Author Guidelines

Editorial Mission

The mission of MIT Sloan Management Review is to be the most trusted source of useful and innovative ideas for business leaders.

SMR Readers

• Circulation: 25,000
• Readership: 75,000

• 70% are business executives
• 10% are business professionals
• 10% are management consultants
• 10% are academics
• About 25% of subscribers live outside the United States.

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How We Edit an Article

Because the majority of SMR’s readers are business executives, we work with authors to ensure that research-based articles with complex technical ideas have the greatest possible influence on actual management practice. We help authors move from insider terminology to quickly accessible language. We work collaboratively, but we do edit and rewrite substantially in order to reach SMR’s primary audience.

We clarify phrases, make the passive voice active, invent engaging heads and subheads, devise ways to highlight the main points (perhaps with a bulleted list in a box) and delete redundant references. In short, we help authors tackle anything that might hinder widespread appreciation of their ideas. We delete or reword any language that promotes a business, service or product. Our readers will take an article more seriously if they don’t perceive it to be thinly veiled marketing material.

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SMR Content Areas

SMR covers all general-management topics, with a particular emphasis on strategic leadership and innovation.

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Editorial Submissions

MIT Sloan Management Review
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Room E60-100
77 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139-4307 USA

Please send manuscripts as e-mail attachments to our editorial submissions department. Send exhibits as editable Excel, Word or PowerPoint files.

Contact David Wagner by e-mail or call (617) 253-7170 to inquire about the status of a submission.

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Editorial Policy

SMR reserves the right to decide at any point in the process not to publish an article.

For questions about other policies, call (617) 253-7170.

Correspondence accompanying submissions must state that the submitted work is original, has not been published elsewhere and will not be sent to another journal or magazine unless it has been declined by SMR.

We will consider articles based on research previously published in a purely academic journal if the new treatment develops managerial perspectives thoroughly. If an article is based on an author’s recent book, the SMR submission must differ significantly.

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Editorial Processing

All manuscripts undergo an internal review process involving SMR editors and may include members of the editorial advisory board. This process can take as long as 12 to 16 weeks, after which manuscripts are either rejected or sent into peer review pursuant to possible publication. (Unfortunately, we cannot provide detailed comments on rejected manuscripts.)

Peer review may take an additional 3 to 4 weeks. The decision to publish is ultimately predicated upon the outcome of peer review, the judgment of SMR editors, and, if necessary, a satisfactory editing and/or revision process that meets SMR standards. Articles usually appear in print within three to six months of acceptance.

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Editorial Tips

Manuscripts are limited to 5,000 words, including references and text sidebars.

Include a summary of the research methodology (as an appendix to the paper, not included in the word count) to assist the peer reviewers in article assessment. If the article is accepted for publication in the journal, an SMR editor will help reduce the research methodology section to a short sidebar relevant to practicing managers.

Avoid generalizations. Be specific.

Authors are responsible for all facts, including dates and correct spellings of people’s and organizations’ names.

Authors have one opportunity to give reactions to SMR’s editing and to make comments and changes -- that opportunity comes after the content editing. Our process deadlines do not permit repeated rounds of revision.

SMR editors put articles into Associated Press style. They determine the article’s placement in the journal as well as the final titles and illustrations.

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What SMR Seeks From the Peer Review Process

• Is the paper essentially correct? If not, what changes are necessary to make it so?
• Does the paper offer something innovative or provide a new insight?
• Is the research sound and adequate to back up the authors’ points?
• Would a practicing manager find the paper useful? Are there concepts, suggestions or techniques that could be implemented immediately? If not, what changes to the paper would you recommend?
• What parts of this paper, if any, improve your understanding of the subject matter? What principles, applications or ideas does the paper add to the field? Suggest ways to improve the clarity or focus of the discussion.
• How familiar is the author with the existing literature on this topic? What other sources would anchor, balance or enhance a discussion on this topic?

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MIT SMR’s Intelligence Section

SMR’s Intelligence section, found at the beginning of the publication, allows readers to quickly access interesting new research and ideas from academia, industry and the consulting world - ideas that have potentially significant implications for managers.

SMR’s editors sometimes choose to cover research in the Intelligence section rather than in a longer article for reasons such as:

• The findings (and management implications) can be effectively summarized in a brief report.
• The research is too preliminary for a full-length article or must be reported quickly because it is time sensitive.
• The research is on a vertical market or topic and therefore more appropriate for SMR as a brief summary than as a full-length article.

What makes an Intelligence item interesting to SMR?

• Research that is useful to a wide range of management readers, is based on hard data and is methodologically sound.
• A new practice that’s just emerging as a trend. Trends might be either positive or negative: new management practices or new management problems.
• General-management subjects. We run a large number of marketing, finance, leadership, entrepreneurship, e-business and operations pieces in this section. Strategy is covered less frequently because it is handled in more depth in other sections of the journal.
• Impact. Will the study change the way businesspeople think and act? Is it relevant and important to executives, managers and consultants? Is it engaging, interesting?
• Newness. We promise to provide readers with new and innovative ideas. The more novel and counter-the-conventional-wisdom a piece is, the more we like it.
• Depth. We prefer studies with solid research behind them. Authors presenting an original, innovative concept for which there is little available research will have to compensate by offering in-depth analysis to support the idea’s practicality.
• Timeliness. The item should be from an unpublished or recently published study.

For further information, please contact Beth Magura at (617) 253-0822.

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Endnotes

Although scholars often do, SMR does not identify references by date and author’s last name in parentheses in the text, with a bibliography at the end of the article. Instead, SMR asks that authors place in the text superscripted numbers that refer to a list of endnotes assembled at the end of the article. These endnotes should be presented in SMR style (described below).

Each enumerated endnote may contain several related items (below see “SMR Special Style: Multiple Citations in One Reference”). It may be possible to group several citations or explanatory notes that occur in a single paragraph under one number.

We use “The Chicago Manual of Style” (CMS), 14th ed., as our guide for endnotes, but because we adhere to the “Associated Press Stylebook” for everything other than endnotes, there are some exceptions:

• Do not spell out the first name of authors in endnotes.
• Do not italicize book or magazine titles. Enclose book titles in quotation marks.
• Do not place within quotes or italicize magazine names.
• Other AP style conventions apply as well. For example, the AP abbreviates most months when used with a specific day (Jan. 1, 2004; but January 2010).

As a rule of thumb, AP trumps Chicago, and our AP-approved dictionary is “Webster’s New World College Dictionary,” 4th ed.

Books

G. Hollenback and W. Vestal, eds., “Developing Leaders at All Levels” (Houston: American Productivity and Quality Center, 1999).

J. March and H.J. Simon, “Organizations,” 2nd ed. (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1966), 4-13.

Usage note: “The Chicago Manual of Style” advises against the use of op. cit. and loc. cit. (See 15.256, p. 583, in CMS.) If another page from a previously cited book is mentioned several endnotes later, follow the short-title approach:
March, “Organizations,” 23.

Usage note: The use of ibid. is acceptable when referring to a single work cited in the endnote immediately preceding.

Article Cited in Anthology; Chapter Cited in Book

M. Shaw, “Communication Networks,” in “Advances in Experimental Social Psychology,” ed. L. Berkowitz (New York: Academic Press, 1964), 131-153.

S.M. McKinnon and W.J. Bruins, Jr., “Information for the Longer View,” chap. 3 in “The Information Mosaic” (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1992).

Newspapers

W. Robbins, “Big Wheels: The Rotary Club at 75,” New York Times, Sunday, Feb. 17, 1980, sec. 3, p. 3.

“Poverty in the U.S.,” International Herald Tribune, Sept. 29, 2000.

Journals

D. Kenny and J. F. Marshall, “Contextual Marketing: The Real Business of the Internet,” Harvard Business Review 78 (November-December 2000): 119-125.

T.J. Allen and S. Cohen, “Information Flow in R&D Labs,” Administrative Science Quarterly 14 (December 1969): 12-19.

M.C. Jensen and W.H. Meckling, “The Nature of Man,” Journal of Applied Finance 7, no. 2 (1994): 4, 15-19.

“GM Powertain Suppliers Will See Global Pricing,” Purchasing 124, no. 2 (Feb. 12, 1998): 10-11.

Popular Magazines

S. Spencer, “Childhood’s End,” Harper’s, May 1979, 16-19.

E. Neuborne, “E-Tailers, Deliver or Die,” Business Week, Oct. 23, 2000, 16.

“To Have and To Hold,” Economist, June 16, 2001, 9-11.

Internet Sources

Usage note: Internet sources are those that exist solely online. A print publication that has an Internet incarnation is not considered to be an “Internet source.”

D. McCullagh, “ACLU Loses Digital Copyright Battle,” April 9, 2003, news.com.com

“Toyota Expanding China Links,” April 9, 2003, edition.cnn.com

A. Huffington, “Corporate America’s ‘Most Wanted’,” April 2, 2003, www.salon.com

Working Papers

N. Repenning and J. Sterman, “Capability Traps and Self-Controlling Attribution Errors in the Dynamics of Process Improvement,” working paper 4372-02, MIT Sloan School of Management, Cambridge, Massachusetts, June 2002, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=-320380.

McKinsey & Co., Inc., “Succeeding at Cross-Border Alliances: Lessons From Winners,” working paper, London, 1991.

D. Ready, “Developing Global Capability - Project Overview,” working paper, International Consortium for Executive Development Research, Lexington, Massachusetts, June 1997.

White Papers

“The Road to Recovery,” white paper, Sibson Consulting Group, New York, November 2001, p. 2.

Dissertations

J. P. Voges “Supply Chain Design in the Volatile Semiconductor Capital Equipment Industry”(Ph.D. diss., MIT Sloan School of Management and MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering, 2002), http://theses.mit.edu/

Forthcoming Books

M. Tushman, “Managing Innovation and Change” (New York: McGraw-Hill, in press).

Forthcoming Articles

M. Tushman, “An Information Processing Approach,” Academy of Management Review, in press.

SMR Special Style: Multiple Citations in One Reference

G. Farris, “Managing Informal Dynamics in R&D,” Harvard Business Review 64 (January-February 1986): 5-11; and F. Andrews and G. Peters, “Personnel Psychology” (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986).

No Author Specified

“Federal Express Uses a Three-Level Recovery System,” Service Edge (December 1990): 5.

“Poverty in the U.S.,” International Herald Tribune, Sept. 29, 2000.

Papers and Presentations at Meetings

J. Donehey and G. Overholser, “Capital One” (presentation at the Ernst & Young Embracing Complexity Conference, Boston, Aug. 2-4, 1998).

J. Kluge, “Simply Superior Sourcing” (paper presented at the Fifth International Annual International Purchasing and Supply Education and Research Association Conference, Eindhoven, Netherlands, April 2, 1996).

Case Studies

R.M. Kanter, “FCB and Publicis (A): Forming the Alliance,” Harvard Business School case no. 9-393-099 (Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing, 1993).

Organization, Association or Corporation as Author

International Monetary Fund, “Survey of African Economies,” vol. 7, “Algeria, Mali, Morocco, and Tunisia” (Washington, D.C.: IMF, 1977).

Government Reports

Securities and Exchange Commission, “Annual Report for the Securities and Exchange Commission for the Fiscal Year” (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1983), 42.

Personal Communications

D.B. Johnson, interview with authors, Nov. 11, 1997.

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