Journal of Contemporary Business Research
An IIM Indore JournalBusiness & Management (General)
The readers of CBS are expected to get a unique perspective on contemporary management topics driven through incisive research evidence of national and international academic researchers, with depth beyond the insights provided by commercial business outlets. Additionally, the journal will feature deep analyses of current business challenges by leading practitioners, as well as academics who are an authority in a domain. The journal will also, from time to time, conduct interviews with important members of the industry, academics, and policy makers. The journal’s articles will span across various management domains like communications, marketing, strategy, information systems, finance, human resources, operations research, economics, and public policy.
Journal of Contemporary Business Studies (CBS) is proposed as the flagship biannual research and opinion journal by the Indian Institute of Management Indore. The journal is a double-blind peer reviewed and is proposed to provide research-driven insights from the best of academic researchers. Further, the journal will also contain experience and evidence-based opinions from leading practitioners. The primary positioning of the journal is to provide deep insights to both researchers and practitioners on contemporary business issues.
The primary readership of the journal is expected to be current practitioners at any level in their respective organizations. The secondary readership of the journal is expected to be academics who desire to remain abreast with the latest insights about the various facets of business to help them shape their own research. The tertiary readership of the journal is expected to be policymakers who can gain from the research-derived or opinion-derived content to help them shape the business-related policies for faster growth of the economy.
| Himanshu Rai | Indian Institute of Management Indore |
| Abhishek Mishra | Indian Institute of Management Indore |
| Pritam Ranjan | Indian Institute of Management Indore |
| Sayantan Banerjee | Indian Institute of Management Indore |
| Shubhabrata Basu | Indian Institute of Management Indore |
| Dhiman Bhadra | Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad |
| Leonardo Caporarello | SDA Bacconi |
| Saurabh Chandra | Indian Institute of Management Indore |
| Gaurav Singh Chauhan | Indian Institute of Management Indore |
| Suresh Kumar Jakhar | Indian Institute of Management Lucknow |
| Naraparaju Karthikeya | Indian Institute of Management Indore |
| Radha Mukesh Ladkani | Indian Institute of Management Indore |
| Sudipta Mandal | Indian Institute of Management Indore |
| Rajhans Mishra | Indian Institute of Management Indore |
| Sushanta Kr Mishra | Indian Institute of Management Bangalore |
| Ganesh Kumar Nidugala | Indian Institute of Management Indore |
| Belgin Okay-Somerville | Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow |
| Alok Pandey | Joint Secretary, Ministry of Finance |
| Jatin Pandey | Indian Institute of Management Indore |
| Ajit Phadnis | Indian Institute of Management Indore |
| V Venkata Rao (Retired) | Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad |
| Arvind Sahay | Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad |
| Biswanath Swain | Indian Institute of Management Indore |
| Shruti Tewari | Indian Institute of Management Indore |
| Amit Vatsa | Indian Institute of Management Indore |
| A V Vedpuriswar | Director, L&D, Cognizant and IBS Hyderabad |
Please read the guidelines below then visit the journal’s submission site 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.
Sage Publishing disseminates high-quality research and engaged scholarship globally, and we are committed to diversity and inclusion in publishing. We encourage submissions from a diverse range of authors from across all countries and backgrounds.
Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of Journal of Contemporary Business Studies 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.
Journal of Contemporary Business Studies 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.
1. Open Access
2. Article processing charge (APC)
3.1 Aims & Scope
3.2 Article types
3.3 Writing your paper
4.1 Peer review policy
4.2 Authorship
4.3 Acknowledgements
4.4 Funding
4.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
4.6 Research data
5.1 Publication ethics
5.2 Contributor’s publishing agreement
6.1 Formatting
6.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
6.3 Supplementary material
6.4 Reference style
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
8. On acceptance and publication
8.1 Sage Production
8.2 Online publication
8.3 Promoting your article
Journal of Contemporary Business Studies 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. Publication costs of the journal are covered by the collection of article processing charges which are paid by the funder, institution or author of each manuscript upon acceptance. There is no charge for submitting a paper to the journal.
For general information on open access at Sage please view our Open Access FAQs.
2. Article processing charge (APC)
There is no article processing charge to publish in the journal. The society would bear all charges for open access.
Before submitting your manuscript to Journal of Contemporary Business Studies, please ensure you have read the Aims & Scope
Research Articles should not exceed 10,000 words; Research Note/Briefs: 3000 words; Invited Articles: 3000 words; Interviews: 3000 words; Book Review: 5000 words; Case study: 5000 words; and Practitioner Articles: 5000 words. The word limit includes references. All articles and case studies must be accompanied by an abstract of 150–200 words and 4–6 keywords.
- The font of the submitted articles should be Times New Roman, 12 font and double space.
- Name(s) of author(s) along with author’s affiliation and institutional address (in case of more than one author, the name and address of the corresponding author with pin code and email id must be provided.
- A 100–150 word Abstract along with 4 to 5 relevant keywords should be a part of the content.
- All notes must be listed as endnotes.
- The language and spellings used should be British (UK), with ‘-ize’ variant, e.g., globalization instead of globalisation, labour instead of labor.
- Non-English and uncommon words and phrases should be italicized. Meaning of non-English words should be given in parenthesis just after the word when it is used for the first time.
- Numbers from one to nine should be spelt out, and 10 and above to remain in figures. However, for exact measurement (e.g., China’s GDP growth rate 9.8 per cent; 10-year-old boy, etc.) numbers should be used.
- Single quotes should be used throughout. Double quote marks are to be used within single quotes. Spellings of words in quotations should not be changed to British; however, glaring mistakes in spellings can be rectified using (sic.).
- Quotations of 45 words or more should be separated from the text and set as block quotes.
- Use ‘per cent’ instead of % in the text. In tables, graphs, and within parenthesis, % symbol can be used.
- Use ‘twentieth century’, ‘the 1990s’
- Initials in names of people used in the text must have spaces in them and dots (e.g., M. K. Gandhi, P. T. Usha, etc.).
- Fuller/non-truncated number ranges should be used (e.g., 1987–1988, 2012–2015, etc.).
- Use of boldface or all capital letters should be avoided. Quotes/italics must be used for emphasis. Capitalisation of different words—proper nouns, names of castes, regions, etc.—must be made consistent in the text.
- Abbreviations should be spelled out at the first occurrence: some common ones (US, GDP, BBC) being exceptions.
There is no limit on the number of references allowed.
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, plus links to further resources.
3.3.1 Make 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.
As standard practice, Sage does not permit the use of author-suggested reviewers.
The journal’s policy is to have manuscripts reviewed by two expert reviewers. Journal of Contemporary Business Studies utilizes a double-anonymized peer review process in which the reviewer’s name and information is 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 Associate Editor followed by the Editor-in-Chief who then 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.
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.
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.
Important: Changes to the author by-line by adding or deleting authors are NOT permitted following acceptance of a paper.
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.
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.
Journal of Contemporary Business Studies 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
Journal of Contemporary Business Studies encourages authors to include a declaration of any conflicting interests and recommends you review the good practice guidelines on the Sage Journal Author Gateway.
It is the policy of Journal of Contemporary Business Studies to require a declaration of conflicting interests from all authors enabling a statement to be carried within the paginated pages of all published articles.
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’.
For guidance on conflict of interest statements, please see the ICMJE recommendations.
At Sage we are committed to facilitating openness, transparency and reproducibility of research. Where relevant, Journal of Contemporary Business Studies encourages authors to share their research data in a suitable public repository subject to ethical considerations and to include a data accessibility statement in their manuscript file. Authors should also follow data citation principles. For more information please visit the Sage Author Gateway. which includes information about Sage’s partnership with the data repository Figshare.
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.
5.1.1 Plagiarism
Journal of Contemporary Business Studies 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. Journal of Contemporary Business Studies 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 colour will appear in colour 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 supplementary files.
Journal of Contemporary Business Studies adheres to the APA reference style. View the APA uidelines to ensure your manuscript conforms to this reference style.
Manuscripts must be submitted electronically to Dr Amaresh Dubey, Managing Editor, Margin. E-mail: margin@ncaer.org
7.1 How to submit your manuscript
Journal of Contemporary Business Studies is hosted on Sage Track Sage, a web based online submission and peer review system. Visit https://peerreview.sagepub.com/cbs 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 Sage Track Sage.
7.2 Title, keywords and abstracts
Please supply a title, short title, an abstract and 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).
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 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. Please note that if there are any changes to the author list at this stage all authors will be required to complete and sign a form authorizing the change.
One of the many benefits of publishing your research in an open access journal is the speed to publication. With no page count constraints, 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. In addition, Sage is partnered with Kudos, a free service that allows authors to explain, enrich, share, and measure the impact of their article. Find out how to maximize your article’s impact with Kudos.
Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the Manuscript Submission process should be sent to the Journal of Contemporary Business Studies editorial office as follows:
Prof. Abhishek Mishra
Prof. Pritam Ranjan
Indian Institute of Management Indore, Indore, India
Email Id: editor-jcbs@iimidr.ac.in