From the Editor—Updates and Looking Forward

Submissions, Rankings, and Changes at Journal of Service Research (JSR)

It has been another great year for the JSR. As we begin our 18th volume of the journal in 2015, I want to take a look back on the past year and thank all the outstanding authors, reviewers, editorial board, and associate editors (AEs) who made the 2014 volume a success. We published 30 manuscripts and had approximately 300 new submissions. Since we had no special issue calls for papers due in 2014, this is a very strong submission number. The published articles and submissions continue to represent the diversity of JSR’s focus across disciplines, countries, topics, and methodologies that I noted and described in some detail in my February 2014 editorial.

JSR’s reputation continues to grow from recognitions and rankings. The impact factor held strong in the most recently released numbers at 4.109 for the 5-year impact factor, 2.143 for the 2-year impact factor, and 1.229 for the journal’s Article Influence score. These scores place JSR as number 15, 26, and 24, respectively, of the 110 business journals that are ranked by Thomson Reuters ISI Web of Knowledge Journal Citation Report. As another important recognition, the journal was added to the A* list (highest ranking) of journals for Australia by the Australian Business Dean’s Council.

A major change at JSR this past year was the addition of AEs whose names you see listed on the inside cover page, along with the advisory board and the editorial board. The AEs are critically important to the journal in providing an intermediary review and report between the initial set of blind reviews and the decision by the editor. They provide a synthesis of sometimes disparate reviews and suggest a direction for the article which is sent to the authors. Although they don’t make the final decision on the article, their opinions are incredibly valuable and important in making the decision as to whether the article advances to the next round. In this first year, the AEs have proven themselves invaluable, and I want to thank them very, very much. Not every article has an AE, as we want to use their time judiciously. No doubt we will add new AEs and editorial board members as JSR continues to grow.

Advice for (New) Authors

A hallmark of JSR is its welcoming nature in terms of topics, disciplines, and methodologies. A perusal of the Table of Contents for the four issues last year and the articles in Online First will confirm this. In addition, JSR reviewers and AEs are incredibly supportive and helpful. Reviews are constructive and, even when a paper is rejected, the reviewers and editorial team almost always provide good suggestions for improvement or directions for moving the article forward at another journal. Surprisingly, I even get letters from rejected authors thanking the review team for the helpful critiques and suggestions.

That said, it can be very challenging to get an article through the review process, and fewer than 10% of all the submissions are published. It is clear that JSR has very high standards and high expectations, but that should not be interpreted as being overly selective. Articles that ultimately get published in JSR are theoretically strong and contribute something new to our knowledge and understanding of service. They also provide managerial insights for business practice and/or insights for public policy (related to service), social change (related to service), or improvements in well-being (tied to service). Articles that provide new methodologies for service are also published in JSR, but the bar is again very high. New methodologies must be truly new, be valuable to service practice, and be better than what is currently in use in a meaningful way.

Just as JSR is very welcoming to all types of papers, all types of papers are also rejected from JSR, many times due to lack of contribution. Another common reason for rejection is that the paper does not recognize past research in an area, but rather claims to add something brand new when there is considerable existing research in an area already.

Some good hints for submitting papers to JSR to maximize the chance of moving forward are as follows:

Clearly identify and position your work as a contribution to service theory and practice, not simply a general marketing, operations, human resources, consumer behavior, or management paper that happens to be set in a service context.

Something that comes as a surprise to some people: Rejections happen for well-established and well-known authors as well as new authors just starting out—they happen for all of us. So, don’t be discouraged by a rejection or assume it is because you are new or unknown. That is simply not the case. However, as a new or inexperienced author, it is especially important to have others review your work prior to submission and get help and research guidance early on. Publishing in top journals such as JSR is a difficult, but rewarding endeavor. Good work moves forward.

What to Look for in the Next Year

As we move forward into 2015 and beyond, there are some exciting things on the horizon for JSR.

You can look forward to a new and updated version of Service Research Priorities this year in a paper coauthored by Amy Ostrom, Parsu Parasuraman, David Bowen, Lia Patricio, and Chris Voss. This paper was invited and is being guest edited by Kay Lemon, previous editor of JSR.

We expect to announce one or two additional special sections or issues over the next year and will continue to welcome your best work! Thank you all for continuing to build the service research community, service research, and JSR.