[July 1, 2020]
[Policy applies to new submissions from July 1, 2020, onward. Policy does not apply to resubmissions of papers originally submitted prior to July 1, 2020.]
- Code Sharing: After a paper has been accepted for publication at the Review of Financial Studies (RFS), the authors are required to provide the programs needed for replication of any empirical analysis, simulations, numerical computations, or experimental work contained in the paper. The programs will be made available on the RFS website at the time the paper is published online.
- Data Sharing: We encourage authors to include the data along with the source code. However, if the authors choose not to provide the data, or if they are restricted from doing so because of copyright or confidentiality agreements, they are required to include a pseudo-data set to illustrate the format of the files read by the code so that users can better understand the code.
- Exceptions: Exceptions to this policy, such as delay in sharing the code, are possible. However, authors must request such exceptions when they first submit the paper to the RFS. Decisions on such exception requests will be made by the editor handling the submission. Approved exceptions will be noted on the published paper.
- Code Details: Authors should make their best effort so that the code can be understood by reasonably trained users. Hence, the code should include comments as needed. Similarly, details should be provided about the software packages, programing languages, data formats, and data sources. Beyond that, authors are not expected to provide assistance to users of the code.
- Code Usage: People downloading the files will need to certify that the programs will be used only for academic research. Any other use will require explicit permission from all the authors of the published paper and other originators of the code (if such other originators exist). Academic researchers using any part of the code in their own work are required to acknowledge the origin of the code.