Journals Press Release - Reviews of Economic Literature
Stanford University Press + Public Knowledge Project Launch Reviews of Economic Literature as first Collaboration in Open Access Journal Publishing Program
Stanford, CA: April 17, 2025: Stanford University Press (SUP) and Public Knowledge Project (SUP+PKP) announce the launch of the first journal in their open access program, Reviews of Economic Literature, which is accepting submissions now.
Reviews of Economic Literature (REL) is a peer reviewed journal that publishes articles on developments across the field of economics for economists and other interested readers. It is a Diamond Open Access journal (without fees for authors or readers) owned by an editorial nonprofit and published by Stanford University Press.
Subject areas include economics, econometrics, economic history, financial economics, business economics, and accounting.
The editors invite and encourage economists to consider preparing syntheses of recent research, bibliometric reviews, meta-analyses, and other forms of coverage for all aspects of the economic literature for submission to REL. Prospective authors are invited to register and submit work at https://rel.journals.sup.org/index.php/rel/about/submissions.
Four distinguished professors of economics lead the Reviews of Economic Literature editorial team:
- Iris Claus, University of Waikato
- Pascal Courty, University of Victoria
- Les Oxley, University of Waikato and Curtin University
- Roberto Veneziani, Queen Mary University of London
The editorial team, having gained invaluable journal experience working with scholar-authors and reviewers for a large publisher, decided to found a new journal that is based on the highest principles of editorial integrity and published from within the academic community.
“We envision Reviews of Economic Literature as part of a movement to restore scholarly publishing to the priorities and values of the academic community,” the editors say. “Open access as implemented by commercial publishers has, we believe, led to unintended consequences that serve neither researchers, academic institutions, policy makers, nor society in general. REL is a nonprofit, academic led, open access publication, free for authors and readers, with content immediately available upon publication.”
With 133 years of success publishing scholarly books, Stanford University Press has entered journal publishing to advance the academic community’s access to high quality research without author or reader fees. SUP is working with the Public Knowledge Project, a Stanford and Simon Fraser University developer of widely used open-source publishing platforms, and is drawing on the support of university libraries and funders, including the Gates Foundation, which are deeply invested in open access publishing models.
Alan Harvey, director of SUP, notes that additional journals will soon be announced and is pleased that REL is the first in what promises to be an exciting new scholar-focused journals program from the Press.
“I’m thrilled that PKP is able to work closely with Stanford University Press, as well as with this editorial team” says John Willinsky, PKP founder and Stanford’s Khosla Family Professor Emeritus, “in another of the Project’s efforts to increase public and scholarly access to, in the case of Reviews of Economic Literature, critical overviews and analyses of developments in economic literature.”
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Stanford University Press publishes 140 books a year across the humanities, social sciences, law, and business. These books inform scholarly debate, generate global and cross-cultural discussion, and bring timely, peer-reviewed scholarship to the wider reading public. At the leading edge of both print and digital dissemination of innovative research, with about 4,000 books currently in print, SUP is a publisher of ideas that matter, books that endure.
The Public Knowledge Project is a Core Facility of Simon Fraser University that has, since 1998, been developing open-source (free) publishing platforms, providing publishing services to journals and publishers, and conducting scholarly communication research, all to improve access to research and scholarship. PKP’s work is financed by its services, memberships, and grants, with its open-source software benefiting from the larger community’s contributions.
To learn more about participation in SUP’s new journals series, reach out to John Willinsky, willinsk@stanford.edu
For media inquiries, please contact:
● Bridget Kinsella, SUP Publicist, bridgetkinsella@stanford.edu, 510-465-3853
● Alejandra Casas Niño De Rivera, PKP Communications Coordinator alejandra@publicknowledgeproject.org
● Maria Neal, Reviews of Economic Literature, reviewsofeconliterature@gmail.com