Advancing Scholarly Research in Entrepreneurship: JSBM, 2001–2010

Abstract

This is the last issue of Journal of Small Business Management (JSBM) under my editorship. I have been Editor of JSBM since 2001. In these 10 years JSBM has moved from a tier-three journal to become a tier-one journal, and now it counts toward faculty promotion and tenure in several business schools (Academic Journal Quality Guide published by the Association of Business Schools [ABS Rankings, 2010]). I am now moving on to a new challenge, cofounding along with my coeditor, Ramona Zachary, a new scholarly journal in entrepreneurship, the Entrepreneurship Research Journal, which will focus solely on scholarly research. JSBM is now going back to its owner, the International Council for Small Business (ICSB), which will decide its new editorial policies and editorial team. Back in 2001, JSBM was practitioner focused. After I became Editor, I decided to switch it to a scholarly focus. The ICSB had asked me several times who had changed the focus of JSBM. (ICSB has four pillars including practitioners, professionals, academics, and policymakers, and they wanted JSBM to cater to the needs of their constituencies.) I had to tell them that it was the advisory board. The advisory board, though, came after the new focus. Bill Petty was a strong supporter of the scholarly focus, so he joined as the first member of the JSBM advisory board. Then a few major scholars were added to the board. The ICSB also asked us to include a few of their board members on our board. The next challenge was to find associate editors and reviewers who would support our scholarly focus and new editorial policies. Initially I got support from William Jackson, Nancy Upton, Howard Van Auken, Andrew Zacharakis, Ramona Zachary, Bruce Kirchoff, and Marko Grunhagen. They all saw the need for a scholarly-focused entrepreneurship journal in 2002. Bruce, Andrew, and Nancy left after three years for personal reasons, and we were then joined by associate editors Don Kuratko, Gary Cas-trogiovanni, Justin Tan, Roy Thurik, Julio De Castro, Rod Shrader, David Small-bone, and Massimo Colombo. We have built a great team that has helped the journal to achieve its prominence. When I started in 2001, JSBM had a heavy backlog of manuscripts to be reviewed; more than a year's accumulation of submissions were yet to be processed. At the same time, we were receiving 20-30 manuscripts a month. We had only 10 reviewers who were willing to help us with the review. Even if we would desk-reject most of the manuscripts and process only 10 manuscripts a month through the review process, we still didn't have the reviewer resources to clear the new submissions, let alone the existing backlog. Many authors were frustrated by the turnaround time. The e-mail submission process also made the task more difficult and frustrating, as several manuscripts were lost through the e-mail system and the turnaround time was further delayed. In 2006, JSBM earned the distinction of having the highest percent increase in total citations from January 1995 to December 2005 in the field of economics and business (Thomson Scientifics' Journal Citation Report for the Social Sciences). In addition, in the ABS rankings of entrepreneurship journals, JSBM received a tier-one status, which helped authors to count their JSBM publications toward promotion and tenure needs in business schools, especially in the research-oriented universities. Another important step in achieving the scholarly focus at JSBM was the creation of the Office Depot Research Forum, financially supported by the Office Depot Endowment at Florida Atlantic University (FAU) and the Kauff-man Foundation. …