Information For Authors

The European Journal of Family Business (EJFB) is a  peer-reviewed academic journal devoted to the publication of internationally relevant research practice-oriented articles pertaining to business-owning family, family business, and allied fields. The Spanish Association of Family Enterprise Researchers (SAFER) collaborates closely with EJFB.

EJFB aims to build bridges among scholars and practitioners by publishing original research with practical interest for family firms. The journal is intended to enhance the communication between academia and practice by offering insights and advices of interest for business practice based on rigorous research.

EJFB is a Diamond open access journal. Diamond Open Access refers to a scholarly publication model in which journals and platforms do not charge fees to either authors or readers. EJFB provides fully open access to its content, which means that all content will be permanently available for free without delay.

Authors are not asked to pay Article Processing Charges (APC) for this journal in any case.  There are no submission fees, publication fees or page charges for this journal. Contents published on EJFB are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

The journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and its ethics statement is based on COPE’s Best Practice Guidelines.

EJFB has a periodicity of two (2) issues per year: June and December.

EJFB encourages authors 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.

EJFB accepts manuscripts for evaluation written in English, Spanish or Portuguese. Please note that EJFB only publishes manuscripts in English. If the manuscript is submitted in a non-English language, authors commit to translate it to English once it is accepted. 

During the submission process, authors will be asked to select a category for their paper. Manuscript types acceptable for peer review are listed below:

Research paper. 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 annex at the end of the document to provide smooth reading of article, thus reinforcing its orientation to business practice.

Review article. 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. Review articles are usually up to 11,000 words. The practical implications and recommendations sections should be well developed.

New or Data-driven Insight. 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 debate. This is a scholarly article written to clarify or respond to the content of an insight article previously published in this journal. The editorial board may accept other formats (e.g. two manuscripts by different authors presenting conflicting views on a specific topic). 

Perspective article. 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.

Essay and Commentary article. 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 piece. These 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, Essays & Commentaries, and Practitioner Forum pieces submitted to EJFB are indicatively 4,000 words long, including references.

Before you submit your article, please read Author guidelines section.