The IJQPM strives to publish high-quality analytic, conceptual, and empirical articles that demonstrate a substantial contribution to the broad domain of quality and productivity management. Articles should meet one or more of the following characteristics:
- Present conceptual or conjectural viewpoints that theorize how the contextual and competitive economic environments have changed and/or how management practices might evolve.
- Develop quantitative or analytical optimization models that are supported by theory and are grounded on reality.
- Use empirical methodologies, such as case studies, sample surveys, laboratory experiments, correlational methods, simulation studies, and econometric analysis, appropriately and rigorously.
- Present an international perspective or comparative results at the macro (e.g., industry) or micro (organizational) levels.
- Present relevant and refreshing approaches and/or results in a field of inquiry that broadly falls in the Journal’s area of coverage (see below).
The general area of coverage of IJQPM includes the following topics (the listing is not exclusive of and the topics are not listed in order of preference):
- Productivity and quality improvement strategies.
- Quality and productivity measures, benchmarking, and best practices.
- System design for quality and productivity improvement.
- Quality and performance studies in not-for-profit and governmental organizations.
- Process analysis and work design for quality and performance.
- Evolving quality standards and quality improvement approaches (e.g., TQM, Six Sigma).
- Process capability analysis and statistical process control.
- Technology management in service or manufacturing organizations.
- Quality and performance improvement in project management.
- Performance and quality measures in humanitarian and relief organizations.
- Purchasing and supply chain management.
- Logistics, transportation, and distribution optimization.
- Sustainability, environmental standards and regulatory issues.
- Economic analysis of factors that broadly impact national productivity and quality of life.
REVIEW PROCESS
All manuscripts are first reviewed by the managing editors to ensure a general fit with the scope of the journal, to screen critical faults with the submission, and to assess whether there is sufficient merit for further review. Whether or not the manuscript passes this initial screening, the authors will receive feedback from the editors.
If the manuscript is selected for further review, the editors will select two reviewers for detailed evaluation. The reviewers may be selected from among the members of the editorial board, the reviewers recommended by the authors (since authors have the option to recommend up to three reviewers), and from independently recruited reviewers.
All notifications will be made through email from the editors. The possible decisions are Reject, Major Revision, Minor Revision, and Accept. Authors will receive feedback from the reviewers and editors. In case of revisions, authors have six months to resubmit their work. In their re-submission, they must include a detailed file with “Responses to the Reviewers” summarizing the changes to the manuscript and whether and how the reviewers’ comments were addressed in the revision. In some cases, the reviewers may request access to the original data or code of the computer program utilized. Authors are expected to submit the required elements with the knowledge that these data or programs will not be published or made available to others.
Acceptance of a manuscript is not the end of the process. Instead, it is the start of the final submission and publication process. The managing editors will work with authors to prepare the final version of the paper (e.g., fine tuning format issues, improving the quality of the figures and tables) and to make sure that all copyright issues, disclosures, and required ethical statements are properly handled.
Peer Review Policy
IJQPM follows a double-blind review process, whereby authors do not know reviewers and vice-versa. Authors should respect the confidentiality of the review process and should not reveal themselves to reviewers. Therefore, the manuscript should be double-blind compatible, which means that all explicit indications of the authors’ names and institutions must be removed from the manuscript and from properties of the files submitted. In addition, any acknowledgments should be presented only after the acceptance of the paper and the paper should be written in such a way as not to reveal an author’s identity. For example, instead of using “I extend the results of my prior research (Smith 2010)”, authors should identify their previous work in a neutral manner, as in “This work extends the research in Smith (2010)”. Author names, institutions, and any acknowledgments will be included in the printed article.
ETHICAL PRINCIPLES
IJQPM adheres to the principles outlined by COPE – Committee on Publication Ethics, an international consortium with more than 7,000 members. We encourage all authors to access and follow the International Standards for Authors (Wager E. & Kleinert S., 2011):
- The research being reported should have been conducted in an ethical and responsible manner and should comply with all relevant legislation.
- Researchers should present their results clearly, honestly, and without fabrication, falsification or inappropriate data manipulation.
- Researchers should strive to describe their methods clearly and unambiguously so that their findings can be confirmed by others.
- Researchers should adhere to publication requirements that submitted work is original, is not plagiarized, and has not been published elsewhere.
- Authors should take collective responsibility for submitted and published work.
- The authorship of research publications should accurately reflect individuals’ contributions to the work and its reporting.
- Funding sources and relevant conflicts of interest should be disclosed.
For a brief introduction to some specific ethical issues please refer to the Ethical Guidelines page.
e-VERSION FIRST AND OPEN ACCESS
e-Version First is a feature offered through our web platform. It allows a PDF version of a manuscripts that has been accepted to be posted online prior to their inclusion in the printed version of the journal. Readers can freely access the article and the full citation information will be available online promptly. We aim to publish accepted manuscripts in e-Version First within two weeks of the acceptance date of the final draft.
Open Access is an option offered by many academic journals. Journals that charge an access fee for readers to have access to the full text of their articles (instead of having accessing to abstracts only) often offer an option for authors to buy ‘open access’ to all readers for a fixed fee (typically $1,500-$3,000) while the authors retain the copyright of their articles. IJQPM does not charge an access fee to readers and it does not offer an Open Access option at this time.