How long does it take for papers to get a first decision at IMR?

Citation

Cadogan, J.W. (2009), "How long does it take for papers to get a first decision at IMR?", International Marketing Review, Vol. 26 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/imr.2009.03626faa.001

How long does it take for papers to get a first decision at IMR?

Article Type: Editorial: the review process and IMR’s standing From: International Marketing Review, Volume 26, Issue 6

Researchers are becoming more savvy in their journal submissions strategies. From discussions with colleagues that I meet at various conferences around the globe, it is clear that researchers are becoming less and less tolerant of long, protracted review processes. That is not to say that authors are not prepared to go through the due process of having their manuscript reviewed by experts in the field. Rather, they are less willing to wait an eternity for reviewers to comment on their work. A recent example was relayed to me by a colleague who has just had a paper accepted in a quite well-known (North American) marketing journal. He complained to me that it took over a year to receive the first set of reviewers’ comments, and that overall, it took him several years to get the paper accepted for publication in the journal. This was not because the changes required were so time-consuming, or because the revisions were overly lengthy – but simply because of slow reviewer feedback and/or slow editorial decision making. I sensed a great deal of reluctance on his part to go through the process again with that journal, and my feeling is that the journal in question may become something of a last resort for my colleague, an outlet to target only after other outlets are exhausted.

In short, journals that become tarnished with a reputation for slow review processes can become shunned by academics, especially those who cannot afford to wait and wait for feedback on papers that may or may not get accepted for publication. Those in tenure-track positions in the USA, for example, are very sensitive to this issue. It is with great please, therefore, that I can provide objective information on the performance of International Marketing Review (IMR’s) review process over the past 12 months (August 2008-2009). My statistics come from Manuscript Central’s report generating facility, which automatically calculates the figures in question. Okay … on average, it takes the editorial team just nine days to identify and assign reviewers to original papers submitted to the review process. This is good going – finding the right reviewers for papers is time-consuming, and reviewers are not always available or willing to help. Furthermore, on average, it takes us just 50 days from the date of submission to make a first decision on papers sent to IMR. This is great news for authors who are considering submitting to IMR. It means that authors are quickly informed about the status of their work, and that those considering submitting to IMR need not worry that their papers will disappear into the system and get stuck there. Accept, reject, or revise and resubmit: we deal with the majority of papers quickly. Credit, of course, must go to those reviewers who are doing such a good job in turning papers around! Thank you.

It is also interesting to note that our accept ratio over the last 12 months is 13.6 percent. This is on a par with other high-quality marketing journals, and has been quite steady during my tenure as co-editor of IMR.

IMR’s standing as a scholarly journal

I also briefly report on two other interesting pieces of news. First, new ISI rankings have been released. Back in March 2008, when I was writing my first editorial, I reported that IMR’s two year impact factor was 0.42, and its five year impact factor was 0.79 (Cadogan, 2008). Now, things have definitely improved. According to ISI’s 2008 Journal Citation Reports, IMR currently has a two year impact factor of 1.16, and a five year impact factor of 1.59. Clearly, this is tremendous news that flags IMR as a journal on the rise. Of course, citation scores have their critics: nevertheless, they do provide useful information for journals to help them judge their impact in the discipline.

On a similar front, I have just read an interesting article in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science by Hofacker et al. (2009). They create a ranking of marketing journals based on the reading choice behavior of over 5,000 subscribers to the ELMAR virtual community. The authors examine how often subscribers choose to read the tables of contents of 165 different titled journals (business and marketing) posted on ELMAR during the study time period. Their approach is very different from the citation information described above, providing an alternative perspective on impact, since the study focuses more closely on the journal consumption process. Hofacker et al. (2009) give each journal a utility value, a general score indicating how much ELMAR users value the different journals. It is interesting to see that of those journals listed that deal exclusively with “international” issues (Journal of International Marketing, Journal of International Business Studies, International Business Review, Journal of Global Marketing, Journal of International Management), IMR is the highest ranked journal. In short, Hofacker et al. (2009, p. 242) show that the population of ELMAR, which “very nearly approximates the population of individuals interested in academic marketing and who are reading in English,” place greatest value on IMR within the subset of internationally focused journals examined. Great news again!

The articles in this issue

The articles we have chosen for inclusion in this issue all make exciting contributions to the international marketing literature.

Smith and Reynolds (2009) report on a cross national study of service evaluations and customer loyalty. They argue that the impact of consumers’ service evaluations on loyalty is different across nations with different cultural profiles. They also predict that the dimensions underpinning the construct of service quality (e.g. responsiveness) will play different roles in shaping consumers’ gestalt evaluations of the quality of the service experience depending on consumers’ underlying national culture. They study their hypotheses using data drawn from consumers of specific banking services across three different cultural profiles. Their results are exciting, and indicate that service quality provision may need to be tailored across national cultures – a “one-size fits all” service quality strategy may not be appropriate in across international markets.

Jung et al. (2009) also report on a cross national study. Their paper looks at the persuasiveness of advertising techniques in a cross national context (cross-national advertising issues are something of an emerging theme in IMR (Chan et al., 2007; Fastoso and Whitelock, 2007; Okazaki and Mueller, 2007; Schindler, 2009; Wang, 2010). The often assumed benefits of using adverts that are framed in ways that are congruent with national cultural stereotypes is questioned by the authors, who argue that authority-based adverts may not work in segments of society who hold personal values that are incongruent with those of their culture. To test their ideas, the authors undertake two experimental studies across three national settings. The results demonstrate that, as expected, young adult consumers in traditionally high power distance cultures react more negatively to authority-based adverts than their counterparts in lower power distance cultures.

Market orientation is the cornerstone of strategic marketing, and its relevance to international marketers is also widely accepted. Kirca and Hult (2009) use Schwartz’s cultural values dimensions to develop a more fine-grained model of the antecedents to market orientation. They argue that national cultural values can determine the importance of various antecedents to market orientation. As well as developing further the theory of market orientation, the findings have practical value for managers wishing to develop market orientation in their businesses. Kirca and Hult’s work complements research published and forthcoming in IMR on international aspects of market orientation, and should be read in conjunction with Cadogan et al. (2003), Grunert et al. (2010), Racela et al. (2007), and Zhou et al. (2009).

Malhotra et al. (2009) study focuses on the issue of market entry. Specifically, they note that studies of the role of distance (e.g. cultural distance and geographic distance) on market entry decision-making throw up inconsistent results. Their solution to this is to test some of the boundary conditions that may determine when and how international market distances shapes market entry decision making. Their study of cross-border acquisitions in 18 emerging countries shows that factors such as market potential moderate the relationships between market distance factors and the number of cross border acquisitions firms undertake.

Finally, Carrigan and de Pelsmacker (2009) present a viewpoint piece in which they ask a number of interesting questions concerning ethical consumer behavior across international markets during a global downturn. Their timely and thoughtful commentary identifies challenges and opportunities for businesses seeking to reap the rewards of chasing the ethical consumer.

John W. Cadogan