Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis: Scopus, Scope, Metrics & Submission Guide

Quick Answer: What Is the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis?

The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis is an international scholarly journal in financial economics. Cambridge University Press publishes it, and the journal’s official scope emphasizes theoretical and empirical finance research, particularly corporate finance, investments, capital and security markets, and quantitative methods used in financial research.

The journal is represented by Scopus Source ID 80370 in the source record supplied with this article. Cambridge displays established citation metrics and a 2025 Journal Impact Factor, and its official submission materials describe a double-anonymous review process. Researchers considering JFQA should assess more than indexing: the study’s contribution, finance relevance, empirical or theoretical rigor, manuscript length, anonymization, abstract format, fees, and fit with recently published JFQA articles all matter.

Key Takeaways

• JFQA publishes theoretical and empirical research in financial economics.
• Cambridge University Press is the current publisher; the journal appears eight times per year.
• The source record supplied for this guide identifies Scopus Source ID 80370.
• Cambridge’s journal home reports a 2025 Impact Factor of 4.1; its current metrics page displays CiteScore 7.1, SJR 4.404 and SNIP 2.389.
• Peer review is double-anonymous, so the main manuscript file must remove author-identifying information.
• Corresponding authors are required to use ORCID at submission.
• The current submission fee is $350 unless explicitly waived; Cambridge lists a Gold OA APC of £2,610 / US$3,655 where an APC applies.
• Cambridge states that JFQA publishes fewer than 9% of more than 1,000 submissions annually.

Journal Information at a Glance

What This Page Covers

• JFQA aims, scope and representative research areas
• Scopus identification, current metrics and Journal Citation Reports context
• Article format and author profile likely to fit the journal
• Double-anonymous peer review and editorial screening
• Submission files, ORCID, abstract and length requirements
• Hybrid open access, submission fees and Gold OA APCs
• Publication ethics and generative-AI disclosure requirements
• Practical fit checks, pre-submission review and publication-readiness support

Methodology and Source Note

This profile was prepared from the journal’s current Cambridge Core pages for its overview, journal metrics, author instructions, fees, peer-review model, publishing agreement and publication process, together with the supplied Scopus source record and ISSN identifiers. The official Cambridge pages are the controlling source for current journal instructions. Database metrics, quartiles, APCs, submission charges, editor lists and indexing coverage can change between reporting cycles, so researchers should reconfirm them immediately before submission or institutional reporting.

Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis Aims and Scope

JFQA’s stated purpose is to publish theoretical and empirical research in financial economics. Cambridge specifically highlights corporate finance, investments, capital and security markets, and quantitative methods that are particularly relevant to financial researchers. This makes the journal specialist rather than broadly managerial: a manuscript should engage a finance question and contribute to the financial-economics literature, even when the study draws methods or data from accounting, economics, econometrics, management, law, or data science.

For researchers evaluating fit, the practical implication is that technical sophistication alone is not enough. A new estimator, machine-learning method, governance dataset, market microstructure result, or international policy setting is strongest when the paper makes clear why the finding changes understanding of a finance mechanism or decision problem.

Representative research areas potentially consistent with the stated scope

• Corporate financing, capital structure and payout policy
• Mergers, acquisitions and corporate restructuring
• Corporate governance and ownership
• Asset pricing and expected returns
• Portfolio choice and investment management
• Market liquidity and market microstructure
• Security issuance and capital markets
• Risk, hedging and derivatives
• Institutional investors and trading behavior
• Banking and financial intermediation when linked to financial economics
• Behavioral finance and investor decision-making
• International financial markets
• Financial econometrics and quantitative finance methods
• Fintech, digital assets or machine learning when the contribution is clearly financial-economic
• Labor, information or network effects when tied to asset prices, firms or financial markets

These examples are guidance derived from the journal’s stated scope and publication patterns, not an official exhaustive topic list. Authors should inspect recent issues and FirstView papers to determine whether the paper’s exact question, identification strategy and audience resemble work JFQA currently publishes.

Scopus Indexing and Other Scholarly Visibility

The supplied journal record identifies JFQA as Scopus Source ID 80370 and links to the official Scopus source profile. Its print and online ISSNs match the Cambridge journal page. Researchers who need Scopus status for university, promotion or PhD rules should open the current Scopus source page and confirm active coverage, subject categories and the latest CiteScore details on the date of submission.

JFQA also has a current Journal Impact Factor displayed by Cambridge, with 2025 Journal Citation Reports category ranks for Business, Finance and Economics. This supports visibility in Clarivate’s journal-metric ecosystem. Cambridge also reports archiving through CLOCKSS and Portico. Indexing should nevertheless be treated as a current database status rather than a permanent property.

Check the JFQA Scopus source profile and review the official Cambridge journal homepage before relying on these records for a formal requirement.

Current Journal Metrics and How to Interpret Them

Cambridge explicitly cautions against using journal-level metrics to judge an individual researcher or output. A strong journal-selection decision should combine scope, audience, indexing requirements, methodological fit, publication model, cost and editorial expectations rather than ranking a journal by a single number.

Editorial Leadership and Journal Audience

Cambridge’s current journal homepage lists editors including Hendrik Bessembinder, Ran Duchin, Thierry Foucault, Jarrad Harford, Kai Li, George Pennacchi and Stephan Siegel. Because editorial roles can change, authors should use the live editorial-board page rather than copying an old list into a cover letter or submission record.

The stated JFQA readership includes finance scholars in academia and practice. The journal reports circulation across libraries, firms and individuals in many countries. For manuscript fit, this means the introduction and contribution should be legible to an international finance audience, not only to a narrow local or institutional community.

What Types of Articles Does JFQA Publish?

Recent Cambridge listings classify the journal’s core content as Research Articles. The author instructions additionally state that JFQA welcomes short and impactful papers and publishes them as regular articles when they meet the journal’s quality and interest threshold. Authors should not assume that review articles, case reports, commentaries or other formats common in different disciplines are accepted unless the current JFQA instructions explicitly provide for them.

As a practical fit check, frame the manuscript as an original finance research contribution supported by theory, empirical analysis, or both, and compare its structure with several recently published JFQA papers.

Who Should Consider Submitting to JFQA?

Researchers should consider JFQA when their manuscript addresses a financial-economics question that matters to a sophisticated scholarly finance audience and the study can withstand demanding theoretical, empirical and identification scrutiny. Academic seniority is not the decisive criterion; research fit and contribution are.

• PhD scholars with a mature dissertation chapter that makes an original finance contribution
• Early-career and established finance researchers
• Economists or accounting researchers whose central contribution is clearly financial-economic
• Interdisciplinary teams studying markets, firms, investors, intermediaries or quantitative finance
• Professional researchers producing rigorous academic work relevant to financial markets or corporate finance

A technically strong paper may still be a weak fit if its principal contribution is outside finance, if the manuscript is mainly descriptive, or if its contribution is too local to speak to the journal’s broader research audience.

How to Decide Whether Your Manuscript Fits JFQA

Journal-fit checklist

• Does the paper fit the official financial-economics scope?
• Can the main contribution be stated in one or two precise sentences?
• Has JFQA recently published related questions or methods?
• Would its readership understand why the result matters?
• Is the manuscript’s design strong enough for the claims made?
• Can the final version plausibly stay within the journal’s length expectations?
• Can all identifying information be removed from the review manuscript?
• Have all current fees, OA options and institutional requirements been checked?

JFQA Manuscript and Submission Requirements

According to Cambridge’s current preparing-your-materials page, initial submission uses a separate title page and anonymized manuscript. The title page contains author names, affiliations, contact details and acknowledgments. The review manuscript must be a text-searchable PDF without author-identifying information.

• First page of manuscript: title followed by a one-paragraph abstract of no more than 100 words
• Page size: 8.5 × 11 inches
• Margins: 1 inch
• Body text: 12 point
• Main body, appendices and figure/table description paragraphs: double-spaced
• Corresponding author: ORCID required
• Figures/tables: numbered and cited in text; Cambridge requires accessible descriptions/alt text for published illustrative materials

JFQA welcomes concise papers and states that final accepted papers will rarely exceed 40–45 PDF pages excluding internet appendices. Excessively long manuscripts may be desk rejected. Authors should download the latest author instructions immediately before final formatting because requirements can be updated.

Read JFQA’s official manuscript-preparation instructions.

Submission Fee, Open Access and APC

JFQA currently requires prepayment of a US$350 manuscript submission fee unless the fee has been explicitly waived. Cambridge states that if the Managing Editor elects not to send the paper to a reviewer, US$275 is refunded. The submission fee supports editorial labor and reviewer honoraria and is separate from any open-access APC.

JFQA is a hybrid journal. Authors may publish through the subscription route or choose Gold Open Access where applicable. Cambridge’s current fee page lists Gold OA APCs of £2,610 or US$3,655, with possible additional taxes. Institutional read-and-publish agreements or funder arrangements may cover eligible OA costs. Authors not choosing Gold OA do not pay a Gold OA APC merely to publish under the subscription model.

Verify current JFQA fees and pricing immediately before paying.

Peer-Review Process and Acceptance Selectivity

Cambridge states that JFQA uses double-anonymous peer review: authors and reviewers do not know one another’s identities. This is consistent with the required separation of the title page from the anonymized manuscript file. Authors should remove identifying acknowledgments, affiliations and other obvious identity cues from the review manuscript.

The journal’s official overview says JFQA publishes fewer than 9% of the more than 1,000 manuscripts submitted annually. Cambridge’s submission page also says that more than 90% of submissions are rejected. These are publisher-reported selectivity statements, not an estimated acceptance rate from a third-party site.

No reliable journal-specific average peer-review duration is stated on the current review-process page. Authors should therefore avoid planning around an invented “average review time.” Reviewer availability, revision rounds, editorial assessment and manuscript complexity can materially affect timing.

Publication Process After Acceptance

Cambridge says JFQA publishes Accepted Manuscripts online rapidly after final acceptance once final files and publishing agreements are received. The stated aim is to publish the Accepted Manuscript within 48 hours of final acceptance when those requirements are complete. This is not a promise about time from initial submission to acceptance.

The accepted version receives a DOI and is later replaced by the copy-edited and typeset Version of Record. Cambridge indicates that proofs are normally sent around two weeks after acceptance. A publishing agreement and Author Information Form must also be completed before production proceeds.

Publication Ethics and Generative-AI Policy

JFQA is listed by Cambridge as a COPE member journal and is guided by Cambridge publishing-ethics policies. Authors should ensure accurate authorship, original work, valid data and analysis, appropriate citation, transparent competing-interest and funding disclosures, and compliance with relevant research-ethics obligations.

Cambridge’s current AI guidance states that generative AI tools do not meet authorship requirements and therefore must not be listed as authors. Use that generates text or images, or analyzes/extracts insights from data or other materials, should be declared and described. Minimal non-generative uses such as basic spelling or minor formatting do not require declaration, but responsibility for accuracy remains with the authors.

Researchers using AI should document the tool, version, approximate dates, access method and how it was used, and should verify references and third-party content carefully. The manuscript must not present AI-generated or third-party material as unsupported original scholarship.

Practical Journal-Fit Examples

Example 1 — Strong scope match

A finance PhD paper develops a theory of institutional trading and tests it with a large transaction dataset, showing a new mechanism linked to market liquidity. This is potentially aligned because both the question and contribution sit within financial economics. Before submission, the author should compare the framing and identification strategy with recent JFQA market papers.

Example 2 — Weak scope match

A management paper studies employee satisfaction and mentions stock returns only as a secondary outcome. Even if the statistics are strong, finance may not be the manuscript’s core scholarly contribution. A management or organizational journal could provide a more natural audience unless the paper develops a substantive financial-economics mechanism.

Example 3 — Good study, poor submission preparation

An empirical corporate-finance manuscript fits the scope but contains author names in headers, a 220-word abstract and single-spaced text. Those issues are avoidable. The paper should be anonymized, the abstract reduced to the journal’s maximum, and formatting brought into line before upload.

Example 4 — Excessive length

A strong paper is 70 PDF pages before appendices. JFQA explicitly discourages excessive length and says final versions rarely exceed 40–45 PDF pages excluding internet appendices. The author should identify which robustness material belongs in an online appendix and tighten the main narrative without concealing essential evidence.

Example 5 — Major revision

An author receives a revise-and-resubmit decision. A strong response should reproduce each reviewer point, explain the revision, identify where it appears, and provide evidence when disagreeing. The revised manuscript and response letter should be internally consistent and professionally written.

Pre-Submission Checklist for JFQA

• Recheck JFQA’s live aims and scope and several recent papers.
• Verify Scopus Source ID 80370 and current active coverage directly in Scopus.
• Check the latest JCR/Impact Factor and institutional journal requirements.
• Confirm that the paper is an original finance research article.
• Keep the abstract at 100 words or fewer.
• Prepare a separate title page with all author identification.
• Remove identifying information from the manuscript PDF.
• Use 8.5 × 11-inch pages, 1-inch margins, 12-point text and required double spacing.
• Review manuscript length against the 40–45-page final-version guidance.
• Link the corresponding author’s ORCID.
• Check figures, tables, captions and accessibility descriptions.
• Verify references and citations against original sources.
• Prepare funding, conflict-of-interest and other required declarations.
• Document reportable AI-tool use transparently.
• Understand the $350 submission fee and any refund conditions.
• If considering Gold OA, verify current APC and institutional/funder coverage.
• Confirm all coauthors approve the final submission.

How Contentxprtz Can Support JFQA Publication Readiness

Contentxprtz can support researchers preparing for JFQA by reviewing journal-scope alignment, improving academic language and argument flow, checking whether the title and abstract communicate the finance contribution, proofreading a submission-ready manuscript, reviewing anonymization and formatting, and improving responses to reviewers. Where appropriate, support can also include reference consistency, table and figure language, cover-letter editing and thesis-to-journal-article preparation.

Professional support should strengthen the presentation of the author’s own research, not manufacture findings, citations, authorship or editorial influence. Contentxprtz does not control JFQA editorial decisions and cannot guarantee acceptance, peer-review outcomes, indexing, citations or publication.

Summary: Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis

JFQA is a Cambridge University Press journal focused on theoretical and empirical financial economics. Its official scope includes corporate finance, investments, capital and security markets, and finance-relevant quantitative methods. The source record supplied with this profile identifies Scopus Source ID 80370; authors should confirm current coverage directly in Scopus when indexing status matters for a formal requirement.

Cambridge reports a 2025 Impact Factor of 4.1 and currently displays CiteScore 7.1, SJR 4.404 and SNIP 2.389. JFQA uses double-anonymous review, requires ORCID for corresponding authors, and asks for a separate title page plus anonymized text-searchable PDF with an abstract of no more than 100 words. The journal is hybrid: a separate $350 submission fee currently applies unless waived, while Gold OA carries an APC where not covered by an agreement or funder.

For researchers, the decisive question is manuscript fit. A submission should make a clear financial-economics contribution, meet demanding methodological and reporting expectations, follow current JFQA instructions, and communicate its novelty concisely to the journal’s international finance readership.