Dear Worldwide Members of AIB,

First, let me express my gratitude for being selected as the 2023-2025 Editor-in-Chief of JIBS.  On behalf of my team, I am happy to report that the transition from the previous editorial team to the current one has gone well.  In terms of composition of editorial team members, I have followed the maxim of “something old, something new”.  This approach ensures continuity yet allows opportunity for further enhancement and development of the journal to align with the new initiatives and directions adopted by the incoming team.  The current team is larger and is the first gender-balanced team in JIBS’ history.

Second, in my opening editorial, “To make JIBS matter for a better world”, I have outlined many of the new initiatives and directions of the journal under our team that reflect a continuation of JIBS’ Editorial Statement, namely, that of publishing “insightful, innovative and impactful research on international business” that aligns with AIB’s 2018 Statement of Mission, Vision and Values that are based on the core pillars of internationalization, excellence, intellectual freedom, integrity, inclusiveness and impact.  As such, many of the new initiatives and directions adopted by our editorial team are designed to pursue the three “I’s” of “integrity, inclusiveness and impact”.  The last “I”, impact, goes beyond the journal’s Impact Factor (IF) and represents the journal’s ambition to publish high-quality research that has societal impact.

Without repeating too much of what I have written in my opening editorial, below is a brief summary of the new initiatives that our team has undertaken:

  1. The addition of two new sub-domains, Industry 4.0 and Global Sustainability, to reflect: one, the ubiquitous impact that the Fourth Industrial Revolution has upon all aspects of societal functioning; and, two, our collective responsibility, as academics and researchers, to address and redress societal grand challenges.
  2. The addition of two advisory committees to the editorial team, members of whom are full-fledged Editors. The first is the Research Methods Advisory Committee (RMAC), to encourage a diversity of research methods (quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods, and so on) to understand and study the complexity of concepts, constructs and theories that challenge us in investigating IB phenomena.  The second is the Societal Impact Advisory Committee (SIAC), to help sharpen the societal contributions of high-quality research that has progressed to the stage of conditional acceptance.
  3. Aside from encouraging a plurality of high-quality research methods, our team will pay greater attention to a diversity of research paradigms and cognitive approaches to emphasize the multi-disciplinary nature of the IB discipline and to embrace both Western and non-Western perspectives to more accurately capture the nature and scope of IB.
  4. The expansion of outreach activities to nurture scholarship in regions of the world that are currently under-represented as far as paper submissions are concerned. Our editorial team has conducted JIBS Paper Development Workshops at most AIB regional Chapter conferences as well as with sister academic associations that share our objective of advancing scholarship that has implications for IB.

Third, an update on some of the journal’s metrics.  While our editorial team only assumed its official role at the start of this year, we actually began to oversee all new submissions to the journal since mid-June 2022.  Roughly ten months into our role, we have received 813 submissions, on track with the last year immediately preceding the transition.  The rates of desk reject by our two Reviewing Editors (REs) and by Area Editors (AEs) are 60 percent and 5 percent, respectively, and are on par with that of our predecessor’s rates.  The average turnaround time for RE desk rejects and from submission to first decision by AE is 5 days and 62 days, respectively.  The latter statistic reflects a 5-day reduction from that of the preceding team’s.  As authors, all of us appreciate a quick turnaround time on decisions.  Our team will work hard to maintain this momentum of faster turnaround time without compromising the integrity and quality of the review process.

In closing, I hope that you are as excited as the members of my editorial team and I have been about “making JIBS matter for a better world”.  This goal can only be accomplished with your continuous support and input.  I look forward to interacting, hearing and, most importantly, learning from all of you in our pursuit of meaningful and useful knowledge in the area of IB.

Best,
Rosalie L. Tung