rof-submission

Review of Finance Submission

Use this before uploading through Editorial Express (editorialexpress.com/rof). RoF is the official journal of the European Finance Association (EFA), published by Oxford University Press. Re-verify volatile figures on the official pages before paying or submitting.

Preflight

• Choose the track and verify the current fee and tiered refund schedule. Regular submission is EUR 350 (EUR 300 for EFA members); Fast-Track first submission is EUR 900 (resubmission EUR 500) and targets an editorial decision within 14 days of valid payment. Refund amounts depend on decision type/timing (e.g., regular desk rejection EUR 150 / EUR 100 for members; EUR 175 if a decision takes over 120 days); exact Fast-Track refund figures are 待核实.
• Confirm the manuscript stays within the hard 60-page total cap, including appendices, bibliography, figures, and tables.
• Keep the abstract within 150 words (count it).
• Confirm formatting: at least 12-point font, at least 1.5 line spacing, 1-inch side and 1.5-inch top/bottom margins, submitted as a PDF with the first page numbered page 1.
• Remove author-identifying references, acknowledgements, grants, repository links, and file metadata for double-blind review.
• Check Chicago-style citations and references.
• Prepare cover-letter disclosures: confirm the paper is not under simultaneous review elsewhere and disclose any prior RoF rejection — either omission triggers desk rejection and a two-year submission ban. Request any code-sharing exception here, at initial submission, since it cannot be added later.
• Stage code/data materials and the Data Availability Statement.

See templates/cover_letter.md and templates/checklist.md for skeletons.

Track-choice arithmetic — worked example

Illustrative, using the published schedule (re-verify before paying). An EFA member submits regular at EUR 300; a desk rejection refunds EUR 100, so being screened out costs EUR 200. Fast-Track costs EUR 900 against a 14-day target — the premium buys several months of expected calendar on a finished paper. Worth paying when a rival team is circulating the same natural experiment or a deadline (tenure file, job market) needs the decision; wasted when gate-level problems — page cap, soft identification, missing disclosures — make a desk screen the likely outcome.

Desk-risk grid

Check	Pass condition	Where it fails silently
Page count	<=60 total incl. appendices, bibliography, exhibits	appendix tables added after the last count
Abstract	<=150 words with the finding stated	counting keywords or JEL line by mistake
Anonymity	no names, grants, repos; metadata scrubbed	acknowledgement footnote surviving from the working-paper version
Disclosure	prior-RoF-rejection and no-parallel-submission statements present	omission triggers desk rejection plus the two-year ban
Code policy	proprietary-data exception requested in this cover letter	exception deferred to later (the policy expects it at initial submission)
Format	12-pt minimum, 1.5 spacing, required margins, PDF starting at page 1	LaTeX class silently compiling at 11-pt

Final-hour sequence

1. Recount pages with the final bibliography and appendices compiled in.
2. Regenerate the PDF, strip author metadata, and open it on a clean machine to confirm.
3. Re-read the cover letter for the two disclosure sentences and any code-sharing exception paragraph.
4. Confirm the Editorial Express account, the fee route (member vs. non-member, regular vs. Fast-Track), and payment details.
5. Archive the exact submitted PDF and a hash of the replication package so the eventual R&R diff is auditable.

Upload manifest

• Anonymized manuscript PDF: the only file referees see — title page without names, first page numbered 1, internet-appendix material clearly separated if included.
• Cover letter to the editor: disclosures, any code-sharing exception, optional context on closely related own work (kept non-identifying in the manuscript itself).
• Supplementary files where applicable: internet appendix and any pre-staged replication material, packaged for OUP hosting rather than an external archive link (which would break anonymity anyway).
• Fee payment confirmation on the chosen track; for Fast-Track the 14-day clock runs from valid payment, so pay and upload the same day. Confirm the exact upload slots on Editorial Express and the journal's current author guidelines — interfaces change.

Output format

[Submission readiness] Ready / Needs fixes / Not ready
[Route] regular / Fast-Track
[Blocking checks] <fee/page/abstract/anonymity/style/disclosure/code>
[Highest desk risk] <one issue>
[Fix order] <ordered list>