jpam-review-process

Review Process (jpam-review-process)

Knowing how JPAM judges papers lets you pre-empt the objections that sink them. JPAM is an APPAM / Wiley journal with an anonymized-review preflight and a stated right to desk-reject without review. The reviewer pool is cross-disciplinary, so a paper must satisfy an economist's identification standard and a policy reader's relevance standard at once. (Verify volatile specifics on the author page: 检索于 2026-06；以官网为准.)

When to trigger

• Before submission, to stress-test against likely referee objections
• Deciding which article type to target and whether it is peer-reviewed
• Interpreting a decision letter and planning next steps
• Understanding the desk-screen so you avoid an avoidable desk reject

How JPAM evaluates (the working model)

1. Desk screen. Editors may desk-reject without review for fit (not a credible policy evaluation / out of scope), inadequate identification, or insufficient significance. The submission must also satisfy the membership-or-fee requirement before it is considered (see jpam-submission).
2. Anonymized review preparation. Prepare an anonymized manuscript plus a separate title page; follow the live Research Exchange file labels and anonymity prompts. Anonymize self-references.
3. Cross-disciplinary referees. Expect at least one identification-focused reviewer and one policy/field reviewer. Both must be satisfied — strong design, real relevance.
4. Decision categories. Reject / major or minor revision (R&R) / accept (exact category labels vary; confirm on the live page). R&R is the common path to publication for promising papers.

Article types and peer review

Type	Peer-reviewed?	Note
Feature Research Article	Yes	the main research format
Methods for Policy Analysis	Yes	methodological advances for analysts
Policy Retrospective	Typically (confirm)	reflective look-back
Point/Counterpoint	No (invited)	short scholarly debate
Policy Insights	No (invited; ≤ 3,000 words)	rapid, timely take
Book Reviews	No (invited/edited)	—

What JPAM referees reward / punish

• Reward: credible identification, a clear policy implication calibrated to the design, cost-benefit and distributional attention, cross-field relevance, and a reproducible package.
• Punish: overclaiming beyond the estimand, selection-on-observables dressed up as causal, naive TWFE on staggered policies, no policy takeaway, ignoring who bears the costs, and irreproducible code.

Checklist

• Manuscript survives a self-administered desk screen (fit, identification, significance)
• Correct article type chosen; peer-review status understood
• Double-blind anonymization done (text + self-cites + metadata)
• Design pre-tested against the reviewer-objection checklist
• Both an identification reviewer and a policy reviewer would be satisfied
• Replication package staged so it is not a late surprise

Anti-patterns

• Submitting a paper that an editor will desk-reject for obvious fit/identification gaps
• Pitching a full research paper into the non-reviewed Point/Counterpoint or Policy Insights slots
• Satisfying the identification reviewer while ignoring the policy reviewer (or vice versa)
• Leaving anonymization, fee/membership, or the data package to the last moment

Output format

【Desk-screen risk】fit / identification / significance — clear? [Y/N]
【Article type】+ peer-reviewed? [Y/N]
【Anonymization】text + self-cites + metadata clean? [Y/N]
【Referee coverage】identification + policy reviewers both satisfied? [Y/N]
【Package staged】replication materials ready? [Y/N]
【Next】jpam-submission

Supplementary resources

• ../../../shared-resources/empirical-methods/reviewer-objection-checklist.md — objections by identification strategy
• ../../resources/official-source-map.md — review model, article types, decision-category guardrails