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Policies

JIIBR Editorial Policy

The Journal of International & Interdisciplinary Business Research (JIIBR) seeks to advance useful knowledge within and among the business disciplines. Each paper published in JIIBR contributes an original theoretical idea and/or empirical insight to at least one of the core academic business disciplines—including accounting, finance, economics, management, marketing, international business, strategy, entrepreneurship, business law, logistics, informatics, ethics, and business pedagogy. The Journal endeavors to publish works that will be of interest to a broad business readership (excluding case studies). JIIBR is a double-blind, peer-reviewed scholarly journal and is published online. JIIBR is an open-access journal, and does not charge any fees whatsoever to authors; thus, there are no fees to submit one’s work, nor are there any fees to publish one’s work in the Journal.

JIIBR’s editorial process proceeds as follows:

  • Authors should first ensure that their manuscripts are aligned with JIIBR’s “Preparation Guidelines” and “Publication Ethics Policy,” both of which are available on the JIIBR website ( http://scholars.fhsu.edu/jiibr). By submitting a paper to JIIBR, the author(s) agree that the submission is in accord with the “Publication Ethics Policy.”
  • Submissions are made through the JIIBR website. Authors submitting through Digital Commons for the first time must create an account on the JIIBR website (the process of creating an account is brief and should take less than one minute).
  • Upon a manuscript’s submission, the editor will assign two peer reviewers from the JIIBR Review Board to assess the manuscript’s publication worthiness and will recommend an action to the Editorial Board. At least one of these reviewers will be a content expert in the core domain addressed in the manuscript. At least one of the reviewers will hold expertise in a domain outside of the manuscript’s core focus; this reviewer will represent the “broad business readership” to whom JIIBR aspires to appeal. In this way, the manuscripts published in JIIBR will have been vetted and approved by both context experts in the core field as well as the general business readership. Reviewers will utilize the JIIBR Reviewer’s Rubric (which can be viewed on the JIIBR website) in their assessment of and recommendations concerning the manuscript. Irrespective of their ultimate recommendation on the manuscript, reviewers are asked to provide clear and actionable feedback to the authors in such a manner that the authors might then potentially refine the manuscript. We strive to have reviews returned to the Editorial Board within 45 days from the date the reviewer receives the manuscript, although we cannot guarantee this. If an author has a hard deadline by which they will require a decision (for instance, if an author needs a decision by a certain date to accommodate their tenure notebook), please explicitly state such a need with your submission. We will quickly return the manuscript without review if we think it is unlikely that we can accomplish the review process within the hard deadline. JIIBR’s process of peer review is “double blind,” such that reviewers do not know the authors’ identities, and vice versa.
  • The Editorial Board meets each academic year to render decisions on submissions. The Editorial Board relies upon the reviewers’ assessments of submissions as well as upon the substantive expertise of its members in rendering its publication decisions. Associate editors will not be aware of the authors’ or reviewers’ identities until after publication decisions are finalized. Only JIIBR’s editor, who coordinates and oversees the logistics of the Journal’s review and editorial processes, will be aware of the identities of authors and reviewers throughout the process of making publication decisions. The editor will not use this knowledge to influence the decision-making process in any manner.
  • While the Editorial Board recognizes that a journal’s acceptance rate is not the sole criterion by which to monitor the quality of its publications, the Board does regard JIIBR’s acceptance rate as one of many valuable internal quality controls. External constraints and variables, such as the volume of submissions for a given volume, the number of issues to be published within a volume, and the ratio of submissions that are primarily international in focus to the number of submissions that are primarily interdisciplinary in nature, are accounted for in the process of making publication decisions. The quality of papers that JIIBR has published to date and the impact that JIIBR aspires to contribute to the scholarly dialogue also suggest the validity of using its acceptance rate as one frame of reference in rendering publication decisions. Taken together, these considerations suggest a selective acceptance rate in the ten to twenty percent range (10% - 20%) per volume. The Editorial Board anticipates that JIIBR’s acceptance rate will remain in the range of ten to twenty percent in the future.
  • Those manuscripts that are provisionally accepted by the Editorial Board will be screened by at least one form of anti-plagiarism software. In the event that any question is raised by the anti-plagiarism screening, the authors may be given the opportunity to clarify or to resolve the inconsistency, provided that the inconsistency appears to be an isolated and unintentional oversight. Upon confirmation that the manuscript is free of plagiarism, the Editorial Board will then notify the authors of the manuscript’s acceptance. The Editorial Board will also notify the authors of manuscripts that are not accepted. In either event, the Board will provide to the authors copies of the reviewers’ rubrics at the time of its publication decisions. A representative author from each paper that is accepted will be asked to sign the JIIBR Publication Agreement. Timely consent to the Publication Agreement is required as a condition for publishing the paper in JIIBR. The Journal’s “Publication Ethics Policy” provides additional details on the Publication Agreement. The Publication Agreement is available for public access on the JIIBR website.
  • Each accepted manuscript for which there is a signed Publication Agreement will be assigned to a team of associate editors, who will work with the authors to copyedit the paper. During this process, the associate editors will work with the authors to incorporate changes suggested by the reviewers and to recommend changes to the paper’s language and structure with the goal of improving its readability and persuasive force. Remaining changes needed to bring the paper within APA format will also be made at this stage.
  • At the conclusion of the copyediting process, the editor, associate editors and authors will proofread the manuscript one final time. Only changes that are minor and necessary can be made at the proofreading stage.
  • Upon the completion of the copyediting and proofreading processes for all of the papers to be published in an issue or a volume, the Editorial Board and its support staff will format the issue or volume and will move it to publication.
  • Digital copies of each paper published will be made available on the JIIBR’s website, through any scholarly indexes in which the Journal’s content is included, and by other means consistent with the JIIBR Publication Agreement. The JIIBR Editorial Board intends to disseminate the research published in the Journal as widely and as freely as possible.

Preparation Guidelines

Preparation Guidelines (PDF)

Authors are encouraged to observe the following guidelines in the preparation of their manuscripts for submission to the Journal of International & Interdisciplinary Business Research (JIIBR).

  1. Please submit your manuscript in MS Word format. Any version of MS Word is acceptable. Manuscripts submitted in a format other than MS Word (e.g., in .pdf format) cannot be reviewed.
  2. Papers should be no more than 8,000 words in length, including references and the works cited. Page numbers should be included in the bottom right-hand corner throughout the manuscript.
  3. Please remove all author-identifying information from the manuscript prior to submission. Pertinent author-identifying information, such as acknowledgements of institutions, research assistants, and funding sources, can be added as needed after the review process concludes.
  4. Each manuscript should include on its cover page an abstract of no more than 250 words, in which the subject matter and principal contributions of the paper are summarized. The cover page should also include a list of up to five key words or phrases that reflect the major ideas and themes of the paper.
  5. Papers published in JIIBR will observe “APA format.” In particular, authors must ensure that their citations and works cited adhere to the current edition of the "Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association" (specifically, to Chapters 6, “Crediting Sources,” and 7, “Reference Examples”). The paper’s organization and headings should also comply with APA format. Papers not substantially in compliance with APA will be returned to the author(s) for re-formatting prior to review.
  6. JIIBR welcomes and encourages submissions from scholars around the world, including scholars whose native language is not English. However, JIIBR is published in American English only. Authors whose native language is not English may utilize an editorial service to enhance the linguistic and grammatical soundness of their manuscripts prior to submission—provided that any such service will be limited to linguistic and grammatical editing, and that the authors will be actively involved in any such revisions of their manuscripts. The resulting manuscript must reflect the original thoughts and ultimate linguistic and grammatical choices of the author(s) in such a manner that the resulting manuscript remains the bona fide original work of the author(s).
  7. Questions concerning the preparation of manuscripts can be directed to JIIBR’s editor at jiibr@fhsu.edu.

Reviewer's Rubric

JIIBR's peer reviewers and the Editorial Board use a rubric to assess the publication worthiness of submissions and in making publication decisions.

JIIBR Publication Ethics Policy

The Editorial Board of the Journal of International & Interdisciplinary Business Research (JIIBR) has surveyed the ethics practices of other scholarly business journals as well as the recommendations provided by organizations, including the Committee on Publication Ethics. The JIIBR Editorial Board adopts the following ethics policy concerning its operations.

By submitting a manuscript to JIIBR, the author(s) represent and agree that:

  1. The submission represents their own original work, and provides accurate citations to external sources such that the manuscript is entirely free of plagiarism, misrepresentation, and other forms of academic fraud or dishonesty.
  2. They have removed all author-identifying information from the manuscript.
  3. The manuscript is not under review elsewhere, and that the authors will afford JIIBR a reasonable period of time to review the manuscript.
  4. They will publish the manuscript in JIIBR if it is accepted for publication.
  5. A representative from among the authors will sign and return the JIIBR Publication Agreement by the date requested if the paper is accepted.
  6. They will disclose any potential conflicts of interest, and any sources of funding for the research contained in the manuscript, at the time of submission, and that such notations will be included in the final, published version of the paper.
  7. If needed, the approvals of the authors’ respective Institutional Review Boards, Ethics Committees, or equivalents were obtained prior to undertaking the research contained in the paper, and that any rules or protocols established by these bodies were observed during the course of the research.
  8. If their paper is accepted for publication, the authors will work in a collegial and timely manner with the Editorial Board as partners in the shared pursuit of publishing the paper.

The JIIBR Editorial Board represents and agrees that:

  1. It will conduct its peer review, publication decision making, and editorial processes transparently and in accordance with its own policies, which will be available in their entirety on the Journal’s website. The Editorial Board retains the right to revise its policies as it sees fit.
  2. The process of peer review will be “double blind,” such that reviewers do not know the authors’ identities throughout the process, and vice versa.
  3. The process of making publication decisions will be “blind” as well, in that JIIBR’s associate editors will not be aware of the authors’ or reviewers’ identities until after publication decisions are finalized. Only the Journal’s editor, who coordinates and oversees the logistics of JIIBR’s review and editorial processes, will be aware of the identities of authors and reviewers throughout the process of making publication decisions. The editor will not use this knowledge to influence the decision-making process in any manner.
  4. It will endeavor to maintain the academic integrity of the work published in the Journal, and that it supports scholars’ freedom of expression.
  5. It will make publication decisions in good faith and according to the standards of quality set forth in the JIIBR Reviewers’ Rubric.
  6. It will undertake the editorial process for accepted papers in good faith, with the intention of aiding authors in the refinement of their manuscripts prior to publication.
  7. It will endeavor to disseminate as widely and as freely as possible all of the scholarship published in JIIBR.

Publication Agreement

If an author's paper is accepted for publication, the Journal will require a signed and returned copy of the following publication agreement as a condition for publication:

Publication Agreement (PDF)