Editorial policy

Preliminary considerations

Before submitting your manuscript to European Journal of Family Business (EJFB), we kindly invite you to read the information provided below. We also encourage you to visit our  Journal information page and review our Publishing ethics & research integrity policy for further details.

What we publish

Authors are encouraged to submit manuscripts to shed new light on contemporary challenges in the broad domain of family business. They should strike a reasonable balance between theory and practice, providing a concise but clear description of the issue or research question, using a credible and persuasive argumentation based on scholarly foundation as well as an appropriate methodology, concluding with a clear summary with implications and recommendations for the business practice. This should not be at odds with the use of an informative language, avoiding as far as possible the use of jargon and technical terminology.

Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of EJFB will be reviewed. EJFB accepts manuscripts for evaluation written in English, Spanish or Portuguese but only publishes manuscripts in English.

Types of papers

EJFB publishes original papers that raise our knowledge base on family business, business-owning family, and allied field. Content and presentation must meet the normal standards for scientific credibility. The journal considers the following types of papers:

Research papers: These papers are based on empirical findings or descriptions, theoretical arguments, or methodological developments that show an immediate practical relevance for family business owners, managers, consultants, and other stakeholders. Descriptive works that do not offer a relevant contribution to family business research are not considered for publication in EJFB. Final accepted manuscripts typically should have less than 9,000 words (all-inclusive) with a section on practical implications and recommendations. Statistical details and empirical results should be presented in an appendice at the end of the document to provide smooth reading of article, thus reinforcing its orientation to business practice.

Reviews and meta-analyses. These papers should provide an extensive overview of recent developments on topics that fall within the scope of the journal. They should offer a clear contribution to the domain of family business and establish an agenda for future research. Review articles are usually up to 11,000 words. The practical implications and recommendations sections should be well developed.

New or Data-driven insights. EJFB welcomes articles of 6,000-9,000 words in length that provide new ideas or perspectives by building upon existing or new theories to understand contemporary trends related to enterprises in general, and family firms in particular. EJFB also accepts papers that present new empirical works or techniques that are explorative in nature or that show unusual or counterintuitive findings.

Point/Counterpoint debates. Short articles or notes written to clarify or respond to the content of an insight article previously published in this journal. The Editors of the journal may accept other formats (e.g. two manuscripts by different authors presenting conflicting views on a specific topic). 

Perspective articles. This category of article is an in-depth viewpoint paper that present a forward-thinking view of an emerging topic that is written in an accessible and non-technical style. These articles can provide an ‘insider view’ of family firms and business-owning families drawing on experiential knowledge or offer reflections on key challenges and response options with a view to trigger new exchanges on emerging and future issues. Papers that seeks a dialogue between theoretical and the empirical evidence will be well received. Publishing perspective articles allow an in-depth practical and theoretical discussions.

Essays and Commentaries. They are usually essays that present a personal point of view of fundamental concepts or prevalent ideas in the field.  Commentaries should be stimulating and reflective essays providing personal perspectives on key topics and issues within family firm research. Whereas a perspective article looks at the big picture of a topic, an essay or commentary is a more technical or practical paper.

Practitioner forum pieces. Papers describing the experience of addressing the challenges faced by family firms and business-owning families. Practice papers are aimed to understand critical issues that are unique to family firms by applying the knowledge and expertise developed to solve complex family business issues. We encourage entrepreneurs, business owners and managers, practitioners, consultants, policy makers and other family business stakeholders to present their opinion and experiences using cases and data from which they have learned and that can be useful elsewhere.

Point/Counterpoint debates, Perspectives, Essays and Commentaries, and Practitioner Forum pieces submitted to EJFB are indicatively 4,000 words long, including references. Following a preliminary triage, all papers are sent out for review.

Publishing model

EJFB is a fully open access, also called Diamond Open Access.

Diamond Open Access is the most equitable path to open access publishing. It refers to a scholarly publication model in which journals and platforms do not charge fees to either authors or readers. Contents published on EJFB are licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 License. If the paper is accepted for publication, the author may re-use their work according tho this license.

EJFB is committed to facilitating openness, transparency and reproducibility of research. In support of the Open Access initiative, authors are encouraged to self-archive their publications in open access repositories and share their research data in institutional or public data repositories.

Data availability statement

The data availability statement tells the reader where the research data associated with a paper is available, and under what conditions the data can be accessed. It also includes links (where applicable) to the dataset.

This declaration states the conditions of access to the “minimum dataset” that are necessary to interpret, verify and extend the research in the paper, transparent to readers. This minimum dataset should be provided through deposition in public community/discipline-specific repositories.  Below are some examples of statements that you can use or adapt:

Availability of data	Template for data availability statement
Data openly available in a public repository	The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in [repository name] at [URL/DOI], reference number [reference number].
Data available within the article or its supplementary materials	The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article [and/or] its supplementary materials.
Data available on request from the authors	The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, [author initials], upon reasonable request.
Data sharing not applicable – no new data generated	Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study.

This information should form part of the ‘Title Page’ file. The information will be published if the paper is accepted.

Peer review policy 

EJFB is a member of the Committe on Publication Ethics (COPE). As a peer-reviewed journal, the rigor of scientific publication is expected to be observed throughout the editorial process and for all parties involved in the act of publishing: authors, editors, reviewers and the publisher. 

All academic papers in EJFB  undergo a rigorous and transparent double anonymized  review process, based on initial editor screening, anonymous refereeing by two independent expert reviewers, and consequent revision by author(s) when required. In addition to offering authors advice and guidance, peer review ensures that the manuscripts published in EJFB are of the correct quality for the journal’s aims. In the peer review process the identity of both the reviewers and author(s) are always concealed from both parties. The review process is done with the Open Journal System (OJS) software that guarantees automated and auditable electronic registration of all interactions.The content of each peer review is confidential, for use only by EJFB editor and authors. 

Practice papers (Practitioner Forum pieces) submitted to EJFB undergo a single anonymous review process, a conventional method of peer review where the authors do not know who the reviewers but reviewers know the identities of authors.

Reviewers make comments to the corresponding author and recommendations to the handling editor. The Editor-in-Chief together with the deputy editors are responsibles for deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published. 

Please anonymize your manuscript. It is very important that no file contain any information that can identify it with the author(s). 

In case of any signs of misconduct or malpractice, Editor-in-Chief will discuss and will be in contact with the author(s) as soon as possible. 

Find out more about what to expect during peer review process visiting our Publishing ethics & research integrity page.

Originality 

The manuscript must be original and unpublished. The submission has not been previously published (except in the form of an abstract, a published lecture or academic thesis), nor is it before another journal for consideration unless it was rejected.

EJFB is a member of CrossCheck and uses anti-plagiarism tools to guarantee the originality of the submissions  through Ithenticate Plagiarism Checking Software.

Authors should ensure that none of the data presented in the manuscript have been plagiarized, fabricated, manipulated or falsified. All original data are distinguished clearly from previously published data. Also that all references have been properly identified and cited and that the sources of all previously published figures, tables, data, etc., have been cited in the manuscript.

Authorship

All authors should have made substantial contributions to all of the following: (1) the conception and design of the study, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data, (2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content, (3) final approval of the version to be submitted. It must be ensured that no person who meets the for scientific authorship has been ommitted from the list of authors.

Minor contributions such as suggestions related to references, data analysis or editing support, among others, do not guarantee authorship credits. These and other contributions to the paper may be recognized separately in  'Acknowledgements'.

Please note that AI tools, such as ChatGPT and other tools based on large language models cannot be listed as authors. For more information see the policy on Content generated by AI.

Any addition, deletion or rearrangement of author names in the authorship list should be made only before the manuscript has been accepted and only if approved by the Editor-in-Chief. To request such a change, the Editor-in-Chief must receive the following from the corresponding author: (a) the reason for the change in author list and (b) written confirmation (e-mail, letter) from all authors that they agree with the addition, removal or rearrangement. In the case of addition or removal of authors, this includes confirmation from the author being added or removed.

Author contribution statement

For transparency, we encourage authors to submit an ‘Author Contribution' statement outlining their individual contributions to the paper using CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy). 

The 'Author Contribution' statement should include the names of all authors and their CRediT role(s). EJFB encourages authors to specify their contributions in this way.

CRediT information should be provided during the submission process. Below are the definitions of the Contributor Roles Taxonomy:

Term	Definition
Conceptualization	Ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims
Methodology	Development or design of methodology; creation of models
Software	Programming, software development; designing computer programs; implementation of the computer code and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components
Validation	Verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication/ reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs
Formal analysis	Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyze or synthesize study data
Investigation	Conducting a research and investigation process, specifically performing the experiments, or data/evidence collection
Resources	Provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis tools
Data Curation	Management activities to annotate (produce metadata), scrub data and maintain research data (including software code, where it is necessary for interpreting the data itself) for initial use and later reuse
Writing - Original Draft	Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically writing the initial draft (including substantive translation)
Writing - Review & Editing	Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work by those from the original research group, specifically critical review, commentary or revision – including pre-or postpublication stages
Visualization	Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically visualization/ data presentation
Supervision	Oversight and leadership responsibility for the research activity planning and execution, including mentorship external to the core team
Project administration	Management and coordination responsibility for the research activity planning and execution
Funding acquisition	Acquisition of the financial support for the project leading to this publication

An example of 'Author Contribution' statement is the following:

Amaia Maseda: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software. Vanessa Diaz-Moriana: Data curation, Writing- Original draft preparation. Remedios Hernández-Linares: Visualization, Investigation. Valeriano Sanchez-Famoso: Supervision. Txomin Iturralde: Software, Validation. José Carlos Casillas: Writing- Reviewing and Editing.

If authors have  equal contribution, the statement should say: These authors contributed equally to the work.

This information should form part of the ‘Title Page’ file. The information will be published if the paper is accepted.

Language

EJFB accepts manuscripts for evaluation written in English, Spanish or Portuguese. If the manuscript is submitted in a non-English language, authors commit to translate it to English once it is accepted. Please write your text in good English (American or British usage is accepted, but not a mixture of these).

Use of inclusive language

Inclusive language acknowledges diversity, conveys respect to all people, is sensitive to differences, and promotes equal opportunities. Authors should ensure that writing is free from bias, for instance by using plural nouns as default/wherever possible to avoid using "he, she" or "he/she".

Sex and gender equity in research

We encourage authors to include sex and gender considerations where relevant. Authors should use the terms sex (biological attribute) and gender (shaped by social and cultural circumstances) carefully in order to avoid confusing both terms. Given that the terms sex and gender can be ambiguous, authors should explicitly state what definitions of sex and/or gender they are applying. Authors can refer to Sex and Gender Equity in Research guidelines, which offer systematic approaches to the use and editorial review of sex and gender information in study design, data analysis, outcome reporting and research interpretation.

Where appropriate, data should be presented disaggregated. The potential implications of sex and gender on the study results should also be discussed.  Additionally, authors should report how sex and gender were taken into account in the design of the study, whether sex and/or gender differences may be expected. In cases where they cannot, authors should discuss this as a limitation their research's generalizability.

Conflict of interest

All authors must ensure there are no potential or perceived conflicts of interest. They must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work. 

Declaration of interest

Authors should complete a 'Declaration of Interest' statement. This statement should form part of the ‘Title page’ file.

If there are no interests to declare, please write: Declarations of interest: none.

This information will be published if the paper is accepted.

Ethical statement

Publishing ethics relate to the integrity of the publication process itself. EJFB  recommends authors review our information on Publishing ethics & research integrity page.

Studies that use surveys and questionnaires, written consent should be sought wherever possible. Participants must be fully informed about the purpose of the survey, how their data will be used and the extent of their involvement, if the anonymity of participants is guaranteed, their ability to withdraw from the study at any time, etc. All relevant privacy protections related to disclosure of subject identities must also be strictly maintained. If the paper is accepted for publication, the 'Ethical statement' section should explain this and confirm that the appropriate protocols for protecting the rights and privacy of all participants were utilized during the execution of the research.

Unless exempt, all research involving human participants or the collection and/or use of their data requires ethical approval. Data from human participants includes: the use of secondary research data, and human data and records (e.g., genetic, financial, personnel, criminal, or administrative records); samples taken from participants (e.g. blood samples and DNA); the collection and/or analysis of data collected through the use of sensors and other digital ‘tracking’ tools or other online generated content.

Research that involve the use of personal data also requires ethical approval. Personal data included in any part of the paper and in any supplementary materials must be removed unless authors have written permission from participants.

Declaration of ethical statement

If the study needs ethical approval, it should be documented in the submission and must have been obtained before research is carried out. By making the submission, authors must include in the 'Title Page' an ethical statement  that should include the approval number, the date of approval, and the name and localition of the ethics committee or review board. If the paper is accepted for publication, this information should be indicated in the published article as follow: 

Ethical statemet. This study was approved by the NAME OF ETHICS COMMITTEE OR INSTITUTIONAL REVIEW BOARD (APPROVAL NUMBER/ID NUMBER) on APPROVAL DATE.

Any paper describing a study involving humans should also contain an informed consent statement. Written consents should be retained by the author, and copies of these consents, or evidence of their acquisition, must be made available to EJFB upon request. When informed consent has been obtained, it should be indicated in the article. For example: 

Ethical statement. The authors confirm that Informed consent was obtained from all participants involved in the study.

The publised article should also indicate data protection and confirm that the appropriate protocols for protecting the rights and privacy of all participants were utilized during the execution of the research. An example of ethical statement is the following:

Ethical statement. The authors confirm that data collection for the research was conducted anonymously and there was not possibility of identifying the participants.

Generative AI usage in manuscript preparation

If authors use generative artificial intelligence (AI) and AI-assisted technologies (e.g., ChatGPT) in the writing and preparation of their manuscript, their use must be described. Authors ar fully responsible for the accuracy of any information provided by these tools and for correctly referencing any supporting work on which that information depends.

It must be recalled that authorship implies responsibilities and tasks that can only be attributed to and performed by humans who can take ownership of their work, make ethical judgments, and fulfill responsibilities associated with research.  In accordance with COPE’s position statement on AI tools, these tools cannot fulfill the role of an author of an article. Therefore, AI cannot be listed as an author in scientific publications.

In the case of relying on these tools for drafting the manuscript, APA style  already provides a structured format for describing the use of ChatGPT or other AI tools, incorporating in-text citations and proper referencing. Here is an example offered by APA for describing the use of ChatGPT, along with in-text citation and referencing:

In-text Citation:

“When prompted with “Is the left brain right brain divide real or a metaphor?” the ChatGPT-generated text indicated that although the two brain hemispheres are somewhat specialized, “the notation that people can be characterized as ‘left-brained’ or ‘right-brained’ is considered to be an oversimplification and a popular myth” (OpenAI, 2023)¹.

¹OpenAI (2023). ChatGPT (Mar 14 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat

Source: McAdoo, T. (2023, April 7). How to cite ChatGPT. APA Style. Retrieved at: https://apastyle.apa.org/blog/how-to-cite-chatgpt

In addition, it will be necessary to disclose the use of these technologies in a statement. Please note that authors are ultimately responsible and accountable for the contents of the work.

Using AI and AI-assisted technologies in the writing process to improve the language and readability of the manuscript does not require to add a statement.

Declaration on the use of generative AI

Authors must disclose the use of generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in the research process by adding a statement at the end of their manuscript, before the References list. The statement should be placed in a section entitled ‘Statement on the use of generative AI ’. Authors must provide details like the model, version, date of use, and user’s name for thorough transparency. The following text is an example of declaration:

Declaration on the use of generative AI: During the preparation of this work the author(s) used [NAME TOOL / SERVICE] in order to [REASON]. After using this tool/service, the author(s) reviewed and edited the content as needed and take(s) full responsibility for the content of the publication.

In the submission, this information should also form part of the ‘Title Page’ file. 

This declaration does not apply to the use of basic tools for checking grammar, spelling, references, etc. If there is nothing to disclose, there is no need to add a statement.

As mentioned, authors should not list AI and AI-assisted technologies as an author or co-author. Authorship implies responsibilities and tasks that can only be attributed to and performed by humans.

Funding information

Authors are requested to identify who provided financial support for the conduct of the research and/or preparation of the paper and to briefly describe the role of the sponsor(s), if any, in study design (please indicate the grant number); in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the article for publication. If the funding source(s) had no such involvement then this should be stated.

Please supply all details requered by your funding and grant-awaring bodies. This information will be published if the paper is accepted.

Acknowledgments

Authors may recognize those who have supported the authors in the preparation of the manuscript. Acknowledgments should not be included in the manuscript. The acknowledgments will be incorporated into the paper once it is accepted for publication.