Doing Economics

4.8 Understanding Editorial Decisions
The various types of editorial decisions can be confusing at first, especially
for people who have hitherto spent their entire scholastic lives being at or
very near the top of their class, and who have rarely been told that their
work was anything less than very good, if not perfect. This section aims to
clarify what each type of editorial decision means.
Desk Rejection. A desk rejection occurs when a paper is rejected by an
editor without getting sent out for review. These decisions tend to occur

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quickly, and are usually the result of a manuscript being a poor fit for a
journal. This occurs either because the topic of the manuscript is too far off
from what the editors are currently interested in publishing, or because the
quality of the manuscript is too far below the journal’s quality threshold, or
simply because the topic does not fit the editor’s vision of what the journal
should publish. When you get a desk rejection, if the editor gives you any
actionable feedback on your work, you may try to incorporate that feedback
before submitting your paper somewhere else. It sometimes happens,
however, that an editor will see a fatal flaw in your work. If and when that
occurs, remember the sunk cost fallacy, and consider abandoning that
manuscript to work on something else.
For instance, I spend a good amount of my time rejecting manuscripts
that are best labeled “determinants of” papers. Those are papers where the
authors had some data (almost always cross-sectional data) but no research
design to speak of. Even so, the authors decided to run some regressions,
look at what was significant, and take a heroic step from partial correlations
to causation by speculating about the mechanisms behind those findings.
Almost always, those manuscripts include policy recommendations. In such
cases, the authors should work on something else: though that kind of
analysis was certainly novel and interesting in the 1980s, standards of
evidence have changed considerably over the last four decades, and that
kind of paper would not pass muster as a term paper in a field course.
Rejection. A rejection occurs when a manuscript is sent out for review
and gets rejected after the editor has received anywhere from one to five
reviews on it. Though the norm at most journals is for authors to receive
two or three reviews as part of a decision, nothing holds any one editor to
that norm. Many manuscripts get rejected once one clearly negative review
has been submitted (this is especially likely when the editor likes to have
unanimous support for a manuscript before giving a revise-and-resubmit,
and would prefer not wasting the authors’ time by waiting for another
review, or when the editor was somewhat negatively inclined initially, but
wanted to see what the reviewers thought of the paper). At top journals, an
editor will sometimes solicit additional reviews.
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Revise and Resubmit. Revise-and-resubmit decisions (R&Rs) come in
two broad varieties, strong and weak, also respectively called minor and
major revisions (so-named because a strong R&R entails minor revisions

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and less work than a weak R&R, which entails major revisions). For those
cases where what the reviewers and the editor ask from you seems feasible
within the amount of time you are given to submit a revision, see below on
how to prepare a successful revision. If you think the revisions are feasible
but you believe you will need more time than the deadline you are given in
the decision letter, you should ask for more time. In many (if not most)
cases, deadlines for revisions are arbitrary, and editors understand that life
events (e.g., changing jobs, moving, welcoming a new child into the world,
caring for an ailing family member) can get in the way of research
productivity.
Unless you know for a fact that the revisions required from you are
impossible to undertake to the reviewers’ and the editor’s satisfaction, you
should always jump on the chance to resubmit a revised version of an
article when you get an R&R. The probability of getting a manuscript
accepted at a journal, conditional on that journal having requested a
revision, is significantly higher than the unconditional probability of a
getting a manuscript accepted at another comparable journal.
One brief word about what you should not do when given a chance to
revise and resubmit your manuscript. After getting an R&R where the
comments are so good as to make the paper significantly better, you may be
tempted to incorporate those good comments and submit the revised version
of your paper to a higher-ranked journal without letting the original
handling editor know, thus leaving the window open for you to resubmit.
Do not do that. This is highly unethical (the peer-review system is already
stretched thin by an excess quantity of manuscripts relative to the quantity
of decent-quality refereeing time available), and you can quickly get a
reputation for unethical behavior if you get caught doing so.
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When you are offered the chance to revise and resubmit your manuscript,
it is customary to update your curriculum vitae (CV) so that it states for this
manuscript that a revision has been requested by the journal that gave you
the R&R.
Reject and Resubmit. This category of decision tends to puzzle those who
are on the receiving end of it, both because it is uncommon and because of
its neither-fish-nor-fowl nature. Indeed, a reject-and-resubmit is neither a
revise-and-resubmit nor a rejection, but rather a rejection with an invitation
to submit a significantly different version of the paper. Such a resubmission

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after a rejection is then treated as a fresh new submission, and it will likely
have new reviewers if the original paper went out for review. This kind of
decision is typically made when the editor feels as though the original
submission contains the kernel of a good paper, but the current version is so
unsatisfactory as to practically require a brand new paper.
When you get a reject-and-resubmit from a journal, the odds of getting
the paper ultimately accepted in that journal are much less than if you get
an R&R, but they still tend to be slightly higher than for a fresh submission
at a comparable journal. Indeed, though a reject-and-resubmit offers no
guarantees, in giving you a reject-and-resubmit the editor has specifically
told you the kind of paper she would like to see in her journal, and there is a
good amount of information in that signal.
When you get a reject-and-resubmit, do not update your CV like you
would for an R&R. For all intents and purposes, your manuscript was
rejected by the journal, and in no case should your CV state that a revision
was requested.
Acceptance with Minor Revisions. This type of decision, also known as a
conditional acceptance, means that the editor likes the paper enough so as to
be able to accept it subject to your making a few revisions. Typically, those
revisions will be stylistic or cosmetic in nature. This decision usually comes
after one or more revise-and-resubmit decisions. It might also happen that
an acceptance with minor revisions or conditional acceptance will be the
first decision you get on a manuscript, but that is very uncommon.
When your paper is accepted subject to minor revisions or conditionally
accepted, you should list the paper as such in your CV.
Acceptance. This is the Holy Grail of editorial decisions. It means that
your paper is now forthcoming in the journal that accepted it and that you
should take time to celebrate. This decision usually comes after one or more
revise-and-resubmit decisions and a conditional acceptance. Such a decision
can also in principle occur upon the initial submission of a manuscript, but
that is exceedingly rare.
When your paper is accepted, it is customary to list it in your CV as
“forthcoming” in the journal that accepted it. In an effort to generate buzz
for forthcoming articles, many journals will publish manuscripts online
before they do so in physical form. When your article is published online, it
should remain as “forthcoming” in your CV until it is assigned volume or

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issue numbers (or both) as well as page numbers, unless you are publishing
in a journal that is only published electronically, in which case it should be
published in an issue of the journal soon after it is first made available
online.