Welcome to the New JIBS! LETTER TO THE AIB MEMBERSHIP FROM JIBS EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ELECT LORRAINE EDEN July 1, 2007 Dear AIB Members: I was delighted to meet and talk with many AIB members at the annual Academy of International Business meetings in Indianapolis earlier this week. It is a great honor to have been selected by the AIB Executive Board to be Editor-in-Chief Elect of the Journal of International Business Studies. 1. THE NEW JIBS EDITORIAL TEAM Starting today – July 1, 2007 – all incoming manuscripts to JIBS will go to the incoming Editorial Team, which consists of myself, Srilata Zaheer (University of Minnesota) as Reviewing Editor, and nine Area Editors: Daniel Bello (Georgia State University), Sea-Jin Chang (Korea University), Witold Henisz (University of Pennsylvania), Lee Radebaugh (Brigham Young University), Lemma Senbet (University of Maryland), Anand Swaminathan (Emory University), Rosalie Tung (Simon Fraser University), Alain Verbeke (University of Calgary) and Arjen van Witteloostuijn (University of Antwerp). Anne Hoekman, the incoming JIBS Managing Editor, will run the new JIBS Office located at AIB Headquarters at Michigan State University. In addition, a 30-member Consulting Editors Board and a 150-member Editorial Review Board have been formed to replace the current boards. These two new boards will be in place for July 2007 through December 2008. Some descriptive statistics and information on these boards can be found in the PDF version of this letter, which will be posted on the AIB website at http://aib.msu.edu. In addition, if you would like to see my PowerPoint presentation to the incoming boards, which I gave and we discussed at the AIB Indy meetings, the slides will also be available in PDF form on the AIB website. 2. MANUSCRIPT CENTRAL IS OPEN FOR BUSINESS Starting today – July 1 – all new manuscripts must be submitted through the new JIBS Manuscript Central system at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jibs. This site is now open for individuals to set up their accounts and log in. Please note that members of the incoming JIBS Consulting Editors Board and Editorial Review Boards already have JIBS Manuscript Central accounts. CEB and ERB members should use the email link sent to them by Managing Editor Anne Hoekman on June 28, 2007. JIBS Editor-in-Chief Elect, Letter to the AIB Membership, July 1, 2007 1 We would like AIB members who are interested in being ad hoc reviewers for the Journal to please go to the Manuscript Central website now and set up an account. We need ad hoc reviewers and hope that you will be willing to review for JIBS. PhD students are welcome to sign up as ad hoc reviewers as long as they have successfully passed their preliminary examinations and are currently working on their dissertations. 3. SUBMITTING A MANUSCRIPT TO JIBS Palgrave will “flip the switch” on Monday morning, 9:00 am London (UK) time, turning on the new Palgrave JIBS website. We then “go live” for submission of new manuscripts. We have streamlined the editorial process and expect that this will significantly improve the time from submission to publication. A key factor throughout the process is the double-blind review whereby authors do not know the reviewers of their manuscript, and vice versa. The new process is as follows: • Authors log onto the JIBS Manuscript Central website. They have the option to update their personal information at that time. Both full-length manuscripts and shorter research notes may be submitted, although we have a clear preference for full-length articles. • Authors are asked to read several new JIBS policy documents: Statement of Editorial Policy, Information for Contributors, Style Guide and a Code of Ethics. Authors can determine whether their manuscript topic is appropriate for JIBS by reading the new Statement of Editorial Policy and the Information for Contributors. Guidelines as to length, style, and so on are provided in a new JIBS Style Guide, which follows (with a few changes) the style guide of Academy of Management journals. A Code of Ethics for authors, Editors and reviewers has been developed to safeguard the integrity of the double-blind reviewing process. Please note that some of these policy guidelines are still in draft form; final versions should be uploaded over the next two weeks and may differ slightly from the versions currently posted. If you have any questions or comments, please direct them to either Managing Editor Anne Hoekman at [email protected] or to Editor-in-Chief Elect Lorraine Eden at [email protected]. • Authors are asked to nominate two Editors for their paper, using the short key-word statements available on-line beside the name of each Editor to aid their selection. They can select from either the Area Editors or from the Consulting Editors Board. • Authors are also asked to nominate two to four potential reviewers selected from the Consulting Editors Board (CEB) and the Editorial Review Board (ERB). Short key-word research interest statements are available on-line for each CEB and ERB member to facilitate mapping papers to possible reviewers. Ad hoc reviewers can also be nominated, but authors are encouraged to select ERB and CEB members. • Once the manuscript is submitted, it first goes to the Managing Editor who logs it into the system. The Managing Editor will reject manuscripts if they are excessively long, not in English, or clearly inappropriate for the Journal. • The manuscript then passes to the Reviewing Editor, who assesses it for minimum fit and quality. If the manuscript does not pass minimum fit and quality guidelines the Reviewing Editor will desk reject the manuscript. Up to 72 hours (three days) is allotted for this first review; manuscripts in the system after 72 hours are moved automatically to the next step. JIBS Editor-in-Chief Elect, Letter to the AIB Membership, July 1, 2007 2 • Manuscripts go next to Editor-in-Chief (EIC) who also assesses on minimal fit and quality grounds and can desk reject. If the manuscript is acceptable, the EIC then chooses and assigns an Editor to handle the file. This individual will be either one of the Area Editors or possibly a member of the Consulting Editors Board. (CEB members will guest edit up to three manuscripts per year.) We will try to accommodate the requests of authors for particular Editors, but in cases where an Area Editor is overloaded with manuscripts, the EIC will assign another Editor to the file. Up to 96 hours (four days) are allotted for this step; manuscripts in the system after 96 hours are moved automatically to the Area Editor nominated by the author. • The Editor then reads the manuscript and decides whether to send it out for review or desk reject. If the manuscript goes out for review, the Editor assigns five reviewers to the manuscript, three of whom are immediately contacted by email and asked to review the manuscript. The other two are back-up reviewers. The invited reviewers may or may not have been nominated by the author; typically one reviewer would have been nominated by the author. • Reviewers are then invited to review the manuscript, based on an email with the title and abstract for the paper. If they agree to review, they are asked to read the new JIBS policy documents including Guidelines for Reviewers and the Code of Ethics. A new Reviewer Form is used to score manuscripts and submit reviews. Reviewers are asked not to submit corrections for spelling and grammar mistakes, but rather to provide a developmental review of the paper’s content and quality. • Reviewers are given up to one month to complete reviews. A reminder email is sent automatically the week before the review is due, and email reminders are sent each week the review is late. • If at the end of the month, there are two completed reviews in and a third review is late, the Editor can either make a decision on the basis of the two submitted reviews, or decide to wait for the third review. Editors are expected to write decision letters within a week to 10 days. • The Editor’s decision letter and the reviews are then emailed to the author. In the case of a revise-and- resubmit, authors are given up to four months (with extensions if needed) to revise and resubmit their manuscript. Conditional acceptances are given one month for revisions. • The intent of the new process is to move manuscripts through the system from submission to acceptance for publication if at all possible within 12-16 months. The beauty of Manuscript Central is that it tracks all stages of the editorial process from start to finish. It also tracks everything involved in the process (e.g., all emails, all copies of the manuscripts, any comments noted on the file, all reviews, and every letter to the Editor). Every step and everyone who “touches” the file (author, Editor, and reviewer) are recorded along with date and time. Unlike the current Outdare system, which only follows the first round of submissions, Manuscript Central tracks all rounds through to the final decision. Authors can check the status of their manuscript from anywhere they can reach the Internet. • Manuscript Central also provides a wealth of statistical information that can, for example, rate reviewers on their timeliness and quality of their reviews, and rate Editors on their efficiency and effectiveness. We will use these statistics to develop our own internal performance metrics and for external performance reports to the AIB Executive Board. We also intend to use the metrics to help select the members of the second set of editorial boards, from January 2009 through December 2010, and to start recognizing “star reviewers” with “best reviewer of the year” awards at next year’s Academy of International Business meetings in Milan, Italy.