Doing Economics

4.3 Where to Submit?
I have already briefly discussed in chapter 2 the difference between writing
for a field journal versus writing for a general journal. This section is about
where you should consider submitting a paper in general: should you go for
an economics journal, and interdisciplinary journal, or a general scientific
journal? If you go for an economics journal, should you submit to a general
or field journal? How should journal rankings figure in your decision?
Before anything, I want to convey one important thing as clearly as
possible: never, ever submit to predatory journals. Generally, a predatory
journal is a journal that will publish (just about) anything in exchange for
money.
2
A journal that does that is called predatory because it preys on
unsuspecting authors who need to publish to get tenure, be promoted, and
so on.
3
But tenure and promotion committees tend to be composed of
people who know a predatory journal when they see one.
4
Generally speaking, you should approach journals like Groucho Marx
resigning from the Friars’ Club: “I don’t want to belong to any club that
would accept me as one of its members.” Likewise, most journals (or
presses, or conferences) that write to you soliciting your work should be
viewed with suspicion. In the vast majority of cases, that will be a predatory
journal (or press, or conference). In a small minority of cases, you may

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receive a legitimate request to contribute one of your articles a special issue
of a well-known peer-reviewed journal in your field, or an inquiry from an
editor at a reputable press asking whether you are thinking of writing a
book. But when that happens, you will usually receive the solicitation of
your work from a guest editor for that special issue who will be a leading
scholar in your field whom you have almost surely heard of, if not someone
you know personally.
So much for those journals you should not submit to. When it comes to
choosing from among journals you should submit to, you should keep in
mind the fact that any publication adds value to your CV in two ways. First,
it determines your odds of getting tenured, promoted, getting an endowed
chair, and so on within your own institution. Second, it also determines
your reservation wage by affecting the type of job you could hope for if you
were to go on the market. When considering the latter, a good rule of thumb
is to aim to publish in the best possible journals in the eyes of those who
will be looking to hire when you go on the market. When considering the
former, you should aim to publish in the best possible journals in the eyes
of those who will be evaluating you for tenure, promotion, and so on. The
two sets of individuals will never completely overlap, and it may well be
the case that your internal incentives (i.e., the incentives you face within
your institution) differ from your external incentives (i.e., the incentives
you face on the market at large).
Although external incentives tend to be much too varied and depend on
too many factors to be discussed here usefully, when it comes to your
internal incentives, ask your department and college whether they have a
specific list of journals or a journal ranking they use for tenure and
promotion. While such lists are not common at R1 institutions, they are
very common at doctoral/professional universities and at liberal arts
colleges.
5
This is because many of those departments are smaller, and so
they do not have multiple people in one field who are able to vouch for the
quality of a given journal, and where most of the time, people are not
publishing in top field or top general journals. As a result, the department or
school builds its list of journals to target from various sources (e.g.,
Scimago, RepEc, Web of Science).

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