Foreign Trade Review
Foreign Policy Analysis | International Development | International Political Economy
The constant evolution of the international trading system, the proliferation of regional trade blocs, the role of the WTO, the changes in production and distribution technologies, the volatility of oil prices and emergence of new financial architecture have contributed significantly to the growth of world trade.
Emergence of developing economies, especially BRICS, rise of Southeast Asian countries and South-South Cooperation have challenged the long dominance of the North. The pattern of trade among individual countries, the behaviour of MNCs and the aspirations of individual entrepreneurs have also changed immensely. Capitalization of trade gains, business opportunities, welfare of emerging countries and LDCs and instability of financial markets are constantly posing challenges to be tackled at individual, firm and countries level. All these require fundamental research to provide the necessary policy prescriptions, analysis and critical inputs suitable for a developing economy like India and the world.
The Foreign Trade Review (FTR), a peer-reviewed quarterly journal, has more than four and half decades of existence in the academic research fraternity. Throughout this period, the Journal has aimed to cater to the above-mentioned research domain.
- The target audience of FTR includes academicians, university professors, researchers, policy makers, policy analysts, trade and industry professionals, various university libraries, management institutes, multilateral bodies like WTO, UNCTAD, World Bank etc.
- The Journal publishes articles having academic rigour, extensive trade data analysis and serious policy implications suitable for higher academic research and policy analysis.
- Articles published in FTR covers disciplines such as international trade, WTO issues, international finance, regional trade blocs, global financial crisis, trade facilitation, role of IT in international business, sectoral analysis, etc.
This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
The Foreign Trade Review is intended to serve as a comprehensive forum for theoretical and empirical research on cross-border issues. The coverage of the journal includes, but is not limited to the following branches of research: international trade and open economy macroeconomics, international marketing, international finance, international logistics and trade facilitation, and multilateral trade law architecture and WTO-related research. The journal publishes research articles, literature review articles, short commentaries and book reviews. Foreign Trade Review follows a double-blind peer review policy. Rather than replication exercises, submissions are sought for new ways of estimating existing theoretical models and development of new theoretical models along with their empirical estimation. Application of newly developed statistical models (along with their computer programmes and dataset, if required) in the context of existing theory or new theory is another area of interest for the journal. The major target audience of Foreign Trade Review includes the researchers and academicians involved in theoretical and empirical research on cross-border issues.
| Ranajoy Bhattacharyya | Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Kolkata, India |
| Debashis Chakraborty | Associate Professor of Economics, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT), Kolkata |
| Biswajit Nag | Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, New Delhi, India |
| Daniel Balsalobre-Lorente | University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain |
| Saikat Banerjee | Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Kolkata, India |
| Mita Bhattacharya | Monash University, Melbourne, Australia |
| Tushar Bharati | University of Western Australia, Australia |
| Mauricio Vaz Lobo Bittencourt | Universidade Federal do Paraná (UFPR), Brazil |
| Bibek Ray Chaudhuri | Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Kolkata, India |
| Hung Yi Chen | Department of International Business, Soochow University, Taiwan |
| Alexander Bilson Darku | University of Lethbridge, Calgary, Canada |
| Gouranga Gopal Das | Department of Economics, Hanyang University, South Korea |
| Nadia Doytch | Brooklyn College, City University of New York, USA |
| Triptendu Prakash Ghosh | Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Kolkata, India |
| Sheeba Kapil | Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, New Delhi, India |
| Hooi Hooi Lean | Economics Program, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Malaysia |
| Sara Maioli | Newcastle University Business School, UK |
| Nanditha Mathew | United Nations University - MERIT, Netherlands |
| Sanghita Mondal | PGDAV College(M), University of Delhi, India |
| Arijit Mukherjee | Nottingham University Business School, UK |
| Jaydeep Mukherjee | Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, New Delhi, India |
| Kwame Osei-Assibey | University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa |
| Adriana Peluffo | Universidad de la República de Uruguay, Uruguay |
| Gulasekaran Rajaguru | Bond Business School, Bond University, Australia |
| Daniel Sakyi | Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana |
| Chris Schinckus | School of Business, Fraser Valley University, Abbotsford, Canada |
| Rahul Sen | Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand |
| Deepankar Sinha | Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Kolkata, India |
| Divya Tuteja | Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, New Delhi, India |
| I.K.M. Mokhtarul Wadud | University of Sydney, Australia |
| Joshua Aizenman | University of South California, USA |
| Richard E Baldwin | Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland |
| Christian Bellak | Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria |
| Julien Chaisse | City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong |
| Alan Deardorff | University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA |
| Christopher Findlay | Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia |
| John Gilbert | Utah State University, Logan, USA |
| Bernard Hoekman | Robert Schuman Centre for advanced Studies, European University Institute in Florence, Italy |
| Jean-François Huchet | University of Sorbonne Paris Cité, France |
| Raghbendra Jha | Australian National University, Canberra, Australia |
| Kala Krishna | Department of Economics, The Pennsylvania State University, USA |
| Chang-fa Lo | National Taiwan University, Taiwan |
| Sugata Marjit | Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Kolkata, India & Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata, India |
| Jayant Menon | ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore |
| Devashish Mitra | Syracuse University, USA |
| Surender Munjal | Leeds University, UK |
| Noritsugu Nakanishi | Kobe University, Japan |
| Hildegunn Kyvik Nordas | Council on Economic Policies (CEP), Switzerland and Örebro University, Sweden |
| Manoj Pant | Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, New Delhi, India |
| Richard Pomfret | University of Adelaide, Australia |
| Prasada Rao | The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia |
| Peter Robertson | University of Western Australia Business School, Perth, Australia |
| Razeen Sally | Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National university of Singapore, Singapore |
| Partha Sen | Former Professor, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, Delhi, India |
| Ian Sheldon | The Ohio State University, USA |
| Anna Strutt | University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand |
| Daria Taglioni | The World Bank, Washington DC, USA |
| Binh Tran-Nam | UNSW Business School, Australia |
| L Alan Winters | University of Sussex, UK |
Foreign Trade Review
This Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics
Please read the guidelines below then visit Foreign Trade Review’s submission site https://peerreview.sagepub.com/ftr to upload your manuscript. Please note that manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned.
Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of Foreign Trade Review will be reviewed.
There are no fees payable to submit or publish in this Journal. Open Access options are available - see section 3.3 below.
As part of the submission process you will be required to warrant that you are submitting your original work, that you have the rights in the work, and that you have obtained and can supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you, that you are submitting the work for first publication in Foreign Trade Review and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere and has not already been published elsewhere.
If you have any questions about publishing with Sage, please visit the Sage Journal Solutions Portal
1.1 Aims & Scope
1.2 Article types
1.3 Writing your paper
2.1 Peer review policy
2.2 Authorship
2.3 Acknowledgements
2.4 Funding
2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
2.6 Research data
3.1 Publication ethics
3.2 Contributor’s publishing agreement
3.3 Open access and author archiving
4.1 Formatting
4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
4.3 Supplemental material
4.4 Reference style
5.1 ORCID
5.2 Information required for completing your submission
5.3 Permissions
6. On acceptance and publication
6.1 Sage Production
6.2 Online First publication
6.3 Access to your published article
6.4 Promoting your article
1.1 Aims & scope
Before submitting your manuscript to Foreign Trade Review, please ensure you have read the ‘Aims & Scope’ of the journal
There could be three sections in the journal:
- Research Articles
- Commentaries
- Book Reviews
- Manuscripts should normally not exceed 6,000 words and should be submitted in duplicate with the cover page bearing only the title of the article, author/s’ names, designations, official addresses, phone/fax numbers, and email addresses.
- In case there are two or more authors, then the corresponding author’s name and address details should be clearly specified on the first page of the article. Author/s’ name should not appear on any other page.
- The word limit for quality Survey Articles may be relaxed, as per the decision of the Editorial Board.
- Commentaries on contemporary issues should not exceed 3,000 words.
The Sage Author Gateway has some general advice and on how to get published, plus links to further resources. Sage Author Services also offers authors a variety of ways to improve and enhance their article including English language editing, plagiarism detection, and video abstract and infographic preparation.
1.3.1 Make your article discoverable
For information and guidance on how best to title your article, write your abstract and select your keywords, have a look at this page on the Gateway: How to Help Readers Find Your Article Online
2. Editorial policies
2.1 Peer review policy
Foreign Trade Review adheres to a rigorous double-anonymize reviewing policy in which the identity of both the reviewer and author are always concealed from both parties. The reviewer may at their own discretion opt to reveal their name to the author in their review, but our standard policy practice is for both identities to remain concealed.
The Editor or members of the Editorial Board may occasionally submit their own manuscripts for possible publication in Foreign Trade Review. In these cases, the peer review process will be managed by alternative members of the Board and the submitting Editor/Board member will have no involvement in the decision-making process.
2.2 Authorship
All parties who have made a substantive contribution to the article should be listed as authors. Principal authorship, authorship order, and other publication credits should be based on the relative scientific or professional contributions of the individuals involved, regardless of their status. A student is usually listed as principal author on any multiple-authored publication that substantially derives from the student’s dissertation or thesis.
If the named authors for a manuscript change at any point between submission and acceptance, an Authorship Change Form must be completed and digitally signed by all authors (including any added or removed) . An addition of an author is only permitted following feedback raised during peer review. Completed forms can be uploaded at Revision Submission stage or emailed to the Journal Editorial Office contact (listed on the journal’s manuscript submission guidelines). All requests will be moderated by the Editor and/or Sage staff.
Please note that AI chatbots, for example ChatGPT, should not be listed as authors. For more information see the policy on Use of ChatGPT and generative AI tools.
Important: Changes to the author by-line by adding or deleting authors are NOT permitted following acceptance of a paper.
2.3 Acknowledgements
All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an Acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, or a department chair who provided only general support.
Please supply any personal acknowledgements separately to the main text to facilitate anonymous peer review.
2.3.1 Writing assistance
Individuals who provided writing assistance, e.g. from a specialist communications company, do not qualify as authors and so should be included in the Acknowledgements section. Authors must disclose any writing assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input – and identify the entity that paid for this assistance. It is not necessary to disclose use of language polishing services.
2.4 Funding
Foreign Trade Review requires all authors to acknowledge their funding in a consistent fashion under a separate heading. Please visit the Funding Acknowledgements page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway to confirm the format of the acknowledgment text in the event of funding, or state: ‘This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
Foreign Trade Review encourages authors to include a declaration of any conflicting interests and recommends you review the good practice guidelines on the Sage Journal Author Gateway
Please ensure that a ‘Declaration of Conflicting Interests’ statement is included at the end of your manuscript, after any acknowledgements and prior to the references. If no conflict exists, please state that ‘The Author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest’.
The journal is committed to facilitating openness, transparency and reproducibility of research, and has the following research data sharing policy. For more information, including FAQs please visit the Sage Research Data policy pages.
Subject to appropriate ethical and legal considerations, authors are encouraged to:
- share your research data in a relevant public data repository
- include a data availability statement linking to your data. If it is not possible to share your data, we encourage you to consider using the statement to explain why it cannot be shared.
- cite this data in your research
3.1 Publication ethics
Sage is committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. We encourage authors to refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics’ International Standards for Authors and view the Publication Ethics page on the Sage Author Gateway
3.1.1 Plagiarism
Foreign Trade Review and Sage take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of published articles. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of Journal against malpractice. Submitted articles may be checked with duplication-checking software. Where an article, for example, is found to have plagiarized other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where the authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article; taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author's institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; or taking appropriate legal action.
3.1.2 Prior publication
If material has been previously published it is not generally acceptable for publication in a Sage journal. However, there are certain circumstances where previously published material can be considered for publication. Please refer to the guidance on the Sage Author Gateway or if in doubt, contact the Editor at the address given below.
3.2 Contributor’s publishing agreement
Before publication, Sage requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. Sage’s Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement is an exclusive licence agreement which means that the author retains copyright in the work but grants Sage the sole and exclusive right and licence to publish for the full legal term of copyright. Exceptions may exist where an assignment of copyright is required or preferred by a proprietor other than Sage. In this case copyright in the work will be assigned from the author to the society. For more information, please visit the Sage Author Gateway
3.3 Open access and author archiving
Foreign Trade Review offers optional open access publishing via the Sage Choice programme and Open Access agreements, where authors can publish open access either discounted or free of charge depending on the agreement with Sage. Find out if your institution is participating by visiting Open Access Agreements at Sage. For more information on Open Access publishing options at Sage please visit Sage Open Access. For information on funding body compliance, and depositing your article in repositories, please visit Sage’s Author Archiving and Re-Use Guidelines and Publishing Policies.
4. Preparing your manuscript for submission
4.1 Formatting
The preferred format for your manuscript is Word. LaTeX files are also accepted. Word and LaTex templates are available on the Manuscript Submission Guidelines page of our Author Gateway.
The manuscript should be structured as follows:
- Articles should be written in MS Word, Times New Roman font, and should be submitted only in soft copy.
- All articles must be accompanied by an abstract of 150–200 words and 4–6 keywords.
- The JEL classification code for the articles should be included before Keywords.
- Endnotes should be used instead of footnotes and should be numbered serially using standard figures (e.g., 1, 2, 3). The notes should be linked to the note cues within the text. Notes should contain more than a citation of a work. Use notes to elaborate an issue that is already made in the main text.
- The spellings used should be British (UK), with ‘s’ variant, e.g., globalisation instead of globalization, labour instead of labor.
- Use single quotes throughout. Double quotes only used within single quotes. Spellings of words in quotations should not be changed. Quotations of 45 words or more should be separated from the text and indented with one space with a line space above and below. When directly quoting from a work, include the page number in the citation.
- Use of italics and diacritical should be minimized but consistent. For non-English and uncommon words and phrases, use italics throughout the text. Meaning of non-English words should be given in parenthesis just after the word when it is used for the first time.
- Use capitals sparingly and double-check the logical application of any distinctions you wish to make between specific and general use.
- Abbreviations are spelled out at first occurrence. Very common ones (US, GDP, BBC) need not be spelled out.
- Spell out numbers from one to nine, 10 and above to remain in figures. However, for exact measurements use only figures (3 km; 9 per cent). Use thousands and millions, not lakhs and crores.
- Use ‘per cent’ instead of % in the text. In tables, graphs, etc., % can be used.
- Give specific dates in the form 22 November 1980. Decades should be referred to as ‘twentieth century’, ‘1980s’.
- Ibid should not be used.
- Number ranges should not be truncated, for example, 2017–2018.
- Tables and figures to be indicated by numbers separately (see Table 1), not by placement (see Table below). Present each table and figure on a separate sheet of paper, gathering them together at the end of the article.
4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures and graphs in electronic format, please visit Sage’s Manuscript Submission Guidelines
- All photographs and scanned images should have a resolution of minimum 300 dpi/1500 pixels and their format should be TIFF or JPEG.
- Due permissions should be taken for copyright protected photographs/images. Even for photographs/images available in the public domain, it should be clearly ascertained whether or not their reproduction requires permission for purposes of publishing (which is a profit-making endeavour).
- All photographs/scanned images should be provided separately in a folder along with the main article.
Please Note: All figures and tables should be cited in the text and should have the source (a specific URL, a reference or, if it is author’s own work, ‘The Author’) mentioned irrespective of whether or not they require permissions.
- Figures supplied in colour will appear in colour online regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in colour in the printed version. For specifically requested colour reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding the costs from Sage after receipt of your accepted article.
4.3 Supplementary material
This journal is able to host additional materials online (e.g., data sets, podcasts, videos, images, etc.) alongside the full-text of the article. For more information, please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplementary files
4.4 Reference style
Foreign Trade Review adheres to the APA reference style. View the APA guidelines to ensure your manuscript conforms to this reference style.
- References: A consolidated listing of all books, articles, essays, theses and documents referred to (including any referred to in the tables, graphs and maps) should be provided at the end of the article.
- Arrangement of references: Reference list entries should be alphabetized by the last name of the first author of each work. In each reference, authors’ names are inverted (last name first) for all authors (first, second or subsequent ones).
- Chronological listing: If more than one work by the same author(s) is cited, they should be listed in order by the year of publication, starting with the earliest.
- Sentence case: In references, sentence case (only the first word and any proper noun are capitalized—e.g., ‘The software industry in India’) is to be followed for the titles of papers, books, articles, etc.
- Title case: In references, Journal titles are put in title case (first letter of all words except articles and conjunctions are capitalized—e.g., Journal of Business Ethics).
- talicize: Book and Journal titles are to be italicized.
Please Note: For each in-text citation there must be a corresponding reference in the reference list and for each reference there must be a corresponding in-text citation.
5. Submitting your manuscript
Foreign Trade Review is hosted on Sage Track Sage, a web-based online submission and peer review system. Please visit https://peerreview.sagepub.com/ftr to login and submit your article online.
IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in the system before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for Foreign Trade Review in the past year it is likely that you will have had an account created.
Authors submitting their research to the journal are required to suggest names of three researchers currently active in the specific area of research issues addressed in the paper.
Authors will be provided with a copyright form once the contribution is accepted for publication. The submission will be considered as final only after the filled-in and signed copyright form is received. In case there are two or more authors, the corresponding author needs to sign the copyright form.
5.1 ORCID
As part of our commitment to ensuring an ethical, transparent and fair peer review process Sage is a supporting member of ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID. ORCID provides a unique and persistent digital identifier that distinguishes researchers from every other researcher, even those who share the same name, and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between researchers and their professional activities, ensuring that their work is recognized.
The collection of ORCID iDs from corresponding authors is now part of the submission process of this journal. If you already have an ORCID iD you will be asked to associate that to your submission during the online submission process. We also strongly encourage all co-authors to link their ORCID ID to their accounts in our online peer review platforms. It takes seconds to do: click the link when prompted, sign into your ORCID account and our systems are automatically updated. Your ORCID iD will become part of your accepted publication’s metadata, making your work attributable to you and only you. Your ORCID iD is published with your article so that fellow researchers reading your work can link to your ORCID profile and from there link to your other publications.
If you do not already have an ORCID iD please follow this link to create one or visit our ORCID homepage to learn more.
5.2 Information required for completing your submission
You will be asked to provide contact details and academic affiliations for all co-authors via the submission system and identify who is to be the corresponding author. These details must match what appears on your manuscript. The affiliation listed in the manuscript should be the institution where the research was conducted. If an author has moved to a new institution since completing the research, the new affiliation can be included in a manuscript note at the end of the paper. At this stage please ensure you have included all the required statements and declarations and uploaded any additional supplementary files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).
5.3 Permissions
Please also ensure that you have obtained any necessary permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. For further information including guidance on fair dealing for criticism and review, please see the Copyright and Permissions page on the Sage Author Gateway
6. On acceptance and publication
6.1 Sage Production
Your Sage Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will be made available to the corresponding author via email, and corrections should be made directly or notified to us promptly. Authors are reminded to check their proofs carefully to confirm that all author information, including names, affiliations, sequence and contact details are correct, and that Funding and Conflict of Interest statements, if any, are accurate.
6.2 Online First publication
Online First allows final articles (completed and approved articles awaiting assignment to a future issue) to be published online prior to their inclusion in a journal issue, which significantly reduces the lead time between submission and publication. Visit the Sage Journals help page for more details, including how to cite Online First articles.
6.3 Access to your published article
Sage provides authors with online access to their final article.
6.4 Promoting your article
Publication is not the end of the process! You can help disseminate your paper and ensure it is as widely read and cited as possible. The Sage Author Gateway has numerous resources to help you promote your work. Visit the Promote Your Article page on the Gateway for tips and advice.
7. Further information
Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the manuscript submission process should be sent to Foreign Trade Review editorial office as follows:
E-mails: ftredit@iift.edu