Journal Publication

Resources

• Fire Side Chats with Journal Editors

Journal of Financial Economics

Editor: Toni Whited

Top 3 advice to junior faculty:

• Junior faculty is not so good at positioning their papers. They do great literature reviews, but not how their paper adds.
• Junior faculty often do not have as polished papers, they are not rewritten 20 times.
• Junior faculty is hesitant to sent stuff out, they sit on things for years and years, and then they get one rejection and get discouraged. You have to go on and on, and not give up, and take reviewer comments super seriously. Everyone gets rejected all the time!

A paper is ready to send in for publishing when you do not get more comments on it. If you are not invited to give a lot of seminars, then send your paper out for comments. I also leave a paper alone for a few months, because you need to get some perspective, and you often change things when you pick it up again. Do this once or twice. Rewrite the papers, five or six times.

What makes a paper a good fit for the JFE:

• Anything that is finance, structural or reduced form, anything!

Importance of introduction

There is a limited referee pool and the referees have limited time. You got to catch the editors attention so they can give it to good referees. Toni reads the introductions from start to end, look at the methodology section, and some tables. If she doesn’t know the topic she asks for advice. JFE gets around 1800 papers per year, and the editor reads around 3 papers per day, so you really need to catch the editor’s attention.

In the end what tips a paper towards rejection is the quality of the ideas. Did you explain to the editor why anyone besides you and the referees should be interested in the paper? This can tip a paper one way or the other. If a paper has some executional issues, but has convinced everyone that it is interesting, we let them fix the issues. However, if a paper is perfectly executed but you have not convinced the editor then it typically tips the other way. The introduction is very important here, you should rewrite the introduction 5 to 6 times.

Cover letter to editor

• You should write a cover letter to the editor.
• Relatively short, including: This is my paper, this is my coauthors, this is the topic, and this topic is awesome because.

Journal of Finance

Editor: Stefan Nagel

Advice for junior scholars:

• Recognizing that writing matters. We need to interpret the results we have and we need to persuade an audience.
• The introduction is crucial! Especially the first 2 pages. Don’t write in a chronological order of how you got to your results. What is the most logical, clearest, and transparent way you can explain to the audience why I’m doing is important.

• Look at and deconstruct really good papers.

• You want to come to your main point quickly! Don’t write 5 pages of literature review and then tell the us what you do.
• Some papers say “Our paper contributes to the literature of X” however now the reader is left with the question so what you are actually contributing with! Explain this to the reader!
• Paper often have certain weaknesses, you don’t want to wait until page 30 until you bring up a severe issue with identification or similar. You need to address this head on and write what implications this has. Don’t hide this away!