The editorial office assigns the manuscript to the AEA Data Editor, using the “ScholarOne” (ex-Manuscript Central) system.

The AEA Data Editor team downloads materials from openICPSR, conducts reproducibility checks, and then writes a report. This happens without interaction with the authors. If changes need to be made, the report is communicated to the authors, who make changes and re-submit, the cycle repeating until the replication package is deemed acceptable.

The acceptance report (possibly with some minor additional changes) is communicated to the editorial office and the Editor of the journal. This starts the copy-editing process, and at this time, the manuscript becomes “forthcoming.” Small changes can still be incorporated at this stage. As soon as the replication package is completed, it is published. The manuscript is published once copy-edited and scheduled to an issue.