About the Journal

Focus and Scope

PSL Quarterly Review is a quarterly open-access electronic journal that provides an open forum for debate on economics and economic policy.

PSL Quarterly Review is a pluralist journal: we welcome contributions in all fields and from all the schools and research paradigms of economics, without any discrimination. All submissions are subject to peer review, based on two criteria: their method should be rigorous, and their contents should be relevant. Both criteria must be fulfilled for acceptance for publication.

The editors of PSL Quarterly Review hold a negative view of several practices of contemporary academic publishing, especially in economics. Thus, while we welcome replication studies, we strongly discourage the submission of mere econometric exercises or of articles aimed at displaying technical prowess per se. Authors are invited to clearly highlight the relevance of their work for economic analysis and/or economic policy.

Unlike other economic journals, PSL Quarterly Review strives for relevance and topicality in its published articles. For this reason, we aim at the highest speed of review for all submissions (normally within one month) and subsequent publication of the accepted contributions; for the same reason, we do not seek to accumulate and maintain a substantial backlog of forthcoming articles accepted for publication. 

Furthermore, PSL Quarterly Review embraces a fast-track preferential policy towards young scholars (within 5 years from obtaining their Ph.D.), whose articles are always published in the first issue after receipt of the final proofs.

Founded in 1947 under the name Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Quarterly Review, the journal was owned by the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL) until 2007. After a change of name and ownership, the Review is published today by the Economia civile association, in cooperation with the Department of Statistics of Sapienza University of Rome, and with the financial contribution of the BNP Paribas group.

Over the years, the Review has published original contributions from such notable economists as Baumol, Buchanan, Georgescu-Roegen, Goodhart, Goodwin, Hahn, Harcourt, Hicks, Kaldor, Kindleberger, Malinvaud, Minsky, Modigliani, Pasinetti, Patinkin, Solow, Steindl, Thirlwall, Timbergen, Triffin, Weintraub. An intellectual history of the journal is available here; while the complete archive of all articles published since 1948 can be found here.

The name PSL Quarterly Review has been chosen to recall the work of Paolo Sylos Labini (PSL), who frequently contributed to the Review and who fundamentally shaped the debate on economic policy in Italy and in Europe in the XX century. More information on Paolo Sylos Labini can be obtained on the website www.syloslabini.info, where many of his writings are freely available as well as literature on Sylos Labini’s many contributions on oligopoly theory, the analysis of social classes, civic and economic development and technical change.

The articles published by PSL Quarterly Review are abstracted/indexed in:

• Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ),
• EconLit,
• ProQuest,
• RePEc,
• Scopus,
• SSRN,
• Web of Science (Emerging Sources Citation Index)

Peer Review Process

PSL Quarterly Review accepts submissions at any time of the year; there are no submission charges and no processing or publication charges.

Final decisions will be notified to the corresponding author within 30 days; in exceptional cases the review process may last longer, in which cases the authors are welcome to write to the editor for further information.

Authors are invited to attach a presentation letter to their submission, stating what is the innovative content of the proposed article and why it is of interest to the journal’s readers. PSL Quarterly Review welcomes proposals for special issues and conference proceedings as well: conference organisers are invited to send a short note (maximum three pages), describing the content and scope of the proposed issue, briefly summarising the single contributions to be included in it, and stating the relevance of the topic and of the major contributions for the advancement of science and for the understanding of modern economies and societies.

Under no condition will the journal consider submissions of published material or articles under review elsewhere, except for working papers and earlier versions published in conference proceedings.

All submissions are subject to peer review. However, before sending the manuscript to external referees, the editor or a member of the board will proceed with a general assessment of the manuscript in view of the aims and scope of the journal: the editor may then reject the paper without further review, with the aim of saving both the referees’ and the authors’ time. Based on the referees’ reports (normally two) the editor may take one of the following decisions: accept; reject; accept subject to minor or major changes; revise and resubmit. PSL Quarterly Review occasionally publishes articles commissioned by the Editor or a member of the Editorial Board, but these contributions will be refereed as any other unsolicited paper.

Refees’ reports are always forwarded to the corresponding author, who may reply or comment upon them. However, a final decision always rests with the editor. PSL Quarterly Review does not support the growing trend of sending belated and long referees’ reports, in which the referees almost try to rewrite the article in place of the authors. The journal’s referees are rather asked to provide brief notes in a timely manner, expressing a general assessment of the work, detailing any errors, and suggesting ways to improve the paper.

The referees’ identity is confidential; under no condition will PSL Quarterly Review provide to a third party any information about a submission.

Open Access Policy

This license allows anyone to download, reuse, re-print, modify, distribute and/or copy the final version of the papers, without commercial purposes. The works must be properly attributed to their author(s). Any modified copy of the contributions and any work derived by the contributions cannot be distributed. It is not necessary to ask for further permissions for the above uses of the material, but you are kindly requested to inform the editorial board in case of reuse of the papers.

Code of ethics

As explained in a recent Editorial on ethics and research malpractice (available here), all submissions are expected to comply with the requirements below.

1. Every article submitted to PSL Quarterly Review or presented at any conference organised by Economia civile shall report in its first footnote, together with the acknowledgements, the sources of financial support for the research(es) described in the article.
2. Each author shall identify and list in the same first footnote any interested party from which he or she received financial support including as a remuneration, consultancy fees, grants and the like, summing to at least 10.000€ in the last three years. An “interested” party is any individual, group, or organization that has a financial, ideological, or political stake related to the article. The disclosure requirement also includes in-kind support, such as providing access to data. If the support in question comes with a non-disclosure obligation, that fact should be stated, along with as much information as the obligation permits.
3. Each author should disclose any paid or unpaid positions as consultant, employee, officer, director, or board member of any relevant nonprofit organization or profit-making entity. A “relevant” organization or entity is one whose policy positions, goals, or financial interests relate to the article.
4. The disclosures required above apply to any close relative or partner of any author.
5. Each author must disclose if another party had the right to review the paper prior to its circulation.

PSL Quarterly Review subscribes to, and expects all authors to comply with, the state of the art best practices on publication ethics and integrity, as laid out e.g. in the international standards for editors and for authors developed at the 2nd World Conference on Research Integrity, respectively available here and here. In particular, PSL Quarterly Review has a longstanding commitment to:

• maintain an editorial board composed of recognized experts in economics, whose names and affiliations may be found in the About section of this website; contact information of the editorial office may be found in the same section.
• clearly publicize on this website any possible fees or charges for manuscript processing and/or publishing it should ever introduce (there are currently none). In turn, especially in light of the open access nature of PSL Quarterly Review, authors are expected to be available to act as anonymous referees. Submissions are accepted on the premise that all authors have significantly contributed to the research; the author(s) are obliged to provide retractions or corrections of mistakes.
• all content published in PSL Quarterly Review is subject to peer review. Original articles undergo peer review as explained in the relevant section above; the occasional short editorial introductions are subject to peer review by members of the Editorial Board.
• the editors consistently take all reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred; in the event that we are made aware of any allegation of research misconduct, the editorial board will deal with allegations promptly and appropriately. Corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies, when needed, will be published in the first issue subsequent to the end of the Review's internal investigation.
• any changes to the Review's periodicity, information about the ownership and/or management of the journal, as well as copyright and/or licensing information shall be clearly described on the journal’s web site, as well as changes to the location of the archive of all past issues. At all times, the present website (including the text that it contains) shall demonstrate that care has been taken to ensure high ethical and professional standards.

PSL Quarterly Review adheres to the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing of the Directory of Open Access Journals, as well as the core practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), and is a member of Publication Integrity & Ethics.

Sponsors

• with financial contribution from BNL, BNP Paribas group 

Sources of Support

• Department of Statistical Sciences, Sapienza University of Rome