BRQ Business Research Quarterly
Business & Management (General)
BRQ Business Research Quarterly is a peer-reviewed open access journal which focusses on management topics. Please see the Aims and Scope tab for further information.
This journal is published on behalf of the ACEDE (Spanish Academy of Management).
This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
Submission information
Submit your manuscript today at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/brq
Please see the Submission Guidelines tab for more information on how to submit your article to the journal.
This journal is financially supported by ACEDE and therefore does not charge an article processing charge for open access publication.
Contact
Please direct any queries to the Editor at jpmaicas@unizar.es
Business Research Quarterly (BRQ) is the official journal of ACEDE (Spanish Academy of Management). Born in 1998 as Cuadernos de Economía y Dirección de la Empresa (CEDE), it soon became the leading management publication in Spanish thanks to its strong academic reputation. The journal was indexed in the SCCI in 2008, and it has been published in English under the new title since 2014.
Business Research Quarterly (BRQ) is a peer reviewed, Open Access journal which provides widespread coverage of high quality research in a broad range of topics such as human resource management, organization theory, strategic management, corporate governance, managerial economics, marketing, finance, accounting and operations management. It is therefore a multidisciplinary journal inspired by diversity and open to methodological plurality. The journal’s main concern is that articles have strong theoretical foundations, meet the highest analytical standards, and provide new insights that contribute to the better understanding of managerial phenomena.
BRQ Business Research Quarterly is an English language journal and the journal only reviews papers in English.
| Juan P. Maicas | CUNEF University, Spain |
| Juan Carlos Bou-Llusar | University Jaume I, Spain |
| Lucio Fuentelsaz | University of Zaragoza, Spain |
| Xose H. Vazquez | University of Vigo, Spain |
| Félix López-Iturriaga | University of Valladolid, Spain |
| María Jesús Nieto | Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain |
| F. Javier Sesé | University of Zaragoza, Spain |
| Jordi Trullen | Universitat Ramon Llull, Spain |
| Marta Ferrer | University of Santiago De Compostela, Spain |
| Ana Bojica | University of Granada, Spain |
| Anna C. Bos-Nehles | University of Twente, The Netherlands |
| Andrea Caputo | University of Trento, Italy |
| Gregorio Martín-De Castro | University Complutense de Madrid, Spain |
| Wolfgang Drobetz | University of Hamburg, Germany |
| Mircea Epure | University Pompeu Fabra, Spain |
| Pedro J. García-Teruel | University of Murcia, Spain |
| Elisabet Garrido | University of Zaragoza, Spain |
| Claudio Giachetti | Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna, Italy |
| Tim King | University of Vaasa, Finland |
| Bárbara Larrañeta | University Pablo de Olavide, Spain |
| Agata Leszkiewicz | University of Twente, The Netherlands |
| Chieh-Peng Lin | National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taiwan |
| Óscar Llopis | University of Valencia, Spain |
| Andrea Martínez Noya | University of Ovideo, Spain |
| Alma M. Rodríguez | University of Castellón, Spain |
| Andrés Salas-Vallina | University of Valencia, Spain |
| Gregorio Sánchez-Marín | University of Alcalá, Spain |
| Leticia Santos-Vijande | CUNEF, Spain |
| Antonio Sartal | University of Vigo, Spain |
| Vittoria Scalera | University of Amsterdam,The Netherlands |
| Vu Trinh | Newcastle University Business School (NUBS), UK |
| Pilar Velasco | University of Valladolid, Spain |
| Cristina Villar | University of Valencia, Spain |
| Herman Aguinis | George Washington University, USA |
| Pablo de Andrés | Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain |
| Alberto Aragón | University of Granada, Spain |
| Emanuele Bajo | Università di Bologna, Italy |
| Rodrigo Basco | American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates |
| Gabriel R.G. Benito | BI Norwegian Business School, Norway |
| J. Ignacio Canales | University of Aberdeen, UK |
| Xavier Castaner | University of Lausanne, Switzerland |
| Virgilio Cruz Machado | New University of Lisbon, Portugal |
| Alvaro Cuervo-Cazurra | Northeastern University, USA |
| Nigel Driffield | Warwick Business School, UK |
| Jorge Farinha | University of Oporto, Portugal |
| Elaine Farndale | Penn State University, USA |
| Kirsten Foss | Copenhagen Business School, Denmark |
| Esteban García Canal | University of Oviedo, Spain |
| Pervez Ghauri | University of Birmingham Business School, UK |
| Jaime Gómez | University of La Rioja, Spain |
| Luis Gómez Mejía | University of Notre Dame, USA |
| Oscar González Benito | University of Salamanca, Spain |
| Mark Healey | University of Manchester, UK |
| Michael Hitt | Texas A&M University College Station, USA |
| Umut Konus | University of Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Gianvito Lanzolla | Bayes Business School, UK |
| Javier Llorens | University of Granada, Spain |
| Anoop Madhok | York University, Toronto, Canada |
| Wolfgang Mayrhofer | WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria |
| Michael Morley | University of Limerick, Ireland |
| Juan Luis Nicolau | Virginia Tech University, USA |
| Claude Obadia | Graduate School of International Trade, Paris, France |
| Torben Pedersen | Bocconi University, Italy |
| Ignacio Requejo | University of Salamanca, Spain |
| Vladimir Stantchev | SRH University of Applied Sciences Berlin, Germany |
| Yama Temouri | Aston Business School, UK |
| Joe Tidd | University of Sussex, UK |
| Keith Townsend | Griffith University, Australia |
| Anita Van Gils | Maastricht University, Netherlands |
Table of Contents:
- Open Access
- Article processing charge (APC)
- What do We Publish?
3.1 Aims & scope
3.2 Article types
3.3 Writing your paper - Editorial policies
4.1 Peer Review Policy
4.2 Authorship
4.3 Acknowledgements
4.4 Funding
4.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
4.6 Research Data - Publishing policies
5.1 Publication ethics
5.2 Contributor's publishing agreement - Preparing your manuscript
6.1 Formatting
6.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
6.3 Supplemental material
6.4 Reference style
6.5 English language editing services - Submitting your manuscript
7.1 How to submit your manuscript
7.2 Title, keywords and abstracts
7.3 Information required for completing your submission
7.4 ORCID
7.5 Permissions - On acceptance and publication
8.1 Sage Production
8.2 Online Publication
8.3 Promoting your article - Further information
- Appealing the publication decision
This Journal recommends that authors follow the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals formulated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).
Please read the guidelines below then visit the journal’s submission site https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/brq to upload your manuscript. Please note that manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned. Remember you can log in to the submission site at any time to check on the progress of your paper through the peer review process.
Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of BRQ Business Research Quarterly will be reviewed. 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, that you are submitting the work for first publication in the Journal and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere and has not already been published elsewhere, and that you have obtained and can supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you.
BRQ Business Research Quarterly may accept submissions of papers that have been posted on pre-print servers; please alert the Editorial Office when submitting (contact details are at the end of these guidelines) and include the DOI for the preprint in the designated field in the manuscript submission system. Authors should not post an updated version of their paper on the preprint server while it is being peer reviewed for possible publication in the journal. If the article is accepted for publication, the author may re-use their work according to the journal's author archiving policy.
If your paper is accepted, you must include a link on your preprint to the final version of your paper.
If you have any questions about publishing with Sage, please visit the Sage Journal Solutions Portal
BRQ Business Research Quarterly is an open access, peer-reviewed journal. Each article accepted by peer review is made freely available online immediately upon publication, is published under a Creative Commons license and will be hosted online in perpetuity. There is no charge for submitting a paper to the journal.
For general information on open access at Sage please visit the Open Access page or view our Open Access FAQs.
2. Article processing charge (APC)
The journal is financially supported by the Spanish Academy of Management (ACEDE), and therefore does not charge an Article Processing Charge for Open Access publication.
3. What do we publish?
3.1 Aims & scope
Before submitting your manuscript to BRQ Business Research Quarterly, please ensure you have read the Aims &
Scope.
BRQ Business Research Quarterly is an English language journal and the journal only reviews papers in English.
BRQ Business Research Quarterly is the official journal of ACEDE (Spanish Academy of Management). Born in 1998 as Cuadernos de Economía y Dirección de la Empresa (CEDE), it soon became the leading management publication in Spanish thanks to its strong academic reputation. The journal was indexed in the SCCI in 2008, and it has been published in English under the new title since 2014.
BRQ Business Research Quarterly provides widespread coverage of high quality research in a broad range of topics such as human resource management, organization theory, strategic management, corporate governance, managerial economics, marketing, finance, accounting and operations management. It is therefore a multidisciplinary journal inspired by diversity and open to methodological plurality. The journal’s main concern is that articles have strong theoretical foundations, meet the highest analytical standards, and provide new insights that contribute to the better understanding of managerial phenomena.
3.2 Article types
Regular papers. Regular manuscripts build on strong theoretical foundations and empirical evidence to develop a scientific contribution in the field of management. BRQ encourages theoretical diversity and permeability, as well as methodological plurality. The only constraint is to meet the highest analytical standards.
Review essays. Manuscripts sent to this section should contain authoritative reviews of the literature, offering an updated and critical discussion of the state of the art. They may include traditional literature reviews or meta-analyses, for instance, as long as they make a contribution to management and establish an agenda for future research. Review articles aim at becoming a reference point for academics on the topic they address.
Methodological insights. The journal welcomes articles with a focus on novel methods and significant improvements to conventional techniques, as long as they show an immediate practical relevance for management researchers. We particularly encourage submissions that emphasize those mooted points of the methods employed in any realm of management that have been misused so far, or whose use can be refined and notably ameliorated by utilizing the latest advances.
Counterintuitive perspectives. Their main purpose is to question conventional wisdom in management teaching or research by addressing the issue at stake from different perspectives. Proposals may thus consist of one manuscript by an author to whom other colleague replies, or two manuscripts by different authors presenting conflicting views on a specific topic. The Editorial Board may assess other formats.
Manuscripts should not exceed 40 correctly formatted pages in total, including abstract, text, tables, figures, endnotes, references, appendices, and all other inclusions. BRQ reserves the right to ask authors to shorten excessively long submissions before they are considered. Authors should keep in mind that papers are evaluated on a page-to-contribution ratio. There is no limit regarding the number of references. It’s an author friendly benefit. Formally, Review essays, methodological insights, and counterintuitive perspectives type of manuscripts differ from regular papers since they need not follow a strict paper outline and should preferably have between 3,000 and 4,000 words (abstract, keywords, tables, and references excluded).
3.3 Writing your paper
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.
3.3.1 Making your article discoverable
For information and guidance on how to make your article more discoverable, visit our Gateway page on How to Help Readers Find Your Article Online
Following a preliminary triage to eliminate submissions unsuitable for BRQ Business Research Quarterly all papers are sent out for review. The covering letter is important. To help the Editor in their preliminary evaluation, please indicate why you think the paper suitable for publication.
The journal’s policy is to have manuscripts reviewed by two expert reviewers. BRQ Business Research Quarterly utilizes a double-anonymize peer review process in which the reviewer and authors’ names and information are withheld from the other. All manuscripts are reviewed as rapidly as possible, while maintaining rigor. Reviewers make comments to the author and recommendations to the relevant Associate Editor. The Editor-in-Chief makes the final decision.
The Editor or members of the Editorial Board may occasionally submit their own manuscripts for possible publication in the journal. 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.
BRQ Business Research Quarterly is committed to delivering high quality, fast peer-review for your paper, and as such has partnered with Publons. Publons is a third party service that seeks to track, verify and give credit for peer review. Reviewers for BRQ Business Research Quarterly can opt in to Publons in order to claim their reviews or have them automatically verified and added to their reviewer profile. Reviewers claiming credit for their review will be associated with the relevant journal, but the article name, reviewer’s decision and the content of their review is not published on the site. For more information visit the Publons website.
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.
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.
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.
4.3.1 Third party submissions
Where an individual who is not listed as an author submits a manuscript on behalf of the author(s), a statement must be included in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript and in the accompanying cover letter. The statements must:
• Disclose this type of editorial assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input
• Identify any entities that paid for this assistance
• Confirm that the listed authors have authorized the submission of their manuscript via third party and approved any statements or declarations, e.g. conflicting interests, funding, etc.
Where appropriate, Sage reserves the right to deny consideration to manuscripts submitted by a third party rather than by the authors themselves.
4.3.2 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.
BRQ Business Research Quarterly 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 that: This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
4.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
BRQ Business Research Quarterly encourages authors to include a declaration of any conflicting interests and recommends you review the good practice guidelines on the Sage Journal Author Gateway.
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
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.
This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
5.1.1 Plagiarism
BRQ Business Research Quarterly 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 the 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.
5.1.2 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.
5.2 Contributor's publishing agreement
Before publication Sage requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. BRQ Business Research Quarterly publishes manuscripts under Creative Commons licenses. The standard license for the journal is Creative Commons by Attribution Non-Commercial (CC BY-NC), which allows others to re-use the work without permission as long as the work is properly referenced and the use is non-commercial. For more information, you are advised to visit Sage's OA licenses page. Alternative license arrangements are available, for example, to meet particular funder mandates, made at the author’s request.
The preferred format for your manuscript is Word. LaTeX files are also accepted. Word and (La)Tex templates are available on the Manuscript Submission Guidelines page of our Author Gateway.
6.2 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
Figures supplied in color will appear in color online.
This journal is able to host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images etc) alongside the full-text of the article. For more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplemental files.
BRQ Business Research Quarterly adheres to the APA reference style. View the APA guidelines to ensure your manuscript conforms to this reference style.
6.5 English language editing services
Authors seeking assistance with English language editing, translation, or figure and manuscript formatting to fit the journal’s specifications should consider using Sage Language Services. Visit Sage Language Services on our Journal Author Gateway for further information.
7. Submitting your manuscript
7.1 How to submit your manuscript
BRQ Business Research Quarterly is hosted on Sage Track, a web based online submission and peer review system powered by ScholarOne™ Manuscripts. Visit https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/brq 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 the journal in the past year it is likely that you will have had an account created. For further guidance on submitting your manuscript online please visit ScholarOne Online Help.
7.2 Title, keywords and abstracts
Please supply a title, short title, an abstract of up to 150 words, and 3 to 5 keywords to accompany your article. The title, keywords and abstract are key to ensuring readers find your article online through online search engines such as Google. Please refer to the information and guidance on how best to title your article, write your abstract and select your keywords by visiting the Sage Journal Author Gateway for guidelines on How to Help Readers Find Your Article Online.
7.3 Information required for completing your submission
Provide full contact details for the corresponding author including email, mailing address and telephone numbers. Academic affiliations are required for all co-authors. These details should be presented separately to the main text of the article to facilitate anonymous peer review.
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. 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).
7.4 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.
7.5 Permissions
Please 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 Journal Author Gateway.
8. On acceptance and publication
If your paper is accepted for publication after peer review, you will first be asked to complete the contributor’s publishing agreement.
Your Sage Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will made available to the corresponding author via our editing portal Sage Edit, or by email to the corresponding author and should be returned 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.
One of the many benefits of publishing your research in an open access journal is the speed to publication. Your article will be published online in a fully citable form with a DOI number as soon as it has completed the production process. At this time it will be completely free to view and download for all.
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.
Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the Manuscript Submission
process should be sent to the BRQ Business Research Quarterly editorial office as follows:
Email: jpmaicas@unizar.es
9. Appealing the publication decision
Editors have very broad discretion in determining whether an article is an appropriate fit for their journal. Many manuscripts are declined with a very general statement of the rejection decision. These decisions are not eligible for formal appeal unless the author believes the decision to reject the manuscript was based on an error in the review of the article, in which case the author may appeal the decision by providing the Editor with a detailed written description of the error they believe occurred.