Steps to Submit a Journal Manuscript 

Economic Inquiry (EI) and Contemporary Economic Policy (CEP) maintain a long-standing policy that articles published must be readable and of broad interest.  EI and CEP continue their commitment to the highest-quality of writing as indicated by their strong endorsement of Deirdre McCloskey’s advice as published in “Economical Writing,” the lead article in the April 1985 issue of Economic Inquiry, Vol. 23(2), pp. 187-222.

Please review the following before submitting your paper:

• Any paper submitted to EI or CEP should not be under consideration at another journal and must represent original work.
• Shorter manuscripts reduce the cost to the reader, increasing the chances that your article will be read. In general, manuscripts should not exceed 35 pages (including references, footnotes, tables, and figures, as necessary), but longer papers will be considered if warranted by the subject or contribution. 
• Authors are strongly encouraged to use appendices that can be placed in an online annex for the journal. These files must be identified at the time of submission and submitted as supporting files. Appendices of three or fewer pages may be typeset into the final article.  Longer appendices will be available online as Supporting Information. Publication will be at the editor's discretion. 
• EI and CEP maintain strong desk rejection policies. Editors or co-editors will screen all submissions before sending them to referees for further evaluation. Referee reports will not be solicited when, in the judgment of the editors or co-editors, no reports are needed to conclude that a manuscript is not suitable for publication in EI or CEP. Submission fees will not be refunded in such cases. 
• EI and CEP retain the policy of double blind reviewing. All manuscripts should be submitted with author identity masked.
• Submission fees must be paid at the time of submission or the manuscript will not be considered (make payment now). EI submission is $120 for members and $180 for nonmembers. CEP submission is $90 for members and $100 for nonmembers. Submission fees are not refundable. Fees are waived for members who submit revised conference papers within six months after WEAI conferences (non-members are invited to join at the time of submission to take advantage of the waiver). Waiver code is emailed to presenter after the conference. If you have any questions, contact journals@weai.org. 
• Open Access: If you prefer or if your employer or funding source requires your research to be published under a Creative Commons license, the fee to do so is US$2970 for CEP and US$3400 for EI. If your article is accepted for publication, the Article Publication Charge for publishing Open Access is due before it enters the production process.
• Co-editor Preference:  Authors may request that a particular co-editor or specialized co-editor should handle the manuscript.  Please add “I suggest ________ handle my manuscript” to the letter accompanying your submission. This is not a guarantee that the paper will be handled by that editor, but assures due consideration. Visit the journal page for a list of co-editors: EI / CEP
• Previous Submission Results: If you have an editorial decision letter from another journal and the editor’s decision, referee reports, and your response to those reports that you would like to submit along with your manuscript, please reference these in your cover letter and upload the documents during the submission process under the category “Supporting Information NOT for Review”.  
• No Revisions Option (for EI only):  EI has a “No Revisions” option for submissions, which means exactly what it says—if you submit under No Revisions, the editor or the co-editor will either accept or reject.  What will not happen is a request for a revision. If the authors intend to have the paper considered under this option, please read the No Revisions Policy carefully.  The EI manuscript submission website has a selection for No Revisions, but authors should also state in their cover letter that they seek the No Revisions option.

The manuscript itself should be submitted with the identities of the authors masked so that referees will not know the identities of the authors. It is the responsibility of the authors to mask their identity on their manuscript. WEAI will not intentionally reveal author identity during the review process.

TITLE PAGE

In a separate file from manuscript, submit a title page including the following:

• Information for all authors (full name, affiliation, and e-mail) and indicate which author is the corresponding author for the submission.  This file will not be seen by the referees of the paper.
• Manuscript title of no more than 75 characters and spaces.  
• At least three keywords and three Journal of Economic Literature categories to which the paper belongs, listing the principal code first.
• Alphabetical list of abbreviations used in the manuscript in alphabetical order at the bottom of the title page (e.g., IMF, International Monetary Fund; GAO, General Accounting Office). The first time the organization or subject to be abbreviated is mentioned in the body of the text, use full spelling followed by the abbreviation in parentheses, such as International Monetary Fund (IMF). For subsequent usage, include just the abbreviation. 

ABSTRACT

• An abstract of no more than 100 words is required for all articles submitted.
• Work hard on your abstract; the reader’s decision to tackle your article often depends on the abstract. Give a clear idea of the main conclusions of the article, the methods employed, and a clear indication of the line of reasoning. The opening sentence should indicate the major conclusion of the article.
• Abstracts must not contain equations, diagrams, or footnotes.

FILE FORMATS

• Acceptable file formats for submitted manuscripts include Word or PDF.

SOURCE INFORMATION

• Source information for tables, figures, maps, photos, and other artwork should be mentioned in the captions. For material that is copyrighted, you must obtain a letter of permission from the copyright holder.

Disclosure Policy

Please thoroughly review WEAI's Disclosure Policy. All submissions, including revisions, must be accompanied by an Original Article Disclosure Statement (download fillable PDF form and open in Acrobat to sign digitally). This is applicable even when the authors have no relevant conflicts of interest to disclose. All coauthors should provide a separate Disclosure Statement at the time of submission. The statements will also need to disclose whether IRB approval was obtained for the project, and if not, state the reason(s). Submissions that do not include these statements will be considered incomplete and may not be reviewed. 
 

Data Availability Policy

Sharing data and procedures at the publication stage enhances the value of ​the publication for authors and users. To encourage transparency and reproducibility in the research published in ​EI and CEP, WEAI has partnered with openICPSR to provide published authors a central location to deposit data and other study materials allowing other researchers to replicate analyses without having to request any additional information from the author.

Economic Inquiry requires, as a condition for publication, that the data supporting the results in the paper will be archived in an appropriate public repository such as openICPSR. Authors are required to provide a data availability statement, including a link to the repository they have used, and to cite the data they have shared. Whenever possible the scripts and other artifacts used to generate the analyses presented in the paper should also be publicly archived. Exceptions may be granted at the discretion of the editor, for example, if sharing data compromises privacy of human data, ethical standards or legal requirements. If authors are unable to share data (for example, if sharing data compromises ethical standards or legal requirements) then authors are not required to share it and must describe restrictions in their data availability statement.

Contemporary Economic Policy expects that data supporting the results in the paper will be archived in an appropriate public repository such as openICPSR. Authors are required to provide a data availability statement to describe the availability or the absence of shared data. When data have been shared, authors are required to include in their data availability statement a link to the repository they have used, and to cite the data they have shared. Whenever possible the scripts and other artefacts used to generate the analyses presented in the paper should also be publicly archived. If sharing data compromises ethical standards or legal requirements then authors are not expected to share it.

See the Standard Templates for Author Use to select an appropriate data availability statement for your dataset.

For complete instructions for what to include in your replication packet, visit WEAI Deposit Instructions.

Submit your manuscript via ScholarOne to either CEP or EI, not both:

Submit to Contemporary Economic Policy

Submit to Economic Inquiry
 

Submission Fees 

Payment of a journal submission fee is required for your article to enter the editorial review process. Submission fees are not refundable.

EI submission is $120 for members and $180 for nonmembers: Pay EI Submission Fee

CEP submission is $90 for members and $100 for nonmembers: Pay CEP Submission Fee

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Institutional Member Discount
WEAI Institutional Member affiliates are eligible for a 20% discount on submission fees. For the code to take the discount at checkout, contact your designated representative or call us at 714-965-8800.

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