Publication Guide
The American Economic Association (AEA) is the definitive US learned society for economics. Organized at a meeting in 1885 and incorporated in 1923, it is headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee, runs its publications office out of Pittsburgh, and counts more than 17,000 members across academia, government, and business. Unlike most large publishers, the AEA publishes its nine journals itself, on a society-subsidized model: there are no article processing charges, and costs are covered by subscriptions, membership dues, and modest submission fees.
The portfolio is small but exceptionally influential. The American Economic Review (AER), established in 1911, is one of the so-called 'top-5' economics journals, and the Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) and Journal of Economic Perspectives (JEP) are the field's standard venues for surveys and accessible syntheses. This guide covers which AEA journal fits your paper, what submission actually costs, how peer review works, and how to format and submit your manuscript.
Which AEA journal fits your paper?
| You're most likely to... | Choose this journal |
|---|---|
| Have a general-interest research paper aiming for the field's most visible venue | American Economic Review (AER) - the flagship, established 1911, 12 issues per year. Highly selective; one of the top-5 economics journals. |
| Have a short, sharp result that doesn't need a full-length treatment | AER: Insights - launched 2019 for concise papers, capped at 7,000 words plus at most five exhibits. |
| Be writing a survey or synthesis of an existing literature | Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) - commissioned and submitted survey articles, plus the JEL classification system and book reviews. |
| Want to reach economists outside your subfield, plus policymakers and students | Journal of Economic Perspectives (JEP) - accessible, largely solicited essays; every issue is free to read online. |
| Have a strong field paper in applied micro, macro, theory, or policy | AEJ: Applied Economics, AEJ: Macroeconomics, AEJ: Microeconomics, or AEJ: Economic Policy - the four American Economic Journal field titles, launched in 2009. |
| Be presenting at the ASSA annual meeting | AEA Papers and Proceedings - the annual conference volume, published each May. |
What the AEA publishes
Nine journals, all in economics:
- American Economic Review (AER) - the flagship general-interest research journal (est. 1911).
- AER: Insights - short-form research papers (est. 2019).
- Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) - surveys, review essays, and the JEL classification codes.
- Journal of Economic Perspectives (JEP) - non-technical syntheses; publicly accessible at no charge.
- AEJ: Applied Economics, AEJ: Macroeconomics, AEJ: Microeconomics, AEJ: Economic Policy - peer-reviewed field journals (est. 2009).
- AEA Papers and Proceedings - selected papers from the AEA annual meeting.
The AEA also produces EconLit, the standard bibliographic index for economics, and runs JOE, the profession's main job-listing platform.
Fees and open access - actual numbers
AEA journals charge no APCs. Instead, research journals charge a submission fee tiered by AEA membership and by the World Bank income classification of the author's country (figures below are for AER and AER: Insights; verified August 2026 - check the journal's guidelines page before submitting):
| Author situation | Submission fee |
|---|---|
| AEA member, high-income country | $200 |
| AEA member, middle-income country | $100 |
| Nonmember, high-income country | $300 |
| Nonmember, middle-income country | $200 |
| Any author, low-income country | $0 |
Papers rejected without review receive a 50% refund. Accepted papers pay a publication fee of $15 per typeset page at the proofs stage.
On open access: the AEA runs a subscription model rather than gold OA. JEP is free to read for everyone, compliments of the Association. For the other titles, authors typically rely on green self-archiving - working-paper versions circulate freely on NBER, SSRN, RePEc, and institutional repositories, which is the norm in economics. Because there is no APC route, AEA journals sit outside the transformative-agreement (Read & Publish) ecosystem; check your funder's policy if you are under a strict gold-OA mandate.
Peer review
- Model: single-blind - referees remain anonymous, while author names are visible to reviewers.
- Process at AER: each manuscript is assigned to a coeditor who manages it through the full decision process; before a revise-and-resubmit is issued, a second coeditor is consulted.
- Data check: accepted papers are reviewed by the AEA Data Editor for compliance with the data and code availability policy before publication.
- Turnaround: economics review cycles are long by STM standards; expect several months to a first decision, and plan working-paper circulation accordingly.
How to submit
- Pick the journal. Use the decision table above; AER and the AEJs have distinct scopes, and JEL/JEP content is largely solicited.
- Format in AEA style. Author-year citations on a Chicago-derived template; SciSpace hosts AEA formats at scispace.com/formats/aea.
- Prepare the required extras. A word-count PDF (via the AEA word-count tool), disclosure statements from every coauthor, and an AEA RCT Registry number for field experiments.
- Submit via ScholarOne Manuscripts. All AEA research journals use ScholarOne (e.g., mc.manuscriptcentral.com/aer); pay the submission fee at upload.
- On acceptance, deposit your data and code for the Data Editor's replication check and review proofs (the $15-per-page fee applies here).
Ethics and integrity
The AEA is a COPE member and maintains one of the strictest reproducibility regimes in the social sciences: a mandatory data and code availability policy enforced by a dedicated Data Editor, a pre-registration registry for randomized controlled trials (the AEA RCT Registry), and mandatory disclosure statements covering funding and conflicts of interest for all coauthors.
