Hi Everyone-
Great to see many of you in Cambridge for the spring meeting. Just a
reminder that the deadline for submitting papers for the Summer Institute
is March 20. Here's the link.
<
http://papers.nber.org/confsubmit/backend/cfp?id=SI17EEE>
My main reason for writing is to relay conversations I've had with editors
from both *Science* and *Nature*. In general, they are both interested in
seeing more economics papers. I think our group is producing work that
could be of particular interest, so I wanted to clarify two issues:
*1. Neither journal prohibits circulating through the NBER working paper
series.* Both explained that they do not want to undermine the intellectual
process, which they understand involves presenting at conferences and
circulating working papers. They described "community servers" where
physical scientists share working papers before they submit to *Science* or
*Nature*. *Nature's* Guide to Authors states “Novel (we do not consider
meeting report abstracts and preprints on community servers to compromise
novelty)...”
I explained to each that the "This Week" email goes to 25,0000 people
including some journalists, and neither re-thought their position.
That said, neither wanted to give blanket approval to papers circulated
through NBER. If a journalist happens to pick up the working paper and
writes a splashy article about it, the journals MAY (but would not
necessarily) decide that this precludes publication. That said, my guess is
that it would be highly unlikely that a journalist would do that without
speaking to the author, at which point, you could request that they hold
off.
What is very likely to raise a a red flag, and preclude publication at
their journals, is if the author puts out a press release, writes a blog
post, or in other ways actively pushes the paper.
Also, Nature emphasized that it made most sense to submit to NBER and the
journal at the same time.
As I've said before, I think the NBER working paper series is a great
service that allows you to circulate your papers to lots of colleagues, so
I'd like to find ways for everyone to continue using it.
*2. Both offered to do pre-submission screens. Science accepts
economics-style articles at the initial submission stage. *As some of you
know, the format for *Science* and *Nature* papers is very different from
an economics article. I suspect that some of you view the idea of
re-writing the paper as a major deterrent to submitting at these outlets.
The editor at *Science* expressed willingness to consider economic-style
submisisions at the early stages of the review process. *Nature* offers a
pre-submission screen based on a short write-up of the paper (see:
http://www.nature.com/nature/authors/submissions/presubs/).
They have both reviewed this email, so I am confident I'm summarizing their
points accurately.
Please let me know if you have questions.
Catherine
Received on Sun Mar 05 2017 - 06:45:17 EST
