Impact articles
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How can we as a community affect a change within publishing that showcases impact achieved and facilitates a new generation of scholars for whom demonstrating impact will be hard-baked into expectations throughout their careers?
The European Journal of Marketing (EJM) is stepping up to this challenge and has introduced a new type of submission called impact articles.
This new kind of article aims to celebrate and make explicit the impact of research. As such, it complements existing types of articles that might be published on the research itself.
Watch the video to find out more.
As a leading journal in the field, the European Journal of Marketing is firmly committed to this impact article initiative and delighted to welcome further submissions. Beyond the obvious drive by the top accrediting agencies for business schools to encourage a broadened view of the impact of our scholarly work, the core impetus for more attention on multifaceted impact affords scholars in marketing a bridge over to a wide range of constituents for whom our work can add real value. I hope you will consider participating in the future.
We know that you care passionately about the impact of your work. This new article type provides you with a platform to celebrate that impact, share learnings and good impact practice, and lead on debates about impact within and beyond our community. We encourage you to submit your impact article from across the wide and diverse field of marketing, including interdisciplinary approaches, and especially with non-academic partners.
What is an impact article?
An impact article structure is different to a standard research article so that it explicitly focuses on understanding, designing, demonstrating and tracking impact.
1. Problem generation and impact to be achieved
The article should open with insights into how the non-academic problem was identified and who was involved in that identification process. Conceptual, literature review approaches to defining the problem should be avoided. Instead, the problem should be developed in terms of what needs to change in order to address that problem. Is this a change at the individual, community, social, economic or environmental/global level? What makes this change valuable and to whom?
2. Working with stakeholders
A section should be included on which stakeholders you worked with and in what ways. You may also include a discussion on how you identified the skills/disciplines/stakeholder groups that you needed to work with. Reflections on the opportunities and challenges of working with stakeholders are useful in terms of understanding how working with stakeholders can enrich the way in which impact is understood, investigated and achieved. Were your (non-academic) researchers involved in the research process and/or in facilitating the impact to be achieved?
3. The knowledge exchange, (co-)creation and learning process
As you progressed with your research, throughout the whole process, there will have been opportunities to co-create with stakeholders and learn about impact. You may even have needed to completely change the way in which you understood impact. You will have used different knowledge exchange methods to further your goals, either to directly achieve impact or to communicate about it. This section should reflect the knowledge exchange and (co-)creation process and the learning from that process.
4. Impact outcomes
In this section, you would present the evidence of your impact, including how you defined that impact (linking with section 1), identified timing of change, and how you measured and tracked impact. Crucially, the challenges that you faced and either were or were not able to overcome would be valuable to discuss (for example in collecting and tracking probably multiple sources of data over time). Importantly, you may also identify unintended impacts.
5. The ethics of impact
This section covers the ethics of the social and economic impact brought about both during and as an immediate conclusion of the research process and the enduring impact afterwards. Authors should consider key questions. Who defined what impact is, in what ways it is valuable, and to whom? Have all stakeholders been able to equally contribute? Have all implications of the change(s) been considered? What are the implied commitments made to and between stakeholders during the research and/or beyond the life of a project?
Interested in submitting?
If you have an idea for an impact article and your research contributes to the field of marketing, please email Professor Debbie Isobel Keeling to discuss your proposal further.
European Journal of Marketing
The European Journal of Marketing offers unparalleled insights on new research, current practice and future trends so that practitioners and academics can gain a useful overview of marketing activity and apply that knowledge to develop appropriate strategies.
About 'are you in?'
Our sector makes an incredible difference to the world, but it’s shrouded in unhelpful traditions, outdated measures of impact and barriers to participation.
We’re seeing green shoots of progress, but significant change will require the entire sector to commit and act. This is why we’ve relaunched our Real Impact Manifesto which asks you to join us in working towards a fairer, more equitable environment where research can have a real-world impact and those within it can reach their full potential. We outline six commitments where we can work together for change – will you join us?
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