ISSN 0120-4483
printed version

INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS

• Scope and policy
• Form and preparation of manuscripts
• Editorial Protocol
• Sending of manuscripts

Ensayos sobre política económica ESPE is a serial publication in economics, whose aim is to publish technical papers of high quality. The kind of papers that ESPE publishes is characterized for being: i) interesting, ii) original y iii) technically correct. Hence, ESPE will consider for publication original research work, both theoretical and applied, which is of relevance for a better understanding of economic problems and of policies needed to remedy them. ESPE emphasizes economic problems facing Colombia, and LatinAmerican but is not limited to work applied to these cases: any manuscript from which it is possible to learn about economic problems and policies may be submitted to the editorial process, with the proviso that ESPE will not consider for publication work with relevance only in the very short term.

ESPE is published by the Deputy Governor`s office of Banco de la República, the Colombian Central Bank, but this does not imply that only papers produced in Banco de la República are published in ESPE, nor that the journal expresses the opinions of the institution. ESPE is a scientific publication, targeted and open to all members of academic communities with interest in economics. Hence, ESPE will not consider documents in which authors merely express their opinions, but only those with a technical foundation according to current standards in economics.

Within this scope, ESPE invites authors to submit their work for editorial review, following the requirements presented below. It must be noticed that for consideration of their work ESPE does not require from authors any form of payment or their subscription to the journal.

1. Submission of a document to ESPE implies declaration from its authors that:
a. The work is original.
b. The work has not been published before.
c. The work is not being considered for publication elsewhere.
d. If accepted, copyrights of the work will be transferred to ESPE.
e. They understand that acceptance of a work for editorial review in no way implies a commitment from ESPE to publish it.

2. Documents must be written entirely in Spanish or English.

3. Original manuscripts may be submitted either electronically or in hard copies, although ESPE encourages authors to use the former, as it expedites the review process.
a. For electronic submissions, authors must e-mail the Editor a cover letter and the file containing the manuscript at espe@banrep.gov.co or mramirgi@banrep.gov.co.
Only files with format PDF, Word or LaTeX (including Scientific Word and Workplace) can be accepted. The file must contain all the material constituting the paper, including graphs, tables and appendices. Authors must keep for themselves a copy of the file containing the version of the paper that has been submitted.

b. For hard copy submissions, authors must mail the Editor a cover letter and three copies of the manuscript to:
María Teresa Ramírez
Editor,
Ensayos Sobre Política Económica.
Gerencia Técnica – Unidad de Investigaciones
Banco de la República
Carrera 7 No. 14-78 piso 11
http://www.banrep.gov.co/economic_reports/er_espe.htm

Each copy of the paper must contain all the material constituting the paper, including graphs, tables and appendices. Authors must keep for themselves a copy of the version of the paper that has been submitted, as well as the electronic file that contains it.

4. Regardless of the type of submission, in the case of co-authored papers, in the cover letter co-authors must declare who the corresponding author will be. ESPE will handle all communications regarding the editorial process with the corresponding author only. Henceforth, “author” will mean “corresponding author” for the case of co-authored manuscripts..

5. The first page of the manuscript must exclusively contain:
a. Title.
b. Names of all authors.
c. Institutional affiliation of each author.
d. Postal address of each author.
e. E-mail address of each author.
f. Abstracts Spanish and English, of no more that 100 words each. The abstract in the language different from the one in which the paper is written must include at its beginning the full title of the work, although this will not count for the limit of words.
g. At least three keywords in Spanish and English.
h. At least three JEL classification codes.
i. Any and all acknowledgements.
Note: names of authors must not appear elsewhere in the manuscript.

6. For the body of the document:
a. It must be in Times New Roman 11 or 12, double-spaced and with reasonable margins.
b. Graphs and tables may be inserted within the text or attached, all of them at the end of the document.
c. Numbering must be sequential to the whole of the document, starting with numeric markers (e. g.: I Section, A. Subsection, 1. Subsubsection, etc.).

d. Tables and graphs must be numbered independently and sequentially (e. g.: Table 1, Graph 1, Table 2…).
e. Formulae must be centered and numbered sequentially to the left.
f. Footnotes must be sparely used. When needed, they must be only for clarification and must be numbered consecutively throughout the paper.

7. Bibliographic references must include, exclusively, all works mentioned in the text, using the following format:
a. For journal articles:
• In the text, author (year); e. g.: “… Villar (1985) demuestra que la elasticidad-ingreso de las importaciones es…”.
• In the references, author (year). “Título”, Journal, month, volume, pages; e. g.: Villar, L. (1985). “Determinantes de las importaciones en Colombia: un análisis econométrico”, Ensayos Sobre Política Económica, diciembre, No. 8, pp. 15-39.

b. For books:
• In the text, author (year); e.g.: “… Banco de la República (1987) analiza los principales determinantes…”
• In the references, author (year). Title, Editor; e.g.:
Banco de la República (1987). Colombia: 20 años del Régimen de Cambios y de Comercio Exterior, Departamento Editorial.

8. Once the manuscript has been received by the editor, it may be rejected at two instances:
a. Before any editorial review, the editor may reject the document if it is considered that it is not within the scope of the journal, or if the manuscript has not been prepared following these guidelines. In the second case, the author may submit the document after necessary adjustments have been made. Under normal circumstances, the editor will communicate this kind of rejections within the week after reception of the submission.

b. If the Editor considers that the document is suitable for editorial review, this decision will be communicated to the author within the week after reception of the submission. The editorial process consists of the evaluation given by one or two members of the Technical Committee and the publication decision made by members of the Editorial Board. This process leads to one of three decisions: publication, rejection or requirement of revision. In the case of rejection, the technical reasons for it will be communicated to the author. In the case of requirement of revision, the points that need to be addressed and the closing date for the next issue will be communicated to the author. Under normal circumstances, the editorial process must not take longer than three months from submission to communication of decision. ESPE commits itself to undertaking the whole process in at most four months.

9. ESPE values the time of the members of the Technical Committee and expects from them to present their evaluations promptly. For this reasons, ESPE does not expect its referees to decipher confusing or poorly written documents. The Editor may also demand from the author clarifications on mathematical reasoning, so as to facilitate the editorial review.

10. If a revision of the document has been required, the Editorial Board will determine when it has been made to satisfaction. Once this occurs, the author will be notified that the document has been accepted

11. Once the document is accepted for publication, the author must send the file containing the manuscript as it was accepted by the Editorial Board. Only Word or LaTex (including Scientific Word and Workplace) files can be accepted. Tables not within the text must be presented in Excel. Only graphs produced in editors compatible with Power Point can be processed. Based on this version, ESPE will give the author suggestions for a better presentation of the document. The author may disregard these suggestions, but ESPE reserves the right to impose a minimum of uniformity in the styles of the documents. Before printing, the author must approve proofs created by ESPE, within a week of their delivery. It lies within the author’s responsibility to make sure that the final version of the document corresponds to what the Editorial Board accepted.

12. Once the document is accepted for publication, copyrights become ESPE’s property. Once published, the document may be reproduced for academic purposes, so long as nobody profits from this and including always ESPE’s bibliographical references. The authors of a document are allowed to upload it to their own websites, in the electronic version provided by ESPE. Reproduction of a document for any other purposes, or its link to any other website, will require express authorization by the Editor of ESPE.

ESPE’s editorial process is undertaken by the Editor, the Editorial Board and the Technical Committee, and is designed so that editorial decisions are made within a period of three months. ESPE commits itself to making publication decisions in at most four months after submission, under the following protocol:

1. Manuscripts are received by the Editor, who, in the next week, evaluates whether the work lies within the scope of the journal (in terms of relevance, originality and, if possible, quality). When the editor accepts that a document can begin the review process, one or two members of the Technical Committee are appointment to evaluate it. These referees are not informed about the name of the author. At the same time, the editor informs the Editorial Board that the document has begun being evaluated. Under no circumstances will the editor inform other members of the Editorial Board the names of the referees.

2. Each referee must submit a report in at most eight weeks. Reports must contain:
a. A summary of the most relevant aspects of the paper.
b. A list of comments, if the case.
c. A concrete recommendation as to whether to “reject”, to “publish as is” or to “publish once comments have been addressed”. In the last case, the referee must be explicit in terms of what changes are sine qua non for publication.

3. Without revealing the names of the referees, the editor sends the reports to two members of the Board. One week later, the editor and these two co-editors must vote for one of the three options: to “reject”, to “publish as is” or to “publish once comments have been addressed”. Silence by one of the co-editors is understood as a vote for the recommendation given by referees which is most favorable to the document.

4. When a document is rejected, the editor communicates this decision to the author and explains the reasons for it.

5. When changes are requested, the decision is communicated to the author and the corrections are explained. If an author addresses all corrections satisfactorily, the document is automatically accepted for publication unless there are exceptional circumstances. When an author makes the requested changes, it lies within the responsibility of the co-editors that requested those changes to verify them to satisfaction.

6. When a document is accepted for publication, the only changes that may be done afterwards are to its form. Only exceptionally will other changes be accepted, and this will require a written request by the author. If the requested changes are such that they would imply a new, full evaluation of the document, the editor will reject both the request and the publication of the paper, but a new version of the paper will be acceptable subject to the editorial process in its entirety.

7. For the sake of control, during the editorial process the editor maintains a log, which records the evolution of the process. Given that the names of referees and authors are there, the log will be revealed to the Board only by unanimous decision of its members, not considering the editor. In this decision, silence by a co-editor will be understood as a vote against revealing the log.

8. When members of the Board or the Technical Committee have taken part in the preparation of a document, they will not participate in any of the instances of the editorial process. If needed, an external co-editor may be invited.

María Teresa Ramírez
Editor,
Ensayos Sobre Política Económica.
Gerencia Técnica – Unidad de Investigaciones
Banco de la República
Carrera 7 No. 14-78 piso 11
http://www.banrep.gov.co/economic_reports/er_espe.htm