Radar Perene / Archive / science

Submitting a paper to a Brazilian economics journal

◦ Index methodology v2.2 (working papers with DOI). See the methodology.

Science

The finished manuscript feels like the end of the line. Months of data, tests, tables, drafts — and at last a PDF that stands on its own. Anyone who has never been through the process imagines the next step is an email and a wait. In practice, the finished PDF marks the halfway point: submitting a paper to an economics journal is a process with its own stages, its own rules and a vocabulary nobody explains in advance.

Submitting a paper means handing an unpublished manuscript to a journal's formal evaluation, which decides — first through editorial screening, then through peer review — whether the work will be published. The author does not choose the reviewers, in most cases never learns their identity, and undertakes not to offer the same text to another journal while the evaluation runs.

Before submitting: choosing the journal

The most consequential decision happens before any form is filled. Journals have scope — a macroeconomics journal is unlikely to evaluate a market-microstructure paper, however good — and they have prestige rulers, which in Brazil coexist in two systems that do not translate into each other: the Qualis classification, used by the graduate-education system, and the international impact factor. Reading the candidate journal's recent issues says more than any ranking: it shows the type of question, the typical article length and the standard of method that editorial board considers publishable.

There is also a check few people run and which saves months: the preprint policy. Most serious journals accept that the manuscript circulated earlier as a working paper — that has been the normal flow of economics for decades — but the rules vary in the detail, and the instructions-to-authors page is the only place where the answer counts.

The mechanics: platforms, format, anonymization

The submission itself happens on electronic platforms — in Brazil, most commonly OJS, the open system many university journals use, and commercial systems such as ScholarOne. The form asks for metadata (title, abstract, JEL classification codes), the files and, increasingly, declarations: of originality, of conflict of interest, of ethical compliance.

Format is where manuscripts stumble early. Each journal publishes its norms — maximum length, citation style, abstract language — and editorial screening returns, without reading the merits, any text that ignores them. When review is double-blind, anonymization is added: the body of the text cannot contain the authors' names, acknowledgments that identify them, or revealing self-citations ("as we showed in our earlier study"). Preparing the blinded version is a small craft of its own.

What happens after sending

The first decision is the editor's screening — the desk review. The editor may decline without sending the text to reviewers (the desk reject, which usually arrives within weeks) or forward it to two or three referees. From there the clock changes scale: in the Brazilian system, one round of referee reports typically takes several months, and the outcome is rarely a dry yes or no. The most common result of a successful evaluation is the "revise and resubmit" — a list of objections the author must answer point by point, sometimes over more than one round, before acceptance.

Two figures help calibrate expectations, and they belong to the system, not to any particular case. In numbers: rejection rates above 80% are common at well-regarded economics journals, and the span between submission and final decision, all rounds included, frequently crosses a full year. None of this measures the quality of a specific paper — it measures the ratio of manuscripts to available pages.

The step before, which this house knows from the inside

This article describes the process in general terms for a reason of method: evaluations in progress are not public matter — anyone's. What the house can show, because it is public and verifiable, is the step that precedes any submission: Radar Perene's working paper series, published on Zenodo with DOIs (the first in the series sits at 10.5281/zenodo.21325743). That is the step where a study acquires a date, an identifier and readers before facing referees — and also where the choices described above (scope, format, preprint policy) stop being abstract and become decisions with consequences.

What submission is not

It is not an entrance exam with an answer key: two competent referees can disagree about the same text. It is not a moral judgment: rejection is the statistically normal outcome, not a sentence on the author. And it is not the only way for a study to exist — working papers with DOIs circulate, get cited and age in public, with peer review coming later, when it comes.

Frequently asked questions

Can the same paper be submitted to two journals at once?

No. Simultaneous submission violates the exclusivity rule of practically every journal and, once discovered, ends the evaluation at both.

Does publishing first as a working paper hurt the submission?

At most economics journals, no — the working paper is an expected stage of the flow. Each journal's specific policy, however, is the only source that decides.

Does submitting cost money?

It depends on the journal. Many Brazilian journals charge nothing; others charge submission or publication fees. The information is always in the instructions to authors.

How long does a decision take?

A desk reject arrives within weeks; a full evaluation, with referee reports and revision rounds, tends to be measured in many months. Times vary by journal and appear, when published, in each journal's editorial statistics.

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Continue the track: BCB open data: how an SGS number becomes a Diário reading →

House readings: today's reading is in the Diário; the memory of Brazilian market episodes, in the Atlas.

Understanding where a specific study would fit in that circuit is backstage conversation — and the house has it, when sought.