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Submission and Author Guidelines

Suitable Articles

Articles submitted to BuR – Business Research should be original work or reviews that are not under review with other journals. Articles can be considered for publication in BuR given the authors own the copyright of the work being submitted or are authorized by the copyright owner. Articles based on published dissertations are welcome if the publisher grants the right of further utilization of the material to the author. If the manuscript (or any part of it) has appeared, or will appear, in another publication of any kind, all details must be provided to the department editor at the time of submission. Please note: "publication" in a working-paper series does not constitute prior publication. Only articles in American English may be published.
Given the electronic nature of the journal the following submissions are emphasized in particular:

Articles that contain material which cannot be printed in a suitable way such as high quality colored pictures or videos,
Articles that use elaborate empirical or quantitative methods the description of which is too long for print journals. Articles in BuR can be accompanied by appendices of any length,
Articles that provide EXCEL sheets which document complicated numerical issues,
Articles that are based on a data base that is made publicly available in order to initiate methodological comparisons,
Articles that may be considered controversial and will initiate fruitful discussions. Comments are welcome and will also be published in a special section.

Formal notes

You should write in clear and concise American English. Spelling should follow http://dict.leo.org/ende?lang=en&lp=ende&search=. Authors whose native language is not English are encouraged to have their text proofread by a native English copy editor before submission.

Content

A paper may describe original work, discuss a new technique or application, present a survey of recent work, or provide tutorial information. Concepts and underlying principles should be emphasized, with enough background information to orient the reader who is not a specialist in the particular subject area.

Please supply sufficient detail so that the reader can really comprehend your article. In case it is an empirical paper please detail the data you are using, the statistical method applied, and the analysis results. In case it is a model based paper with some optimization please detail the method (pseudo-code), the test data, and the results. In general, readers want to read only about 20-25 pages. Therefore, it makes sense to organize your write-up in a way that details (not necessary for the flow of your article) are provided as an appendix (for which there are no space restrictions). Readers would also appreciate to get supplementary material describing in more detail what you are doing. It has been shown that well documented articles are more often cited than less documented articles.

Arrangement of Papers

Your work should be arranged as follows:

Please submit all your text files as pdf.
Title of paper, authors’ names, affiliations and email addresses, and full address, telephone number for at least one contact author should be provided on a separate page. A relevant website address may also be optionally supplied. When the paper is online there will be a link to the authors' email addresses so that readers can reach you for further information. Please do not submit a paper without these contact details.
Identify authors and affiliations on only the first separate page and not on other pages of the separate manuscript. All identification information (name, affiliation, address, phone, fax, and e-mail address) must be included for each author on the first separate page. Please make sure that the paper should be written in such a way that it does not reveal an author’s identity (e.g., “I extend the work in my dissertation (Meier 1995).”).
The main document starts with a 100 words abstract outlining the purpose, scope and conclusions of the paper, and selected keywords. It is important that the abstract should be clear and understandable for readers for whom English is not the native language. The abstract should explain why the paper is an important contribution to a particular aspect of research in business.
Authors are also asked to provide a 300 word executive summary of their article designed to explain to practitioners what from a practical point of view the major contribution of their work is.
Within the BuR website there will be a search facility to look for papers that have been published and the keywords will be used in conjunction with this. Therefore please include at least ten words or short phrases that highlight the topics covered by the paper.
Acknowledgements (if any).
References. See below for reference conventions.
Biographical details of authors of up to 100 words.
You can submit your article in any layout you want. But please respect the other formatting guidelines provided below.

Formatting Guidelines

Once a paper has been accepted for publication the authors are requested to provide their work in either Word or LaTeX according to the style sheets we are providing on our website. Both style sheets are compressed as zip files (along with a user tutorial) and need to be decompressed before they can be used. Papers not complying with this convention cannot be published.
- Download Word style sheet
  (.zip file)
  
  Download LaTeX style sheet
  (.zip file - optimized for LaTeX distribution MiKTex)
  
  LaTeX users can use an additional BibTex template for formatting lists of references.
  
  Download BibTex template
  (.zip file)
  
  An EndNote style is available for use. The file needs to be saved into your local EndNote styles folder.
- Download EndNote style version 7 or version X2 or sooner
Acknowledgements and information on grants received can be given in the final version accepted for publication and not on the submitted manuscript. In the final version, they should be placed right before the references.
Please do not use footnotes. They should only be used in the rare cases when information should be provided to the reader that does not belong to the content of the article. For example if you want to thank a reviewer for pointing out something or you want to refer to the web address of supplementary material. If used at all they should be numbered consecutively inside the text.
Displayed formulae or blocks of formulae should be numbered consecutively throughout the manuscript as (1), (2), etc. against the left-hand margin of the page. It is recommended to provide the full derivation of formulae in an appendix.
Tables and figures should be numbered consecutively in the text in Arabic numerals, respectively. The heading of figures and tables should be given above the figures and tables. Tables and figures should be placed within the text and not on separate pages.

Tables, Graphs and Illustrations

Tables, graphs and illustrations should be drawn using a suitable drawing package. Color may be used, however please consider that most readers will use b/w-prints. Place all diagrams and tables where you wish them to appear in the paper.

References

References to publications in the text should follow the following style
1. “Basu, Lal, Srinivasan, and Staelin (1984) have shown…” or “Fixed salaries should be higher the higher the environmental risk (Basu, Lal, Srinivasan, and Staelin 1984).” In case of books please provide the exact page you are referring to, e.g., “Gatignon (1993: 699 et seq.) provides a table…”.
2. Please mention all authors. Do not use “et al.”.
3. In case of articles by the same author that appeared in the same year they should be numbered as 1984a, 1984b, etc.
4. If you refer in brackets to more than one paper separate them by a semicolon, e.g., “It is shown (Basu, Lal, Srinivasan, and Staelin 1984; Hauser, Simester, and Wernerfeldt 1994) that…”.
References in the reference list should be given in the following:
1. Journal Articles:
  Hauser, John R., Duncan I. Simester, and Birger Wernerfelt (1994): Customer Satisfaction Incentives, Marketing Science, 13 (4): 327-350.
2. Book Articles:
  Gatignon, Hubert (1993): Marketing Mix Models, in: Jehoshua Eliashberg and Gary L. Lilien (eds.): Marketing, Handbooks in Operations Research and Management Science 5, North-Holland: Amsterdam, 697-732. (In case of a further edition specify, e.g., “3rd ed.,” before the publisher.)
3. Books:
  Hanssens, Dominique M., Leonard J. Parsons, and Randall L. Schultz (2003): Market Response Models: Econometric and Time Series Analysis, 2nd ed., Kluwer: Boston et al.
4. Working Papers:
  Everett, Craig R. (2008): Group Membership, Relationship Banking and Default Risk: The Case of Online Social Lending, Working Paper, SSRN.
5. Internet Resources:
  Prosper Marketplace (2007): What's New on Prosper?,
  http://www.prosper.com/help/topics/whats_new.aspx
  (Access date: 2007-09-12).
Please provide the full first names when available. We accept initials of first names only if the original article is not stating the full first name.

Papers not using this convention will not be published.

Submission

Select the department editor responsible for the different fields from the list below who should process your manuscript. If you are not sure in which field your manuscript falls please choose the department editor who is most likely to be knowledgeable in your area of expertise.

Department Editors

The journal is organized along five departments.

Accounting

Rainer Niemann (Graz)
niemann@business-research.org

Finance

Christian Schlag (Frankfurt am Main)
schlag@business-research.org

Please send your article via email to the chosen department editor.
When sending a manuscript, you have two options: a) Send your manuscript as an unprotected Adobe Acrobat PDF (Portable Document Format) file. b) Send your manuscript as a DOC (Microsoft Word Document) file. We will convert the file to PDF format.
A PDF version of your manuscript file is sent to reviewers.
Authors may post their papers on websites after acceptance and prior to publication, as long as the sites are not copyrighted.

Check List

Please make sure that your paper consists of a separate front page containing all information about the author(s), so that the separate main document (your manuscript) can be used anonymously for the double-blind reviewing process.
Have you told readers, at the outset, what they might gain by reading your paper?
Have you made the aim of your work clear?
Have you explained the significance of your contribution?
Have you set your work in the appropriate context by giving sufficient background (including a complete set of relevant references) to your work?
Have you addressed the question of practicality and usefulness?
Have you identified future developments that may result from your work?
Have you structured your paper in a clear and logical fashion?
Have you included detailed descriptions of your data, analyses, proofs, etc. in appendices for the benefit of readers?
Please be sure that all electronic comments and corrections between authors have been removed (not just turned off).
Please make sure that the manuscript you submit does not include a recognizable author name in the file properties.
Before submitting a manuscript, carefully check the manuscript for errors and check that the manuscript prints as intended.

Proofs

Once a paper has been finally accepted it will be checked and converted. As all correspondence for the journal will be electronic, authors will receive PDF proofs for a final check. Corrections requested if any are to be inserted as a comment into the PDF file. The desk editor will include them thereafter.

Contributions and Dates

Submissions are welcome any time.

Publisher

Business Research is an Electronic Open Access Journal of the German Academic Association for Business Research (VHB). For details see
http://vhbonline.org

Online ISSN: 1866-8658