Impact Pathways - a new type of article in IJOPM

International Journal of Operations & Production Management

Impact Pathways
We are pleased to announce the launch of a new and really exciting initiative unique to IJOPM. The Impact pathways section (IPS) aims to attract a new type of article that stands apart from our conventional submissions. They are short 3000 word limit articles that clearly explain a contemporary issue, problem or challenge directly relevant to our domain. That is being faced by business leaders and/or policymakers and which we need to bring to the attention of our readership. We want author(s) telling the IJOPM community new things, about what they are finding out now through their research with industry and organizations rather than telling us something about what has happened in the past.

We are looking for submissions with the following characteristics:
1) That are interesting to read about and which advance the field of operations and supply chain management (OSCM) by suggesting future research topics and/or directions;
2) that create scholarly and wider (business/policy) impact for IJOPM;
3) that create further opportunities for the development into full empirical research submissions (e.g. they offer a further point of contact with organisations and provide an opportunity to co-author with industry and government); and
4) that outline what methods are being used to identify the right problems/challenges, gather data and build actionable solutions.

We are looking at change and change as it happens rather than reflecting on practice which occurred several months or years ago. However, we are not asking author(s) to tell us about how you are measuring an impact or change through your engagement with practitioners. Neither do we want you reporting some experimental findings from your involvement with a company. Rather we are interested in author(s) reporting real-life issues as they impact on practice, thereby leading to a problem, challenge and/or opportunity we need to know about in our journal, whether that be technological, cultural, social, political, organisational, supply chain, operational or process related.

Author(s) who are successful in publishing their work in the Impact Pathways Section will significantly enhance their reputation and expertise for working on a specific topic at the cutting edge of what OSCM impact is and means. Through the promotion of your work by the publishers and the editors, your work will be disseminated to an extensive global network of practitioners and policy-makers. Thereby, opening up links and opportunities to further develop your impact agenda work, both with academic and non-academic communities. Given the esteemed reputation of IJOPM for high quality and world leading scholarship and the unique novelty of this initiative, we believe that successful author(s) will attract citations for their IPS publication. Finally, this section will enable authors to be quickly recognised by the OSCM community as experts in particular sectors and sub-fields of operations and supply chain management (i.e. projects, manufacturing, services, design, technology, process management) and emerging topics and challenges.


Guidelines: The ideal length of the submissions is 3000 words  (following formatting guidelines by IJOPM, found here). These works will be fast-tracked through the editorial system and we plan that the time from when the piece is written and first submitted to acceptance will be approximately 8 weeks. The submission will be reviewed by section editors to determine whether the work meets quality specifications and topic appropriateness. Submissions will first go through the chief editor and then, after the initial screening process, come to the section and/or advisor for blind review.

Authors who submit a manuscript to this section should also note the following:
•    Agree that their manuscript is not under review at any other journal or outlet, and agree to not submit their manuscript elsewhere during the review process.
•    Declare that their manuscript does not report results that have been previously published.  For instance, a practice-oriented paper summarising the contribution to practice based on an academic paper that has already been published.
•    Earlier or concurrent conference presentation of manuscripts does not disqualify a manuscript from submission.
•    Your submission needs be sufficiently different from any media pieces already published by the author(s).
•    Attest that the manuscript has not been previously submitted to IJOPM for review.
•    Ensure that working papers and/or any similar versions of submitted manuscripts are removed from university or any other websites during the review process.

Section Editors
Gary Graham & Jan Godsell
Advisor Editors
Jens Roehrich & Ann Vereecke