Journal of Empirical Finance

Journal of Empirical Finance is published by Elsevier and is in Zone 3 of Economics in the CAS Journal Ranking (2025 upgraded edition). By OpenAlex counts of its recent articles, its largest topics are Financial Markets and Investment Strategies, Financial Risk and Volatility Modeling and Market Dynamics and Volatility, together about 38.9% of its articles. Its main subfields are Finance and Economics and Econometrics. (generated from OpenAlex topic counts and CAS ranking data)

The Journal of Empirical Finance is a financial economics journal whose aim is to publish high quality articles in empirical finance. Empirical finance is interpreted broadly to include any type of empirical work in financial economics, financial econometrics, and also theoretical work with clear empirical implications, even when there is no empirical analysis. The Journal welcomes articles in all fields of finance, such as asset pricing, corporate finance, financial econometrics, banking, international finance, microstructure, behavioural finance, etc.The Editorial Team is willing to take risks on innovative research, controversial papers, and unusual approaches. We are also particularly interested in work produced by young scholars. The composition of the editorial board reflects such goals. Editorial PolicyWe are committed to fast turnaround times. Since 2016, our goal is to make most decisions on first submissions within 10 weeks.All papers are handled by one of the main editors. For each paper, the editor chooses one of three options:The editor makes a decision on the paper without involving additional reviewers;The editor directly selects one or more ad hoc reviewers;The editor assigns the paper to an associate editor, who then selects one or more ad hoc reviewers and makes a recommendation to the editor.In all cases, the editor is responsible for the final decision on the paper.All first submissions require payment of a submission fee. The submission fee is not refundable. In particular, the submission fee will not be refunded if the paper is "desk rejected" (i.e. the editor rejects the paper without involving additional reviewers) or if the editors are unable to secure reviewers for the paper. We do not pre-screen papers or ideas; authors have to submit their papers and pay the submission fee to receive an evaluation. Please note that, due to the exceptionally large number of high-quality submissions, the hurdle is very high: we currently reject about 85% of all submissions, of which 40% are rejected by the editors without involving further reviewers and with no detailed feedback offered. We thus recommend authors to be conservative in their submission decisions, as most submissions will lead to rejection. As a guideline for authors, here we list some of the most common reasons for desk rejections (please note that this list is not exhaustive):The paper is a better fit for Accounting, Computational, Mathematical Finance, Operations, Statistics, or Econometrics journals.The paper is a better fit for academic journals with a more practitioner orientation.The topic or the application is too narrow, being of interest to only a small group of researchers.The quality of the analysis falls short of the standards expected by the Journal.The paper is poorly written and/or formatted.

From the journal's Aims & Scope

Research area (LetPub): Multiple

Editorial board by country: 6 in mainland China (about 8%); most named United States 43, United Kingdom 8, Mainland China 6, France 4, Canada 3 (74 members with a country) Editorial board ↗Publisher website · 2026-10-01

CAS Journal Ranking

Database indexing

SSCIScopusLetPub

International journal early-warning lists: not listed in any editionLetPub

Editions, and major and minor categories, are shown separately and never merged into one zone; check which edition your institution uses before you submit or report.

Impact

Impact factor

2.55LetPub · 2026-09-13

Impact factor (publisher)

2.5Publisher website · 2026-10-01

CiteScore 2026-06

3.8LetPub · 2026-09-13

CiteScore (publisher)

3.8Publisher website · 2026-10-01

SJR 2026-06

1.14LetPub · 2026-09-13

SNIP 2026-06

1.08LetPub · 2026-09-13

h-index

138OpenAlex · 2026-10-01

i10-index

1,128OpenAlex · 2026-10-01

2-year mean citedness

2.89OpenAlex · 2026-10-01

Self-citation rate

0%LetPub · 2026-09-13

Share of gold OA articles

25.53%LetPub · 2026-09-13

Volume

Articles per year

65LetPub · 2026-09-13

Sources count differently and were observed at different times, so each source's own value is kept; "publisher" marks figures from the journal's website.

Figures by source

Submission to first decision

26 daysPublisher website · 2026-10-01

First decision after review

125 daysPublisher website · 2026-10-01

Submission to acceptance

442 daysPublisher website · 2026-10-01

Acceptance to publication

9 daysPublisher website · 2026-10-01

Peer review

Double anonymous peer reviewPublisher website

Community reports come from authors' own submissions (confidence 0.5) and are not a promise from the journal; for publisher figures, the journal's own definitions apply.

A hybrid journal charges the APC only when the author chooses open access; publishing under the subscription model is usually free.

Other charges and waivers (author guidelines)

Submission fee

USD 175

The journal's website is authoritative for fees; sources were observed at different times and each keeps its own value, without averaging.

Excerpts are quoted from the journal's website; "model summary" lines are written by Workers AI and checked against the text. The journal's website is authoritative.

Publisher

Elsevier

ISSN

0927-5398

Electronic ISSN

1879-1727

Official links

• Journal homepage ↗OpenAlex
• Submission system ↗Publisher website
• Special issues ↗Publisher website