About

International Journal of Advanced Business Studies (IJABS) is registered in the German National Library (Deutsche Nationalbibliothek) with ISSN 2940-2735. IJABS is a peer-reviewed and open access international journal that publishes recent and advanced trends in all aspects of business and management studies. The IJABS journal publishes high quality original research articles, review papers, case studies, and surveys to attract contributions from the academic and business communities.

Aims and scope of IJABS are:

• To provide a platform for the dissemination of advanced research in all areas of business, management, marketing, e-commerce, HRM, resources management, information technology management, economics, finance, accounting, and organizational decisions.
• To publish scholarly articles based on the quality and rigor, and of relevance for academics, professionals, researchers, private sector, and public decision makers
• To stimulate novel research ideas.
• To provide a scientific forum for research advancement and dissemination of results.
• To support high-level learning, teaching, and research.

Fast Publication: upon submission, the manuscript will be evaluated by the editorial team and if it is found relevant with high quality, it will be sent to reviewers for their feedback and evaluation. Based on the results, the first decision is provided to the authors no later than 20 days from the submission date.  Upon final acceptance, the articles will be published on the IJABS website within 5 days.

Frequency: Bimonthly

Open Access Policy 

All research articles published in IJABS are fully open access. It means that the published articles are freely available to read, download and share whenever they are published. The Open Access Publication means author(s) and copyright holder(s) provide all users a free, irrevocable, and perpetual right of access, copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly for any responsible purpose, subject to proper citation.

Abstracting& indexing

The IJABS is indexed in DOAJ, DRJI, SHERPA UK, and Google Scholar. Indexing in other databases is in the process.

 Author instructions

The authors are invited to send their original manuscripts that have not been published before and it is not currently under consideration in other journals.

Article structure

Every article should follow the suggested structure in below:

Title: should be Concise and informative and not more than 20 words.

Authors name, affiliation, and email address

Corresponding author: Clearly indicate who will handle correspondence at all stages of refereeing and publication.

Abstract:

The manuscript should start with an Abstract up to 150 words in length and should be informative for non-specialists. It should briefly contain the aim of the paper, the principal results, and major conclusions. Please do not put reference citations in the abstract.

Keywords

Please include three to six keywords that describe your paper for a better web search.

JEL classification

This is only for economic papers. The economic papers are encouraged to include the JEL classification of their paper using this link:

https://www.aeaweb.org/econlit/jelCodes.php?view=jel 

Body of the paper

Introduction: should clearly state the objective of the paper and the context of the research.

Literature review: should highlight the most recent studies that have a direct bearing on the topic. The theoretical papers may devote a separate section on the motivation and development of the conceptual framework.

Methodology: this section should indicate the techniques which have been used for data analysis.

Results: this section presents the empirical/statistical results and should provide appropriate citation to the literature.

Conclusion: should summarize the key findings and the relevance to the field. Authors are also encouraged to provide practical implications of their research.

Figure captions: ensure that each figure has a caption that comprises of a brief title for the figure.

Tables: Please submit tables as editable text and not as images. Place the tables next to the relevant text in the article.

Funding sources: if you receive any funding for your research, please use the below standard format:

“This work was supported by the [name of institution here] under the grant number [state the grant number].

If you receive no funding, please include the following sentence:

“This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.”

Declaration of Conflicting Interests:

Please use the following statement in the article: 

“The author declare no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.”

References

IJABS follows APA style. The reference list should be in alphabetical order. Make sure that the reference for each citation is given and the DOI is provided.

Example of journal article:

Hills, G. E., & LaForge, R. W. (1992). Research at the marketing interface to advance entrepreneurship theory. Entrepreneurship theory and practice, 16(3), 33-60.

Example of book:

Kotler, P. (2012). Kotler on marketing. Simon and Schuster.

Online documents:

The Investment Company Institute. 2004. Worldwide mutual fund assets and flows, third quarter 2003. http://www.ici.org. Accessed 4 February 2004.

Appendices (if any): If there is more than one appendix, they should be identified as A, B, etc.

Style of article

• Article should be in Word file A4 (210 x 297 mm)
• Margins should be one inch (2.5cm) at the top, bottom, and sides of the page.
• Font type should be 11-point Optima throughout the document.
• Number all pages in your manuscript, starting with the Abstract Page.
• Manuscript text should be left-aligned.
• When citing a list of references in the text, put the list in alphabetical order and separate authors by semicolons; for example and in the case of several authors (Bailey & Cesar, 1977; Dong, 1993; Ryan & Vector, 2013).”

Readability

• Since IJABS readers have varied backgrounds, therefore, the following guidelines are given and authors are encouraged to follow:
• Write short sentences so that the reader does not get lost before end of the sentence. Do not write long paragraphs.
• Define all the technical terms so that it will be easy for the readers to understand the text.
• Check the spelling and punctuation before submitting your manuscript.

Plagiarism

The editors of IJABS will check the similarity index of every submitted article (via Turitin) to ensure the academic integrity of the submitted article.  At IJABS the editors will spend all their efforts to ensure that only original and high-quality papers are published. If the turnitin score of an article is found to be high, it will be returned to the author/s to rectify the issue/s. Here are the turnitin policy for IJABS: less than 25% is accepted; 26%-40% will be returned for editing; 41% and more is rejected.

Article Processing Charges

IJABS offsets publication expenses such as cost of peer-review, journal production, and online hosting and archiving by charging an Article Processing Charge (APC). Therefore, authors are required to pay a fee of 100 EURO for each article accepted for publication. The fee is reduced for low-income countries as well as for the PhD and Postgraduate scholars (up to 50%). The above fee should be paid only after the manuscript has been reviewed and accepted for publication.

Refund Policy:

Here is the refund policy based on the publishing status:

– Half refund: online version is unpublished.

– No refund: when article is published online.

Copyright: at IJABS authors retain the copyright of their works, therefore authors are allowed for unlimited use, re-distribution, and archive of their work after publication. IJABS is not responsible for subsequent uses of authors’ work. Authors grant their permission to apply for DOI for their articles and also for archiving in various databases and indexes such as DOAJ, etc. without restrictions.

 Open-access Policy:

IJABS follows open-access policy. This means that IJABS provides immediate open access for readers for all articles on the publisher’s website. The readers are allowed to download, copy, print, and distribute or use them for any other lawful purpose. All articles published in the IJABS are open access under the Terms & Conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution License. 

Submission Policy:

Submission an article at IJABS implies that the works has not been previously published (except in the form of abstract or part of a thesis) or is currently under consideration by other journals . However IJABS accepts pre-prints and also the papers that have been presented in conferences (in the case of conference papers, there should be at least 50% changes).

Data protection:

Data protection becomes necessary due to many reasons. One of the reasons why authors are worried about publishing their work online is that the personal information (name, e-mail, and institution name/address) can be traced and used for malicious purposes. The law requires that all information about the authors be kept confidential until and unless the author gives permission for publication of the article. IJABS ensures that the data is confidential until the paper is published. Upon publication of the paper, the author details will be visible in the article.

Publisher’s responsibilities:

IJABS works closely with the editors to take reasonable action to prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred.

Access to the journal contents:

IJABS is dedicated to make the articles permanently available by partnering with other organisations that follow open-access concept.

Submission:

Please submit your manuscript through the “submit manuscript” tab in this page. Alternatively, you can send your manuscript in WORD format to this email: ijabs.editor@gmail.com

• For the International Journal of Advanced Business Studies (IJABS) publications please click on the “IJABS Publications”.
• For BESRA Conference Proceedings please click on the “BESRA Conference Proceedings”.

 IJABS, ISSN 2940-2735

IJABS is dedicated to maintain the integrity of the work published. This journal follows the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)’s core practices. Therefore it is expected that the authors, reviewers, and editors follow the best practices of ethical behavior. Some of the key points are listed here:

Editors’ roles and responsibilities:

First and foremost, this role is of voluntary nature and aims to promote the profile of editors as well as the reputation of the journal. It is expected that each editor manages the peer review of maximum 4 submissions per year.

The Editors are usually assigned (by editor-in-chief) for a specific issue. They will be approached to evaluate the overall quality of the intellectual contents of the submitted articles. Besides they are responsible to:

• Oversee the review process to ensure that it is fair and timely.

• Ensure that the subject of the submitted manuscripts are in-line with the aim and scope of the journal.

• Accept or reject the manuscripts after weighing comments from the reviewers.

• Ensure that the accepted manuscript has been peer-reviewed by at least one reviewer. 

• Not disclose any information regarding the manuscript under their consideration to anyone other than journal editorial office, editor-in-chief, and reviewers.

• Inform the editor-in-chief about potential ethical concerns of a work.

• Promote the journal to peers and colleagues.

Conflict of Interest:

Editors should refuse to process the manuscripts if they have any conflict of interests resulting from collaborative or any connections with the authors/institutions related to the manuscript, and they should ask another member of the editorial board to handle the paper.  

Editors should meet the following criteria:

• have similar research interests with the journal’s aim and scope

• have publication record in ranked journals

• have experience in reviewing manuscripts

Become a Editor

IJABS invites all researchers and academics to be part of the IJABS Editorial society by sending a photo alongside their CV to ijabs.editor@gmail.com or info@besra.net

Reviewers’ roles and responsibilities:

Reviewing a manuscript requires time and certain skills. If you are approached to review a paper, before accepting the review request, you should know that the Reviewers should evaluate the articles based on the requirements of the journal, quality, completeness, and accuracy of the research. Reviewers provide feedback on the article suggesting acceptance, minor revision, major revision, or rejection of the article. The ultimate decision will be made by the editor while reviewers play a major role. The role of reviewers are as below:

• Ensure the scientific rigor of the paper
• Help maintain the quality of the journal
• Establish good relationship with other institutions to increase the opportunity to join the Editorial Board at IJABS.
• If the reviewer is not able to accept the review request, s/he should inform the Editor ASAP.
• Reviewers are expected to submit the review report within 14 days.
• Reviewers should treat the manuscript in a confidential manner and should not disclose or discuss the manuscript with others except the editor. 
•  Reviewers should inform the editor of any substantial similarity or overlap in the manuscript with any other manuscript published or under consideration by other journal. Reviewers should identify any relevant published works that have not been cited in the work. Reviewers should check the work to see if the citations given are appropriate (acknowledge the literature).
• Reviewers should keep the privileged information and ideas obtained through peer-review confidential and not use for personal advantage. This is especially applicable for those who decline the review invitation.  

Reviewers should meet the following criteria:

• IJABS takes double-blind peer-review process and carefully selects the reviewers among the reputable scholars with similar fields. Here are the general criteria for reviewers:
  • Have expertise in the field
  • Hold a PhD degree
  • Should not be affiliated with the author’s institution.

Reviewers Guidelines:

Reviewers should use the below suggested evaluation criteria for the Articles:

• Theoretical/Conceptual Soundness: the article should make reference to previous scholarly activities and to the theories in the literature. The theory, if any, should be scientifically applied and justified. If hypotheses are presented in the article, they should have been derived from the theory.

• Methodological Soundness: the reviewer is expected to check the methodology. Qualitative or quantitative empirical studies should have a systematic and coherent method of study. The reviewer should comment accurately and constructively upon the quality of the author’s interpretation of the data and results
• Contribution: reviewers should specify if the article advances knowledge in the related field. Also, if the paper is of interest to many people in the field.
• Communication: reviewers are encouraged to check if the paper has an acceptable quality in terms of clarity, coherence, and linguistic accuracy. It is also checked if the tables/diagrams are clearly presented and sufficiently elaborated.
• References: IJABS uses APA style of referencing. Reviewers are requested to detect if the references are in the right format. However authors are already informed to “cite what you use, and use what you cite”.

Reviewer rewards:

At IJABS, we appreciate the value of the dedicated time of our reviewers, therefore, we will do our best to reward every time you review a paper:

• All reviewers can sign up for free access to IJABS articles.
• Since the review process is in anonymous nature, the IJABS editor will publish the list of reviewers on the website to thank and acknowledge the valuable contributions of the reviewers.
• IJABS provides reviewer certificate upon request.
• To compensate the reviewers’ time and effort, IJABS offers the below benefit:

– Reviewers will have the opportunity to submit a manuscript (as corresponding author) with a great discount (reviewers pay only 40% of the normal APC). The manuscript should be within the scope of the IJABS. To qualify, a reviewer must have completed reviews on time for 3 separate manuscripts in the preceding 12 months. However, the reviews of the revised manuscripts are not counted.

The peer review process:

The following peer review process will ensure an efficient peer review:

The editorial board at IJABS will ensure a high quality and efficient peer review process for all manuscripts submitted to IJABS. The editorial team will uphold the following quality standards:

• Editors and reviewers are subject experts for the manuscripts submitted to IJABS and have the knowledge to evaluate the scientific level of the article.
• Both editors and reviewers have no relationship with the authors.
• Reviewers will complete the evaluation questionnaire provided to them to assess the quality of the manuscript. The review reports are consolidated and verified to deliver constructive feedback to the authors.
• During the peer review, the authors might be contacted to provided additional information/clarification on the manuscript.

Here is the potential conflict of interest between editors/reviewers and authors: 

• When the reviewers and authors are collaborating or have collaborated on a research project or a publication within the past 2 years.

• When the reviewers are collaborating or have collaborated as an advisor or in any other direct supervisory capacity with authors in the past 5 years.

• When the reviewers are collaborating or have collaborated with authors as a student/subordinate in the past 5 years.

Become a reviewer

IJABS invites all researchers and academics to be part of the IJABS reviewers’ society by sending their CV to ijabs.editor@gmail.com or info@besra.net