Finance Journals

Maintained by Don Chance

Please do not email me with questions about journal quality.  I will not respond to questions about journal quality.  This list makes no statements with regard to the quality of any of these journals or any journals on this list.

This list contains all journals that I am aware of that academics in finance would likely use as outlets for their research.  It specifically excludes economics journals except where obvious connections to banking or finance are in the title or in the content (e.g., Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking).  It also includes some general journals of high quality (e.g., Journal of Business).  I have also not included journals in real estate or insurance.  No offense is intended, and I may add some of these later.  If you know of any finance journals I should add, please send an email to dchance@lsu.edu. 

Many journals have two sites, one maintained by the publisher (dealing more with promotion and subscription issues) and one maintained by the editor.  Some of these links are for one type, and some are for the other.  Usually you can find either from the other.

Also, some journals include the word "The" as part of their titles, such as The Journal of Finance.  Others do not, such as Journal of Financial Economics.  I have omitted the word "The" here as I think it is easier to find the journal title without having so many alphabetized with the letter "t."

***ASIDE***

Before we get started, however, I would like to take this opportunity to express a beef I have with a lot of journals.  We all have our complaints about rejections, but my complaint deals with the quality of the service provided by journals.  Although I have no empirical evidence, I believe that the quality of the journal is highly correlated with the quality of the service provided by the editor.  In other words, the crappier the journal, the poorer the service.  Such editors often take the job in the hope that their department chairs and deans will be impressed.  Little do the chairs and deans know about the poor quality of the journals and the bad service provided by the editors.

I propose the following code of conduct for journals and their editors.

1.    The editor will promptly acknowledge all submissions, with an indication that the article is being reviewed and an estimate of the date given to the referee for expected return of the review.  Email makes this easy

2.    The editor will strive to find impartial referees.  A referee whose own work is highly criticized or praised in the paper should be avoided.

3.    The editor will contact the referee with a request for whether the referee would be willing and able to review the paper by a specific date.

4.    The editor will stay abreast of the status of each paper.  The author should not be required to ask the editor to follow up on a delinquent referee.  If the author is willing to wait, the editor will get a new referee if necessary.

5.    The editor will discount reviews that stagger in late from delinquent referees.  Delinquent referees are already discredited; hence, their opinions are questionable.  There may be a few circumstances in which a delinquent referee makes a valid point, but the editor must be absolutely certain that the referee is correct before giving it any weight.

6.    The editor will carefully examine referee reports and will not use those that clearly indicate poor effort or hasty preparation.

7.    The journal will provide an unbiased appeals process.

8.    The editor will be alert to those situations in which the referee appears to have made a conscientious effort but makes no constructive suggestions.  Any good editor should be able to recognize destructive suggestions and handle accordingly.

9.    Articles accepted for publication will be processed in a manner befitting the significance and timeliness of the findings.  The editor will not accept or even consider articles when there is an unusually large backlog unless the author is informed in advance.

10.    The editor will contact authors informing them of the expected dates on which they should receive the page proofs.  The authors will not receive a surprise package of proofs the day before catching a plane for a 30-day trip to the other side of the world.  The author will not be made to feel that failure to return the proofs within 48 hours will result in sacrifice of his or her firstborn child.

11.    The editor will disregard the affiliations of authors and referees, especially any significant differential between the quality of the two.

12.    The editor will actually pay attention to the comments of referees.  If none of the two or more referees recommends rejection of the article, the editor will not reject the article on this pass.  If the editor rejects the article in spite of two or more good reviews, then the editor should have sent the paper back to the author (with manuscript fee) before sending it out for review.  (This has happened to me twice at the same journal.  Notice to "___ ___ ___" (insert journal name), I will not submit any more articles to you nor will I referee for you again.)

13.    The editor will take the referee's comment "shorten the paper" with considerable skepticism, recognizing that this is the most frequent comment made by referees who either cannot come up with something substantive to say or are trying to tell the editor "I'm so smart I could see the point in half that much space."  Referees who make legitimate criticisms that a paper is too long will point out exactly what sections should be deleted but few do so.  While editors must be concerned about excessively long papers, they will recognize that a carefully executed and verifiable study requires that all details be revealed.

14.    Another referee comment to be taken with skepticism is any comment that says that something the author did is questionable, doubtful, debatable, or wrong without explaining exactly why the referee feels this way.  Referees are prone to making such off-hand remarks without explanation but in that case, the author cannot determine exactly what it is that the referee objects to.  

15.    The journal will keep files on individuals who have submitted or refereed for the journal.  All of the above do not apply when delinquent or careless referees submit their own papers.

If you submit to a journal and find it violating the above rules, do not confront the editor.  You will only lose.  The editor has power, influence, and knows a lot of other editors.  Instead I recommend you (1)  do not submit to the journal again and (2) tell all of your colleagues (and doctoral students, if any) of this experience, encouraging them not to submit to the journal.

*******

OK, I've said enough.  Here are the journals.  (Editors:  Do you see yourself in here?)

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Last updated:  August 30, 2008