Business & Management Studies: An International Journal (BMIJ) publishes original research articles and review articles in the fields of business and management. Authors intending to submit a manuscript to BMIJ should first ensure that their work falls within at least one of the subject areas specified on the journal’s Aims and Scope page.

Manuscripts submitted to BMIJ undergo a two-stage evaluation process comprising a preliminary editorial assessment and peer review. During the preliminary assessment, each manuscript is examined carefully, impartially, and in accordance with the journal’s established criteria. Manuscripts found suitable are forwarded for peer review.

BMIJ employs a double-blind peer-review system. Reviewers are selected from scholars who possess relevant subject expertise and an established record of academic research in the field addressed by the manuscript. The journal follows a careful and systematic reviewer-selection process to ensure the quality and impartiality of its evaluations.

Manuscripts must be submitted as Microsoft Word files prepared in accordance with the BMIJ manuscript submission template. The current template is available on the BMIJ Manuscript Submission Template page. BMIJ has adopted the APA 7 guidelines for in-text citations and reference lists. Authors must ensure that their manuscripts fully comply with APA 7 requirements before submission.

All manuscripts undergo a preliminary editorial assessment before they are considered for peer review. The purpose of this stage is to determine whether the manuscript complies with the journal’s aims and scope, scholarly publishing standards, research ethics requirements, and author guidelines.

Passing the preliminary assessment does not constitute acceptance for publication. Manuscripts found suitable at this stage proceed to double-blind peer review.

Scope of the Preliminary Assessment

The editorial office assesses the manuscript together with all supporting materials submitted as part of the application. These materials may include ethics committee approval documents, data collection instruments, datasets, statistical or qualitative analysis outputs, similarity reports, and other supplementary files.

The preliminary assessment covers the following areas:

• Plagiarism and similarity screening

• Alignment with the journal’s aims and scope

• Scientific adequacy

• Accuracy and consistency of citations and references

• Requirement for and validity of ethics committee approval

• Consistency between the ethics committee approval date and the data collection period

• Disclosure of the use of generative artificial intelligence

• Consistency between the manuscript, research data, and analysis results

• Internal, linguistic, and formal consistency of the manuscript

For detailed information, authors should consult the BMIJ Manuscript Preliminary Evaluation Criteria.

Preliminary Assessment Decisions

One of the following decisions is issued upon completion of the preliminary assessment:

Eligible for Peer Review

The manuscript satisfies the preliminary assessment criteria and may proceed to double-blind peer review.

Eligible for Peer Review Following Preliminary Revisions

The manuscript contains remediable scientific, ethical, bibliographic, linguistic, or formatting deficiencies. The manuscript will be reassessed after the authors have completed the requested revisions.

Rejected at the Preliminary Assessment Stage

A manuscript may be rejected without external peer review if it falls outside the journal’s scope, fails to meet fundamental standards of scientific adequacy, or contains ethical, methodological, or scholarly reliability problems that cannot be remedied through preliminary revision.

Compliance with the journal’s similarity thresholds does not, by itself, establish that a manuscript is scientifically adequate or eligible for peer review. Ethical violations, data manipulation, fabricated or unverifiable references, serious methodological deficiencies, or material inconsistencies between the manuscript and the reported analysis results may constitute grounds for rejection irrespective of the preliminary assessment score.