Excellent referee reports are the lifeblood of any journal.  Their value goes far beyond the final decision.  They improve the quality of research for manuscripts published in JME and those published elsewhere.  The JME's founding editor, Karl Brunner, stressed that the refereeing process extends the network of colleagues for an author from a local department to the world as a whole.

All referee reports should be submitted through the online editorial system.  A complete Tutorial for Reviewers can accessed from the JME/EES Homepage.

1. Invitations to review a manuscript are made through the online submission system.  Referees will receive an email from the Journal of Monetary Economics requesting their help in reviewing a submitted manuscript.  The email will contain your Username and Password so as to make it easy to access the material.
2. Go to the JME/EES Homepage to log-in.  Enter your Username and Password and log-in as a Reviewer.
3. The Reviewer Main Menu contains three categories.
   • New Reviewer Invitations: This category details new invitations to review a manuscript.
   • Pending Assignments: This indicates reports that you have agreed to produce but have not yet sent in to the Journal.
   • Completed Assignments: Here you can review reports that you have produced previously for the Journal.
4. To respond to an invitation click on the New Reviewer Invitations category.  You will see a page that gives you information on the manuscript including three key options.
   • View Submission: You can view or download a PDF version of the manuscript to aid you in deciding whether to review it now and for preparing a review later.  Please do not transmit these PDFs to other people as they are confidential documents given to the Journal and to you as part of the review process.  However, many are separately available via various working paper series.
   • Accept to Review: We are sending you the manuscript because we think that you will provide a combination of expert knowledge as well as being able to provide the author with perspective on his contribution.  If you do not feel you are the right person to produce the review, due to a conflict of interest or because it is outside of your area of expertise, please contact the editor.  If you accept the reviewing invitation, we will expect your review within 4 weeks.  If you complete your review within that time frame we offer either an honorarium of $150 or a certificate for a free submission to the JME within the subsequent 12 months.
   • Decline to Review: If it is not a good period for you to produce a timely review for JME or if there are other reasons for you to decline, please do so quickly.  We also appreciate your suggestions of other individuals that might provide a good review for the manuscript.
   • In order for the JME to provide timely referee reports it is important that you respond to our invitation one way or another.  While we value your help and hope that you will accept our invitation, we understand that you will not always be able to assist us.  In either case we appreciate you letting us know promptly and, if you must decline, providing us with suggestions for an alternate referee.  This allows us to quickly assign another referee to the paper.
5. To submit your referee report to the Journal sign-on to the JME/EES system as a referee.  Choose the Pending Assignments option and you will see information on the manuscripts that you have outstanding.  Select the relevant manuscript and choose Submit Recommendation.  There are five key steps to completing the process and they vary slightly depending on whether you are entering your report directly or submitting your report and/or your cover letter to the Editor using attachments (such as a PDF document).
   • Enter you recommended decision using the drop menu next to Recommendation.  (For a discussion of the various decision options see Decision Categories.)
   • Enter your referee report as text in the area marked Reviewer Blind Comments to Author or enter your referee report as a PDF attachment by clicking on Upload Reviewer Attachments.  Then enter the title as "Referee report on JME #####" in the first field and attach your document in the second field.  Next click Attach This File and Proceed with Recommendation.  Note that you will probably wish to remove identifying information from your PDF document. (Click here if you wish to see how to do this).
   • Enter your letter to the Editor as a text file in the area marked Reviewer Confidential Comments to Editor or enter you letter as a PDF attachment by clicking on Upload Reviewer Attachments.  Then enter the title as "Letter to Editor on JME #####" in the first field and attach your document in the second field.  Next click Attach This File and Proceed with Recommendation.
   • You can then Proof and Print your report.  If for some reason you wish to stop in the middle of the process, be sure to select Save and Submit Later so that you do not lose your work.
   • The final step is clip on Proceed and then Submit Review to Journal Office.