One of I4R’s core objectives is to help disseminate reproductions and replications. In what follows, we first highlight special issues/symposiums and journals which strictly publish comments and replication studies. We then provide results from a survey that our collaborators conducted.
Replication journal: The Journal of Comments and Replications in Economics (JCRE) publishes comments in addition to replications in economics and closely related disciplines. JCRE provides authors with an outlet for comments that have been submitted to, and rejected from, the journal that published the original article.
Special Issue: I4R is collaborating with Economic Inquiry. See call for papers for special issue "On the Reproducibility and Replicability in Economics".
Special Issue: I4R is collaborating with R&P. See call for abstracts for "methods, practices and ethics for replication" at Research & Politics.
Symposium: We are working with the Canadian Journal of Economics on a symposium dedicated to publishing a number of replications: Call for papers.
Special Issue: Our collaborator Jörg Peters is Associate Editor at World Development Perspectives. The journal accepts submissions of replications on a rolling basis and a special issue (online) will be compiled once a reasonable number of papers is published.
Replication Section: Research & Politics welcomes replications as regular submissions.
Replication Section: A new journal, Journal of Political Economy Microeconomics, welcomes replications as regular submissions.
Replication Section: The journal Spatial Economic Analysis recently introduced a new section, Replication Studies, devoted to short papers that replicate or extend published empirical results and discuss their sensitivity to relevant changes in the model, estimation method and/or interpretation.
Journal Publishing Replications: Industrial Relations welcomes replication studies in the field of industrial and employment relations.
Journal Publishing Replications: Public Finance Review welcomes replication studies.
AEA Meeting: We will be submitting sessions for each major economic field to the AEA Annual Meeting. If you have a replication which you would like to be included in a session proposal, please reach out to us. The deadline to submit is usually mid-April, and we will be aiming to get sessions published in the AEA Papers & Proceedings.
Please contact us if you want to advertize other journals or special issues related to open science and replications. We are more than happy to help putting together special issues!
Nathan Fiala, Florian Neubauer, Jörg Peters and the chair, Abel Brodeur, conducted a short survey of journal editors late 2021. (Nathan, Florian and Jörg did this as part of their replication review paper.) We share the answers from this survey below. The survey included the following text followed by two questions: "We’re writing to you in regard to your role as editors of the [journal name]. We are doing research on post-publication review through replications and reanalyses on previously published papers. In some (but not all) journals the format we are talking about are published as comments. A comment directly addresses and challenges a previously published paper. As editors of the [journal name], we would love to hear how your journal handles the publication of comments on previously published papers. We would really appreciate if you could briefly answer the following two questions. We are fully aware that these are rather generic questions, and it is hard to respond with an unconditional yes or no. So, feel free to elaborate briefly if you like."
(1) Do you publish comments in the [journal name]? By comment we mean a paper that discusses and potentially challenges the empirical results from another paper, for example based on a reanalysis or additional robustness checks.
(2) If yes, do you only publish comments on original papers that have previously been published in the [journal name] or do you also publish comments on original papers that have been published elsewhere?
| Discipline | Journal | Editor Answered | Q1 - Code | Q2 - Code | Long Answer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Economics | American Economic Journal: Economic Policy | Erzo F. P. Luttmer | Yes | Yes | Yes, but rarely. I think we're at 2 or 3 of such comments published in about a decade... We will also consider comments on papers published elsewhere (indeed one of the comments we published is on an article published in the QJE), but I would encourage authors to first submit their comment to the journal in which the article they commented on appeared. I think it is important that the publication process has a mechanism that can correct earlier publications that have a major shortcoming. Often this is in the form of a new publication that overturns the conclusions of an earlier publication, but sometimes a comment can serve that purpose (esp, if it shows an error in a previous paper but does not offer an alternative estimate or result). Comments in my view need to reveal a major issue, not that results are not quite as robust as the original article seemed to imply. |
| Economics | American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics | Simon Gilchrist | Yes | No | Yes we publish comments. These are typically short pieces (3-5 pages).. that highlight a specific issue with the robustness of a set of empirical results where minor but reasonable modifications might lead to very different conclusions, a mistake in a theory (e.g. a proof or derivation that is incorrect), or simple errrors in coding or data analysis that lead to incorrect conclusions. Q2: We do not publish comments on papers that are not published in AEJ:Macro. We may publish an entire piece that sheds new light on existing findings but that would not be written as a comment on a specific paper. |
| Economics | American Economic Review | Esther Duflo | Yes | See long answer. | See editor's report: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pandp.110.660. |
| Economics | Brookings Papers on Economic Activity | James H. Stock | No | No | Brookings Papers on Economic Activity does not publish comments. We do publish corrections online however... This would include when a researcher replicates a published paper but finds an error. Q2: Not applicable. |
| Economics | Econometrica | Guido Imbens | Yes | Yes | Yes. In principle we publish comments both on theoretical and empirical papers... In practice comments on empirical papers are more rare. Q2: We would typically suggest to submit to the journal that the original paper was published in, though there is no hard rule that we could not publish such a comment. |
| Economics | Econometrics | Jaap Abbring | Yes | Yes | Yes, we have a dedicated “Comment” submission category (with corresponding dedicated print issue section) for comments on articles previously published in The Ecomometrics Journal... See e.g. https://doi.org/10.1093/ectj/utz012. Q2: Our “Comment” category and issue section are effectively for comments on papers previously published in The Econometrics Journal only. We consider it important to publish such checks of research published in our journal (and to publish Errata in case mistakes are found by authors themselves). We may publish comments on papers published elsewhere, but these would be reviewed and published as regular, original articles and thus be held to a higher standard of originality and importance. |
| Economics | Economic Journal | Francesco Lippi | Yes | Yes | The board of editors has recently discussed the issue... The journal is open to publishing comments and or replciation analyses on previously published papers if the content of these analyses modify the conclusion of the original papers in a substantive way. We would not publish a paper that replicates and confirms results for country j using new data for country i. Thus our rule is that the comment must be an interesting self contained "new paper", albeit it will be a very short one. Q2: We do not have any formal rule. The answer is that it will depend on the scope of the breakthrough. A short paper finding a major mistake or different outcome in a famous paper published elsewhere would in principle be considered for publication. My view is there will be more and more replication done as the technology for it becomes easier and journal and authors conerge more and more to being open about their data. It is happening already. I personnally think that replication is a great thing, and every serious science should have it. But I think that frontier journals cannot host all interesting contributions. So eventually a new type of outlet, or possibly a sister outlet of the main journal, should be created to this end. |
| Economics | Experimental Economics | John Duffy | Yes | Yes | Your questions do not lend themselves to simple yes or no answers... Experimental Economics (EE) welcomes good quality papers that challenge/replicate results from published papers in EE or other journals. We don’t have an explicit comment category for paper submissions to EE, though we would not exclude comments. Indeed, we have accepted papers that are essentially comments on papers published in other journals, for example see this paper: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10683-020-09682-8. In our field, one would not typically comment on a previously published paper without providing some new experimental data. One kind of comment is a replication. More often, a comment takes the form of a new paper that uses as a baseline treatment an experiment that was previously published and then studies some further treatment variations on that baseline treatment. But in our view, this is just normal science and in essence, a new paper. In that sense, we don’t really need a comments category. |
| Economics | International Economic Review | Dirk Krueger | See long answer. | No | We don't have written rules of restrictions on what papers we publish... Having said that, we would likely publish as erratum or corrigendum a correction to a paper in the IER whose main results are overturned by subsequent analysis. We are very unlikely to publish a comment on a paper not published in the IER, simply because we thrive to publish top general interest papers, and it is unlikely that a replication analysis of an existing paper would meet that editorial standard. In my own opinion replication analyses are really valuable and should be part of the curriculum of every PhD program. I think it would be great to have specialized journals devoted to such analyses, as I don't think the established journals are very well-equipped to handle replication papers as regular submissions. |
| Economics | International Journal of Central Banking | Luc Laeven | Yes | No | Yes we would publish comments on papers published in the IJCB (not other journals) even though so far we have not had such a case yet. |
| Economics | Journal of Accounting and Economics | John E. Core | Yes | See long answer. | Q1: Very rarely. Q2: Mainly on papers published in JAE. |
| Economics | Journal of Applied Econometrics | Barbara Rossi | See long answer. | Q1: We publish replications... Q2: The original papers should be published in a list of selected journals. Please see for more information: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/page/journal/10991255/homepage/news.html#replication. |
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| Economics | Journal of Business & Economic Statistics | Jianqing Fan | See long answer. | The quick answer is ’no’... This is mainly due to the fact that we did not receive such a submission during our tenure in the past 3 years. I can imagine that if someone write comments as you elaborate below, we would send the comments for review to see if they have merits. If so, we would publish them too, with reference to the original publication. |
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| Economics | Journal of Development Economics | Andrew Foster | See long answer. | . | I'm afraid I don't have a clear answer that will fit in a box but we do have a philosophy... We do not publish comments per se but we do sometimes publish papers that are submitted as comments. Our point is that comments are a lot of work, create delicate politics of powerful versus less powerful, and generally do little to advance the literature. But every paper is in a way is a comment on the literature and in our experience most submitted comments can be reframed as a stand alone paper that makes a broader point that will be of interest to people other than the two sets of authors. Such papers would go through a reasonably normal referee process. We do not necessarily seek the input (as a regular referee) of the first papers' authors although we will sometimes do that. We would impose the same standard if someone wanted to publish a response to a reframed comment. This approach also tends to dovetail nicely with our new "short paper option". Given this philosophy we are willing to consider these modified "comments" even if they primarily target a paper published in another journal. We see our role as supporting the field of development economics so if a reframed submitted comment would be informative to researchers in the development field then we will consider publishing it after an appropriate referee review. I in fact just accepted such a modified comment. |
| Economics | Journal of Economic Growth | Oded Galor | No | No | THe JOEG publishes very few papers per year, and we do not think that publishing notes and comments is the best use of this space... It is very unlikely that notes or comments will be published in the JOEG unless they generate fundamental new insights (i.e., they are in fact not a note or a comment). Q2: We would certainly not consider notes on papers published in other journals. |
| Economics | Journal of Economic Surveys | Iris Claus and Les Oxley | Yes | See long answer. | Yes, the Journal of Economic Surveys publishes comments that directly address and challenge a paper that was previously published in the Journal of Economic Surveys... The Journal of Economic Surveys publishes literature reviews that critically evaluate the current state of knowledge on a subject of study. Hence most published articles could be considered as challenging previous findings published in the Journal of Economic Surveys and elsewhere. |
| Economics | Journal of Economic Theory | Tilman Borgers | Yes | Yes | Because we primarily publish theoretical research,.. challenges to empirical results are not really relevant at the Journal of Economic Theory (JET). What is relevant in our case are comments that point out mathematical errors. We publish those if the error is significant, and affects some of the main results of the paper. Q2: We are also open to publishing corrections of papers that have previously appeared in other journals, although we would expect the author to submit first to the journal in which the paper originally appeared. |
| Economics | Journal of Environmental Economics and Management | Roger von Haefen | Yes | Yes | Comments would fall into the category of short papers and notes, and we do publish them if appropriate... These generally are limited to comments on papers JEEM has previously published, but I guess we would consider publishing a comment on a paper published in a higher-ranked journal if we thought the comment would generate broad interest. We have not published comments in a while, however, although we regularly publish short papers. |
| Economics | Journal of Health Economics | Christopher S. Carpenter | No | No | I am not aware of any formal policy on this question at JHE,... but I can say that in the six years I have been at JHE we generally do not publish comments in either case. |
| Economics | Journal of Human Resources | Lisa Al-Amoodi | No | No | The Editor, Anna Aizer forwarded your questions. The journal has not published anything labeled “comments” in recent years,.. and I’ve not seen a paper describing itself as such submitted in the nearly five years I’ve worked here. There is no mention of comments per se in our scope or author instructions. But I did find some from quite a few years back in our archive on JSTOR. From a preliminary check, it looks like those comments were all on papers previously published in the JHR. I might add that we do have a replication policy and encourage data and replication management to encourage sound reanalysis and further work. It appears that this type of discourse has probably just evolved. My guess is that many researchers prefer to both reexamine and build on previous study. |
| Economics | Journal of International Economics | Costas Arkolakis | Yes | Yes | The JIE does not have a separate section for comments... But it publishes papers that "challenges the empirical results from another paper" either the JIE or somewhere else. They have to be treated as regular submissions, and the length has to be appropriate to the contribution, in other words if they get accepted they will likely be very short. I think the answer to both 1 and 2 is Yes. |
| Economics | Journal of Labor Economics | Kevin Lang | See long answer. | We do not have a policy favoring or opposing comments/replications... of papers published in JOLE or elsewhere. Our overriding criterion is impact per page. If i the judgment of the handing editor and any referees, the paper is sufficiently impactful for its length, we publish it; otherwise, we do not. |
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| Economics | Journal of Law and Economics | Maureen Callahan | Yes | No | The answers to your questions are as follows:.. 1. The JLE occasionally publishes articles that are comments on articles that have been previously published in the JLE. 2. The JLE does not publish comments on articles published in other journals. |
| Economics | Journal of Population Economics | Klaus F. Zimmermann | See long answer. | The Journal of Population Economics publishes only full papers, no notes or comments... We are also no replication journal, this is an important task but needs a different journal format. Hence, the strict answer is "no", we do not publish "comments". However, we consider and possibly publish substantial full articles challenging received important findings and mainstream insights, also reflected in a specific article. But such an article needs to have a substantial body of evidence and deal with an important issue. Q2: We consider articles or mainstream positions using articles not published in the Journal of Population Economics. But the papers could NOT be comments = short articles as explained before. |
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| Economics | Journal of Political Economy | Magne Mogstad | Yes | Yes | Yes. Many examples of that including the past few years... Q2: not necessarily. If the comment an important substantive point, we can publish it in jpe even if the original paper was published elsewhere. |
| Economics | Journal of Public Economics | Wojciech Kopczuk | Yes | No | We have a procedure for publishing replications/comments of papers published in the journal that I attached [available upon request] (though, admittedly, it is rarely used)... As a principle, they have to be either very short, just to identify problems, or - to be longer - they have to have a substantial innovation. Beyond that, we are obviously open to publishing papers that more broadly engage some existing work, but a paper structured just as a comment on a paper published elsewhere is not something that we are likely to do. |
| Economics | Journal of Risk and Uncertainty | Kip Viscusi | No | No | |
| Economics | Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists | Christian A. Vossler | See long answer. | We have yet to publish a comment in JAERE... We do not have a formal policy around comments, but the sentiment among the current editors is that we’d be open to it. We only publish three dozen papers a year, and the journal began in 2014. So perhaps the right opportunity has not come up yet. Replications are a good idea, and we require authors of empirical papers to make public their data and code for replication purposes prior to publishing their paper. |
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| Economics | Journal of the European Economic Association | Imran Rasul | Yes | Yes | The answer to both questions is broadly yes... but we would probably not refer to these papers as “comments” – they would need to be more substantive contributions in their own right. In addition, they would need to revisit the original paper and adjust its main conclusions in a first order way. One approximate test can be whether the abstract of the original paper would have to be changed in an important way given the “comment”. We target a general interest audience – so the comment would need to have that same broad appeal, beyond just the specifics or field of the original paper. Finally, given the grey areas and subjectivity involved, this is not a policy that is easy to enforce consistently across editors – and we don’t try to do so. I prefer to delegate such judgements to the handling editor. |
| Economics | Journal of Urban Economics | Nathaniel Baum-Snow | Yes | Yes | We do not have a journal policy for or against publishing comments... We would certainly consider submissions that wish to comment on published papers. They would go through the review process as determined by the editor assigned to handle the submission. Given our new short paper series JUE: Insights, any comments would probably be published there as an “Insight”. Q2: We would consider both types of submissions. However, to make it through the review process I suspect most “comments” on papers published elsewhere must include some additional development and insight beyond a narrow comment on accuracy of results in the other paper. If the JUE were to publish a paper that is found to be incorrect in some way, we would certainly want to publish something that corrects this record. |
| Economics | Labour Economics | Arthur van Soest | No | No | We do not explicitly allow for short papers / comments... If submitted, we treat them as regular submissions and it is up to the editors / reviewers to judge whether they are of enough interest to our readers. |
| Economics | RAND Journal of Economics | Kathleen Mullen | See long answer. | No | We currently do not publish comments but we are in the middle of revisiting that policy,... so that may change. If we did publish comments, we would limit them to comments on prior RJE papers. |
| Economics | Research Policy | Ben Martin | Yes | No | Yes, but only very occasionally. Q2: Only comments on previous RP papers. |
| Economics | Review of Economic Dynamics | Loukas Karabarbounis | Yes | Yes | |
| Economics | Review of Economics and Statistics | Will Dobbie | Yes | Yes | We do not have a formal policy on comments, either for papers published at REStat or published elsewhere... As long as the papers comply with our guidelines, they are allowed to be submitted. In practice, I don’t think we receive many comments in either category and I definitely don’t think we have accepted many. |
| Economics | Review of Economic Studies | Nicola Fuchs-Schündeln | Yes | No | At the Review, we have an editorial policy of publishing only corrections of papers previously published in the Review,.. provided that the mistakes that are corrected are fundamental and essentially invalidate the main result of the original paper. Q2: only on original papers previously published in the Review. |
| Economics | Spatial Economic Analysis | Jan Ditzen | Yes | Yes | We publish comments in our “Replication Studies Section” (Ditzen, Elhorst, 2022; https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17421772.2022.2018169)... The section is devoted to short papers that replicate or extend published empirical results and discuss their sensitivity to relevant changes in the model, estimation method and/or interpretation. Q2: We publish comments on papers which are within the aims and scope of Spatial Economic Analysis. The study being replicated must have been originally published in a peer-reviewed journal. |
| Economics | World Bank Research Observer | Peter Lanjouw | Yes | Yes | I'm editor of the World Bank Research Observer and we come out twice a year with an issue that generally comprises papers critically evaluating debates and issues in the development literature based on reviews of the literature... We don't normally publish new results or findings based on original analysis. As the papers we publish are reviews of the literature they themselves often embody commentary on published analyses. An example is a forthcoming paper which reviews and comments on the large debate around the famous Kremer and Miguel paper on Worms in Kenya. However, I don't recall receiving queries as to the possibility of publishing comments on the actual papers we have published. My sense is that I would certainly look at such a query and would then decide whether to go ahead with publishing based on the arguments made. There certainly is no policy against publishing comments. My sense is that the kind of comments you are thinking of refer to papers that report some specific results and for which new analysis reveals that they merit reappraisal. I don't believe that the World Bank Research Observer fits terribly well into the category of journals you have in mind. |
| Finance | Journal of Finance | Stefan Nagel | Yes | No | We don't publish "comments", but we publish papers in a closely related category of "Replications"... Here is how our submissions guidelines at https://afajof.org/submissions/ describe this category. Q2: Our "Replications and Corrigenda" section is only for papers that reexamine work previously published in the Journal of Finance, not other journals. (As always, of course, if a paper that reexamines previous influential work published elsewhere and comes to very important new insights, we would consider publishing this paper as a regular paper). |
| Finance | Journal of Financial Econometrics | Allan Timmermann | Yes | Yes | I can't recall that we have published comments, but we would certainly be open to this if a relevant case emerged... I would personally think that comments on papers published by our own journal would be most relevant/natural, but I would not be against publishing a comment on a paper published in another journal. |
| Finance | Journal of Financial Economics | Toni Whited | Yes | Yes | The JFE is open to publishing studies that revisit the work of previous studies... In particular, real replications are an important part of the scientific process. We just need to come up with a method that is fair to all parties and does not encourage frivolous activity. Q2: Regarding the second question, the answer is yes if the results move the field forward. |
| Finance | Review of Finance | Alex Edmans | See long answer. | Sorry that I'm unable to give a clear answer, but we don’t have any official policy on this... Our standard is “does the paper significantly advance knowledge”. A paper can significantly advance knowledge by challenging the findings of a prior paper, regardless of whether it was published in the RF or not – but it will depend in part on how important the original paper was. https://academic.oup.com/rof/article-abstract/24/4/891/5584208 challenged the findings of a JFE paper but we didn’t publish it as a comment, but saw it as a contribution in its own right. So, my answer is strictly no to both questions below in that we have no specific comments section, but we would see a paper that overturns an important prior paper as publishable, just like any paper that overturns conventional wisdom. |
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| Finance | Review of Financial Studies | Itay Goldstein | See long answer. | Yes, we would consider a replication of a paper previously published in the RFS,... but we would not typically publish it as a comment, but rather as a stand-alone paper. There are many papers challenging other papers, as part of the normal research process, which are published as regular articles in our journal. We are typically considering the broader contribution to the literature. In that case, they may be challenging papers in this journal or others. |
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| International Development | World Development Perspectives | Jörg Peters | Yes | Yes | |
| Political Science | American Journal of Political Science | Kathleen Dolan and Jennifer Lawless | No | No | We don’t publish comments. |
| Political Science | American Political Science Review | Aili Mari Tripp | Yes | See long answer. | Q1: Yes, we would consider publishing a comment in our Letter (research notes) format that challenges the empirical results from another paper if... 1) the article is of interest to a sufficiently broad section of our readership; or 2) if the article makes a methodological advance that would be of interest to a broader readership. Q2: We have generally avoided publishing comments on manuscripts published elsewhere. We privilege commentary on our own articles, as we believe that the responses to articles in other journals belong in those journals. But this is not to say that we would never consider doing this. It would depend on the importance of the debate and the extent to which the issues are of general interest. But as a general principle, we would not do so. |
| Political Science | British Journal of Political Science | Robert A. Johns | Yes | Yes | Q1: Yes, we do. Not many -- perhaps one every second issue, or something like that -- but some... (Quite a few -- maybe even half -- of these are accompanied by a follow-up rejoinder from the original author, although that's as far as we take an exchange.) Q2: We don't have a rule against comments on papers published elsewhere, and occasionally that happens, but the clear majority of our comments are on BJPolS papers. That's partly because we feel more of an obligation to correct/refine findings published in our own journal. It's also because I guess there's a natural 'level' issue here: we probably wouldn't publish a comment on an article in a journal well below us in the rankings/prestige/hierarchy, simply because the original contribution is unlikely to have been of a size that we'd have published in the first place; meanwhile, someone wanting to comment on an article in the AJPS is unlikely to want to publish it with us. |
| Political Science | Comparative Political Studies | David Samuels | No | No | We have not published comments and have no plans to do so at present. |
| Political Science | Comparative Politics | Yekaterina Oziashvili | No | No | We do not publish comments in Comparative Politics. |
| Political Science | European Journal of Political Research | Emiliano Grossman | See long answer. | The quick answer ist that we do not have a specific format for this... We have done it recently in an ad hoc move in response to an author who approached us regarding a recently published paper (by us). We published his comment as a "research note", an existing format. While we may do this again, subject to agreement bw the three editors, we do not currently have a policy on this. |
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| Political Science | International Organization | Erik Voeten | Yes | Yes | We do not have a separate comments or letters to the editors section... We do publish research notes that are based on replications of articles we have published and occasionally articles that were published elsewhere. Those notes go through the regular review process. |
| Political Science | International Studies Quarterly | Brandon C. Prins | Yes | No | Q1. Yes. Q2: Only publish responses to manuscripts published in ISQ. |
| Political Science | Journal of Conflict Resolution | Paul Huth | Yes | No | For Q1 the answer is that JCR occasionally publishes what you term comments... For Q2 when JCR publishes comments they are in relation to a prior JCR publication. |
| Political Science | Journal of Experimental Political Science | Kevin Arceneaux | Yes | See long answer. | This is a bit of a theoretical question for us, because we have yet to receive a submission directly challenging something published in the journal,... , but if we did, we would be open to publishing it as a comment that allows the authors of the original piece to respond. For your second question, I have a complicated response. We would only consider publishing a paper that “comments” on a publication in a venue other than JEPS if it consisted of original research (e.g., a replication study), but we would not consider it if it only re-analyzed data published elsewhere. I should also add that these polices are not written in stone and perhaps a future editorial team will do something different! |
| Political Science | Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory | Mary K. Feeney | No | No | We do not do comments. |
| Political Science | Legislative Studies Quarterly | Guillermo Rosas | Yes | Yes | The answers to your questions are pretty straightforward in LSQ's case... We do not have an established policy on publishing comments. We would not discourage submissions that seek to discuss or challenge the empirical results from published papers, either in LSQ or elsewhere, but we have not sought in the past to invite such comments. However, the idea strikes me as worth following up. |
| Political Science | Political Analysis | Jeff Gill | No | No | No, We require replication of every analysis before publication. Our policies are at our submissions page online. |
| Political Science | Political Communications | Regina G. Lawrence | No | No | We do not publish comments of the sort you describe. |
| Political Science | Political Research Quarterly | Seth C. McKee | No | No | As a rule, no, we do not publish comments in Political Research Quarterly... We have not done this at all under our editorial tenure. |
| Political Science | Public Opinion Quarterly | Eric Plutzer | Yes | Yes | Q1: Yes we do. But we do not distinguish these from any other submission... Indeed, every submission “discusses” empirical results from other papers and a large majority of submissions “challenge” prior empirical results. A “Comment” is often a special case, one that focuses on a single paper’s conclusions. If we receive such a submission, we treat it like any other, with one exception: at least one author of the targeted article is invited to serve as a reviewer in the double-blind condition. If the commenter is assured that one of the original authors will be a reviewer, I think there is a pressure towards professional, less aggressive and less pejorative framing. The original author can choose to disclose their identity or not. We can take into account potential conflicts of interest when reviewing the full set of reviews. Here is a recent example: Urbatsch, R., 2020. Revisiting “The First-Daughter Effect”. Public Opinion Quarterly, 84(2), pp.523-537. I think the process worked well in this case. Q2: This is irrelevant since we do not treat comments differently from any other submission. If the contribution to knowledge is substantial, it makes no difference where the original findings were published (and vice verse). It’s useful to add that if a third party points out a simple error (e.g., a variable was reverse coded and thereby mis-interpreted by the authors, or the authors incorrectly included or excluded cases, etc.), the preferred mechanism is collegial: (a) the person who identified the error contacts the authors, hopefully copying us in the email thread, and then (b) the authors formulate a corrigendum , (c) which we publish. There is no need for the “corrector” to have authorship in these cases. We publish corrigenda from time to time and many are the result of these normal collegial interactions. We’ve never had a retraction, but in the case of a more serious error, that could occur. That is how science ought to work. |
| Political Science | Quarterly Journal of Political Science | Anthony Fowler | Yes | Yes | The answer to both questions is yes... We do not formally distinguish between original articles and research comments unless the author would like to explicitly classify their article as a research note. We are certainly open to submissions that are largely comments on or reassessments of previously published articles. Just like all submissions, we would evaluate them on the basis of whether they are high-quality, novel, and make a significant contribution to our field. If there is an opportunity for authors to make a valuable contribution beyond their commentary on one specific paper, we would encourage them to do so, but we are open to publishing papers that are primarily responses to or critiques of other studies. |
| Political Science | Research & Politics | Kevin M. Esterling | Yes | Yes | Yes to both questions. R&P does strongly encourage and publish both replications and comments... We have a clear policy for dealing with replication studies which is detailed here: https://journals.sagepub.com/author-instructions/RAP#ArticleTypes. |
| Political Science | Review of International Organizations | Axel Dreher | Yes | Yes | Q1: Yes. Q2: Also elsewhere (explicit journal policy). |