Maritime Business Review

Before you start

For queries relating to the status of your paper pre decision, please contact the Editor or Journal Editorial Office. For queries post acceptance, please contact the Supplier Project Manager. These details can be found in the Editorial Team section.

Submit to the journal

Submissions to Maritime Business Review are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts, the online submission and peer review system. Registration and access is available at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/mabr. Full information and guidance on using ScholarOne Manuscripts is available at the Emerald ScholarOne Manuscripts Support Centre: http://mchelp.manuscriptcentral.com/gethelpnow.

Registering on ScholarOne Manuscripts

If you have not yet registered on ScholarOne Manuscripts, please follow the instructions below:

• Please log on to https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/mabr
• Click on "Create Account"
• Follow the on-screen instructions, filling in the requested details before proceeding
• Your username will be your e-mail address and you have to input a password of at least 8 characters in length and containing two or more numbers
• Click "Finish" and your account will have been created.

Submitting an article to MABR on ScholarOne Manuscripts

• Please log on to MABR at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/mabr with your username and password. This will take you through to the welcome page (to consult the Author Guidelines for this journal, click on the homepage link in the "Resources" column)
• Click on the "Author Centre" button
• Click on the "Submit a manuscript" link which will take you through to the Manuscript Submission page
• Complete all fields and browse to upload your article
• When all required sections are completed, preview your PDF proof
• Submit your manuscript

Review process

Each paper submitted is reviewed by at least two external reviewers and the Editors to assess its suitability to the journal. All manuscripts which format does not follow the guidelines indicated below will be rejected without further consideration.

Author responsibilities

Our goal is to provide you with a professional and courteous experience at each stage of the review and publication process. There are also some responsibilities that sit with you as the author. Our expectation is that you will:

• Respond swiftly to any queries during the publication process.
• Be accountable for all aspects of your work. This includes investigating and resolving any questions about accuracy or research integrity.
• Treat communications between you and the journal editor as confidential until an editorial decision has been made.
• Read about our research ethics for authorship. These state that you must:
  • Include anyone who has made a substantial and meaningful contribution to the submission (anyone else involved in the paper should be listed in the acknowledgements).
  • Exclude anyone who hasn’t contributed to the paper, or who has chosen not to be associated with the research.
  • In accordance with COPE’s position statement on AI tools, Large Language Models cannot be credited with authorship as they are incapable of conceptualising a research design without human direction and cannot be accountable for the integrity, originality, and validity of the published work. The author(s) must describe the content created or modified as well as appropriately cite the name and version of the AI tool used; any additional works drawn on by the AI tool should also be appropriately cited and referenced. Standard tools that are used to improve spelling and grammar are not included within the parameters of this guidance. The Editor and Publisher reserve the right to determine whether the use of an AI tool is permissible.
• If your article involves human participants, you must ensure you have considered whether or not you require ethical approval for your research, and include this information as part of your submission. Find out more about informed consent.

Emerald’s Policy on AI Usage

Emerald’s overarching principles of AI usage:

1) Authors and peer reviewers are responsible and accountable for the accuracy and integrity of their work.&

2) AI tools and technology must be used responsibly and transparently.

3) AI tools and technology should not replace human involvement in the publication process but instead supplement it.

Copywriting (creating, drafting, or writing) any part of a submission using generative AI tools and technology to generate new material is not permitted.

Copy-editing (correcting, editing, formatting, modifying, or refining) all or part of an author’s own original existing work using generative AI tools and technology the content to improve its structure and the clarity of the language and grammar is permitted, ensuring users adhere to the following overarching principles.

Emerald’s full policy, including examples of use cases can be found on our Publishing Ethics page.

Research and publishing ethics

Our editors and employees work hard to ensure the content we publish is ethically sound. To help us achieve that goal, we closely follow the advice laid out in the guidelines and flowcharts on the COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) website.

We have also developed our research and publishing ethics guidelines. If you haven’t already read these, we urge you to do so – they will help you avoid the most common publishing ethics issues.

A few key points:

• Any manuscript you submit to this journal should be original. That means it should not have been published before in its current, or similar, form. Exceptions to this rule are outlined in our pre-print and conference paper policies.  If any substantial element of your paper has been previously published, you need to declare this to the journal editor upon submission. Please note, the journal editor may use Crossref Similarity Check to check on the originality of submissions received. This service compares submissions against a database of 49 million works from 800 scholarly publishers.
• Your work should not have been submitted elsewhere and should not be under consideration by any other publication.
• If you have a conflict of interest, you must declare it upon submission; this allows the editor to decide how they would like to proceed. Read about conflict of interest in our research and publishing ethics guidelines.
• By submitting your work to Emerald, you are guaranteeing that the work is not in infringement of any existing copyright.
• If you have written about a company/individual/organisation in detail using information that is not publicly available, have spent time within that company/organisation, or the work features named/interviewed employees, you will need to clear permission by using the consent to publish form; please also see our permissions guidance for full details. If you have to clear permission with the company/individual/organisation, consent must be given either by the named individual in question or their representative, a board member of the company/organisation, or a HR department representative of the company/organisation.
• You have an ethical obligation and responsibility to conduct your research in adherence to national and international research ethics guidelines, as well as the ethical principles outlined by your discipline and any relevant authorities, and to be transparent about your research methods in such a way that all involved in the publication process may fairly and appropriately evaluate your work. For all research involving human participants, you must ensure that you have obtained informed consent, meaning that you must inform all participants in your work (or their legal representative) as to why the research is being conducted, whether their anonymity is protected, how their data will be stored and used, and whether there are any associated risks from participation in the study; the submitted work must confirm that informed consent was obtained and detail how this was addressed in accordance with our policy on informed consent.  
• Where appropriate, you must provide an ethical statement within the submitted work confirming that your research received institutional and national (or international) ethical approval, and that it complies with all relevant guidelines and regulations for studies involving humans, whether that be data, individuals, or samples. Specifically, the statement should contain the name and location of the institutional ethics reviewing committee or review board, the approval number, the date of approval, and the details of the national or international guidelines that were followed, as well as any other relevant information. You should also include details of how the work adheres to relevant consent guidelines along with confirming that informed consent was secured for all participants. The details of these statements should ensure that author and participant anonymity is not compromised. Any work submitted without a suitable ethical statement and details of informed consent for all participants, where required, will be returned to the authors and will not be considered further until appropriate and clear documentation is provided. Emerald reserves the right to reject work without sufficient evidence of informed consent from human participants and ethical approval where required.

Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines

We are a signatory of the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines, a framework that supports the reproducibility of research through the adoption of transparent research practices. That means we encourage you to:

• Cite and fully reference all data, program code, and other methods in your article.
• Include persistent identifiers, such as a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), in references for datasets and program codes. Persistent identifiers ensure future access to unique published digital objects, such as a piece of text or datasets. Persistent identifiers are assigned to datasets by digital archives, such as institutional repositories and partners in the Data Preservation Alliance for the Social Sciences (Data-PASS).
• Follow appropriate international and national procedures with respect to data protection, rights to privacy and other ethical considerations, whenever you cite data. For further guidance please refer to our research and publishing ethics guidelines. For an example on how to cite datasets, please refer to the references section below.

Third party copyright permissions

Prior to article submission, authors should clear permission to use any content that has not been created by them.

Failure to do so may lead to lengthy delays in publication. Emerald is unable to publish any article which has permissions pending. The rights Emerald requires are:

1. Non-exclusive rights to reproduce the material in the article or book chapter.
2. Print and electronic rights.
3. Worldwide English language rights.
4. To use the material for the life of the work (i.e. there should be no time restrictions on the re-use of material e.g. a one-year licence).

When reproducing tables, figures or excerpts (of more than 250 words) from another source, it is expected that:

1. Authors obtain the necessary written permission in advance from any third party owners of copyright for the use in print and electronic formats of any of their text, illustrations, graphics, or other material, in their manuscript. Permission must also be cleared for any minor adaptations of any work not created by them.
2. If an author adapts significantly any material, the author must inform the copyright holder of the original work.
3. Authors obtain any proof of consent statements
4. Authors must always acknowledge the source in figure captions and refer to the source in the reference list.

Authors should not assume that any content which is freely available on the web is free to use. Authors should check the website for details of the copyright holder to seek permission for re-use.

We are a member of the International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers (STM) and participate in the STM permissions guidelines, a reciprocal free exchange of material with other STM publishers.  In some cases, this may mean that you don’t need permission to re-use content. If so, please highlight this at the submission stage.

Please take a few moments to read our guide to publishing permissions to ensure you have met all the requirements, so that we can process your submission without delay.

Open access information

This is a sponsored open access journal, also referred to as diamond open access. Because it is published in partnership with an organisation, your article will be published open access, but you will not have to pay an APC (article processing charge) - publication is free. Your article will be published with a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 user licence, which outlines how readers can reuse your work.

You can find out more about our open access routes and read our FAQs on our open research page. 

Find out about open

Informed consent

If your article involves human participants, you must ensure you have considered whether or not you require ethical approval for your research, and include this information as part of your submission. Find out more about informed consent.

Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)

Emerald supports the development of, and practical application of consistent ethical standards throughout the scholarly publishing community.

All Emerald’s journals and Editors are members of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) which provides advice on all aspects of publication ethics. Emerald follows the Committee’s flowcharts in cases of research and publication misconduct, enabling journals to adhere to the highest ethical standards in publishing. Find out more on Emerald’s publication ethics policy.

Manuscript support services

We are pleased to partner with Editage, a platform that connects you with relevant experts in language support, translation, editing, visuals, consulting, and more. After you’ve agreed a fee, they will work with you to enhance your manuscript and get it submission-ready.

This is an optional service for authors who feel they need a little extra support. It does not guarantee your work will be accepted for review or publication.

Visit Editage

Manuscript requirements

Before you submit your manuscript, it’s important you read and follow the guidelines below. You will also find some useful tips in our structure your journal submission how-to guide.

Submit your manuscript

There are a number of key steps you should follow to ensure a smooth and trouble-free submission.

Double check your manuscript

Before submitting your work, it is your responsibility to check that the manuscript is complete, grammatically correct, and without spelling or typographical errors. A few other important points:

• Give the journal aims and scope a final read. Is your manuscript definitely a good fit? If it isn’t, the editor may decline it without peer review.
• Does your manuscript comply with our research and publishing ethics guidelines?
• Have you cleared any necessary publishing permissions?
• Have you followed all the formatting requirements laid out in these author guidelines?
• Does the manuscript contain any information that might help the reviewer identify you? This could compromise the anonymous peer review process. A few tips:
  • If you need to refer to your own work, use wording such as ‘previous research has demonstrated’ not ‘our previous research has demonstrated’.
  • If you need to refer to your own, currently unpublished work, don’t include this work in the reference list.
  • Any acknowledgments or author biographies should be uploaded as separate files.
  • Carry out a final check to ensure that no author names appear anywhere in the manuscript. This includes in figures or captions.

You will find a helpful submission checklist on the website Think.Check.Submit.

The submission process

All manuscripts should be submitted through our editorial system by the corresponding author.

A separate author account is required for each journal you submit to. If this is your first time submitting to this journal, please choose the Create an account or Register now option in the editorial system. If you already have an Emerald login, you are welcome to reuse the existing username and password here.

Please note, the next time you log into the system, you will be asked for your username. This will be the email address you entered when you set up your account.

Don't forget to add your ORCiD ID during the submission process. It will be embedded in your published article, along with a link to the ORCiD registry allowing others to easily match you with your work.

Don’t have one yet? It only takes a few moments to register for a free ORCiD identifier.

Visit the ScholarOne support centre for further help and guidance.

Final submission

Please ensure that the manuscript is complete, grammatically correct and without spelling or typographical errors. Before submitting, authors should check their submission completeness using the available Article Submission Checklist. Proofs will be e-mailed prior to publication.

What you can expect next

You will receive an automated email from the journal editor, confirming your successful submission. It will provide you with a manuscript number, which will be used in all future correspondence about your submission. If you have any reason to suspect the confirmation email you receive might be fraudulent, please contact the journal editor in the first instance.

Post submission

Review and decision process

Each submission is checked by the editor. At this stage, they may choose to decline or unsubmit your manuscript if it doesn’t fit the journal aims and scope, or they feel the language/manuscript quality is too low.

If they think it might be suitable for the publication, they will send it to at least two independent referees for double anonymous peer review.  Once these reviewers have provided their feedback, the editor may decide to accept your manuscript, request minor or major revisions, or decline your work.

While all journals work to different timescales, the goal is that the editor will inform you of their first decision within 60 days.

During this period, we will send you automated updates on the progress of your manuscript via our submission system, or you can log in to check on the current status of your paper.  Each time we contact you, we will quote the manuscript number you were given at the point of submission. If you receive an email that does not match these criteria, it could be fraudulent and we recommend you contact the journal editor in the first instance.

If your submission is accepted

Copyright

Articles submitted to the journal should not have been published before in their current or substantially similar form, or be under consideration for publication with another journal. Please see Emerald's originality guidelines for details. Authors submitting articles for publication warrant that the work is not an infringement of any existing copyright and will indemnify the publisher against any breach of such warranty. The editor may make use of iThenticate software for checking the originality of submissions received.

All accepted authors are sent an email with a link to a licence form. This should be checked for accuracy, for example whether contact and affiliation details are up to date and your name is spelled correctly, and then returned to us electronically. 

Proofing and typesetting

Once we have received your completed licence form, the article will pass directly into the production process. We will carry out editorial checks, copyediting, and typesetting and then return proofs to you (if you are the corresponding author) for your review. This is your opportunity to correct any typographical errors, grammatical errors or incorrect author details. We can’t accept requests to rewrite texts at this stage.

When the page proofs are finalised, the fully typeset and proofed version of record is published online. This is referred to as the EarlyCite version. While an EarlyCite article has yet to be assigned to a volume or issue, it does have a digital object identifier (DOI) and is fully citable. It will be compiled into an issue according to the journal’s issue schedule, with papers being added by chronological date of publication.

How to share your paper

Visit our author rights page to find out how you can reuse and share your work.

To find tips on increasing the visibility of your published paper, read about how to promote your work.

Correcting inaccuracies in your published paper

Sometimes errors are made during the research, writing and publishing processes. When these issues arise, we have the option of withdrawing the paper or introducing a correction notice. Find out more about our article withdrawal and correction policies.

Need to make a change to the author list? See our frequently asked questions (FAQs) below.

Archiving policy

Emerald provides perpetual access for all eJournal and book content by working with digital preservation schemes Portico, LOCKSS and CLOCKSS. Find out more about Emerald’s archiving policy.

Frequently asked questions

Need to make a change to the author list? See our frequently asked questions (FAQs) below.