How It Works

The Practice Oriented Open Management Science (POOMS) and its journals publish rigorous scientific research spanning all domains of the management field as well as interdisciplinary research that is most importantly, relevant to management practice and beneficial to management practitioners. To this end, article submissions are required to have a minimum of one contributing author who is an active researcher, management academic or management practitioner.

While all submissions to our journals must be original, scientifically rigorous and most importantly, relevant to management practitioners; unlike traditional publishing models and in line with recent advances in scholarly publishing, POOMS journals do not discriminate on articles based on perceived levels of interest, novelty or author affiliations. In other words, we welcome all research including but not limited to replication and confirmatory studies, studies reporting negative or null results, as well as studies by active scholars and practitioners from all over the world irrespective of their institutional affiliations. Similarly, in addition to regular research articles, POOMS journals publish all relevant types of management research including review articles (all sub types), method articles, software tools, letters and opinion articles among others. Finally, POOMS journals are method agnostic and welcome submissions deploying deductive, inductive and mixed methods approaches. As an innovative platform, we monitor innovations in both the general scholarly research and management science domains and integrate new methods, manuscript types, as well as best practices - especially those that hold potential benefit for management practitioner communities, when necessary.

Article submissions to POOMS’ journals are published using our novel and end-to-end transparent ‘practitioner-first’ model. Not only does this model generically emphasize rigor and relevance, it fundamentally prioritizes a relevance-driven and author-driven process. In other words, while rigor is a given requirement, relevance fundamentally drives our entire publishing model and process. In addition, authors are singularly responsible for the content of their submissions, and alongside POOMS editorial staff, share the critical role of identifying and recommending potential reviewers. As one of the five pillars of relevance in management research is ‘timeliness’, POOMS deploys a slightly modified version of the innovative and transparent post-production review process which requires that invited peer review occurs in a mandatory open and transparent manner after the article has been published. POOMS editorial staff and authors both share equal responsibility in ensuring the peer reviews are conducted in a timely and transparent manner, and by independent reviewers. Successful articles that pass the peer review process are indexed in relevance-prioritizing bibliographic databases and indices, such as the novel Management Research Relevance & Impact Index (MARRII) as well as other indices that reward the relevance of management research.

In addition to the equal prioritization of rigor and relevance and being enthusiastically practitioner-oriented, POOMS is also a responsible Open Science publication platform and as such, democratizes access to management science by publishing all articles using an open access model; ensures reproducibility through mandatory open methods and open data policies; and guarantees a rigorous and transparent peer review process through a mandatory post-production open reviews policy.

As mentioned in our publishing philosophy, all manuscript submissions to our journals must be original, scientifically rigorous, and relevant to management practitioners. We do not discriminate on articles based on (a) whether they are replication and confirmatory studies or studies reporting negative or null results; (b) institutional affiliations; (c) type of article (e.g. regular articles, review articles (all sub-types), method articles, software tools, letters and opinion articles among others); (d) type of method used (e.g. deductive, inductive and mixed methods approaches).

However, it is very important to note that at POOMS, only manuscripts that are relevant to practice are accepted for consideration and publication. As a policy, 90% of submissions for each issue of a POOMS journal must contain research questions that are practice-originating and pertain to timely scholarly problems; while 10% may be research questions that are theory/literature-originating but grounded in management practice and present scholarly problems that are timeless in nature.

Also, manuscript submissions must be by either collaborative teams made up of management scholars and practitioners, or by individual academics or verified professional management researchers (also called scholar-practitioners) from the R&D or similar departments of management practice (for our practice-to-research track publications).

• If developed by an individual academic, it must demonstrate documented and significant interaction/consultations with seasoned practitioners especially and at least in the co-determination of the dependent variable and in the contextualization of insights in the discussion section of the study.

• If developed by an individual professional management researcher (scholar-practitioner) coming from practice (for our practice-to-research track), it must demonstrate documented and significant interaction with qualified academics to mainly co-determine the theoretical underpinnings as well as the independent and secondary variables.

• Irrespective of whether a study is by individual academics or individual scholar-practitioners, research problems must originate from management practice for all timely management studies and from theory/literature with grounding in practice for all timeless management studies.

NOTE:

Practitioner-originating problems refer to problems demonstrated to exist in management practice. Such problems must be verified and confirmed by individual management practitioners, management teams or management consultants actively working on real world management problems on behalf of real organizations.

Timely research are those whose findings/insights management practitioners can readily implement, deploy or use to resolve real world management problems in a timely manner. Timeless research on the other hand are those that are often of a theoretical nature that either stimulate critical thinking in management practitioners, or synthesizes large bodies of management literature providing important summary or similar insights that management practitioners can refer to at any time.

All articles submitted to POOMS’ Journals are rapidly screened via a thorough initial pre-publication evaluation check carried out internally by our in-house editorial team after which they are then published using our dual-format publication model with an ‘Awaiting Peer Review’ status.

While each POOMS journal has an editor (typically an academic) and an associate editor (typically a scholar-practtiioner), the role of an editor is very different from what's obtainable in traditional journals.

To overcome editorial bias and optimize fairness, at POOMS, both editors are coordinating editors and do not have the authority to accept or reject an article or to oversee the peer review process. Instead a combination of select discipline-specific members of POOMS’ internal editorial team and select members of POOMS Advisory Board fully representing academia and practice, collectively make these decisions. While the select internal editorial board members primarily make the acceptance/rejection decision, the select members of the advisory board provide strategic input and may provide expert advice occasionally when issues arise with certain article submissions. They also serve as invited reviewers for POOMS Journals.

At this stage of the editorial process, our editorial team evaluates each submission on four pre-publication evaluation criteria to ensure that the article is (a) within the scope of the corresponding POOMS journal, (b) meets our stringent relevance criteria, (c) complies with our ethical, editorial and data policies, and (d) meets the reporting format, language, intelligibility and clarity requirements of our novel dual-output publication model. The fourth criteria is critical in ensuring that during the post-production review process, reviewers and readers alike are able to fully access the content of the published articles.

Submissions lacking in any of the four pre-publication evaluation parameters will be returned to the authors for revision within a given time-frame. If after the given time-frame issues around any or all of the four parameters are not completely and satisfactorily resolved, the article will be rejected.

It is important to note however, that given our inclination to ensure that published articles are relevant to management practitioners, among all four pre-publication evaluation criteria, the preliminary relevance check is the most important check carried out at this stage.

• This preliminary relevance check is done using an internally developed preliminary relevance-check tool based on our 8-item model. This check tool demands the provision of evidence and proof to show that each of the non-tangible relevance criteria has been put in place.

• The preliminary relevance check is also designed to scrutinize and confirm evidence of practitioner contributions to studies or interactions with practitioners at the different stages of the development of the study.

• The preliminary relevance check is carried out by the internal editorial team who unanimously vote to accept or reject a submitted manuscript after the relevance and other pre-publication evaluation checks at this stage.

NOTE:

In line with our ‘publish everything’ end-to-end transparency policy, outcomes of the pre-publication evaluation check (pre-publication evaluation reports) are published alongside the manuscript.

Article submissions to POOMS’ journals are published in a very timely manner using our novel and end-to-end transparent ‘practitioner-first’ model. Not only does this model generically emphasize rigor and relevance, it fundamentally prioritizes a relevance-driven process. In other words, while rigor is a given requirement, relevance fundamentally drives our entire publishing model and process.

Therefore, as one of the factors that guarantee the relevance of management research is timeliness, we believe that while the content of manuscripts must be timely and current, publishers have a major responsibility in ensuring that new management research insights are published and made available to practitioners in a timely manner.

In this light, at POOMS, we publish first and rigorously review post-publication.

What we publish

At POOMS after scaling through the pre-publication evaluation phase, we deploy a relevance-optimized bipartite publication process that entails the publication of two article formats (Poomslays and Scientific Article formats) for each submitted manuscript.

Poomslays Format: A Poomslays is an article format optimized for a management practitioner audience. In essence, Poomslays are stripped of academic jargon; designed to be engaging and appealing to management practitioners in terms of readability, usability and shareability. For Pooms journals, the Poomslays article format is the primary and default publication format; has a permanent DOI and is independently citable.

Scientific Article Format: Our scientific article format is a regular scholarly article optimized for a scholarly audience, but unlike traditional management article formats is relevance optimized. For POOMS journals, this format is a secondary article format that compliments our primary format (Poomslays); is published alongside other complementary materials; has a permanent DOI linked to its corresponding Poomslays and is independently citable.

In addition, alongside our flagship and pioneer bipartite publication formats (Poomslays and Scientific article formats), we also publish through our open data and end-to-end transparency policies, the data underlying the research, as well as the pre-publication evaluation report.

In a nutshell, the following key points about our publication process are noteworthy:

1. Only articles confirmed to be relevant and useful to practitioners in practice are published in POOMS journals.

2. We aim to have a 14-day publication time-frame from submission through pre-publication check to publication using our relevance-optimized and practice-first publication model.

3. We aim to do this using a post-production review process that allows us to publish immediately after a pre-publication check confirms relevance and language clarity.

4. In addition to meeting the relevance requirement for timeliness, our publication model also meets the relevance requirement for readability through the use of our novel pioneer dual-output format that entails the simultaneous generation of two publication outputs per submission. One whose language, design, structure & contents are optimized for maximum relevance to practitioners that readily appeals to a practitioner audience; and another science -optimized output format (infused with more relevance than any traditional management journal does) designed to adequately appeal to a scholarly audience. This is because, at POOMS we place scientific and practitioner-relevance rigor on an equal footing.

5. Unlike traditional management journals , the practitioner-optimized output format is our primary output format, while the science-optimized output format is a secondary and supplemental material.

6. We also publish the underlying research data behind the study and link to it within all output formats.

7. Our publication process incorporates all recent industry best practices.

In addition to the equal prioritization of rigor and relevance and being enthusiastically practitioner-oriented, POOMS is also a responsible Open Science publication platform and as such, democratizes access to management science by publishing all articles using an open access model; ensures reproducibility through mandatory open methods and open data policies; and guarantees a rigorous and transparent peer review process through a mandatory post-production open reviews policy.

POOMS deploys a post-publication, relevance-optimized and open peer review model. In other words, peer reviews are mandatorily open and happen after the article has passed the pre-publication evaluation check and after it has been published. Upon publication of the article, a formal invitation is sent out to expert reviewers to begin the peer review process. To fully integrate relevance into the review process, POOMS peer reviews are carried out by expert reviewers from both academia and practice. Invited reviewers are requested to review the article within a specified time-frame through our fully open, transparent and relevance-optimized peer-review model.

Joining a growing number of publishers using an open reviews model and seeking to standardize peer review terminology for easy comparability, POOMS adopts the ANSI/NISO Standard Terminology for Peer Review as a means of summarily describing our peer review process.

• Identity transparency: All identities visible

• Reviewer interacts with: Editor, other reviewers, authors

• Review information published: Review reports, submitted manuscript, reviewer identities

• Post publication commenting: Open

Identity transparency: Since POOMS uses a post publication open peer review model, it follows that all peer reviews happen on a version of the article that is published making the author(s) names and affiliate institutions fully accessible to readers and reviewers. Therefore, reviewers get to know the identity(ies) of the author(s) and when the reviewers’ reviews are published, our mandatory open review model requires that reviewers’ full names and institutional affiliations are fully disclosed. Thus, authors get to know the reviewers.

Reviewer interacts with: POOMS editorial team interacts with peer reviewers at different stages of the review process. First of all, they first interact when the editorial team formally invites them to serve as reviewers for and secondly, during the review process when the editorial team provides peer reviewers support services. Moreover, Peer Reviewers interact with each other when they read each other's reviews on the same article when their first round of peer reviews are initially published, and can optionally comment on each other's reviews openly using the comment section if they choose to. Finally, while authors are required to respond to the review comments offered by the peer reviewers, they are required to respond while submitting a revised version of their article which will also be published openly alongside the latest version of the article; they can also optionally choose to respond by openly responding to peer-review reports by commenting on the corresponding report. Beside responding to the openly published review reports from reviewers while submitting corrected versions and optionally commenting on such reports using the comments section, it is against our policies for authors to contact reviewers directly, as this may lead to the invalidation of any reviews emanating after direct interactions. Authors and reviewers must also take into cognizance the fact that reviewers’ reports including their identities and affiliations are fully and openly published and the inherent level of rigor is publicly assessed by readers and the general public.

Review information published: Once a submission passes pre-publication evaluation checks, it is formally published kicking off the initial review process. During this stage, as peer review reports are received, members of the POOMS editorial team carry out an editorial check to ensure that the submitted review report complies with POOMS’ Peer Reviewer Code of Conduct, after which the report is published along with the full names and institutional affiliations of the reviewers. In compliance with POOMS commitment to open science, each published peer review report is assigned a DOI to empower it to be independently citable thereby enabling reviewers to receive credit for the effort put into the review process.

Post publication commenting: At POOMS, each publication (article, review reports and responses to review reports) comes with a comment section which facilitates open discussions of an academic and practice-oriented nature typically carried out between or among the authors, reviewers, scholarly or practitioner readers. Discussions carried out in the comments section must be about the article in question and can focus on the scientific content presented in the research article or on the practice implication content of the article.

The Role Of The Internal Editorial Staff And Authors In The Peer Review Of Manuscripts

While the POOMS editorial team works together with authors to identify, suggest and invite suitable reviewers who are expert scholars and practitioners in the field, they both have very clearly demarcated roles. It is the primary role of POOMS’ internal editorial team to identify, confirm and contact suitable peer reviewers. However, POOMS staff may request suggestions for potential peer reviewers from authors, in such cases authors can merely suggest but it is the primary responsibility of the internal editorial team to verify the eligibility of suggested reviewers and to approve/disapprove their inclusion as reviewers for the submission in question. Occasionally, and where necessary, the editorial team may coordinate with and complement the efforts of the authors in searching for and suggesting practitioner reviewers.

Typically, before the initial publication of a submission, the internal editorial team may identify (or request authors to provide) a list of 6 potential reviewers (4 expert scholars and 2 expert practitioners) who meet our core criteria for reviewers.

• In cases where they are requested to make these suggestions from their network, we provide a guide to aid authors in identifying potential scholarly experts - usually ones who have extensively published in the topic area the article is concerned with; as well as practitioners who are visibly acknowledged as experts in the domain either as a result of their long practice tenure within the domain area of the submitted research or as a result of related positions held in reputable organizations.

• Irrespective of the source of the suggested reviewers, authors are only allowed to make the suggestions to the editorial team. It is against our policies for authors to directly contact suggested/actual reviewers as this may lead to the invalidation of any reviews emanating after direct interactions.

A continuous search will be made by the editorial team while simultaneously, a continuous request to suggest potential reviewers will be made by the editorial staff to authors until at least four peer review reports (two scientific and two practice) have been received, checked by the editorial team and published.

Criteria For Selecting Peer & Practitioner Reviewers

At POOMS our criteria for identifying suitable reviewers reflects our core commitment to relevance in management research. As such, two separate criteria are provided to help editorial staff and authors identify suitable scientific reviewers as well as practitioner reviewers.

Editorial staff & authors must apply the following criteria when identifying and selecting scientific reviewers:

1. Scholarly domain expertise: potential scientific reviewers should (a) demonstrate verifiable domain expertise in the key domain(s), topic area(s) or deployed method(s) of the submitted research; (b) have published at least three articles as a single or main author within the domain of the study or on relevant topics topically near that of the submitted study.

2. Depth of scholarly domain experience: potential scientific reviewers must (a) have attained a substantial level of experience reflected in their scholarly qualifications - usually an Assistant Professorship and above; and (b) be formally employed at a recognized higher educational institution or research organization.

3. Relational Independence: potential scientific reviewers who work at the same institution as the authors, or are close collaborators, partners or research group members with the authors, or non-scholarly collaborators associated in other ways to the authors e.g, personally, financially or professionally are not eligible to serve as scientific peer reviewers for obvious conflict of interest reasons. A full disclosure of any conflicts of interest is a mandatory requirement that reviewers must provide on their review reports which, in line with our fully transparent peer review process, will be openly and fully published.

When identifying and selecting practitioner reviewers, editorial staff and authors are required to comply with the following criteria:

1. Practitioner’s domain expertise: potential practitioner reviewers should (a) demonstrate verifiable practice-based domain expertise in the key subject domain(s) or topic area(s) of the submitted research; OR (b) must be actively working as a management consultant within the corresponding management domain, and must have provided at least three consulting services within the past year to the practitioner group for whom the study in question is relevant to.

2. Depth of domain experience in practice: potential practitioner reviewers must (a) have occupied corporate managerial or leadership positions within the corresponding domain/topic area OR (b) have attained partnership at a recognized large and global management consultancy or have occupied the position of principal consultant for an active minimum of four years at a boutique private consulting establishment, and (c) be currently and formally employed at a recognized corporate organization or management consulting firm.

3. Relational Independence: potential practitioner reviewers who work at the same organization as the practitioner author(s) (in cases where a study is co-produced collaboratively by authors from academia and authors from practice), or are close collaborators, business partners or research group members with any of the authors; or non-practitioner collaborators associated in other ways to the authors e.g, personally, financially or professionally are not eligible to serve as practitioner peer reviewers for obvious conflict of interest reasons. A full disclosure of any conflicts of interest is a mandatory requirement that reviewers must provide on their review reports which, in line with our fully transparent peer review process, will be openly and fully published.

The Role Of Reviewers In The Peer Review Process

At POOMS, in line with recent best practices in scholarly peer reviews, reviewers are provided with review guidelines that are tailored to each specific type of research article. In essence, reviewers are asked to (a) determine the scientific soundness of the research and (b) confirm the relevance of the study and its findings to practitioners.

In determining the scientific soundness of a research, reviewers are required to determine:

1. if the study is well positioned theoretically within the context of the current literature

2. if the study's finding is generalizable

3. if the study's findings have been sufficiently and appropriately discussed within the context of extant and current literature

4. if the study provides sufficient information as well as source data to allow replicability and reproduction at every stage of the research

5. if the conclusions of the study are scientifically and where necessary, empirically supported by the findings.

In confirming the relevance of a research, reviewers are required to determine:

1. Descriptive relevance: whether the research question/problem is representative of a real life management situation and of importance to practitioners.

2. Currency relevance: Timeliness - whether the research topic/question/problem and its findings are current or trending in practitioner spheres and whether the study's findings are readily implementable/deployable by management practitioners in resolving the problem in question in real world management settings. Timelessness- whether the aim of the study is to merely stimulate critical thinking among practitioners or to synthesize extant scientific/practitioner literature for the evidential benefit of management practitioners.

3. Goal relevance: whether the dependent variable or focal variable is relevant to the outcome of interest to practitioners.

4. Operational validity: whether the set of independent variables contained in the study can be manipulated in organizational settings.

5. Non-obviousness: whether the results provide useful information or are mere common sense conclusions.

6. Actionable advice for practitioners: whether the study contains clear actionable advice for management practitioners in accordance with its findings.

7. Article readability: whether the manuscript is readable to management practitioners. At POOMS we prefer grade 8 readability levels especially for Poomslays.

Where the research type being reviewed are any of the following: Letters to the editor, Opinion articles or Case reports, peer-reviewers are only asked to review the facts and approaches deployed but will not be required to evaluate, agree or disagree with the author's stated opinion.

Upon conclusion of each review, reviewers are required to provide a review report clearly stating the reviewer's review decision by selecting any one of these three review decisions:

Approved: An approved decision means that the reviewer found the manuscript to be both scientifically rigorous and of adequate relevance to management practitioners. Scientific rigor is reflected in the adequacy and accuracy of the research design, methodology, statistical analysis, results; and that drawn conclusions are supported by analyzed data as reflected in the statistical analysis. Relevance to practitioners is reflected in the satisfaction of all seven relevance criteria mentioned in the preceding section.

Approved with Reservations: This means that while the reviewer judges the manuscript as having scientific and practitioner-relevance rigor and merits publication pending the conduct of certain minor or occasionally, major adjustments or revisions to the manuscript in question.

Not Approved: The reviewer judges the manuscript to be of poor scientific rigor and of low relevance to management practitioners. In other words, the poor scientific rigor results from serious flaws in the manuscript that significantly compromise the study's findings and conclusions; and/or the study's as a whole is not relevant to a management practitioner audience across all seven relevance criteria.

Reviewers especially those who have either awarded an ‘Approved with Reservation’ or ‘Not Approved’ decision are encouraged to review revised versions of the manuscripts submitted by authors in line with the reviewers’ comments to ascertain if the authors have adequately improved the manuscript to warrant a more favorable approval decision or if a ‘Not Approved’ decision should be a final review decision.

Handling Revisions And Article Updates

At POOMS, we deploy our pioneer innovative dual-output publication format which means that after pre-publication checks are completed for a submission, two outputs are published the concise practitioner-friendly format whose content, language, style and article format is relevance-optimized for easy consumption by our primary target: management practitioners; as well as an innovative and relevance-enhanced regular scientific article very similar to traditional scientific publication formats.

Therefore, when review reports are received for a submission, authors are required to address the issues raised by the reviewers on both manuscripts, by publishing revised versions for both. When necessary, authors can additionally respond to review reports using the article's comment section.

In-line with our commitment to the openness and transparency of the scientific process, we make all versions of our dual-output article publications publicly available, and independently citable. However, only the most recent versions of both output types will be displayed by default on the article's web page here on POOMS, with a summary section at the beginning of each new version displaying at a glance, a short history of the revisions and versions to keep readers up-to-speed on the article's development.

Similarly, in-line with recent developments in scholarly publishing, all articles published in POOMS journals are considered ‘living’ in the sense that long after the peer-review process has been successfully completed, authors can at anytime choose to update the information contained in the long finalized article as new significant developments occur within the corresponding field or topic area that have implications for the study's findings.

Key Takeaways About Our Post-Publication Open Reviews Process

• Our review process is open and gives equal priority to both relevance rigor and scientific rigor (based on our equal relevance & scientific rigor review framework)

• Our review process is post-publication to enable us meet the relevance requirement for timeliness.

• As our process is post-publication, open and accords equal priority to relevance rigor and scientific rigor, it demands high levels of transparency, so it is mandatorily open end-to-end (we believe that openness and transparency safeguards rigor).

• Our review process is not biased against negative or non-significant results. We are methods and article-type agnostic.

• Our open review process is not interfered with by an editor-in-chief, eliminating any opportunity for editorial/review bias. To avoid common issues of bias increasingly reported in traditional management research journals and publishers, our process makes it impossible for manuscripts to be discriminated against based on author nationality, race, institutional affiliation, country or region. All manuscripts are equally and transparently evaluated.

• Practitioners are included in our review teams (at least 2 practitioners, 2 academics).

Upon initial publication of an article, and until the initial peer review report is published, the practitioner version of the article is labeled 'Yet-to-be-verified'; while the scientific article version is labeled 'Awaiting Peer Review'. These labels are conspicuously displayed as part of the title of the article for both formats, and in the Open Peer Review summary section on both the HTML and PDF versions of both formats.

Once an initial peer review report is published for a particular submission, the approval status in the review report is displayed on the article. As more review reports are received and published, updated versions of the published manuscript are published to replace the default article and the approval status on the new article version is cumulatively updated on both output formats.

Key Insights About Our Versioning Process

• In addition to open reviews, at POOMS journals, we also maintain an open revisions policy. In other words, all author revisions are published alongside the revised versions of articles through our versoning system.

• LIke our open reviews policy, our open revisions and transparency policy also maximizes relevance and scientific rigor.

• Manuscript revisions are considered the latest versions of a publication and automatically replaces the previous publication or revision as the default article.

• Revision history is tracked through versioning. (CrossMark) for both Poomslays and scientific articles.

• Open revisions & versioning supports our ‘Publish Everything’ principle

• Versioning in combination with post-production publication helps expose management practitioners to ruminating research-based management ideas/insight, even if the final review outcomes for those articles are not successful.

• Unsuccessful final versions of manuscripts may help management researchers/scholars pinpoint management research topics/problems for which there might be no need of studying further.

Once an article has received three ‘Approved’ statuses (two from scholarly reviewers and one from a practitioner reviewer); OR two ‘Approved with Reservations’ statuses (one from a scholarly reviewer and the other from a practitioner reviewer) and two ‘Approved’ status (one each from a scholarly reviewer and a management practitioner respectively), the peer-review process is considered complete, and the final version of the publication will at this stage be indexed in the Management Research Relevance & Impact Index (MARRII) as well as in other suitable bibliographic databases.

POOMS is an early pioneer of the integrated 'Practice-First' management research publication model which prioritizes and emphasizes the publication of management research that is ‘relevant’ to practitioners, while simultaneously upholding scientific rigor by adopting up-to-date best practices and innovations in scientific publishing. As such, unlike traditional management scientific research publishing models which are heavily self-referential (among academics) in nature, and which measure impact primarily via citation counts, POOMS publishing belongs to the school of thought that posits that the real impact of management research is measured via its relevance and usefulness to management practitioners.

It thus follows that conventional indexing systems as they currently exist, are insufficient to measure the impact of 'Practice-First' management research publications. Therefore, in a bid to lead the way in the development of a novel management research publication, assessment, indexation, reward and dissemination ecosystem that equally prioritizes relevance to management practitioners as it does scientific rigor, POOMS has pioneered a novel Practice-First management research impact index - Management Research Relevance & Impact Index (MARRII).

Although pioneered by POOMS, this index is editorially independent of POOMS and is administered by an independent global content selection and advisory board (GCSAB) which evaluates the impact of management research based on its relevance, actual use and perceived usefulness to management practitioners.

All published articles which have successfully completed the peer review process having obtained three ‘Approved’ statuses (two from scholarly reviewers and one from a practitioner reviewer); OR two ‘Approved with Reservations’ statuses (one from a scholarly reviewer and the other from a practitioner reviewer) and two ‘Approved’ status (one each from a scholarly reviewer and a management practitioner respectively) will be indexed in MARRII. Upon indexation, the dual-outputs related to the research as well as all versions of the articles and all associated peer review reports will also be deposited in the index's database.

While we are of the position that relevance-anchored impact assessment and indexing systems such as MARRII and other similar systems already in existence such as Altmetrics and PlumX Metrics, as well as others yet-to-be developed, are superior systems for measuring the impact of management research on management practitioners, we acknowledge that the disruption of the traditional management publishing ecosystem will entail an incremental process rather than a discontinuous one. As such, all scientific article output versions of POOMS articles which have successfully passed the peer review process will be sent for indexation to such traditional indexing bodies and databases such as Google Scholar, Scopus and Web of Science Collections.

Our inclusion of our articles in these indices and databases is not to support these traditional, academia-leaning, self-referential indexation models, but primarily to enhance the discover-ability of POOMS publications both to meet the institutional needs of our authors and to expand awareness about its innovative 'Practice-First' publication ecosystem thereby furthering and accelerating the transition of management science from the traditional citation-centric publishing system to the novel Practice-First relevance-prioritizing and emphasizing system.

However, it should be unequivocally stressed and reiterated that for indexation purposes, POOMS prioritizes Practice-First indices such as MARRII, and other similar indexes and it is our assumption that authors who choose to publish with us are already tired of publishing research that has little to no relevance to management practitioners and are as excited as we are to see their research become optimally relevant to real world management practitioners. Authors who prioritize traditional publication methods and traditional citation-based indexing systems are better off sending their manuscripts to the myriad of publishers already existing in the traditional management research ecosystem.

Finally, all published articles which are unsuccessful during the peer review process having failed to obtain three ‘Approved’ statuses (two from scholarly reviewers and one from a practitioner reviewer); OR two ‘Approved with Reservations’ statuses (one from a scholarly reviewer and the other from a practitioner reviewer) and two ‘Approved’ status (one each from a scholarly reviewer and a management practitioner respectively), will be clearly marked and available on our website as pre-prints.

Irrespective of whether a manuscript passed the peer-review stage or not (and has become a pre-print) authors can retract their manuscripts at any time. However, our three-paths (indexation, pre-prints & retractions) publication policy demands that such papers will still be available on our database with a conspicuous label stating that the manuscript has been retracted.

POOMS dual output article publications are typically published under a CC BY license that allows for the unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction of the concerned articles via any channel as long as credit is duly given to the original work; and attributes copyright of the article to the copyright holder which is typically the author(s) or their affiliated institutions. As POOMS journals deploy a post-publication open reviews model and hence, naturally accommodate multiple article versions, the specific CC BY license applied to a particular version of an article may change due to revisions or periodic updates, we provide the specific CC BY license applicable to each version right beneath the article's abstract.

POOMS implements a mandatory open data policy and as such publishes or encourages the publication of data related to published articles in all of its journals using the CCO license to enable a seamless process of attribution in cases where a combination of datasets with multiple authorship and multiple licenses are being re-used for replication or reproduction studies.

Similarly all peer review reports published alongside specific articles are made fully open and accessible under a CC BY license.

To appreciate the unique citation structure and configuration of POOMS publications, it is important to first reiterate that POOMS’ pioneer Practice-First management research publication model requires that submissions and published outputs are bipartite in structure. In other words, a submission is made up of two inherent formats - one comprehensive relevance-optimized lay summary (called a Poomslays) designed and optimized for the practitioner community and one standard rigor & relevance-optimized scientific article designed and optimized for the scholarly community.

Secondly, POOMS’ post-publication open reviews model maximizes scientific rigor and entails the subsequent publication of revised versions, review reports, and study data related to each submission.

Taking these into consideration, it becomes apparent that standard citation conventions are insufficient to accommodate the diverse publications associated with each submission.

Upon consultations with our inaugural internal editorial team and our inaugural global advisory editorial board, we agreed to develop our own proprietary citation convention for our pioneer relevance-optimized lay summary format designed for practitioner audiences (Poomslays) as well as for our novel rigor & relevance-optimized scientific article format.

In light of the above, the citation conventions for our publications are as follows:

• To cite the Poomslays or Scientific article version of a POOMS article, use the following convention:

Authors, (Year). Article title [article sub-type; version number, peer review status]. POOMSJournal, Volume:, Issue: Publication number (doi)

• To cite a POOMS peer review report, use the following convention:

Reviewer, (Year). Open Peer Review Report For: Article title [version number, peer review status]. POOMSJournal, Volume:, Issue: Publication number (review report doi)

• To cite a dataset used in an article published in a POOMS journals,

As part of the submission process, all articles are required to include where available, the dataset underlying the study's analysis and findings. To do this, authors are required to deposit their dataset in external discipline specific or general repositories.

Information about a dataset is provided in the ‘Open Data’ section of the article including the ‘Title’ and assigned ‘DOI’ of the dataset as well as a reference containing details on how to cite the dataset.