The world has certainly changed in the past few months! Throughout these changes, hopefully all of you are safe and healthy. We wanted to send a brief note to let you know that we are managing the increasing flow of manuscripts at JPSM and hope that you will consider your own submissions. With these very interesting times comes interesting research opportunities. Our journal impact factor was announced in June and has increased to 4.640 putting us in the middle of the pack with the top supply chain journals.
We highly value JPSM’s close relationship with IPSERA, which dates back to the two institutions’ founding. For us, it means that there is a close-knit community of scholars that contribute to the success of JPSM through authorship, engaged editorship and reviewing. We highly value this community and hope to continue our strong and engaged relationship.
We very much missed catching up with the IPSERA-JPSM community in Knoxville, and hope you, your family, friends and colleagues have been spared the suffering experienced by so many during the ongoing pandemic. Had we met in Knoxville, we would have had the pleasure of announcing this year’s JPSM awards at the conference dinner on Monday night at Jackson Terminal. The night would have included line dancing, “real” east Tennessee cooking, and a moonshine tasting!
We also missed the JPSM annual meeting, traditionally held immediately before the conference opens. Here are a few facts and figures from the annual report we would have presented. Since 2016, the metrics are quite stable. The number of submissions remains just short of 300 per year, though for 2020 we already have 265, suggesting academics are catching up on their writing while in lockdown. Desk reject rates rose to 72%. At 40 weeks, the average time from submission to final editorial outcome in 2019 is much the same at in 2018 and 2017. This is higher than we would like ideally, but reflects the considerable effort by authors, reviewers and handling editors to develop submissions, often over several rounds - high added-value but not quick to deliver!
Having risen steadily, JPSM’s ISI Impact Factor dipped for 2018, and then risen again significantly for 2019. This is pleasing, but not a primary focus. We continue to aim towards:
- a steady increase in the quality of articles (significance, originality, rigour)
- alongside empirical articles, publishing a range of other articles which, for example, make conceptual contributions or develop research agenda
- publishing articles which ‘push boundaries’, through novel topics or methodologies, through interdisciplinary research etc
The world of academic publishing is undergoing a huge transformation affecting all journals, driven in part by technology and in part by changing policy among governments, HE institutions and research agencies. Our decisions to accept papers are not constrained by article or page budgets. We can accept as many (or few) as the editorial team agree, and these are now published online as soon as the proofs are corrected. Articles are now numbered (rather than labelled with volume + issue + page numbers), and where appropriate collated into ‘virtual special issues’ (VSI) available via ‘Article Collections’ [https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-purchasing-and-supply-management/special-issues].
One area that we know is causing some confusion is open access and fees to publish. JPSM authors have never had to pay, and still don’t. For most papers we publish, full text access is restricted to readers with subscription access to JPSM. Authors can however choose to pay a fee when their paper is accepted, and then the full text of the article is available without charge via the JPSM website. [https://www.elsevier.com/journals/journal-of-purchasing-and-supply-management/1478-4092/open-access-options]. Open Access, Plan S etc. will drive further change in the sector, some of which will no doubt affect JPSM – we will keep you posted!
Our first VSI was published recently, to mark JPSM’s 25th anniversary. It provides a great mix of articles, some looking back, others looking to future, some empirical and others focused on theory, method or pedagogy. The editorial and all the articles can be accessed here [https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-purchasing-and-supply-management/special-issue/100LPLQLBQJ] directly, without subscription (till April 2021). For an overview of the various articles see pages 1 to 4 of the editorial. Do take a look!
In the latter part of the editorial, we reflect on JPSM progress and our plans for its future development. In our view, the PSM academic community has developed the scope and quality of its research and teaching enormously in the last 25 years. Now we need to take this still further, and do so faster than before. We need to broaden the portfolio of topics and methods in use, to strengthen the impact and influence of PSM research and pedagogy. We need to contribute effectively to addressing grand challenges and developing new ways of doing business. In the editorial, we wrote of ‘business-not-as-usual’, having in mind in particular climate change. Since then, of course, we now face the covid-19 pandemic, which gives even greater import and urgency to developments within our field. We aim to support and guide this development by continuing to encourage ‘boundary pushing’ research.
We look forward to receiving many submissions in the year to come, whether more traditional or innovative, and either for our regular issues or in response to one of our open calls on PSM & innovation, or on learning from the pandemic [Call for Papers: Purchasing and Supply Management learning from the pandemic: transforming for better crisis management]
Best wishes --
Louise Knight and Wendy Tate --
Co-Editors-in-Chief and members of the JPSM editorial team
https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-purchasing-and-supply-management/editorial-board
