From Manuscript to Publication : A Brief Guide For Economists ∗

The aim of this paper is to give a short description of the nature of books and journals, their respective editors, and the difficult process and proprieties involved in publishing papers. It describes some of the main features of the publication process, so that readers may be in a better position to make judgements about published work and writers may be, to some extent at least, prepared to face the difficulties that inevitably lie in their path. Emphasis is given to the need to deal with rejections and the often substantial revisions requested by editors. While some of the features of publishing are common to all disciplines, this paper is specifically intended for economists. ∗This paper was written in response to several requests from colleagues and graduate students. It can be regarded as a sequel to my paper on starting research and writing research reports; see Creedy (2001), substantially revised and extended in Creedy (2002). I should like to thank Veronica Jacobsen for encouragement and helpful discussions, and Siobhan Austen, Harry Bloch, Mark Casson, Robert Dixon, Nisvan Erkal, John Fender, Norman Gemmell, Ross Guest, Guyonne Kalb, Ingrid Linsley, and Denis O’Brien for comments on an earlier version. However, as these people were not referees, I have had the luxury of being selective in following their comments.