Review of Financial Studies Submission Guide

Source: RFS on Oxford Academic, Society for Financial Studies, Clarivate JCR 2024, accessed April 2026.

This is the RFS-specific structural detail authors most often miss:

The strategic implication: all three publish across the full finance scope at top selectivity. The three-society/publisher structure means subtle editorial-culture differences exist. Authors typically consider all three.

Three operational signals govern editorial assessment:

1. Top-finance substance. RFS requires substantive finance contribution at top-3 level.

2. Methodological rigor. Empirical, theoretical, or modeling work must be top-tier.

3. SFS-fit. RFS's SFS sponsorship gives it a distinctive editorial culture; cover-letter framing should articulate fit.

Recent RFS issues span:

• Asset pricing and intermediary asset pricing

• Corporate finance and capital structure

• Banking, regulation, and financial intermediation

• FinTech, payments, and digital finance

• Market microstructure and liquidity

• Behavioral finance and household finance

• ESG and sustainable finance

• Crypto and decentralized finance

For specific recent papers and DOIs, use the current issue list at RFS on Oxford Academic, because article metadata changes as online-first papers move into issues.

• Initial decision: typically 4-8 weeks

• First decision after review: typically 12-20 weeks

• Revision rounds: typically 2-3 major revisions to acceptance

• Time to publication after acceptance: months (Advance Articles available)

This page handles the public submission rules; the draft still needs a journal-specific fit check. The review tells you whether your paper clears the Review of Financial Studies fit check before upload, especially around top-3 finance substance not cleared, methodological execution doesn't clear top-tier bar, and wrong top-3 finance venue chosen. Paid Manusights reviews include a 60-day money-back guarantee, and we do not train models on submitted manuscripts.

Three patterns generate the most consistent rejections.

Top-3 finance substance not cleared

RFS's bar is among the highest in finance. The fix is honest routing. In manuscripts we see before submission, the abstract often announces a finance topic but not a top-three finance contribution. The introduction may say the paper studies asset pricing, corporate finance, banking, or market microstructure, but the tables and identification strategy do not yet show what the field learns that Journal of Finance, JFE, or RFS readers would treat as new.

The manuscript component to fix first is the first-page contribution statement: the abstract, introduction, first table, and cover letter need to make the finance contribution explicit before the Co-Editor reads the technical appendix.

Check top 3 finance substance not cleared before submitting to Review of Financial Studies →

Methodological execution doesn't clear top-tier bar

The fix is rigorous execution. A common RFS pattern is a paper with a plausible question and strong data but methods that still look second-tier: weak identification, unconvincing instrument logic, missing robustness tables, insufficient out-of-sample validation, or online appendix material that does not let a referee audit the empirical path. The paper may belong in finance, but the methods, tables, data construction section, and code-and-data plan have to look like a top-three finance package before upload.

Check methodological execution doesn't clear top tier bar before submitting to Review of Financial Studies →

Wrong top-3 finance venue chosen

JoF, JFE, and RFS have subtle editorial-culture differences. The fix is informed routing based on editor expertise. In RFS-targeted drafts, we look for whether the cover letter, keywords, editor-conflict declaration, recent references, and first-page framing make RFS the natural first target. A paper can be top-three quality and still be better routed to Journal of Finance because of AFA audience fit, or to JFE because the likely editor match is clearer.

A RFS manuscript readiness check can identify whether top-finance substance, methodological rigor, and SFS-fit align before submission.

Check wrong top 3 finance venue chosen before submitting to Review of Financial Studies →

RFS requires these at first submission:

• main manuscript file fully anonymous for double-blind peer review, double-spaced (maximum 28 lines per page), size 11 or larger font

• paper title and abstract of no more than 100 words on the first page of the anonymous manuscript

• separate 1-page title page with the paper title and the name, affiliation, and email address for each author (uploaded separately so reviewers do not see it)

• cover letter establishing the financial-economics contribution and noting any code-and-data-sharing exceptions (if the public-release-of-code requirement cannot be met, this must be noted in the cover letter on initial submission)

• editorial conflict of interest declaration covering same-institution authors, current or recent past co-authors (within the last 10 years), former PhD students or advisors, close friends, and relatives (these conflicts are tracked at editor-assignment time)

• author CRediT contribution statement (uploaded with the title page, not the anonymized manuscript)

• competing-interests declaration covering financial relationships, industry consulting, equity, and any research-data-sharing arrangements

• code and data sharing commitment: RFS requires authors to publicly release all code underlying any published paper as a condition of publication

• supplementary files, online appendices, tables, figures, and README material checked for accidental author identity leaks

• suggested reviewers only when they do not create conflicts of interest or reveal author identity

• ethics statement (where applicable for survey or experimental work involving human subjects)

• submission fee: $400 for SFS members and $460 for nonmembers from high-income economies; $260/$320 for middle-income economies; waived for low-income economies

• $4,500 USD APC for the gold open-access option (2026; subscription publication has no APC)

• declaration of generative AI use in the writing process per OUP policy

• for revised submissions, point-by-point reviewer response and marked-up manuscript

For RFS submissions, the most common artifact-related issue is incomplete blinding that leaves author identity in self-citation patterns, acknowledgement references, or supplementary online appendices linking to author SSRN profiles or institutional pages. RFS's double-blind review depends on full anonymization; submissions where editors can immediately identify the author team via supplementary materials face routine resubmission requests for proper anonymization before the manuscript enters review. A secondary issue is misstated editorial-conflict declarations that surface during editor-assignment routing.

Run a Review of Financial Studies pre-submission readiness check before clicking submit to verify the package meets the journal's top-3-finance contribution bar and full anonymization standard.

RFS manuscripts move through a four-stage editorial timeline. The editorial triage pattern at top-3 finance journals favors submissions where the cover letter names a failure pattern in current finance research that the manuscript addresses. Editors routinely reject methodological-novelty submissions without substantive finance contribution and consistently screen for cover letters that demonstrate awareness of the journal's recent editorial culture around contribution-clarity and code-and-data-sharing readiness.

Day 0 to 7: SFS submission portal intake and editorial-office technical check

The platform performs format and blinding checks (anonymous manuscript with separate title page, double-spacing with 28-line maximum, font size compliance, declarations, code-and-data-sharing acknowledgement). Editorial staff verify the cover letter and editorial-conflict declarations.

Day 7 to 30: Editor-in-Chief and Co-Editor desk-screen

The Editor-in-Chief assigns the manuscript to a Co-Editor avoiding editorial conflicts (same-institution, co-author within 10 years, PhD advisor-student relationship). A Co-Editor (matched to asset pricing, corporate finance, intermediation and banking, market microstructure, derivatives, household and consumer finance, behavioral finance, or international finance) reviews scope fit and the top-3-finance contribution.

Week 5 to 24: External peer review (double-blind)

Manuscripts that pass desk-screen go to 1-3 referees selected from the broader top-finance referee pool. Refereeing in top-finance journals takes longer than most STEM fields; 16-24 week peer-review windows are typical.

Week 24 to 52: Decision, revision (18-month resubmission window), and code-and-data finalization

First decisions arrive at the 4-6 month median, typically as revise and resubmit. Authors have 18 months from the R&R decision to resubmit; revisions submitted after 18 months are treated as new submissions. Upon acceptance, authors must finalize the public code-and-data release at the SFS-designated repository as a condition of publication.

• Is Review of Financial Studies a good journal?

• Journal of Finance Submission Guide

• Journal of Financial Economics Submission Guide

Before the reviewer-invitation stage, read the Review of Financial Studies package against the same risks this guide flags in the Manusights section. The practical question is whether the abstract, cover letter, figures or tables, methods, reporting statements, supplementary files, and references all make the journal choice obvious.

• If the abstract still points toward top-3 finance substance not cleared, revise the central claim before upload.

• If the evidence package leaves methodological execution doesn't clear top-tier bar, strengthen the methods, controls, figures, or supplementary material rather than expecting reviewers to infer it.

• If the cover letter cannot resolve wrong top-3 finance venue chosen, compare the target journal against the adjacent venues named above before submitting.

Use these nearby guides when the target journal is still uncertain:

• Review Of Financial Studies submission guide

• Review of Economics and Statistics Submission Guide

• Review of Economic Studies Submission Guide

• The Journal of Economic Perspectives Submission Guide

• Journal of Economic Theory Submission Guide

• Journal of International Business Studies Submission Guide

• Journal of Marketing Submission Guide

• Organization Science Submission Guide

• Production and Operations Management Submission Guide

• Journal of Statistical Software Submission Guide

• Computers In Human Behavior Submission Guide

For the related journal overview, see Review Of Financial Studies submission guide. In our work on Review Of Financial Studies submissions, we observe that editors specifically screen the abstract, first figures, cover letter, and evidence package for whether the manuscript answers the journal's stated fit test; our analysis of Review Of Financial Studies pages treats those checks as submission-risk signals, not as official guidance.

Last verified: April 2026 against RFS editorial pages.