Editorial: On submitting economics articles to JBV

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Abstract

This editorial provides guidance to authors considering submitting papers with economics content to Journal of Business Venturing. The aim of the journal is to publish high-impact articles on entrepreneurship which combine methodological rigor with comprehensibility (‘accessibility’). Since many economics articles are technically demanding, accessibility to non-technical readers can be a major challenge for authors. This editorial provides some advice for authors of such articles to make their articles more closely targeted on the core interests of the journal's readership and more accessible to non-technical readers. To this end, the editorial suggests that potential authors might benefit from adopting one of the following ‘3R’ strategies: ‘Remove’, ‘Reduce’ or ‘Relate’. It is hoped that this editorial provides useful and actionable guidance for economics researchers submitting theoretical and empirical papers to Journal of Business Venturing.

Introduction

The Journal of Business Venturing (JBV) is a multi-disciplinary journal. It is committed to publishing original research about entrepreneurship regardless of disciplinary ‘homes’ and perspectives. There is no ‘most favored’ discipline or approach at the journal: JBV considers all articles on their merits without prejudice. To cope with the heterogeneity of manuscripts submitted to it, the journal employs field editors arrayed across several disciplinary areas. At the time of writing, these include digital, economics, finance & accounting, innovation, international, management, marketing, organization theory, psychology, sociology, strategy and sustainability.

There are many strengths of JBV's disciplinary pluralism. One advantage is that the journal reduces the risk of excessive reliance on a handful of methodologies and perspectives, by recognizing that valuable insights can come from many different, and sometimes unexpected, places. This keeps the journal and its readership open to new thinking, ideas and methods – which in turn facilitates cross-field learning and cross-fertilization of ideas from numerous diverse sources. Of course, plurality does not come without its challenges: one danger is that a field can become too amorphous without a strong central core identity. Fortunately, entrepreneurship as a field has now attained a strong enough core (McMullen, 2019) to obviate concerns over identity confusion.

A different challenge arises from the possibility that some articles emanate from a ‘home discipline’ where conventions, jargon and mode of argumentation are difficult for readers trained in other disciplines to understand. This is common: consider, for example, some of the theoretical assumptions and conventions that psychologists take for granted – and which are alien to researchers grounded in innovation or finance. Most journal readers are usually willing to invest a little time to learn some of the basic conventions of a different discipline, especially when such effort is reciprocated by authors who take the trouble to present their material in an accessible manner. In these cases, the possibility of genuine cross-disciplinary communication is most apt to be realized. It is surely reasonable to expect both parties – authors and readers – to commit modest investments towards enhancing communication across disciplinary boundaries. What is not warranted by authors is to make unreasonable demands of the reader by expecting them to invest deeply in learning about another disciplinary methodology.

Economics (which is taken hereafter to include financial economics) is a discipline where conventions, jargon and mode of argumentation are often specialized and technical. For example, economics theory papers often make assumptions about agent rationality, objectives, market competition, incentives and strategic interactions which are often neither obvious nor familiar to non-economists. Specialized jargon is often used to describe phenomena or frameworks which may be little known outside of academic economics. And the construction and solution of mathematical models, in which all agents optimize subject to specified information sets and exogenous constraints, can be difficult for non-technical readers to follow. This can deter even intelligent and well-read non-economists from investing the effort to understand the core arguments and results of technical economics papers. In contrast, it typically poses much less a problem for readers of economics journals, who are expected to possess the requisite training and familiarity with the conventions, jargon and mathematics used in economics. Consequently, submitting economics papers to economics journals is usually the most logical way of communicating new economic ideas to the scholarly community at large. That is quite apart from well-established career advantages of publishing within one's discipline, where the relevant journals are well known, and publications can be assessed and rewarded by one's peers.

But what if economists are studying entrepreneurship, and want to engage with an audience of entrepreneurship scholars rather than economists? JBV welcomes submissions from economists where entrepreneurship is at the core of their work. Indeed, it is fair to say that the journal prefers to see this work published in its own pages rather than in those of economics journals. However, as a general interest entrepreneurship journal, JBV's requirements for the articles it seeks to publish differ in several important respects from those of economics journals. These differences have hitherto not been clearly articulated to prospective authors of JBV, resulting in numerous cursory rejections of such submissions with or without review.

Since this outcome is a poor use of authors', editors' and reviewers' time, it seems both appropriate and timely to furnish some guidelines to prospective authors of economics articles who are considering submitting their work to JBV. That is the purpose of the present editorial. Since JBV remains committed to publishing impactful economics articles which make a major contribution to entrepreneurship research, it seems appropriate first to clarify the differences between the publishing expectations of mainstream economics journals on one hand and entrepreneurship journals JBV on the other. Then, the editorial will outline some guidelines designed to help economists craft papers that will appeal to JBV's readership without compromising their own unique disciplinary perspective. Throughout, I will draw on papers published in JBV over the last decade to support and exemplify the points at hand.

It is worth noting at the outset that I will not discuss other disciplines and the communication problems that can arise for them. This is not to suggest that only economics submissions are vulnerable to these problems. Moreover, some of the suggestions that apply to authors of economics-flavored articles might also be applicable to authors from other disciplinary backgrounds. However, for maximum focus, economists are the main target audience for this editorial.

Section snippets

Publishing expectations in mainstream economics journals

There follows a (necessarily) subjective interpretation of publishing expectations in economics journals. Economics journals are of course heterogeneous, so I will make some general observations which might not apply equally to all of them. I list four salient features of ‘typical’ published articles in these journals, relating to expectations about: what constitutes theory; data and methods; admissible contributions; and paper structure and style.

First, ‘mainstream’ economics journals have

Publishing expectations in JBV

As above, I will start by discussing expectations about the role of theory at JBV, before moving on to data and methods, admissible contributions, and paper structure and style.

First, JBV does not publish purely empirical contributions. A more appropriate outlet for such submissions – provided they are about entrepreneurship – is its sister journal, JBV Insights. Empirical papers therefore require a theoretical underpinning. Consistent with the journal's broad disciplinary tent, a wide range of

Advice for economists seeking to publish in JBV

Comparing the previous two sections of this editorial reveals several areas of difference between economics and entrepreneurship journals like JBV. These differences motivate the following pieces of advice for economists contemplating submission of a paper to JBV.

Conclusion

Impactful and novel economics papers are welcome at JBV. To increase the chances these papers get published, this editorial has provided some guidance to authors which, it is hoped, will encourage them to tailor their work to meet the journal's expectations. Of course, tailoring economics content to fit the expectations of a non-economics journal can be challenging, especially for theoretical articles. Some ‘fixes’ are relatively simple to do, for example minimizing the use of jargon; but

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Thomas Åstebro, Jeffery McMullen, Peter Thompson and Karl Wennberg for helpful comments on an earlier draft. The usual disclaimer applies.

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