Why You Should Publish In (And Read) The Journal: Business Horizons

I like the journal Business Horizons. I publish in it. I encourage colleagues to publish in it. I read it. I ask friends, colleagues, students and managers to read it. In this posting, I outline some of the reasons why I think you should publish in (and read) one of my favorite management journals.

Inclusive - The journal publishes research-based papers on a broad range of issues,  spanning all areas of business and even going into areas such as law, engineering and science. The articles are intended to be of interest and value to academics, practioners, policy makers and students. It is a journal that will give every submitted paper a fair shot. In other words, it is not biased toward papers from scholars from certain institutions or with a certain pedigree. However, it is prejudiced towards high quality submissions that strike a balance between the practical and the academic. The journal expects submissions to be able to inspire and guide readers to improve business reality and to help address the challenges and opportunities of our changing world.

Relevant – Given its stated aim and focus, Business Horizons is an academic journal with a non-traditional academic format. It is not interested in publishing papers that discuss, joust with and make finely crafted and delicate advances to theory. Instead, it seeks to publish work that sheds new light to help society better understand and act on problems they are facing. The papers still need to be grounded in the literature and be conceptually strong. And data can be used to illustrate and reinforce the points being made. What is most important though, is that the focus and insights have relevance to those interested in learning about and changing business and management. In the typical management academic journal this focus on relevance, is often an inadequate afterthought.

Impactful – Unlike some other management journals that also strive to balance the practical and the academic, Business Horizons is run by academics, as opposed to journalists, and only publishes work in the form of ‘papers’. So, your work will not be a two-page ‘excerpt’ or ‘news piece’ on a journal’s Facebook page, blog or other digital outlet. Your paper will have a digital object identifier (DOI), a journal volume and page numbers. Business Horizons is not a pseudo-magazine. It is a journal whose papers are rooted in research, but with messages that appeal to and change the practice of management. Your work will need to be persuasive and a pleasure to read, but not overly simplistic or too journalistic. It will distill complex ideas for complex issues, based on evidence and logic. This format has resulted in numerous highly influential papers dealing with subjects like social media, artificial intelligence, digital marketing, and virtual teams (see Tables 1 and 2). A key question that the journal puts to all authors is, having read your paper, might a manager do things differently? If the answer to that is a simple, ‘no’, then the paper won’t fit the journal’s mandate. But if the answer is ‘yes’, and the work is publishable, then some business school deans, along with many students, buyers of executive education and donors, will find it a delightful and encouraging indicator of the value of faculty research.

Responsive – It can take several years to develop and publish one paper in a traditional management journal. And, the estimated cost (research funding, faculty time, overhead, etc.) to publish one such paper is in the region of $700,000. Given the rapid rate and shifting direction of change for many issues in society, it is difficult to imagine how such expensive and sluggishly produced research can keep pace with and positively impact society. In contrast, the time to publish in Business Horizons can be just several months. The journal aims to offer rapid review and publication, while expertly supporting and shaping the quality of the work. This allows Business Horizons to publish papers that are timely and timeless.

In sum, the focus on inclusivity, relevance, impact and responsiveness helps Business Horizons papers to get read, be used and to positively shape society. The team at Business Horizons has put in a great deal of work to deliver on these principles, to grow the journal, and to increase its stature and reach. This has helped spur the impressive increase in its Impact Factor (see Tables 3 and 4).

Table 1 - Most Downloaded Business Horizons Articles from ScienceDirect, in 2020 YTD and Lifetime

Downloads (in 2020)	Downloads (lifetime)	Article Title	Authors	Publication Year
32,076	32,076	Confronting indifference toward truth: Dealing with workplace bullshit	McCarthy I.P., Hannah D., Pitt L.F., McCarthy J.M.	2020
17,707	337,191	Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media	Kaplan A.M.,Haenlein M.	2010
13,494	216,353	Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media	Kietzmann J.H., Hermkens K., McCarthy I.P., Silvestre B.S.	2011
10,215	103,411	Digital marketing and social media: Why bother?	Tiago M.T.P.M.B., Verissimo J.M.C.	2014
9,592	84,145	Digital innovation strategy: A framework for diagnosing and improving digital product and service innovation	Nylen D., Holmstrom J.	2015
7,755	27,135	Strategies for building effective virtual teams: Trust is key	Ford R.C., Piccolo R.F., Ford L.R.	2017
6,621	223,653	Social media: The new hybrid element of the promotion mix	Mangold W.G., Faulds D.J.	2009
6,602	7,767	Rulers of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of artificial intelligence	Andreas Kaplan, Michael Haenlein	2020
5,646	33,294	How to create a realistic customer journey map	Rosenbaum M.S., Otalora M.L., Ramirez G.C.	2017
5,633	36,300	What leaders need to know about organizational culture	Warrick D.D.	2017

Last updated July 2020


Table 2 - Top Business Horizon Articles by Social Media Attention, in 2020 YTD and Published All Time

Social Media Attention	Article Title	Authors	Publication Year
2,368	Confronting indifference toward truth: Dealing with workplace bullshit	McCarthy I.P., Hannah D., Pitt L.F., McCarthy J.M.	2020
256	Why every business professor should write practitioner-focused articles	Fisher G.	2020
194	Deepfakes: Trick or treat?	Kietzmann J., Lee L.W., McCarthy I.P., Kietzmann T.C.	2020
46	How bad is your company? Measuring corporate wrongdoing beyond the magic of ESG metrics	Fiaschi D., Giuliani E., Nieri F., Salvati N.	2020
46	Artificial intelligence: Building blocks and an innovation typology	Paschen U.,Pitt C.,Kietzmann J.	2020
36	How to serve online consumers in rural markets: Evidence-based recommendations	Sousa R., Horta C., Ribeiro R., Rabinovich E.	2020
26	Designing, developing, and deploying artificial intelligence systems: Lessons from and for the public sector	Desouza K.C., Dawson G.S., Chenok D.	2020
21	Entrepreneurship as a solution to poverty in developed economies	Morris M.H., Santos S.C., Neumeyer X.	2020
19	Virtue as a framework for the design and use of artificial intelligence	Neubert M.J.,Montanez G.D.	2020
9	Artificial intelligence and machine learning as business tools: A framework for diagnosing value destruction potential	Canhoto A.I., Clear F.	2020

Last updated July 2020

Table 3 – Journal CiteScores

Journal	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020 YTD
Business horizons	3.60	3.70	5.20	6.20	7.40	7.60
California Management Review	3.90	4.70	6.30	7.90	10.10	0.00
Harvard Business Review	3.30	3.20	1.90	1.50	1.90	2.00
MIT Sloan Management Review	4.10	3.50	4.00	3.40	3.10	2.90

Source: Scopus

Table 4 – Journal Impact Factors

Journal	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019
Business Horizons	1.008	2.157	2.588	2.828	3.444
California Management Review	1.109	2.943	3.302	5.000	3.909
Harvard Business Review	2.249	3.227	4.374	5.691	5.700
MIT Sloan Management Review	2.114	2.705	2.569	2.196	2.706

Source: Journal Citation Reports (Regd.) (Clarivate Analytics)