Arecon editor strategy

Editor & Committee Strategy (arecon-editor-strategy)

When to trigger

• The Editorial Committee invited the topic and you are negotiating the review's scope
• You want to anticipate what ARE referees of a review will push on (different from a paper)
• The editor has asked you to expand, cut, or rebalance coverage
• You are calibrating how the Committee-driven review cycle and the Annual Reviews production timeline work

Who you are working with at ARE

ARE is run by an Editorial Committee of senior economists (current co-editors 检索于 2026-06-22：Philippe Aghion, Hélène Rey, Timothy Besley；re-verify before relying — the Committee rotates on five-year terms；以官网为准) plus the journal's production editors at Annual Reviews. Your primary partners differ by phase: the commissioning editor / Committee owns scope and acceptance; the production editor owns format, figures, copyediting, and the volume schedule. Because the article is commissioned, the relationship is more collaborative than adversarial — the Committee wants the review to succeed — but acceptance is not automatic: an invited manuscript still goes through review for accuracy, rigor, and balance (检索于 2026-06；以官网为准).

How review differs for a review article

ARE referees do not check an identification strategy or replicate results — there are none of the author's own. They evaluate the review as a review:

Referee question	What they are really checking
Is the coverage complete?	the saturation/comprehensiveness from arecon-literature-synthesis — can they name an omitted literature?
Is it balanced and accurate?	even-handedness across schools; no self-promotion (arecon-evidence-standards)
Is there a real framework?	the spine vs. an annotated bibliography (arecon-organizing-framework)
Is it accessible?	can an adjacent economist follow it (arecon-writing-style)
Are the appraisals fair and correct?	does the author characterize each study's contribution and limits accurately
Is it the right scope?	not too narrow (field review) nor unfinishably broad (Handbook)

Referees of an ARE review are often the reviewed authors themselves — the people whose work is being weighed will read how you weighed it. This makes balance and accurate attribution strategic, not just ethical.

Economics-specific editorial posture

• Treat the editor conversation as a scope contract about literatures, mechanisms, and evidence hierarchies: theory, quasi-experimental work, structural models, macro evidence, and applied micro fields may each expect different standards of synthesis.
• When an editor asks for broader coverage, answer by naming the economic question the added work changes: mechanism, welfare implication, identification lesson, policy margin, market design, or macro/finance channel.
• Push back on additions that turn the piece into a handbook chapter; ARE value comes from a field-level economic framework plus selective appraisal, not from listing every empirical setting.

Scope negotiation with the Committee

• Lock scope early, in writing. The invitation/acceptance stage is where scope is cheapest to change. Confirm the boundaries with the editor before months of reading.
• Negotiate, don't capitulate, on coverage asks. If a referee or editor wants an added literature, assess whether it fits the spine; propose where it goes or explain why it is out of scope — a review cannot grow without bound and must stay in the ~25–40-page envelope (检索于 2026-06；以官网为准).
• Surface conflicts of interest. If a likely referee is a central author you must critique, tell the editor — Annual Reviews requires disclosure of potential bias, and it protects both the process and you.
• Respect the volume schedule. ARE publishes one volume per year; production has fixed deadlines. A late draft can slip a whole volume. Confirm the timeline with the production editor and plan backward from it.
• Keep a coverage ledger. Maintain a short, sharable record of what is in scope and why (and what was deliberately excluded), so when the editor or a referee asks "why not X?", you answer with a decision already made.

Checklist

• Scope agreed with the commissioning editor in writing at the invitation stage
• Anticipated the six review-referee questions (coverage, balance/accuracy, framework, accessibility, appraisal, scope)
• Coverage-expansion asks evaluated against the spine and the page envelope before agreeing
• Conflicts of interest (referees who are reviewed authors) flagged to the editor
• Attribution and appraisals double-checked, knowing reviewed authors may referee
• Volume/production timeline calibrated with the production editor (volatile — confirm)
• A plan for which asks you accept vs. push back on, with reasons

Anti-patterns

• Treating an invitation as guaranteed acceptance — invited reviews are still refereed for rigor and balance
• Accepting every "please also cover…" until the review loses its spine and overruns the page envelope
• Mischaracterizing a reviewed author's work when that author may be your referee
• Hiding a conflict of interest instead of disclosing it (Annual Reviews requires disclosure)
• Missing the production deadline and slipping the volume
• Asserting current editors / timeline / process from memory rather than the live Annual Reviews pages

Output format

【Scope agreement】boundaries locked with editor in writing? Y/N
【Referee anticipation】coverage / balance / framework / accessibility / appraisal / scope — prepared each? Y/N
【Coverage asks】evaluated against spine + page envelope; accept/push-back plan? Y/N
【COI】reviewed-author referees flagged to editor? Y/N
【Timeline】volume/production schedule calibrated? Y/N · 待核实
【Source status】current editors/process re-confirmed on Annual Reviews pages? Y/N
【Next step】→ arecon-submission (preflight) → arecon-review-process (what to expect)