Jel editor strategy

Editor & Referee Strategy for a Survey (jel-editor-strategy)

When to trigger

• The editor encouraged the proposal and you are negotiating the survey's scope
• You want to anticipate what JEL referees of a survey will push on (different from a paper)
• The editor has asked you to expand, cut, or rebalance coverage
• You are calibrating how many revision rounds and how long a JEL survey typically takes

How review differs for a survey

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

Referee question	What they are really checking
Is the coverage complete?	the saturation/comprehensiveness from jel-literature-synthesis — can they name an omitted literature?
Is it balanced?	even-handedness across schools; no self-promotion (jel-comprehensiveness-and-balance)
Is there a real framework?	the spine vs. an annotated bibliography (jel-organizing-framework)
Is it accessible?	can a non-specialist (the JEL reader) follow it (jel-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-journal review) nor unfinishably broad

Referees of a survey are often the surveyed authors themselves — the people whose work is being weighed will read how you weighed it. This makes balance and accurate attribution not just ethical but strategic.

A useful frame: the editor recruits referees partly to test coverage and fairness, not to re-run statistics. A referee who can name an omitted literature, or who feels their school was caricatured, is the single most common cause of a major-revision verdict on a survey — both are preventable upstream by jel-literature-synthesis and jel-comprehensiveness-and-balance.

Scope negotiation with the editor

The editor is your primary partner on a survey. Use the relationship deliberately:

• Lock scope early, in writing. The proposal stage (jel-proposal-and-commissioning) is where scope is cheapest to change. Get the editor's agreement on the boundaries before months of reading.
• Negotiate, don't capitulate, on coverage asks. If the editor wants an added literature, assess whether it fits the spine; propose where it goes or explain why it is out of scope — a survey cannot grow without bound.
• Surface conflicts of interest. If a likely referee is a central author you must critique, tell the editor; it protects both the process and you.
• Calibrate timeline. JEL surveys are large; revision can be substantial and multi-round. Confirm current timelines on the AEA JEL pages (检索于 2026-06；以官网为准) and plan for real revision effort, not cosmetic edits.
• Keep a coverage ledger for the editor. 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 can answer with a decision already made rather than scrambling.

Checklist

• Scope agreed with the editor in writing at the proposal stage
• Anticipated the six survey-referee questions (coverage, balance, framework, accessibility, appraisal, scope)
• Coverage-expansion asks evaluated against the spine before agreeing
• Conflicts of interest (referees who are surveyed authors) flagged to the editor
• Attribution and appraisals double-checked, knowing surveyed authors may referee
• Timeline and likely revision depth calibrated from the official pages (volatile)
• A plan for which asks you will accept vs. push back on, with reasons

Anti-patterns

• Treating the editor as a gatekeeper rather than a scope partner on a commissioned-style article
• Accepting every "please also cover…" until the survey loses its spine and finish-ability
• Mischaracterizing a surveyed author's work when that author may be your referee
• Hiding a conflict of interest instead of disclosing it to the editor
• Assuming a survey gets a light revise; budgeting for cosmetic edits when substantial rework is normal
• Asserting current timelines/process from memory rather than the live AEA 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 the spine; accept/push-back plan? Y/N
【COI】surveyed-author referees flagged to editor? Y/N
【Timeline】revision depth + rounds calibrated from official pages? Y/N
【Next step】→ jel-submission (preflight) → jel-revision (after the letter)