Our Framework

Firstly, the integrated framework begins with a manuscript submission process which, unlike the traditional process, accords equal priority to both scientific and relevance rigor. Therefore, it requires that each submission studies a management problem that is appropriately situated in/or emanating from practice; or if emanating from extant literature/theory, must be confirmed as reflective of an actual management problem in practice through documented interactions with expert practitioners within the field in which the problem is situated.

To ensure that the subject of submitted manuscripts reflect real world management problems, this stage of the framework prioritizes manuscripts that have been co-authored by management academics and management practitioners or by management academics in extensive and documented consultations with management practitioners. While such collaborations can happen independently, POOMS provides a networking platform that fosters such management academia-practitioner collaborations.

This stage also categorizes submitted manuscripts according to the nature of the management knowledge insights they claim to produce (timely and timeless). Timely knowledge/insights are readily implementable insights that management practitioners can readily deploy in their decision making or problem resolution processes. Timeless knowledge/insights are ones which may not be readily deployable but synthesizes a large body of management insights or stimulates critical thinking in the minds of management practitioners.

Next, submitted manuscripts go through a relevance-optimized pre-publication check phase. This phase involves a preliminary review of the manuscript for technical(format), scientific and practitioner-relevance.

Unlike traditional management journal publishing models that only conduct technical and scientific checks, our publishing framework places an equal level of importance on the relevance of submitted manuscripts to management practitioners through the use of a robust relevance evaluation system comprising 7 criteria and an in-house (internal) editorial team comprising an equal number of management scholars and management practitioners, unlike the traditional ‘desk review’ process which is primarily made up of management scholars.

Finally, to eliminate editorial bias and maximize transparency, the relevance evaluation system mandates that the evaluation report of the in-house editorial team for this pre-publication evaluation stage, is open and published alongside the manuscript for maximum public scrutiny.

Thirdly, upon passing the in-house pre-publication evaluation phase, the manuscript is published.

To overcome one of the most serious problems traditional management journals have - readability - complex jargon-filled and dense article language and format that has been historically demonstrated to discourage management practitioners from reading management research and accessing its content; our patent-pending framework pioneers a relevance optimized dual-output (bipartite) publication format in line with its equal prioritization of practitioner-relevance and scientific rigor policy. One that is fully practitioner-relevance compliant and fully optimized for readability and content access for a management practitioner audience and another which is also practitioner-relevance compliant but fully optimized for the management scholarly community in the structure, format and management science parlance.

The practitioner-optimized format targeting the practitioner community is published as the main (default) manuscript format, while the format targeting the management scholarly community is published as a complementary format. The format targeting the management scholarly community is published alongside complementary open science elements such as the study's data. Finally the pre-publication review report is also published alongside the dual formats.

Fourthly, upon publishing the manuscript, it is automatically activated for open peer review.

Unlike traditional management journals that use a pre-publication closed peer-review process, our publishing framework uses a post-publication open peer+practitioner review process which allows for the timely publication of research findings while simultaneously maximizing the transparency and rigor of the scientific and practitioner-relevance review process.

In addition, unlike traditional management journals, the review process is conducted by a review team made up of both experienced management scholars and expert management practitioners in equal proportion.

The review process entails a robust and systematic evaluation of the scientific rigor deployed in conducting the research, developing the manuscript, and examining and reporting its findings typically carried out by scholarly reviewers on the one hand, and a robust and systematic evaluation of the practitioner-relevance rigor demonstrated in the manuscript using an 7-item relevance assessment tool, typically carried out by both scholarly and practitioner reviewers, with the practitioner reviewers’ report assigned a higher weight for the practitioner-relevance criteria.

All review reports are open and published.

Fifth, authors revise their manuscripts in line with the reviewers’ comments and submit a revised version of the manuscript and their responses to the reviewers.

These author revisions and responses/comments to the suggested/required revisions stipulated by the peer+practitioner review team are then published with an open revision and versioning policy, to complement the post publication open reviews process, and in compliance with an overarching ‘publish everything’ policy that not only optimizes relevance, but also enhances rigor.

Revisions for each round of peer reviews (where multiple rounds are required) will be published as the default manuscript for the manuscript in question. The initially published manuscript will be referred to as version 1, the first peer-review inspired revision of the manuscript will be referred to as version 2 and so on. Each version replaces the previous version as the default manuscript, while all versions (or the versioning history) will be accessible to readers.

The peer-review process ends when at least two scholars and one practitioner approve the manuscript.

Sixth, once the manuscript successfully passes the peer-review stage (with at least 2 scholars and one practitioner approving the manuscript), the manuscript begins the final process of being included in the final issue collection. In other words, manuscripts successful at the peer-review stage will be included in the final issue collection, while manuscripts which fail to pass the peer review stage will be available on our website as pre-prints.

Only manuscripts that pass the peer+practitioner review process and are included in the issue collection are indexed in indices where the journal is listed. Due to our practitioner-relevance focus, POOMS prioritizes indexation in indices such as MARRII that objectively measure the practitioner-relevance of management science and the impact of relevant management science on management practitioners as opposed to citation based indices.

Pre-prints are clearly labeled, and are not included in the indices, but remain on our website to serve two functions: (a) to be accessible to practitioners so they can gain exposure into upcoming or ruminating management ideas that are currently not scientifically verified, and (b) to help management scholars gain exposure to the research topics being examined by other scholars, and most especially, to give them quick insights that may guide them regarding topics to avoid, topics that are inadequately studied or the inadequacies of methodologies deployed, and hence inspiring a reformulation of the study contexts, methodologies or approaches to obtain stronger indexable evidence in the future.

Irrespective of whether a manuscript passes 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.

Finally, all research published in POOMS' journals are living in the sense that months, years or decades after a manuscript has been published and indexed, authors wanting to update insights taking into account temporal changes that may have occurred since the manuscript was indexed, can do so using our continuous update system.

This effectively makes our manuscripts living manuscripts as they can be updated over the lifespan of the studied phenomenon. This step of the framework is optional and will only be activated as necessary.

Updated manuscripts have three additional sections: one that describes changes that have occurred between the period the manuscript was last updated and the current update, the new context/data/method/analysis employed and a results and discussion section.