Focus and Scope

Objectives

The main aim of the Small Business International Review journal is to publish research papers that offer innovative perspectives in the area of micro, small and medium-sized firms (MSMEs) and contain scientifically rigorous methodological and conceptual developments in order to contribute to:

  1. The consolidation of MSMEs as an engine of economic development, highlighting its role as a generator of employment and wealth.
  2. The dissemination and transfer of knowledge between the academic and private sector.
  3. The implementation of regional and global studies focusing on the development and consolidation of MSMEs all over the world.
  4. The development of empirical, theoretical and/or conceptual studies that support the understanding of the three major challenges facing the MSMEs today:
    1. Technological development.
    2. Market globalization.
    3. Economic uncertainty.
  5. The development of studies on MSMEs operating foundations that underscore their problems in strategy and decision-making from the perspectives of (1) internal company policy for management and (2) national and international policies to help determine and set suitable action programs.
  6. The development of research that contributes to the understanding and possible solution to the issues that hinder and limit the development of MSMEs in the areas of survival and competitiveness such as:
    1. Market globalization.
    2. Acceleration of technological change and the development of new information and communication systems.
    3. Scarce knowledge and human capital management practices.
    4. Difficulty in raising external long-term financing.
    5. Low qualification of employers and employees.
    6. Difficulties in location and infrastructure.
    7. Complexity to incorporate technological innovations.
    8. Improvement in corporate culture.

Visibility

The Small Business International Review journal is proposed to become a leading research publication in MSMEs by:

  1. Formulating and implementing editorial quality policies accessible and visible for authors, readers and reviewers.
  2. Increasing international visibility through inclusion of the publication in: (1) Online libraries from foundations, research institutes and universities, (2) Indices of scientific publications and (3) International databases. Specifically, it is scheduled the inclusion of the journal in the following databases: Thomson Gale, Informe Académico, Ebsco Host, Emerald, Jstor, Latindex, Redalyc, SciELO, Scopus.
  3. Achieving high scores within the impact factor rankings, in particular: Thomson ISI (JCR Social Sciences Edition), SCImago Journal & Country Rank, IN-RECS, Indice de impacto de las Revistas Españolas de Ciencias Sociales, RESH, Revistas Españolas de Ciencias Sociales y Humanas, SciELO, Journal Citation Report.

Target Audience

Small Business International Review journal is aimed at:

  1. Professionals in management, economic and accounting sciences.
  2. MSMEs managers and strategic staff.
  3. Lecturers, researchers and university students interested in MSMEs research.
  4. Government officials related to the management of public policy.

Scope and Publication Frequency

The Small Business International Review journal develops mainly in the fields of economic, management and accounting sciences. Its geographical scope is worldwide.
Small Business International Review journal is published in one yearly volume divided into two half-yearly issues (5 articles every issue). The first issue of every year is published within the first days of January and covers the months from January to June, and the second one is published the firs days of July and covers the months from July to December. The journal offers a permanent open call for papers.
Time to publication: Small Business International Review averages an estimated time from submission until its publication of 18-20 weeks, with a refusal rate of 73.4%.

Continuous Publication (CP)

In September 2020, the publishing models of the Small Business International Review has changed. Rather than publishing conventional complete online issues at fixed intervals, the journal has moved to a continuous publication (CP) model. The information below is a guide for readers, authors, and librarians on what the change means.

What has changed, and what hasn’t?: The most important feature of the new publishing model is that articles can be published online in their final form, with their final citations, as soon as they have been acepted and corrected. Articles are added to the current "open" issue of the journal, which will grow over time until it is "closed" and replaced by a new open issue. The total number of articles published does not change, apart from a brief increase in the publication rate immediately after the change, as the queue of articles awaiting publication is cleared. Complementary to this, there are a number of other minor changes to the journal. Article PDFs see a number of design changes, including a clearer "Cite this article as" section. PDF files will always start paginated from page 1.

Why has the switch been made?: The primary motivation for this change was to better serve readers and authors by ensuring that a "final version" of an accepted article is available as quickly as possible. As the number of journal readers has moved online and the use of search engines has increased, the importance of publishing individual articles rapidly has increased relative to publishing large groups of articles at fixed intervals.

How do I cite my article?: An article’s citation details are presented clearly alongside the web and PDF versions of the article. For ease of indexing and browsing, the journal is still divided into “volumes” and “issues”. However, page-range has been replaced with an alphanumeric identifier (elocation-id), based on the manuscript’s submission number preceded by an 'e'. For instance:

Beglaryan, M., & Shakhmuradyan, G. (2020). The impact of COVID-19 on small and medium-sized enterprises in Armenia: Evidence from a labor force survey. Small Business International Review, 4(2), e298. https://doi.org/10.26784/sbir.v4i2.298

Section Policies

Research Articles

The journal only aims to publish research articles, i.e. manuscripts that present a complete conceptual argument or empirical study. As a brief guideline for its preparation, a research article should generally conform to the following outline:

  • Title, abstract and keywords in English if the article is written in Spanish.
  • Body of the article, divided into sections and subsections in accordance with the following structure:
    • Introduction. This must include a review of the literature on the topic, as well as a presentation of the aim and basis of the research.
    • Method. This must include a description of the research method and of the materials and procedure.
    • Sample description. For case studies, best practices or experiences, this must include sample data and the reason for selecting the samples.
    • Results. These must include a description and an analysis of the main research results and their impact.
    • Discussion. The results must be discussed in relation to those from other studies. This includes highlighting any new findings and mentioning the main limitations and future lines of research.
    • References. These must only refer to those cited in the text, and be presented in alphabetical order in accordance with the APA Style.
 Open Submissions    Indexed    Peer Reviewed  

Plagiarism policy

Turnitin helps you prevent plagiarism to foster academic integrity and excellence through formative tools and educational resourcesAECA and UPCT (publishing entities) adhere to a zero-tolerance policy towards plagiarism in all its possible forms. Editors will include in their internal review the scanning of articles received through the platform using the Turnitin Software tool. If authors have access to any anti-plagiarism tool, it would be advisable that they make use of the tool prior to submitting their article. This is to avoid any unpleasant situations.

The editorial board of the journal has approved the following possible actions to be taken by the section editor depending on the similarity markers returned by the turnitin report:

  1. For a total match rate higher than 30% --> Article rejected (for bad citation and/or bad paraphrasing, article rejected outright, NO RESUBMISSION ACCEPTED).
  2. For a total match rate between 30% and 20% (and similarly index for each of the individual sources must be less than 3%).--> The section editor may request improvements and corrections from the authors (request for quotations in a correct way in all places where similarities have been found, make a good paraphrase even if the quotation is provided).
  3. For a total match rate less than 20% (and similarly index for each of the individual sources must be less than 3%) --> The section editor may either accept the submission for the next stage of the editorial process, or require further improvements from the authors (similar to previous item).

In cases 2 and 3 (if required by the editor): Authors must revise the article carefully, add the required citations and make a good paraphrase to the outsourced text. On receipt of the new version of the article it will be rescanned, requiring at this point a total match rate of less than 20% and similarly index from all single source must be less than 3%.

Peer Review Process

All articles will undergo a preliminary editorial evaluation by the Writing Board. This Board reserves the right to determine whether articles match Small Business International Review's editorial line and fulfill all necessary requirements of an academic material, as well as each and every editorial guideline hereby established. As part of this internal evaluation, all articles are scanned through Turnitin Software and, in case the editors detect plagiarism issues, a receipt from Turnitin will be provided to the authors with the review reports.

The peer review process is double blind.

Documents that comply with the rules will be sent to two external anonymous reviewers selected by the Scientific Editorial Board for their recognized expertise. Peer reviewers will measure the item considering the following criteria:

  1. Relevance of the article in the research topics of FAEDPYME.
  2. Academic quality (research methodology and results).
  3. Style and article writing.
  4. Impact of the results for the development of the field of research and to SMEs.

Review Guidelines

When reviewing the assigned article, please keep the following items in mind (once you have finished, complete the review form)

  • Organization and Clarity
  • Title: It clearly describes the article
  • Abstract: It reflects the content of the article
  • Introduction: It describes what the author hoped to achieve accurately, and it clearly states the problem being investigated. Normally, the introduction should summarize relevant research to provide context, and explain what other authors' findings, if any, are being challenged or extended. It should describe the experiment, the hypothesis(es) and the general experimental design or method.
  • Method: The author accurately explain how the data was collected. The design is suitable for answering the question posed. There is sufficient information present for you to replicate the research. The article identifies the procedures followed, and these are ordered in a meaningful way. If the methods are new, they are explained in detail. The sampling was appropriate. The equipment and materials have been adequately described. The article makes it clear what type of data was recorded; the author has been precise in describing measurements.
  • Results: This is where the author/s should explain in words what they discovered in the research. It should be clearly laid out and in a logical sequence. You will need to consider if the appropriate analysis has been conducted. Are the statistics correct?: If you are not comfortable with statistics, please advise the editor when you submit your report. Interpretation of results should not be included in this section.
  • Conclusion/Discussion: The claims are in this section supported by the results, do they seem reasonable? The authors have indicated how the results relate to expectations and to earlier research. The article supports or contradicts previous theories. The conclusion explains how the research has moved forward the body of scientific knowledge .
  • Tables, Figures, Images...: they are appropriate. They properly show the data. They are easy to interpret and understand

Decisions regarding publication may be:

  1. Approved with no changes ('Accept Submission')
  2. Publication pending compulsory modifications and subject to re-submission ('Revisions Required')
  3. Rejected ('Decline Submission')

If an article gets two positive decisions, it may be published if contents are compatible with the timing, editorial and topical guidelines of the Journal at the time. The acceptance of an accepted submission does not imply its immediate publication. Small Business International Review reserves the final decision for the publication, as well as the volume in which the accepted originals will be published.

If decisions deem it necessary for the article to be modified and re-sent, the authors must timely address observations, additions, corrections, expansions or clarifications suggested by reviewers. The authors have a maximum of thirty natural days as a limit to present the new version. Once the article is reworked following the recommendations, it will be re-submitted to reviewers, who will then decide if article is publishable.

Two negative decisions will cancel the possibility of publication of proposed material, considering it rejected.

When an article receives a negative review and a positive one, the article will turned to a third reviewer, whose decision will be determinant and not subject to appeal.

The resulting decision will be communicated to the authors in a maximum lapse of five working days after receiving the last review. Communication includes the commentaries, suggestions and observations of reviewers.

The content of each peer review is confidential, for use only by Small Business International Review and the authors.

The Writing Board is in charge of solving conflicts, complaints or nonconformities expressed by the authors vis-à-vis the results of the evaluation process.

Open Access Policy

Open access (OA) refers to online research outputs that are free of all restrictions on access (e.g. access tolls) and free of many restrictions on use (e.g. certain copyright and license restrictions). Open access can be applied to all forms of published research output, including peer-reviewed and non peer-reviewed academic journal articles, conference papers, theses, book chapters, and monographs. The journal Small Business International Review provides Fully Open Access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. As proof of its commitment to open access, the journal is included in the DOAJ register from the moment the journal was created and met the minimum requirements to be accepted by DOAJ. In addition, the journal has been awarded the 'DOAJ Seal', which rewards journals demonstrating best practice in open access publishing. Around 10% of journals indexed in DOAJ have been awarded the Seal. On the other hand, as is well recorded in the DOAJ record, our journal does not charge any publication fee.

Authors are not asked to pay Article Processing Charges (APCs) for this journal in any case.

Long-term Archiving Policy

LOCKSS - lots of copies keep stuff safe AECA and UPCT (publishing entities) believe in the importance of long-term preservation of scholarly content. This journal is also responsible for ensuring that the effort invested by its authors and reviewers is not lost in case of any unfortunate event causing the journal to cease publishing. University libraries were traditionally the ones responsible for preserving scholarly articles. However, one of the challenges that appeared with Open Access journals (regardless of their many other advantages), is that someone needs to ensure their long-term preservation. To this end, several archiving measures were established to take on this mission:

Website archiving

All of our electronic content (website, manuscripts, etc.) is stored on three different sources. Content on one server is online and accessible to the readers. The copy of the same content is kept as a backup on two other sources. In case of failure of one server, any one of the other sources can be made online and website expected to be accessible within less than 24-36 hours.

UPCT digital repository

The Digital repository of Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena, is the tool that collects, manages, disseminates and preserves the scientific, educational and institutional production of the University. It also gathers digital documents that are part of or complement UPCT libraries collections. The UPCT digital repository shows an organized, open access and interoperable collection. All content of Small Business International Review, as part of UPCT, is kept and preserved at the UPCT repository.

Dialnet aggregation journal platform

Dialnet is one of the largest bibliographic platform in the world, whose main aim is to give greater visibility to Hispanic scientific literature. Focusing mainly on the fields of the Human, Legal and Social Sciences, Dialnet is a fundamental tool for the search for quality information.

RePEC subject repository

Research Papers in Economics (RePEc) is a collaborative effort of hundreds of volunteers in many countries to enhance the dissemination of research in economics. The heart of the project is a decentralized database of working papers, preprints, journal articles, and software components.

Self-archiving

Authors may archive the submitted, accepted and published versions as you can see below in Self-archiving Policy.

The LOCKSS program

Small Business International Review is included in the Public Knowledge Project Private LOCKSS Network (PKP PLN), a distributed archiving system that creates permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration. More about LOCKSS and the PKP PLN.

Internet Archive - fatcat!

Fatcat is versioned, publicly-editable catalog of research publications: journal articles, conference proceedings, pre-prints, blog posts, and so forth. The goal is to improve the state of preservation and access to these works by providing a manifest of full-text content versions and locations (SBIR container record).

Self-archiving Policy

Small Business International Review journal permits and encourages the authors to electronically disseminate their works in its different versions:

  1. submitted version (the version that has been submitted to a journal for peer review; also known as: pre-print),
  2. accepted version (the final author-created version that incorporates referee comments and is the accepted for publication version; also known as: post-print) and
  3. published version (the publisher-created published version, that has been peer-reviewed and copy edited; also known as: version of record).

, as it encourages its earliest circulation and diffusion and thus a possible increase in its citation and scope between the academic community. However, please note that, by posting only the published version, you will have full guarantee that the same version of your article will be available on any website, which means that your article is more likely to be cited correctly.

Submitted version

Authors retain the right to make this version available on: Author's Homepage or Institutional Website, provided that they acknowledge that the article has been submitted for evaluation as follows:

This article has been submitted for evaluation in Small Business International Review Published by Spanish Accounting and Business Administration Association AECA and Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena UPCT

Accepted version

Authors retain the right (under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence) to make this version available on: Author's Homepage or Institutional Website, provided that they acknowledge that the article has been accepted for publication as follows:

This article has been accepted for publication in Small Business International Review Published by Spanish Accounting and Business Administration Association AECA and Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena UPCT

Published version

Authors retain the right to make this version available anywhere (under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence): This includes posting on:

  • Journal Website. The primary website on which a journal may make articles available for download.
  • Author's Homepage. The personal home page of the author.
  • Academic Social Network. A social network where academics can deposit their publications, e.g. ResearchGate, Academia.edu, Google Scholar, ORCID, etc.
  • Funder Designated Repository. A repository required by the funding agency.
  • Institutional Repository. A repository that is associated with the Institution of the author.
  • Institutional Website A website at the author's institution that is not the institutional repository.
  • Subject Repository. A repository that only contains articles within a pre-set subject field
  • Commercial Platforms Websites or Repositories.
  • Social Media, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc

In all cases published source must be acknowledged with full citation, as well as the link to the Journal’s web landing page using its assigned DOI link.

Small Business International Review, as part of its commitment to authors, automatically deposits every published version in UPCT, Dialnet and RePEC repositories, to help authors to disseminate their works. Details of Self-archiving Policy have been deposited at Sherpa Romeo and Dulcinea

Indexing systems

The Small Business International Review is in its infancy at the moment and is naturally not indexed in any of the major scholarly article indexing services. It is however the intention of the publisher to start applying for the relevant indexes (e.g. DOAJ, Emerging Sources Citation Index, Scopus) after publishing enough articles (or for enough time) to qualify for indexing. We are taking all possible measures in accordance with the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing to ensure that we are easily accepted for prominent indexes.

For the time being, different SEO measures were taken to ensure that journals content is discoverable through popular search engines (e.g. Google Scholar). It is also important to note that (being published using OJS) the journal’s website is OAI-compliant and its contents can be easily harvested by the relevant services (e.g. BASE, OAIster … etc.).

To date, the actions carried out have been as follows:

Indexes:

  • EIRH PLUS (originally called the European Reference Index for the Humanities or ERIH) is an index containing bibliographic information on academic journals in the humanities and social sciences.

Catalogues:

  • Latindex Catálogo 2.0: (Regional Cooperative Online Information System for Scholarly Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal) is a bibliographical information system available for free consultation.
  • Dulcinea: Is a service to show the copyright and open access self-archiving policies of academic journals.
  • REDIB (Red Iberoamericana de Innovación y Conocimiento Científico): is a platform for aggregation of scientific content in electronic format produced in the Ibero-American context.
  • BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine) is a multi-disciplinary search engine to scholarly internet resources, created by Bielefeld University Library in Bielefeld, Germany.
  • DIALNET: A bibliographic database maintained by the University of La Rioja.
  • REBIUN: Collective catalog of the University Libraries Network (REBIUN) gathers the bibliographic records of the 76 university libraries and of the CSIC that are part of this network.
  • Internet Archive - fatcat!: A versioned, publicly-editable catalog of research publications: journal articles, conference proceedings, pre-prints, blog posts, and so forth. The goal is to improve the state of preservation and access to these works by providing a manifest of full-text content versions and locations.

Directories:

  • DOAJ: The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a website that hosts a community-curated list of open access journals, maintained by Infrastructure Services for Open Access. The project defines open access journals as scientific and scholarly journals making all their content available for free, without delay or user-registration requirement, and meeting high quality standards, notably by exercising peer review or editorial quality control.
  • MIAR (Information Matrix for the Analysis of Journals): is a database, free and accessible by Internet, which serves to identify and evaluate the secondary dissemination of humanities and social sciences journals.
  • ROAD (the Directory of Open Access scholarly Resources) synthesizes information about open access journals and is a subset of the ISSN register.

Repositories:

  • UPCT (Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena - España)

Search Enginer and Academic Networks:

  • Google Scholar: Is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines.
  • ResearchGate: Is a social networking site for scientists and researchers to share papers, ask and answer questions, and find collaborators.
  • RePEc (Research Papers in Economics): A decentralized bibliographic database dedicated to Economics of working papers, journal articles, books, books chapters and software components.
  • IDEAS: the largest bibliographic database dedicated to Economics and available freely on the Internet.
  • Dimensions : New bibliographic database produced by Digital Science and launched in January 2018. Dimensions is a dynamic database that is open for the integration with any research publication outputs.
  • Lens Scholarly Search : Lens serves almost 200 Million Scholarly records, compiled and harmonised from Microsoft Academic, PubMed and Crossref, enhanced with UnPaywall open access information, CORE full text and links to ORCID.
  • 1FINDR: An inclusive discovery platform aiming to index articles in all peer-reviewed journals, in all fields of research, in all languages and from all over the world.
  • OpenAlex: An open and comprehensive catalog of scholarly papers, authors, institutions, and more. Inspired by the ancient Library of Alexandria, OpenAlex is an index of hundreds of millions of interconnected entities across the global research system.
  • Scilit - scientific and literature: is a comprehensive, free database for scientists using a new method to collate data and indexing scientific material. Crawlers extract the latest data from CrossRef and PubMed on a daily basis. This means that newly published articles are added to Scilit immediately.
  • Scinapse: is a free search engine for academic papers. As of April 2019, it indexes more than 200 million articles from more than 40,000 journals. It has more than 300,000 visitors on a monthly basis, as of April 2019.
  • Semantic Scholar: is a project developed at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence. Publicly released in November 2015, it is designed to be an AI-backed search engine for scientific journal articles.
  • scite_: is a Brooklyn-based startup that helps researchers better discover and evaluate scientific articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence.
  • Naver Academic: is a free web search engine for academic literature, developed by Naver Corporation. It started with the name of Naver Knowledge Market in 2004 and offered an open market enabling users to trade reports, articles, professional images and other documents.
  • CORE: ("COnnecting REpositories") is a service provided by the Knowledge Media Institute, based at The Open University, United Kingdom. The goal of the project is to aggregate all open access content distributed across different systems, such as repositories and open access journals, enrich this content using text mining and data mining, and provide free access to it through a set of services.
  • EBSCOhost (Business Source Ultimate): EBSCOhost is an intuitive online research platform used by thousands of institutions and millions of users worldwide. With quality databases and search features, EBSCOhost helps researchers of all kinds find the information they need fast.
  • Internet Archive - Scholar: Search Millions of Research Papers. This fulltext search index includes over 25 million research articles and other scholarly documents preserved in the Internet Archive. The collection spans from digitized copies of eighteenth century journals through the latest Open Access conference proceedings and pre-prints crawled from the World Wide Web.
  • EconLit: professionally classified, updated weekly, and including over 1.6 million records, EconLit covers economics literature published over the last 130 years from leading institutions in 74 countries. In combination with the optional full-text package of over 500 journals, including the prestigious AEA journals, EconLit provides a comprehensive library of economics literature.

Ethical guidelines, principles and disclaimers

Responsibilities or conduct of the Writing Board and of the Editorial Committee

  1. Description of the peer review process is defined and made public by the Writing Board and the Editorial Committee of the Journal, so that authors know what evaluation criteria will be used. Both editorial bodies will readily solve any controversies that may arise in a given evaluation process.
  2. The Writing Board takes full responsibility to duly inform the author(s) the editorial phase in which his/her/their piece is, as well as to communicate all decisions regarding their (submitted) work.

Responsibilities or conduct of the Editors

  1. The editors and members of the editorial board of the journal are not responsible for the opinions and assessments done by the authors whose pieces are published.
  2. The editors will endeavor to satisfy the needs of the readership and of authors, to constantly enhance the quality and impact of the Journal, as well as to boost academic and scientific standards.
  3. The editors are ready to publish amendments, clarifications, retractions and apologies whenever necessary.
  4. The editors’ decisions to accept or reject a paper for publication will be solely based on the article’s relevance, originality, clarity and pertinence vis-à-vis the Journal’s profile.
  5. The Editors are committed to guaranteeing confidentiality during the process of evaluation.
  6. After peer-reviewing and as long as an article is deemed “publishable” by reviewers, the editors are in charge of deciding which articles will be included in the Journal.
  7. The editors will review all materials and their contents disregarding the author(s)’ race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnic origins, nationality, or political philosophy.
  8. The Editors and the Writing Board will not disclose any information regarding any text submitted to the Journal, to anyone except the author of the text, peer-reviewers, potential reviewers or other editorial advisors.
  9. Unpublished materials submitted to the Journal will not be used in the personal scholarly work of the Editors or of members of the Writing Board except when there is explicit written consent of the author. Privileged information or ideas obtained via peer-reviewing will be confidential and not used for personal advantage. The editors will make fair and impartial decisions and will assure an appropriate and just peer-review process.

Responsibilities of authors

  1. Authors must guarantee their texts are product of their original effort and that data are obtained in an ethical manner. Further, they must assure their texts have not been previously published or are not being presently considered by another publication. An article will be deemed previously published in any of the following circumstances:
    1. When the full text has been published elsewhere.
    2. When extensive parts of previously published work are part of the text sent to the Journal.
    3. When the text submitted to the Journal is an in extenso part of the contents of records of Conferences or other such instances (40% or more of the submitted text contents).
    4. These criteria apply to previous publications both in electronic or written form, and in any language.
  2. In order for their articles to be published, authors must strictly comply with the editorial norms of the Journal, as established by the Editorial Committee.
  3. Authors will send the Journal a copy of the article excluding personal information (name, contact information, institutional affiliation, etc.), deleting their names from any bibliographical reference included.
  4. The authors of original research reports must include a precise description of the work undertaken, as well as objectively argue its relevance.
  5. Each document must include sufficient information and references to allow other persons’ use of the material. Fraudulent or deliberately imprecise statements are considered unethical behavior and are unacceptable.
  6. Authors must guarantee that they have written the original papers in whole and, if and when the work or words of others have been used, these must be duly referenced. Plagiarism, in all its forms, constitutes an unethical editorial conduct, and is unacceptable. In consequence, any article incurring in plagiarism will be eliminated and not considered for publication.
  7. In general terms, an author should not publish texts that basically describe the same research in more than one journal or primary publication. Submission of the same text to more than one journal is an unethical behavior and publishing becomes inadmissible.
  8. Sources used must be adequately registered. Authors must cite all publications that have influenced the nature of the submitted work. Private information obtained through conversations, personal written exchange, or discussions with third parties, should not be used except with explicit written authorization by the source.
  9. Authorship should be limited to those who have significantly contributed to the conception, design, implementation or interpretation of the subject matter. All who fall in this category should sign as co-authors. The main author(s) must assure all co-authors are included in the article, and that all have read and approved the paper’s final version, and have agreed to its submission for publication.
  10. Authors must note, in their article, any conflict of funding or of interest that may have an influence upon results or interpretation of the research presented in the text. All sources of financial support (and/or of institutional backing) for the project’s implementation should be revealed.
  11. When an author discovers an error or meaningful inaccuracy in his/her published piece, it is his/her duty to immediately notify the Journal’s Director and to collaborate with the editors to correct or rectify it.

Reviewers’ responsibilities

  1. Reviewers agree to report any unethical conduct incurred by authors reviewed, and to note all information that justifies rejection of publication. Further, they must agree to maintain confidentiality regarding all information surrounding the materials they evaluate.
  2. In order to proceed with the reviewing process, reviewers must follow guidelines provided by the Writing Board.
  3. All selected reviewers must notify the Board, as soon as possible, if unqualified to review the research matter or text provided, or if he/she will not be available to perform said task.
  4. Any document received for review must be treated confidentially. It must not be shown to other experts, nor discussed with them, except if under explicit authorization by the editors.
  5. Reviewers must be objective. All personal criticism towards the author(s) is inadequate. Reviewers must express their points of view with clarity and by means of valid arguments.
  6. All privileged information or ideas obtained through the reviewing process must be confidential and will not be used towards personal advancement.
  7. Reviewers must not engage in the revision of texts in which they have a conflict of interests.

This Journal adheres to the principle of transparency and good practices set by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

DOI & ORCID

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

A DOI is a persistent identifier that can be assigned to any type of content. It can be used to create a URL (by adding “https://doi.org/…”) that would always resolve to the webpage that at least includes all of the object’s metadata (i.e. information like author, publisher, year of publication). For content that are published under an open license (e.g. Small Business International Review articles) the DOI would resolve to the page displaying the article’s full-text. That would naturally be this website or, in the unfortunate case of this website not being available, the website of the archiving service we are registered with. Crossref is the organization responsible for assigning DOIs to scholarly items (articles, datasets, etc.). Small Business International Review is a member of Crossref, and every time we publish a new issue we will deposit new DOIs at Crossref's databases.

Open Researcher & Contributor ID (ORCID)

ORCID serves a purpose for researchers similar to that of DOI for articles. It is especially important as a unique identifier because it eliminates the confusion that can result from authors with similar names. It also provides researchers with a webpage that can be automatically updated once any of their articles are published. Small Business International Review requires that at least the corresponding author should have an ORCID account. We encourage all authors to create them. They are free and have many benefits. More information can be found here. As a member of Crossref we are linking each unique article (DOI) with its corresponding authors through their ORCID numbers.

Crossref Funder Registry

Crossref Funder RegistryThe Crossref Funder Registry is an open archive of funders found throughout the world and their accompanying IDs (much like DOIs for articles and ORCIDs for authors). Using this registry has the following benefits

  • Funding organizations can easily track published results relating to their grants
  • Monitoring research output by an author’s institution becomes much easier
  • SBIR can analyze funding sources to aide authors in ensuring compliance with funder mandates
  • Transparency increases as it relates to who funded the research, the results of that R&D funding, and possible conflicts of interest resulting from that funding

The key to this registry is the ID, which provides an easy way to find and map various funding names found throughout the scholarly record to a single source.

How It Works: SBIR collects funding data from authors at two points during an article’s life cycle: at submission and during the page proofing process. These data include funder names and institutions, awards or grant names, and the author(s) receiving that grant. The absolute best place to provide these funding data is during the submission process. The reason: SBIR has chosen to integrate our submission system with the Open Funder Registry, which means that the input is validated as the name is entered. This means that funder names are standardized and mapped to the appropriate ID if one exists. In any case, prior to publication of the article, the authors will be asked again for all information related to funders and awards. Once the article is published, SBIR as a member of Crossref, will deposit all the Funding Information accompanying the DOI of your article.

These data are also available to machines and computer programs for analysis by funders, institutions, and other interested organizations. Authors are also permitted to include a free-form version of funding and award information within the Acknowledgments section of an article. Because this section is readable text (as opposed to metadata), it is not limited to the strict requirements of the funding registry, so there is more freedom to include specific program names or non-monetary awards.

Journal History

In June 2012, the first issue of the journal Faedpyme International Review (FIR) (ISSN 2255-078X), was published. The idea to create FIR was promoted by the Fundación para el Análisis Estratégico de la Pyme (FAEDPYME) which, dependent on the Spanish Universities of Cantabria and Murcia and the Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena, aims to establish and consolidate a network of researchers in micro, small and medium business (SMEs) in the Hispanic-American field. With the creation of FIR, FAEDPYME wanted to consolidate its work, which started in 2009, to promote research on SMEs in Spain and Latin America focused on topics such as innovation, human resources, information and communication technologies (ICT), financing and entrepreneurship. Five years after its creation (2012-2016), FIR had been indexed and included in databases such as Latindex, Dialnet, Cengage Learning, ResearchGate, Doaj, EconBib and Redib.

In parallel, the Spanish Accounting and Business Administration Association (AECA), an institution with extensive experience and penetration in the scientific and professional fields in Spain as well as in Latin America, promoted and published, between 2008 and 2012, the International Journal of the Small and Medium Enterprise (RIPYME) (ISSN 1989-1725). RIPYME was set up with the aim of becoming a multidisciplinary meeting and discussion space on economic and business aspects of SMEs, based on academic research and aimed at improving both a theoretical and a practical understanding of the management of SMEs.

Due to the similar objectives and means of diffusion of both institutions, AECA y FAEDPYME agreed in 2017 to merge both journals, in order to give a new impetus to the dissemination and scope of research on SMEs in the international context. The new resulting journal, Small Business International Review (e-ISSN 2531-0046), integrates the history of FIR and RIPYME and builds on the reputation and experience of both editorial committees. It was created with the intention of improving the recognition, positioning and dissemination of works published in the sphere of SMEs. The publishing entities of this new journal are now the Spanish Accounting and Business Administration Association (AECA) and the Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena (UPCT), with FAEDPYME now acting as a collaborating entity. It should be noted that AECA makes a financial contribution to help maintain SBIR.

The editors-in-chief of Small Business International Review, will be Professors Ph.D. Gregorio Sánchez Marín of the University of Alcalá (Spain) and Ph.D. Julio Dieguez Soto of the University of Málaga (Spain), both experienced and accredited researchers in the areas of Business Management and particularly in the field of SMEs and Family Business. For its part, the new editorial committee will be composed of renowned and recognized researchers who were members of the editorial committees of the preceding journals.

Regarding the evaluation and editorial process, Small Business International Review will continue to receive papers in Spanish and/or English, although authors will be invited to submit their research in English. Likewise, it will continue with the good practice of double anonymous revision ('Peer Review') for the articles submitted, with the purpose of objectifying evaluations and optimizing scientific feedback, in order to contribute to the publication of high-quality research which represents significant advances in the field of SMEs.

We hope that these changes will contribute towards improving the impact and reputation of the new journal, and we are confident that the authors will continue to place their trust in Small Business International Review to disseminate the results of their research. Although we aware that, as in anything involving a change of this nature, there may be some minor initial inconveniences, we are sure that, before long, Small Business International Review will attain high levels of recognition and dissemination which make it increasingly attractive for researchers and professionals.

Journal Sponsorship

Publishers

  Spanish Accounting and Business Administration Association AECA
  Address: C/ Rafael Bergamín, 16-B. 28043 - MADRID
Phones: +34 91 547 37 56 - 91 547 44 65
E-mail: info@aeca.es
Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena UPCT
Dp. Economía, Contabilidad y Finanzas
Address: Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena C/ Real, 3 30201 Cartagena (Murcia) España
Phones: +34 968 32 59 16
E-mail: sbir@upct.es

Source of Support

  Fundación para el análisis estratégico y desarrollo de la Pyme FAEDPYME
  Address: Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena C/ Real, 3 30201 Cartagena (Murcia) España
Phones: +34 968 32 59 16
E-mail: faedpyme@upct.es