About the Journal

Focus and Scope

International Review of Economic Policy – (IREP) is an academic review which focuses on economic policy.


The review is published in Valencia (Spain) by the Department of Applied Economics of the University of Valencia.


The predecessor to the International Review of Economic Policy-Revista Internacional de Política Económica was an academic review entitled “Quaderns de Política Econòmica”, which was first published between 1997-1999 (ISSN: 1137-4381) and then again between the years 2002 and 2005 (ISSN: 1579-8151). The decision to go back to publishing a review in this economic field arose out of the 2008-2009 crisis and reflects the need to come up with new ideas that help to define economic policy within the framework of the 21st century. In addition, the aim of this initiative is to offer a means of communicating and spreading ideas of a high scientific calibre.


IREP not only accepts contributions from any economic approach (orthodox or unorthodox), but also those from other disciplines belonging to the field of social sciences. This standpoint allows IREP to accept pieces that are both theoretical and applied, while also welcoming contributions based on both quantitative and qualitative analyses, highlighting the realism of their content. More specifically, IREP accepts pieces from several fields, such as economics, political economy, development and planning, history or social sciences in general. IREP publishes articles on all types of subjects related to Economic Policy:



  • Structuring of economic policy (problems, goals, design, implementation and assessment in economic policy)

  • Formation of economic policy

  • Policies of economic growth and development

  • Social change, poverty and redistribution policies

  • Environmental policy

  • Historical studies (centralised planning, XX century economic policy, …)

  • Theoretical and empirical approaches to economic policy

  • Macroeconomic policies (budgetary, monetary or foreign policies)

  • Structural policies (microeconomic)

  • International economic policy

  • Comparative economic policy

  • Methodological features (political analysis, data compilation and analysis, …)


International Review of Economic Policy –Revista Internacional de Política Económica (IREP) is an international review publishing articles in English and Spanish.


All of the articles are submitted to a strict double-blind peer review.

Peer Review Process

The review process is fundamental. Every article sent to the International Review of Economic Policy that is approved by the members of the editorial board is submitted to a double-blind peer review with the aim of guaranteeing the publication’s superior quality.


Blind review plays a vital role in carrying out and spreading any research. The care and attention and, ultimately, the quality with which the assessment is performed is essential to the process of improving the quality of IREP. If the review process is to be carried out as successfully as possible, the reviewer must be unbiased in his/her judgment, knowledgeable in the subject matter of the article and able to construct and express his/her comments carefully in such a way that they are of use to the authors when it comes to improving their articles.


The International Review of Economic Policy assesses every original piece received after peer review. The article will be sent to two outside reviewers, independent of the review’s publishing body, and at the end of the review, the reviewer must clearly state whether the article is approved for publication, approved with revisions or rejected. If no agreement is reached between the two reviewers, it will be sent to a third who will be the one to make the final decision on whether to publish or reject the article.


All of the reviewers may avail themselves of some public assessment criteria available on this platform. The decision to accept or reject a piece of work will be based on what is set out in these criteria.  


Confidentiality during and after the review. IREP uses the double-blind system to review articles. This means that, at no moment are the authors aware of who has reviewed their articles and neither are the reviewers aware of the identity of the authors of the article. The reviewers will assess the article confidentially and in total anonymity; in such a way they feel at ease to review the article truthfully and impartially free of any fear that their actions may affect their academic and professional career.


The content of the articles must not be used, cited or included in any piece of work by the reviewers until the article has been reviewed and published. Until that moment, any type of information related to the articles must be treated as confidential and must not be used for any purpose that is not a part of the review process itself. The reviewers must not share the following with anyone other than their coordinator: the results of the article, the comments and observations of the reviewer and the discussions that have taken place at the end of the review regarding whether to publish or not. The confidential nature of that information must be respected, even when the review process has finished.


International Review of Economic Policy-Revista Internacional de Política Económica (IREP) accepts articles sent for publication. These will be reviewed by the editorial committee. The review aims to ensure that articles conform to the journal's standards and policy. In case of not passing this revision, they will be returned to the author for correction who must forward the work in a term no longer than 10 days once corrected. Once the article has been approved by the editorial committee, it will be sent for external evaluation. After this phase, the editorial committee will decide on its publication.


In case of overcoming the editorial review, the manuscripts will be submitted to external evaluation through the blind double judge system (anonymity of judges among themselves and anonymity of authors). 


The document may result:



  • Rejected for publication: the author will not be able to resubmit the manuscript.

  • Re-evaluable: the author may resubmit the manuscript after a reasonable period of time (minimum two weeks) and after making the changes considered by the reviewers (maximum four weeks). This will involve a new submission through the International Review of Economic Policy-Revista Internacional de Política Económica (IREP) platform. If within one month no response-submission has been received from the authors, it will be considered that they have chosen not to make a new submission and, therefore, the journal will proceed to remove it from the platform.

  • Publishable with modifications: the author will have to make the changes suggested by the reviewers and undergo a second round of review. It may reach a third round of evaluations and, once the changes have been approved by the reviewers, it will be reviewed by the Editorial Team for final acceptance or rejection.

  • Accept submission: the author must make the changes suggested by the Editorial Team before publication of the document.



Criteria for action by the Editorial Committee, in accordance with the above:


Referee1                     Referee2                                               FINAL DECISION


Accepted                       Accepted                                                Accepted                       


Accepted                       Publ. with modif. (PWM)                          Second round submission, up to three rounds


PWM                             PWM                                                      Second round submission, up to three rounds


PWM                             Rejected                                                 Rejected 


Rejected                        Rejected                                                Rejected 

Publication Frequency

The frequency of the magazine will be semi-annual. The numbers will be published in the months of July and December of each year.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate free access to its content under the principle of to make the investigation freely available to the public, which fosters greater global knowledge exchange.


This journal provides immediate free access to its content under the principle of making research freely available to the public, which fosters a greater exchange of global knowledge.


The texts published in this magazine are – unless otherwise indicated – under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 license. You can copy, distribute and communicate them publicly as long as you cite the author and the name of this publication, International Review of Economic Policy – Revista Internacional de Política Económica (IREP), an academic journal that focuses on economic policy. In any case, the intellectual property of the articles and the possible economic rights derived from them are exclusively of their authors.


The complete license can be consulted at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ We encourage authors to electronically disseminate works published in International Review of Economic Policy – Revista Internacional de Política Económica (IREP).  


From issue 1 of this journal, the editorial policy was open access for reading, but with limitations on distribution without permission of the publisher. Open access means "free public Internet access, allowing anyone to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search or use for any legal purpose, without any financial, legal or technical barriers, other than those that are inseparable from Which means accessing the Internet itself "(definition of the Budapest Open Access Initiative, BOAI).


The authors maintain the right "of control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly recognized and quoted" (BOAI). Full or partial contents of the articles published in this journal can be used, with the only condition of citing its authorship and source of publication.


This journal does not apply rates of any kind.

Declaration of ethics and good practices

International Review of Economic Policy – Revista Internacional de Política Económica (IREP). Academic journal that focuses its attention on economic policy, is committed to guaranteeing the ethics and quality of the articles published, taking as a reference the Code of conduct and good practices for editors of scientific journals defined by the Publications Ethics Committee (COPE) and the CSE's White Paper on Promoting Integrity in Scientific Journal Publications.


The Editorial Committee of the International Review of Economic Policy – Revista Internacional de Política Económica (IREP), undertakes to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when necessary. In compliance with these good practices, the arbitration system used for the selection of articles, and the evaluation criteria that external evaluators (anonymous and peer) must apply are published. They guarantee, at all times, the confidentiality of the evaluation process: the anonymity of the evaluators and authors, the content evaluated, the reasoned report issued by the evaluators and any other communication made by the Editorial, Advisory and Scientific committees. In the same way, confidentiality will be maintained in the event of possible clarifications, claims or complaints that an author wishes to send to the committees of the journal or to the evaluators of the article.


Our journal declares its commitment to the respect and integrity of the works already published, so it will be especially strict with plagiarism, and the texts that are identified as such will be removed from the journal or will not be published. The magazine will act, in these cases, as quickly as possible. By accepting the terms and agreements expressed by our journal, the authors must guarantee that the article and the materials associated with it are original and do not infringe the copyright of third parties.


The journal will monitor any of the following dishonest practices:



  • Production of results (when fictitious data are presented).

  • Forgery (when data is manipulated or changed).

  • Omission (when information is deliberately hidden).

  • Plagiarism (when presenting information, ideas or data of other authors as own). Two forms of plagiarism will be taken into account: the direct copy of a text without the use of quotation marks or citation of the source; The modification of some words of the text, paraphrasing or without sufficient identification of the source.

  • The detection of plagiarism and previously published material is done before sending manuscripts to the judges; Is done automatically by means of specialized search engines (Urkund, Ephorus) and are licensed by the institution that owns the co-ownership of this magazine.

  • When required, institutions that have funded the investigation of an article must grant a publication permit. In all cases, authors should cite any funding institution or other organizations that have helped to carry out the work.


Whenever possible, the authorization number of the Ethics Committee of the institution that endorses the research should be included in the text of the article.


If there is evidence of dishonest practices, the EDITORIAL BOARD will take the appropriate measures mentioned in the following section.

Materials and articles

International Review of Economic Policy – Revista Internacional de Política Económica (IREP) will accept and publish original and previously unpublished material and articles in whole or in part with high potential value for future research and, although not academic research in the strict sense, to advance knowledge around economic policy.

Pro-ethics measures

Identification of unethical behavior or dishonest practices.



  • An ethical misconduct or dishonest practice is reportable at any time to the journal's editorial board by anyone, whether author, reader, reviewer, editor, publisher, or publishing company. 

  • In reporting such actions and in order to initiate an investigation by the editorial board, the complainant (author, reader, reviewer, editor or publisher) must provide evidence. In this case, the editorial board is obliged to address both the complaint and the subsequent allegations until a resolution of the problem is reached.

  • In the case of a complaint, the editorial board must make a decision, gathering any evidence and allegations and avoiding dissemination of the issue until a decision is made to initiate an investigation.

  • In case of serious ethical misconduct, the institution for which the accused works will be informed and the editorial board will make this decision in the light of the available evidence and expert consultation.


Actions to be taken in case of unethical behavior or dishonest practices.


Depending on their seriousness, the measures to be taken by the editorial committee in case of detection of ethical misconduct or malpractice may be:



  • Informing the author or reviewer where an inadequate application of acceptable ethical standards appears.

  • The publication of a notice in the journal warning readers of the malpractice or ethical misconduct and giving details about it. Along with this: 1) a link to the article in the masthead of this news item; 2) watermarking the PDF of the article with the word "Retracted"; 3) an initial page in the article containing the retraction note.

  • A formal letter to the head of the department or director of the research agency that funded the project, reporting the inappropriate behavior of the authors.

  • A formal retraction or withdrawal of a publication from the journal, together with an informative letter to the author's department chair or reviewer (if applicable), a notification to the indexing services, as well as a notification to the readers of the publication.

  • The prohibition of authors from publishing in the journal for a certain period of time.

Journal History

The predecessor to the International Review of Economic Policy-Revista Internacional de Política Económica was an academic review entitled “Quaderns de Política Econòmica”, which was first published between 1997-1999 (ISSN: 1137-4381) and then again between the years 2002 and 2005 (ISSN: 1579-8151). The decision to go back to publishing a review in this economic field arose out of the 2008-2009 crisis and reflects the need to come up with new ideas that help to define economic policy within the framework of the 21st century. In addition, the aim of this initiative is to offer a means of communicating and spreading ideas of a high scientific calibre.