Submit a Paper

High-Income Economies
SFS Member: $400
Nonmember: $460
[Paying the nonmember fee gives the submitting author a one-year SFS membership.]

Middle-Income Economies
To qualify, ALL COAUTHORS MUST RESIDE in middle-income or low-income economies per our list.
SFS Member: $260
Nonmember: $320
[Paying the nonmember fee gives the submitting author a one-year SFS membership.]

Low-Income Economies
To qualify, ALL COAUTHORS MUST RESIDE in low-income economies per our list.
The submission fee waived.

Conditionally Accepted: The fee is waived.

Invited Dual Submission: The first round fee is waived; subsequent rounds require the submission fee.

Appeals: $860 for both SFS members and SFS non-members

Payment Not Required: There are rare cases in which a waiver has been granted. You must upload a cover letter indicating which editor approved the waiver. DO NOT select the waiver unless you have been authorized, in writing, to do so. If you have a question, contact the editorial office BEFORE submitting. Failure to follow this policy may result in your submission being removed.

New Submissions: Please suggest your preference. We take author suggestions into account, but are not always able to accommodate them due to editorial workloads, expertise, and conflicts of interest.

Resubmissions/Appeals: If your original editor’s name is no longer on the list, select the executive editor’s name, and we will reassign to your original editor if possible. Most editors continue to handle resubmissions for one year after the completion of their term.

Resubmissions, including conditionally accepted resubmissions, should be submitted here. Please do not email your resubmission to your editor. Resubmissions require the submission fee. The fee for a conditionally accepted paper is waived.

Please include separate letters to the editor and to each referee, unless otherwise instructed by the editor. The letters to the referees must be anonymous.

If your original editor’s name is no longer on the list, select the executive editor’s name, and we will reassign to your original editor if possible. Most editors continue to handle resubmissions for one year after the completion of their term.

After a revise and resubmit decision, authors will have 18 months from the initial decision to resubmit the paper. Any revisions submitted after 18 months will normally be considered as a new submission and need not receive the same editor or referee; if necessary, the editor may grant an extension at their discretion. This change is effective from November 1, 2024.

Please read the rules to determine if you are eligible for consideration.

If you submitted your paper to a conference and requested dual submission with RFS, you should NOT submit your paper here simultaneously. The conference will send the dual submissions to the RFS sponsoring editor. If the editor invites your paper to continue, you will receive an email instructing you to upload your paper here at that time.

If the editor has already invited your dual submission to continue, you may upload your paper here. The first submission fee is waived; any subsequent rounds will require the submission fee.

In general, RFS does not consider papers that were previously published in conference proceedings, unless the proceedings publication is of abstracts or drastically condensed summaries. There is no conflict between submitting to RFS and to a conference, unless submitting to the conference is simultaneously a submission for publication. There is also no conflict with publishing an abstract of one page or less, e.g., in conference proceedings. In the event that your prior publication is longer, it is crucial to alert us and inquire before submitting your paper to RFS.

In general, it is fine to submit working papers that have been posted on your personal web site, your institution’s web site, SSRN, or a similar site, as long as the submission does not conflict with our other guidelines. If in doubt, please check with us before submitting.

The copyright to a dissertation or thesis typically belongs to the PhD student. Most thesis and dissertation guides have a copyright page in which it is so indicated. Some students officially register for copyright through the U.S. Copyright Office at the Library of Congress. Some students do so using ProQuest/UMI, which involves a financial payment. There are benefits and costs to doing so. Most scholarly publications, like the Review of Financial Studies, ask the copyright to be transferred to the publisher when you sign a publishing agreement upon acceptance of the manuscript. None of this information represents a substitute for the legal advice of qualified attorneys.

Do not submit a paper as new that nontrivially incorporates material from a paper of yours that was rejected by RFS, accepted by RFS, or is at any stage of review at RFS, without first obtaining permission to do so from one of the journal’s editors. We systematically check new submissions against older ones to enforce this policy. Failure to obtain permission prior to doing so may result in sanctions for you and your co-authors. If in doubt, ask!

RFS, RAPS, and RCFS are independent journals. Submissions to any one journal are considered without regard to previous decisions at other SFS journals, and information about past decisions on papers is not shared across the journals without author permission.

Please see our disclosure policy. The submission system will ask you to confirm that you read and understand the policy before you can finalize your submission. You will be able to upload your disclosures in Step 4.

Please see our code sharing policy. The submission system will ask you to confirm that you read and understand the policy before you can finalize your submission. If you need to request an exemption, you will be able to upload your request in the system in Step 4.