Transition to Online Event Questions

Right now! Registration for AIB 2020 Online opened May 1.

Refunds for the full conference registration fee were issued in March 2020 to all members who registered before the transition announcement. If you registered early and have a question regarding your refund, please contact membership@aib.msu.edu.

No. AIB 2020 Online will be split up over six days: Pre-conference workshops will be held July 1-3 and the main conference sessions will be held July 6-8. This schedule allows us to take greater advantage of the flexibility offered by the online format so that conference participants can enjoy the weekend with their families.

By May 15, the Program Chair will publish a set of guidelines and tips for authors preparing their presentations. These include details such as appropriate file formats for any documents or video materials, any apps or programs required for participation in live sessions, and the channels that will be available for you to engage with attendee feedback on your presentation. Please check the conference website for these letters.

The AIB Secretariat is working to transition the majority of the pre-conference activities to a virtual format. For the consortia, participation is limited to those who have already been admitted through the application process. For workshops, a limited number of participants may register, and registration is limited to a single workshop. Registration for these events will be open until June 15 or until the workshop capacity is met. Should an accepted participant decide to cancel their registration due to AIB 2020’s transition to an online event, full refunds will be granted until June 15 and no administration fee will be incurred.

All recorded presentations and any additional files (such as manuscripts or extended abstracts) the authors choose to share will be available to AIB 2020 participants for up to 30 days after the event. This access is limited to AIB conference participants only and is not indexable by search engines. Please note that this policy does not violate any journal submission policies regarding the public availability of manuscripts, as the manuscripts will not publicly available even if you decide to share a copy along with your recorded presentation.

The Association of Japanese Business Studies, which typically holds its annual conference in parallel to AIB’s Annual Meeting has announced that they will suspend their event until 2021. The editorial team of International Business Review has also decided to withdraw their pre-conference paper development workshop from AIB 2020’s program.

Refunds for the full exhibitor registration fee were issued in March & April 2020 to all exhibitors who registered before the transition announcement. If you registered early and have a question regarding your refund, please contact membership@aib.msu.edu.

AIB is currently developing opportunities for sponsorships and exhibitor presentations within our online programming. If you are interested in receiving a notification when these opportunities are announced, please contact membership@aib.msu.edu.

Registration Questions

The fees vary based on your status (regular, student, or low-income) as well as when you are registering for the conference (we have discounts for early registration and penalties for late and on-site registration). Please see the Registration page for detailed information about the applicable registration rates.

The registration fee includes online access to all online conference sessions except for those workshops which require a separate pre-registration and acceptance. Attendees will also be granted access to all recorded conference sessions for up to 30 days after the event.

All participants in the AIB conference have to be members of the Academy of International Business. Therefore, if you are not currently an AIB member, you will have to become an AIB member while registering for the conference. If you are currently an AIB member, but your membership expires before July 8, 2020, then you will have to renew your membership while you register for the conference.

AIB’s no-show policy requires that at least one co-author for each accepted manuscript must be registered by June 15. Otherwise, the manuscript may be removed from the program. If multiple co-authors are planning to attend the conference, each co-author has to register individually. For panels, the requirement is that all panelists must be registered by June 15.

All participants, including track and session chairs, board members, and even the President of AIB is required to pay the full registration fees for attending the AIB Conference. Please note that AIB has both a low-income discount for the registration fees, as well as several stipend programs to provide travel stipends to certain categories of individuals.

AIB does not offer any daily rates. Any members wishing to participate in any part of the conference are required to register for the whole conference.

Yes. All participants attending any pre-conference event are REQUIRED to register for the main conference as well. The AIB Board sees the conference as an integral part of the educational experience these individuals will get from the pre-conference activities, therefore no exceptions will be made.

Once your registration is finalized, you will receive a confirmation email indicating that you are officially registered and shows what your name tag information will look like. You will receive an Official Receipt, via email again, as proof of payment. In addition, your name will appear in the list of registered participants made available through the Registration page, closer to the conference.

We understand that members who have registered for the conference may have to cancel their registrations due to unforeseen circumstances. While we try to accommodate cancellations to the best of our ability, any cancellation, especially late ones, put AIB at a difficult situation. Due to the size of our conference, we make many of our arrangements well in advance and therefore cancellations come with a cost to AIB. Therefore, the AIB Board has developed a cancellation policy to balance the needs of our members with the costs of cancellation to AIB. As such, please note that cancellation requests for an already confirmed registration will be processed according to the following schedule:

Before June 15: %100 refund
After June 15: No refunds available

Cancellation requests should be submitted by email to membership@aib.msu.edu.

A certificate of attendance will be available to download or sent to each verified attendee 15 days after the conference concludes.

This FAQ only covers answers to questions that we receive frequently. If you have registration related question that still has not been answered, please contact our Membership Department at membership@aib.msu.edu and one of us will be happy to assist you.

General Submission Questions

No. AIB membership is not required for submissions. Any member of the research community can submit a manuscript or panel proposal to the AIB conference. However, please note that if your manuscript/proposal is accepted, the presenter(s) will be required to become AIB members to be able to register for the conference.

No. There is no submission fee for manuscripts or panel proposals submitted to the AIB conference. Please note that if your manuscript is accepted, the presenter(s) will be required to register for the conference and pay the appropriate registration fee.

Yes, AIB strictly enforces a Rule-of-Three. No person may be associated (as author, co-author, or panelist) with more than three submissions for an AIB Conference. Therefore, please make sure to coordinate with your co-authors before submitting a manuscript to the conference to ensure that they do not violate the Rule-of-Three as a result of your submission. Please note that this rule does not apply to appearances in pre-conference activities (e.g., workshops, consortia, or chapter meetings), invited (by the program committee) appearances at plenaries or special sessions, session chairs or discussants, or listings resulting from AIB officer roles.

Only abstracts of papers accepted to the AIB Conference is published in the AIB Conference Proceedings. The full manuscripts are not published, and the copyrights of the manuscripts remain with the original authors. Please note that AIB members will have access to any manuscript accepted to the conference for a period no more than 90 days (60 days before and 30 days after the conference), in a members-only password protected portion of our website.

AIB has a No Show Policy in place that requires at least one author of any accepted paper in the final program to register, attend, and present at the conference, if your paper is accepted.

A modified version of this policy remains in effect for the 2020 Online Conference. Failure to register by the author deadline of June 15, or a failure to submit a recorded presentation of the manuscript by a specified deadline will be treated as a “No Shows” per the specified policy. To avoid a violation of this policy, the corresponding author may withdraw the paper before June 15 if none of the paper authors are able to participate in the online event.

Due to the high number of submissions we receive and the extremely tight deadlines that the Program Committee has to work with, we are unable to grant any deadline extensions. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Manuscript Submission Questions

No. The AIB conference submission is a single-stage process. We require complete manuscripts to be submitted for the conference by the submission deadline. Each manuscript submission will go through a double-blind review process. If accepted, authors will have the opportunity to revise their work before it is presented at the conference.

No, each manuscript can only be submitted to a single track. If you not able to decide on the appropriate track for your manuscript, please contact the program chair and request assistance.

AIB recognizes that manuscript development is often an incremental process and that conferences play a critical developmental role in this process. Therefore, it is acceptable to submit papers that have been presented, or scheduled to be presented at another conference to the AIB conference. However, the manuscript must be altered or improved upon after each presentation to incorporate the feedback received.

You can submit your manuscript to the AIB conference, if the article is in the early stages of review at the journal. If you are at the later stages of the review process such that the manuscript could be accepted for publication before the AIB conference takes place, we recommend that you do not submit the manuscript to the AIB conference.

Authors who have a conflict of interest relationship with a track chair shall submit their paper to a different track, or to the Special Submissions track. Conflicts of interest arise from author relationships with current and former PhD students, current and former PhD advisors, members of the same department, co-authors, family members, and the like. If you are not sure whether your relationship would qualify as a conflict of interest, please contact the Program Chair.

If your paper is primarily a research methods paper, or if you are using an uncommon or innovative new method, please submit your papers to the new Research Methods track. Please identify what is innovative about your method in the keywords, so that your paper can be sent to appropriate experts as identified by the Research Methods SIG for review.

If you are using Microsoft Word, there are many ways you can leave personal information on your document. The primary things you need to check for are:

  • That you delete all author information from the title page, and any headers in the document.
  • If you were using “Track Changes” while making revisions to your manuscript, make sure to accept all changes and finalize the document before submitting.
  • Go to File…Info and make sure to delete the “Author” and “Last Modified by” information.

You should also select “Prepare for Sharing” or “Inspect Document” (depending on your Word version) which would allow you to delete additional identifying information that might be hidden in the document. For more information, please see the following Microsoft article. There are also two free software utilities that you can use to automate the process: Document Metadata Cleaner and Doc Scrubber.

Post-Acceptance Questions

Please check the Important Dates page to see when the results are scheduled to go out. An announcement will be posted on the conference home page as soon as the notification emails have been sent out to the corresponding authors.

As a general policy, AIB only communicates with the corresponding authors regarding the status of their submissions. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to keep their co-authors abreast of any developments as necessary.

As outlined in the Submission Guide, submitting a manuscript as a competitive paper does not necessarily mean it will end up in a competitive session. Often times very good papers end up in an interactive session because of lack of space in the program or lack of fit with any of the existing competitive sessions.

Due to the number of papers being presented and the complexity of putting together a schedule, AIB is not able to accept any requests to present at specific day or times. We appreciate your understanding in this matter.

It is typically possible to change the title and/or abstract of your paper until about 30 days before the conference, or until the final program has been published online. Please email your changes to the Program Chair, along with the submission ID of your manuscript.

AIB policy does not allow any additions to authorship information of manuscripts accepted for presentation at the AIB conference. We apologize for any inconvenience. It is, however, possible to modify affiliations or make spelling corrections to existing authors, until about 30 days before the conference. Please email any changes to the Program Chair, along with the submission ID of your manuscript.

Only the abstracts of papers accepted to the AIB Conference is published in the AIB Conference Proceedings. The full manuscripts are not published. However, if you would like to make an updated version of your manuscript available for conference participants, please email a new copy of your manuscript to the Program Chair, along with the submission ID of your manuscript.

AIB’s No-Show Policy requires that at least one co-author for each accepted manuscript must be registered. The deadline for the presenter to be registered is June 15. Otherwise, the manuscript will not be scheduled for inclusion in the online program. If multiple co-authors are planning to attend the conference, each co-author has to register individually. For panels, the requirement is that all panelists must be registered by June 15 and present at the conference.

We understand that authors may not be able to attend the conference or present the paper for a variety of reasons. To maintain a quality experience for all participants, the Program Committee kindly requests that you notify the Program Chair as soon as your plans change. However, please note that there may be repercussions per AIB’s No Show Policy. If a co-author is available to present the paper, you do not need to notify us of the change. If no co-author is available, it is also possible to make arrangements for a colleague who is familiar with your work to present the manuscript on your behalf. However, in this case, please make sure to notify the Program Chair so that your paper is not automatically dropped from the program due to our no-show policy which requires at least one author to be registered for the conference. If you had already registered for the conference, please refer to the Registration Questions section below for AIB’s registration cancellation policy.

Transitioning to Online Event Questions

When will I be able to register for AIB 2020 Online?

Right now! Registration for AIB 2020 Online opened May 1.

I registered for AIB 2020 before the transition to an online event was announced—will I receive a refund?

Refunds for the full conference registration fee were issued in March 2020 to all members who registered before the transition announcement. If you registered early and have a question regarding your refund, please contact membership@aib.msu.edu.

Will AIB 2020 Online be held on the dates originally scheduled for AIB 2020 Miami?

No. AIB 2020 Online will be split up over six days: Pre-conference workshops will be held July 1-3 and the main conference sessions will be held July 6-8. This schedule allows us to take greater advantage of the flexibility offered by the online format so that conference participants can enjoy the weekend with their families.

How should I prepare for my online presentation?

By May 15, the Program Chair will publish a set of guidelines and tips for authors preparing their presentations. These include details such as appropriate file formats for any documents or video materials, any apps or programs required for participation in live sessions, and the channels that will be available for you to engage with attendee feedback on your presentation. Please check the conference website for these letters.

Will pre-conference consortia and workshops transition to the virtual format as well?

The AIB Secretariat is working to transition the majority of the pre-conference activities to a virtual format. For the consortia, participation is limited to those who have already been admitted through the application process. For workshops, a limited number of participants may register, and registration is limited to a single workshop. Registration for these events will be open until June 15 or until the workshop capacity is met. Should an accepted participant decide to cancel their registration due to AIB 2020’s transition to an online event, full refunds will be granted until June 15 and no administration fee will be incurred.

Will my recorded presentation be available on the AIB website for conference participants to view?

All recorded presentations and any additional files (such as manuscripts or extended abstracts) the authors choose to share will be available to AIB 2020 participants for up to 30 days after the event. This access is limited to AIB conference participants only and is not indexable by search engines. Please note that this policy does not violate any journal submission policies regarding the public availability of manuscripts, as the manuscripts will not publicly available even if you decide to share a copy along with your recorded presentation.

Has any of the originally planned AIB 2020 programming been cancelled?

The Association of Japanese Business Studies, which typically holds its annual conference in parallel to AIB’s Annual Meeting has announced that they will suspend their event until 2021. The editorial team of International Business Review has also decided to withdraw their pre-conference paper development workshop from AIB 2020’s program.

Will exhibitors receive a refund?
Refunds for the full exhibitor registration fee were issued in March & April 2020 to all exhibitors who registered before the transition announcement. If you registered early and have a question regarding your refund, please contact membership@aib.msu.edu

What other opportunities will exhibitors have to engage with AIB 2020 Online participants?

AIB is currently developing opportunities for sponsorships and exhibitor presentations within our online programming. If you are interested in receiving a notification when these opportunities are announced, please contact membership@aib.msu.edu.

Registration Questions

How much are the AIB registration fees?

The fees vary based on your status (regular, student, or low-income) as well as when you are registering for the conference (we have discounts for early registration and penalties for late and on-site registration). Please see the Registration page for detailed information about the applicable registration rates.

What is included in the AIB registration fee?

The registration fee includes online access to all online conference sessions except for those workshops which require a separate pre-registration and acceptance. Attendees will also be granted access to all recorded conference sessions for up to 30 days after the event.

Do I have to be an AIB member to register for the AIB 2020 Conference? 

All participants in the AIB conference have to be members of the Academy of International Business. Therefore, if you are not currently an AIB member, you will have to become an AIB member while registering for the conference. If you are currently an AIB member, but your membership expires before July 8, 2020, then you will have to renew your membership while you register for the conference.

What is your registration policy for authors/presenters that have a paper or panel accepted for the conference?

AIB’s no-show policy requires that at least one co-author for each accepted manuscript must be registered by June 15. Otherwise, the manuscript may be removed from the program. If multiple co-authors are planning to attend the conference, each co-author has to register individually. For panels, the requirement is that all panelists must be registered by June 15.

What is your registration policy for track/session chairs?

All participants, including track and session chairs, board members, and even the President of AIB are required to pay the full registration fees for attending the AIB Conference. Please note that AIB offers a discount on registration fees for students, emeritus faculty, and low-income members.

Can I register for one day only? Do you have a special day rate?

AIB does not offer any daily rates. Any members wishing to participate in any part of the conference are required to register for the whole conference.

I am participating in the Doctoral Consortium/Junior Faculty Consortium/JIBS/JIBP Paper Development Workshop. Do I have to register for the AIB Conference?

Yes. All participants attending any pre-conference event are REQUIRED to register for the main conference as well. The AIB Board sees the conference as an integral part of the educational experience these individuals will get from the pre-conference activities, therefore no exceptions will be made.

How do I confirm that I’m successfully registered?

Once your registration is finalized, you will receive a confirmation email indicating that you are officially registered and shows what your name tag information will look like. You will receive an Official Receipt, via email again, as proof of payment. In addition, your name will appear in the list of registered participants made available through the Registration page, closer to the conference.

What is your cancellation policy? 

We understand that members who have registered for the conference may have to cancel their registrations due to unforeseen circumstances. While we try to accommodate cancellations to the best of our ability, any cancellation, especially late ones, put AIB at a difficult situation. Due to the size of our conference, we make many of our arrangements well in advance and therefore cancellations come with a cost to AIB. Therefore, the AIB Board has developed a cancellation policy to balance the needs of our members with the costs of cancellation to AIB. As such, please note that cancellation requests for an already confirmed registration will be processed according to the following schedule:

June 15: 100% refund
After June 15: No refunds available

Cancellation requests should be submitted by email to membership@aib.msu.edu.

Can I get a certificate of attendance?

A certificate of attendance will be available to download or sent to each verified attendee 15 days after the conference concludes.

What if I have a question that was not answered here?

This FAQ only covers answers to questions that we receive frequently. If you have registration related question that still has not been answered, please contact our Membership Department at membership@aib.msu.edu and one of us will be happy to assist you.

General Submission Questions

Must I be a member of AIB to submit a manuscript or panel proposal?

No. AIB membership is not required for submissions. Any member of the research community can submit a manuscript or panel proposal to the AIB conference. However, please note that if your manuscript/proposal is accepted, the presenter(s) will be required to become AIB members to be able to register for the conference.

Is there a submission fee?

No. There is no submission fee for manuscripts or panel proposals submitted to the AIB conference. Please note that if your manuscript is accepted, the presenter(s) will be required to register for the conference and pay the appropriate registration fee.

Are there any limits to submissions?

Yes, AIB strictly enforces a Rule-of-Three. No person may be associated (as author, co-author, or panelist) with more than three submissions for an AIB Conference. Therefore, please make sure to coordinate with your co-authors before submitting a manuscript to the conference to ensure that they do not violate the Rule-of-Three as a result of your submission. Please note that this rule does not apply to appearances in pre-conference activities (e.g., workshops, consortia, or chapter meetings), invited (by the program committee) appearances at plenaries or special sessions, session chairs or discussants, or listings resulting from AIB officer roles.

Are papers accepted to the AIB conference published?

Only abstracts of papers accepted to the AIB Conference is published in the AIB Conference Proceedings. The full manuscripts are not published, and the copyrights of the manuscripts remain with the original authors. Please note that AIB members will have access to any manuscript accepted to the conference for a period no more than 90 days (60 days before and 30 days after the conference), in a members-only password protected portion of our website.

Am I required to attend the conference if my paper is accepted?

AIB has a No Show Policy in place that requires at least one author of any accepted paper in the final program to register, attend, and present at the conference, if your paper is accepted.

A modified version of this policy remains in effect for the 2020 Online Conference. Failure to register by the author deadline of June 15, or a failure to submit a recorded presentation of the manuscript by the specified deadline will be treated as a “No Show” per the specified policy. To avoid a violation of this policy, the corresponding author may withdraw the paper before June 15 if none of the paper authors are able to participate in the online event.

How do I request an extension on the AIB submission deadline?

Due to the high number of submissions we receive and the extremely tight deadlines that the Program Committee has to work with, we are unable to grant any deadline extensions. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Manuscript Submission Questions

Can I submit only an abstract or an outline?

No. The AIB conference submission is a single-stage process. We require complete manuscripts to be submitted for the conference by the submission deadline. Each manuscript submission will go through a double-blind review process. If accepted, authors will have the opportunity to revise their work before it is presented at the conference.

Can I submit my manuscript to multiple tracks?

No, each manuscript can only be submitted to a single track. If you not able to decide on the appropriate track for your manuscript, please contact the program chair and request assistance.

Can I submit a paper that has already been presented, or scheduled to be presented, at another conference?

AIB recognizes that manuscript development is often an incremental process and that conferences play a critical developmental role in this process. Therefore, it is acceptable to submit papers that have been presented, or scheduled to be presented at another conference to the AIB conference. However, the manuscript must be altered or improved upon after each presentation to incorporate the feedback received.

Can I submit a paper that is already under review for a journal to the AIB conference at the same time?

You can submit your manuscript to the AIB conference, if the article is in the early stages of review at the journal. If you are at the later stages of the review process such that the manuscript could be accepted for publication before the AIB conference takes place, we recommend that you do not submit the manuscript to the AIB conference.

What should we do if an author of the manuscript has a close relationship with the track chair in our chosen subject area?

Authors who have a conflict of interest relationship with a track chair shall submit their paper to a different track, or to the Special Submissions track. Conflicts of interest arise from author relationships with current and former PhD students, current and former PhD advisors, members of the same department, co-authors, family members, and the like. If you are not sure whether your relationship would qualify as a conflict of interest, please contact the Program Chair.

What should I do if my paper is primarily a research methods paper?

If your paper is primarily a research methods paper, or if you are using an uncommon or innovative new method, you can submit your manuscript to the Special Submissions track. Papers marked (through the keywords) as research methods paper in that track will be sent to appropriate experts identified by the Research Methods SIG for review.

How can I ensure that all identifying metadata has been removed from my manuscript before I submit it?

If you are using Microsoft Word, there are many ways you can leave personal information on your document. The primary things you need to check for are:

  • That you delete all author information from the title page, and any headers in the document.
  • If you were using “Track Changes” while making revisions to your manuscript, make sure to accept all changes and finalize the document before submitting.
  • Go to File…Info and make sure to delete the “Author” and “Last Modified by” information.

You should also select “Prepare for Sharing” or “Inspect Document” (depending on your Word version) which would allow you to delete additional identifying information that might be hidden in the document. For more information, please see the following Microsoft article. There are also two free software utilities that you can use to automate the process: Document Metadata Cleaner and Doc Scrubber.

Post-Acceptance Questions

When do the results go out?

Please check the Important Dates page to see when the results are scheduled to go out. An announcement will be posted on the conference home page as soon as the notification emails have been sent out to the corresponding authors.

Why have my co-authors not received a notification of the decision?

As a general policy, AIB only communicates with the corresponding authors regarding the status of their submissions. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to keep their co-authors abreast of any developments as necessary.

I submitted my paper for a Competitive session, why was it accepted for an interactive session?

As outlined in the Submission Guide, submitting a manuscript as a competitive paper does not necessarily mean it will end up in a competitive session. Often times very good papers end up in an interactive session because of lack of space in the program or lack of fit with any of the existing competitive sessions.

Can I request my session to be scheduled for a specific day of the conference?

Due to the number of papers being presented and the complexity of putting together a schedule, AIB is not able to accept any requests to present at specific day or times. We appreciate your understanding in this matter.

Can I change the title and/or abstract of my paper after it has been accepted?

It is typically possible to change the title and/or abstract of your paper until about 30 days before the conference, or until the final program has been published online. Please email your changes to the Program Chair, along with the submission ID of your manuscript.

Can I add an author that was not included on the original submission to my paper?

AIB policy does not allow any additions to authorship information of manuscripts accepted for presentation at the AIB conference. We apologize for any inconvenience. It is, however, possible to modify affiliations or make spelling corrections to existing authors, until about 30 days before the conference. Please email any changes to the Program Chair, along with the submission ID of your manuscript.

Can I update my accepted manuscript with a new version?

Only the abstracts of papers accepted to the AIB Conference is published in the AIB Conference Proceedings. The full manuscripts are not published. However, if you would like to make an updated version of your manuscript available for conference participants, please email a new copy of your manuscript to the Program Chair, along with the submission ID of your manuscript.

What is the deadline for presenters to register for the conference?

AIB’s No-Show Policy requires that at least one co-author for each accepted manuscript must be registered. The deadline for the presenter to be registered is June 15. Otherwise, the manuscript will not be scheduled for inclusion in the online program. If multiple co-authors are planning to attend the conference, each co-author has to register individually. For panels, the requirement is that all panelists must be registered by June 15 and present at the conference.

I am not able to attend the conference or no longer with to present the paper. What should I do?

We understand that authors may not be able to attend the conference or present the paper for a variety of reasons. To maintain a quality experience for all participants, the Program Committee kindly requests that you notify the Program Chair as soon as your plans change. However, please note that there may be repercussions per AIB’s No Show Policy. If a co-author is available to present the paper, you do not need to notify us of the change. If no co-author is available, it is also possible to make arrangements for a colleague who is familiar with your work to present the manuscript on your behalf. However, in this case, please make sure to notify the Program Chair so that your paper is not automatically dropped from the program due to our no-show policy which requires at least one author to be registered for the conference. If you had already registered for the conference, please refer to the Registration Questions section below for AIB’s registration cancellation policy.