Guidelines for Accepted Articles

Instructions for Authors of Accepted Manuscripts


Authors of articles and review essays accepted to the Journal of Economic Literature must provide the following items to the publications office:

  • Final manuscript PDF. Please send a final .pdf that includes everything for print publication including your reference list and any tables, figures, and print appendices. Please exclude anything from the .pdf that is for the web only, like online appendices.

  • Manuscript native files. Please send editable native files for your manuscript that reflect the final version of your paper. If originating from LaTex, Scientific Word, or a similar program, please be sure to include any associated .aux, .bib, and/or .bbl files along with the main text file. Authors are also welcome to submit their native files in other editable formats, such as Microsoft Word.

  • Table and figure native files. If possible, table native files should be submitted in Excel or .tex format. Though we will happily publish tables of any size, tables are most legible in “portrait” layout and tend to look best with nine columns or fewer when typeset. Editable figure native files should be submitted in .wmf, .eps, .ai, editable .pdf, or Excel format, and photographs and raster images should be formatted at 300 dots per inch (dpi). If there are variables (italics) or matrices or vectors (boldface) in figures, they should be designated as such. We are now able to print color images, so authors should feel free to use color in figures.

  • Publication Agreement (PA). The publications office will send a PA for each author. Please select the appropriate reprint permission option on the first page and sign and date the relevant line on the last page.

  • Disclosure statement(s). Each author must submit a disclosure statement. The statement must be written by the author to whom it applies, should include the author’s name and the manuscript title, and should list any potential conflicts of interest and/or funding sources for the author’s work. See the full AEA Disclosure Statement Policy for details: https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/policies/disclosure-policy.

  • Reprint permissions for figures/tables copied from another source. If any figures and/or tables in your manuscript previously appeared in other publications, please notify the editorial office when submitting your manuscript files and consult the original publishers’ websites for instructions on how to apply for permission to reprint them in the JEL. Publishers’ rules and requirements surrounding reprints vary. Some require substantial processing time, so we recommend requesting reprint permissions shortly after the acceptance of your manuscript.

  • Access to data files and programs, if applicable. Authors of accepted papers that contain empirical work, simulations, or experimental work must provide information about the data, programs, and other details of the computations sufficient to permit replication. Data and programs should be archived in the AEA Data and Code Repository. Authors will provide access to the Editor, if requested, to both data and programs. The Editor should be notified if access to the data used in a paper is restricted or limited, or if, for some other reason, the requirements above cannot be met. The AEA Data Editor will assess compliance with this policy, and will verify the accuracy of the information. Please see the Data and Code Availability Policy for details: https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/policies/data-code.
     
    • Data and Code Archive Agreement(s), if applicable. If your paper makes use of data as outlined above, each author will need to sign a Data and Code Archive Agreement. The publications office will supply the agreement(s) if necessary.

Once the Editor has assigned your paper to an issue, you will receive an email from our editorial office alerting you to the issue assignment and providing a date by which you can expect to receive page proofs. If you will be traveling or otherwise unavailable during that time, please let us know and we will adjust the schedule so that you will be sure to receive your proofs earlier in the process. The proofs will include any editorial queries we may have. You will also have the opportunity to make relatively small changes to the file at the proofs stage.