Red review process

Review Process at RED (red-review-process)

When to trigger

• Setting expectations on timing and review model before or after submitting
• Understanding what the desk screen decides and what reaches referees
• Planning around the single-anonymized (not double-blind) model

How RED review works (verified)

• Desk / suitability screen first. The editor first assesses whether the paper is suitable for RED; papers that pass are sent out for review. A clean, in-scope, dynamic-model paper clears this faster.
• Single-anonymized review. Reviewers' identities are concealed from authors, but author identities are visible to reviewers — this is not double-blind, so you do not anonymize the manuscript.
• Minimum of two reviewers. Suitable papers go to at least two independent referees.
• Speed is a feature, not a guarantee. The current reviewer page asks reviewers to notify the editor if they cannot act within six weeks, and older SED newsletters report fast first-decision performance. Treat this as planning guidance, then confirm live expectations in the current author system.
• Coordinating Editor. Loukas Karabarbounis (University of Minnesota / Minneapolis Fed) is RED's Coordinating Editor (the editor-in-chief equivalent), cross-checked on SED and ScienceDirect pages.

Planning implications

• Single-anonymized means keep self-citations and acknowledgments natural — no double-blind scrubbing.
• The fast-turnaround target rewards a complete, runnable submission with replication discipline already in place; do not submit a paper whose code archive does not yet exist.
• Plan around a post-desk clock that starts only after the suitability screen and the fee.

Pre-review readiness

Before submission, stage the same materials you would need for a fast R&R:

• model equations and calibration table are internally consistent;
• code archive can rerun baseline and counterfactual exhibits;
• untargeted moments or accuracy diagnostics are available;
• the abstract names the dynamic mechanism and quantitative result;
• any proprietary data or large-runtime issue is documented.

Checklist

• Manuscript is not anonymized (single-anonymized model)
• Paper is in-scope and complete enough to clear the desk screen quickly
• Expectations set for ≥2 referees and live post-desk timing guidance
• Replication materials staged so a fast acceptance is not bottlenecked

Anti-patterns

• Double-blind-scrubbing a manuscript for a single-anonymized journal
• Treating an older turnaround statistic as a guaranteed current deadline
• Treating slow-journal habits (thin appendix, no code) as acceptable here

What fails the suitability screen

Patterns that plausibly stop a quantitative-macro paper at the desk (hedged — the screen is editor judgment, not a published rubric):

Desk-risk pattern	Why it fails the RED lens
Static cross-sectional analysis, no dynamic model	scope is method-defined; no dynamics, no fit
Reduced-form policy evaluation with a token "model sketch"	the model must carry the argument, not decorate it
Calibration exercise reproducing known results with newer data	no mechanism, method, or moment advance
Pure econometric theory with no dynamic-economics object	belongs at an econometrics outlet
Incomplete computation ("results to be added", no accuracy info)	the fast-review model presumes a finished quantitative core

Round log

ROUND LOG — [paper short title]
  Submitted (fee received):  [date]   ← clock starts after fee + desk
  Desk decision:             [date]   suitable / not suitable
  Referee reports expected:  [live guidance / historical fast-review benchmark]
  Decision:                  [date]   reject / R&R / accept
  If R&R — archive rerun:    [date]   resubmission fee: exempt (2nd+ resubmission)

Keep this log in the project repository; it disciplines the team's expectations and gives a polite status query an objective trigger — confirm current expected turnaround against the journal's current author guidelines before quoting any figure to the editor.

Who referees at a SED journal

Expect referees drawn from the SED-conference community: people who solve heterogeneous-agent and business-cycle models themselves. Plan for reports that probe grids, Euler-equation accuracy, calibration circularity, and counterfactual logic rather than only framing — which is why the pre-review staging list above doubles as referee-proofing.

Supplementary resources

• red-submission — the pre-submission preflight
• ../../resources/official-source-map.md — review-model and timing sources