Guidelines for Submission of Special Issue Proposals
for International Business Review
Submission Deadline: 17 February 2025
International Business Review (IBR) invites proposals for Special Issues that capture important phenomena and high-impact theoretical developments in international business. These Special Issues should have the potential to offer new perspectives
and point the literature in new and interesting directions.
International Business Review is a premier academic journal in the discipline of international business, and the official journal of the
European International Business Academy (EIBA). The journal publishes original and insightful papers on the theory and practice of international business, broadly defined to embrace firms’ internationalization strategies, the cross-border management
of firms’ operations, and comparative studies of the business environments in different countries. Put simply, the journal is interested in publishing papers that inform the international operations of firms or guide the actions of policy-makers in home or
host countries. The journal welcomes conceptual, empirical and review papers, and is open to contributions from strategy, finance, management, marketing, economics, human resource management and organizational studies scholars.
IBR embraces methodological plurality, and papers using quantitative and/or qualitative approaches are equally welcome.
Application Process
The process for the selection of successful proposals for Special Issues involves two stages as follows:
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Stage 1: The Guest Editors should prepare a concise (4-6 pages) proposal which should include the following elements:
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The proposed title of the Special Issue (SI).
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Information about each of the Guest Editors (names, titles, affiliations and email addresses) and their current involvement in Special Issues at other journals. The proposal should provide the definitive list of Guest Editors, and additions or deletions from
the list will only be permitted in exceptional circumstances once the proposal has been accepted.
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Short biographical notes (approx. 150 words) about each of the Guest Editors.
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The aims, and academic and policy significance of the Special Issue.
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Key themes and research questions for the Special Issue. This should include a short summary of the relevant literature in
IBR and other international business journals.
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List of key references.
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Stage 2: The Guest Editors of the successful SI proposals are required to submit a full Introduction paper (9000-12000 words including references and any supplementary material) by the end of September 2025. This Introduction paper will be reviewed,
revised, and published. The paper should provide thought leadership to take the research field further, summarise and critique the extant literature on the SI topic, highlight current debates and limitations, and suggest an agenda for future research. The
Introduction should not be simply a review of the extant literature, but should provide a significant contribution to the topic and offer a framework to which submissions to the SI can refer. The Introduction paper should thus include the following elements:
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The proposed title of the Special Issue.
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A review and critical assessment of the relevant literature in international business journals and cognate disciplines.
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Identification of current debates on the topic, limitations, and a future research agenda.
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Full list of references.
In addition, the Guest Editors should submit a draft Call for Papers for the Special Issue to be published at the same time as the Introduction paper. The Call for Papers should suggest a deadline for the submission of papers for the Special Issue.
Important Information
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International Business Review publishes papers on “international business”. All proposals must be positioned in the relevant literature in
IBR and other international business journals.
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In preparing your proposal, please take note of any Special Issues in progress and/or recently published in
International Business Review: see the IBR website for details:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/international-business-review.
Proposals should not replicate and/or overlap any recent/ongoing Special Issues published in
IBR or other journals.
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There should be no more than FOUR Guest Editors for each Special Issue. We encourage guest teams to embrace diversity, equality and inclusion when forming the team. In the interests of promoting diverse voices and creating opportunities in an equitable manner,
we will not approve proposals where any of the editors have guest-edited Special Issues that have appeared in
International Business Review since 2022 (volume 31).
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Elsevier check to see whether the Guest Editors are currently involved in Special Issues at other journals, and approval will not be granted if any of the Guest Editors is involved in three (or more) other Special Issues. Please indicate any such involvement
in the proposal.
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All proposals submitted in Stage 1 will be reviewed by the IBR Senior Editorial Team in terms of their quality and alignment with
IBR’s vision and scope. Two or three proposals will normally be selected to go forward to the next stage. The proposers will be informed of the Editorial Team’s decision approximately 3 weeks after the submission deadline.
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The Introduction papers submitted in Stage 2 will be reviewed by the IBR Senior Editorial Team. Accepted papers will be published on-line at the earliest opportunity.
Timetable
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Monday 17 February 2025: Deadline for submission of SI proposals.
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Monday 10 March 2025: Notification of decisions on SI proposals.
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Tuesday 30 September 2025: Deadline for submission of Introduction papers.
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October: Publication on-line of accepted Introduction papers.
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Early 2026: Deadlines for submission of papers to the Special Issues.
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The publication date will be allocated once all the papers for the Special Issue have been accepted.
All documentation should be submitted to the Editors-in-Chief of
IBR, Professor Roger Strange [
[log in to unmask]] and Professor Fang Lee Cooke [
[log in to unmask]]. When submitting documentation, please include in the email submission line:
‘IBR Special Issue’.
Roger Strange & Fang Lee Cooke (IBR Editors-in-Chief)
January 2025
------------------------------------------------------
Roger Strange
Professor of International Business
Editor-in-Chief, International Business Review
University of Sussex Business School, Room 107A, Jubilee Building
Brighton BN1 9SL, United Kingdom
Tel: (44) 1273-873531
Web profile:
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/profiles/243640
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