Economics journal rankings: where to look and what it costs to submit
Economics has an open, free ranking — IDEAS/RePEc — and one thing rankings do not show: several of the best-known journals charge a fee just to submit, paid even if the paper is rejected. This page puts the two together.
Detail
Where to find the rankings
- IDEAS/RePEc (free). The aggregate ranking combines several ranking methods by taking the harmonic mean, leaving aside each journal's best and worst result. Only journals with 50 or more items are ranked.
- SCImago (free). Quartiles per subject category — useful for finance, marketing and statistics.
- Journal Citation Reports (subscription).
We do not reproduce positions: they change with every update and belong to whoever calculates them.
Submission fees
Read from each journal's own page on 16 September 2026.
| Journal | Submission fee | Refund |
|---|---|---|
| American Economic Review | AEA member: $200 (high-income country), $100 (middle-income), free (low-income). Non-member: $300, $200, free | — |
| The Journal of Finance | AFA member: $400 (high-income), $100 (middle-income). Non-member: $525, $150. Low-income: free | $200 returned for desk rejections (high-income, first submissions); full refund if the decision takes more than 100 days (first submissions) |
| Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization | $175 | Non-refundable |
| European Economic Review | €125; €100 if the contact author is a PhD student; €50 if the contact author is in a Research4Life Group B country | Non-refundable |
And the publication fee?
Two of these journals are hybrid: publishing under the subscription route costs nothing, and open access is optional — $3,870 at the European Economic Review and $3,640 at the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization.
Why it matters
With an APC, a rejected paper costs nothing. With a submission fee, every attempt has a price. For an author submitting to several journals in sequence, the difference adds up.