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POSTING TYPE: Journal News

Posted by: Mirella Kleijnen

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Journal of Business Research Special Issue Guidelines

Co-Editors-in-Chief Dipayan Biswas and Mirella Kleijnen

August 27, 2025

Special Issue Background Information:

Journal of Business Research (JBR) will consider Special Issue (SI) proposals semi-annually, with deadlines on March 15�����Ի���September 15.

• Proposals for special issues should be submitted either between March 1–15 or between September 1–15
• Proposals must be submitted using the Qualtrics submission form (click ).
• The EICs (Editors-in-Chief) and related CoE (Co-Editors) will take a call on the submitted proposals within about 2 weeks of the deadlines. JBR tends to receive a high volume of SI proposals and hence only a small percentage of proposed SIs are likely to be approved.
• The EICs would occasionally reach out to specific scholars to solicit SI proposals.
• SI topics can be interdisciplinary in nature.

Special Issue Evaluation Criteria:

All special issue proposals would be evaluated on the following criteria:

• Relevance and Timeliness of Topic: Preference will be given to topics that are timely and emerging in nature.
• Potential Impact: Topics with broader appeal and the potential to have a higher impact will get higher preference.
• Quality of Guest Editor Team:
  • Evidenced-based expertise. The Guest Editor (GE) team needs to have a highly credible track record of research and publications on the proposed special issue topic. The Guest Editor (GE) team should demonstrate a credible track record of research and publications in the proposed area. JBR welcomes teams with a mix of senior and early-career scholars, but at least two members should have publications in top-level outlets (e.g., FT50).
  • Complementary of expertise. Each member of the team should contribute to the team by offering specific, yet complementary expertise..
  • Editorial Experience, Again, the team can be diverse in its experience, but we expect that all members have review experience, and that some have editorial experience (at least associate level).
  • Diversity of the team. JBR is diverse in its outreach, which we would like to see this reflected in guest editorial teams as a way to invite a wider set of voices and perspectives to the special issue topic (i.e., different schools, different internationalities, different countries, different genders, etcetera).
  • Integrity and Professional Reputation: Consideration will also be given to the integrity, collegiality, and professional standing of the Guest Editor team.
• Size of the Guest Editor Team: The Guest Editor (GE) team should be no more than four members.

Guest Editor(s) Role/Responsibilities and Procedures

The Guest Editor(s) is responsible for putting together the Call for Papers/contributors, communicating with the journal editor-in-chief regarding the progress of the issue and any changes to the schedule, ensuring the timely submission of manuscripts, communicating with prospective authors, coordinating the review of manuscripts, ensuring manuscripts conform to the journal style, writing a brief editorial providing an orientation towards and an overview of the content of the issue, and publicizing the special issue after publication. The Guest Editors need to ensure that the topic area is aligned with JBR’s policies.

The Guest Editor(s) handle the entire review process, including selecting reviewers, taking a call on rejections, revise-and-resubmits, and making the recommendation for acceptance. One of the EICs or SEs will have to send out the final acceptance decision.

The SI proposal should nominate a person from the Editor-In-Chiefs and Co-editor team (see for an overview) who is most closely aligned with the topic area of the SI. This EIC/Co-Editor member will be the “Overseeing Editor” for the special issue.

Restrictions for Special Issues:

• The Guest Editors cannothave any of their own papers published in the special issue. The Guest Editors would only have an editorial covering the published papers in the special issue.
• The Guest Editors need to be cognizant of any potential conflict of interest issues regarding the authors publishing in the special issue. Guest editors cannot handle papers of current co-authors or authors they have published with in the last 5 years.
• In order to ensure editorial variation, there is a window that excludes guest editors from acting in this role more than once with a three-year period. This window commences at the closing date of the former special issue (i.e., when the last paper is published) and ends at the intended submission date of the subsequent special issue date.
• In addition, guest editor applicants can only be part of one editorial team per submission window.

Special issues & Conferences

JBR would not have special issues organized around a specific conference or workshop. Conferences or workshops may be used to promote a special issue, but submission to the special issue is open to all authors who are interested and not attending the conference should not disadvantage authors in any way.

Proposal Components

Any ideas for Special Issue topics must be presented to the Editors-in-Chief using this qualtrics form: [link will be available soon]. The proposal should include the following elements:

1. Title of the Special Issue.
2. Related track(s): It is fine for a SI proposal topic to be relevant to multiple tracks.
3. Nominating one of the EICs/CoEs as the “Overseeing Editor” for the SI”. For an overview of the EiCs/CoEs and related tracks, click .
4. Motivation for the Special Issue (Why is this topic relevant and worthy of a special issue?).
5. Specific Focus of the Special Issue (suggested topics/research questions).
6. Deadline for  first submissions. (Please note that  a special issue needs sufficient lead time for potential authors to be able to target the special issue. At a minimum, the deadline should be 8 months ahead).
7. For each guest editor (maximum of four guest editors):

1. Name
2. Position
3. Affiliation
4. Email address (this needs to be in institutional email address)
5. ORCID or google scholar page
6. Statement of ad hoc, editorial review board, and book and/or journal editorial experience.
7. Contribution to the editorial team (i.e., complementary expertise), including (maximum 5) key references that illustrate this expertise.

Typical proposals are about 2-4 pages in length (not counting information about the guest editorial team).

Submit your proposal .