JMSR Editorial board meeting Boston 6 August 2023
Report from the publisher
Dear colleagues and friends,
It was 4 years ago at the Boston AoM meeting that the editorial board took the decision to self-publish. After a short search for middle range publishers, the editorial team agreed to have a go at it and publish the journal ourselves. It meant, for my sins, that I became the publisher. I won't indulge you with the detail of the uphill struggle that was and is required to publish an academic journal in this day and age, and during a global pandemic on top; just to say that we managed to do it. Our publishing platform is the industry benchmark, our submission and reviewing platform is the gold standard in the field; and we provide all the adds-on that have become normative for a high quality academic journal: pre-publication portal for accepted manuscripts, DOI ID, automatic presence on Google Scholar upon publication, etc. We maintain of course a rigorous vetting process that has become a hallmark of our journal, with double blind reviewing and an acceptance rate ranging from 15% to 20%.
In the 2.5 years since we started to publish independently, we have increased our global visibility. Our authors over this period have come from no less than 36 countries all over the globe, with the following distribution of institutional country-of-origin affiliations:
USA - 49; India - 11; The UK, Indonesia, Italy - 7 each; Brazil, France - 6 each; Belgium, Canada - 5 each; Norway, Pakistan - 4 each; Portugal - 3; Nigeria, South Korea, Poland, Turkey, Israel, South Africa, Uganda, Algeria, Spain, Oman, the Netherlands, UAE - 2 each; Columbia, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Botswana, Argentina, Germany, China, Sri Lanka, Ireland, Hungary, Hong Kong, Nepal - 1 each
We are publishing 5 issues a year, totalling 25+ papers, and moving to six issues next year with over 30 papers. And we have a sponsoring agreement with Octave Institute in Singapore to publish one open access special issue a year. This partnership adds to our scholarly impact and contributes significantly to our financial health. I wish here to record our thanks to Chris Laszlo and Judi Neal for enabling and facilitating this partnership.
As a not-for-profit with no expectations for fat margins, we maintained our institutional subscription price over the past 3 years and it remained the same as it was in 2020, containing all cost increases (which were substantial). Next year, as we increase our contents by 20% we have raised our prices by an average of 17% - pro-rata the cost per published article becomes cheaper. Please take note if you are asked by your library about the price increase.
Which brings me to an important subject. Your role in attaining institutional subscriptions. By far the key source of these subscriptions are your good selves. And you have done magnificently. We now have a presence in five continents (excepting Latin and South America). Thank you! And if you haven't yet asked your library to subscribe, or if you have more than one institutional affiliation, or if you know someone in another institution you can ask, please do so. By far the most effective means to a subscription, in our experience, is for a member of staff to ask for it.
As you realise, our business model is the traditional by-subscription only. We offer an Open Access option for authors, like most academic journals, but so far there have not been any takers. We closely follow developments towards OA and the signs are that we are clearly moving to this destination, but much slower in the social sciences and business & management and, in particular, in the humanities, compared to the medical and pure sciences. For example, here are the number of OA articles in the current issue of a few comparative journals (similarity of topics, longevity, pages output, ranking):
Psychology of Religion & Spirituality (APA) 0/16; International Journal for the Psychology of Religion (Wiley) 1/6; Sociology of Religion (Cambridge) 0/4; Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (T&F) 2/14
I mentioned the improvement in the visibility of the journal. In terms of its competitive ranking, we have made a huge jump forward. In this past 2.5 years we managed to have JMSR listed in the ABDC list (Australia and New Zealand - thanks to Kathryn Pavlovich and her colleagues down under), FNEGE (France - thanks to Richard Major), Poland's Ministry of Higher Education list (thanks to Monika Kostera) as well as in the academic quality journal lists of Israel, Norway and Finland. We have this year received our first Impact Factor (1.4), we are top third out of 334 journals in the Religion category of the Journal Citation Indicator - both are in the Web of Science (Clarivate). We are in four (!) categories in Scopus (strategy & management, OB & HRM, social sciences and religious studies) - in the latter we are ranked top 7th out of 705 journals. And we score 0.884 on Cabells Classification Index (where 1.00 is the maximum). Here are some data for comparative top journals:
JMSR - 1.4 (IF), 3.55 (JCI)
Sociology of Religion - 3.1 (IF), 3.34 (JCI)
Psychology of Religion & Spirituality 2.4 (IF), 3.75 (JCI)
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 2.4 (IF), 2.44 (JCI)
So, what's next for JMSR?
Overall, we can note three periods in the 20 years of JMSR. For the first nine years, ours was practically the only academic outlet for scholarship on workplace spirituality/ religion and related areas. The following eight years our pages served as a meeting platform for MSR colleagues and the wider non-AoM MSR community (most of our authors are not AoM members). The last three years see us become a bridge journal between business & management, the social sciences and the humanities, taking a lead role in developing inter-disciplinary scholarship in these disciplines.
To consolidate our financial base we need more income, i.e,. more institutional subscriptions. We can also entertain another sponsoring partnership with like minded institutions, such as Octave is. And of course, if you happen to have a rich uncle who wishes to do good, we are open for donations.
To maintain and improve our rankings, we need to accrue citations, particularly those published in the two years.
Kathryn will update you on the editorial team and her needs and wishes. As for me, in my role as publisher, I could do with support in the following areas:
- Subscription champions
- Developing a donation portal
- Someone to look after our reviewers
- Reinforce our social media presence
- Liaison with global ranking agencies (Clarivate, Scopus, Cabells)
- Liaison with national ranking agencies
Please approach me if you have an interest and time on your hands.
Before last, let me mention a sister project that has evolved in tandem with our taking over the publishing of the journal: a book-series named Management, Spirituality & Religion in partnership with De Gruyter, it offers the latest academic scholarship in our field that may be more geared to a thematic book than a journal. Having started in 2021, we published to date four books, with the fifth due by the end of this year.
And finally, it is celebration time! We reached the milestone of our 20th anniversary. Hallelujah.
Yochanan Altman
jmsr.sbscriptions@gmail.com