Author Guidelines
Mission
Boston Hospitality Review (BHR) is an interdisciplinary journal devoted to scholarship and reflection about the theory and practice of hospitality as a business activity and cultural phenomenon. It is published for the benefit of academics, industry practitioners, and the interested public.
Focus & Audience
Industry Focus
The journal focuses on industries and behaviors related to accommodation (including hotels and cruise lines), travel (including airlines and railroads), prepared food (including restaurants and retailing), and tourism (including cultural institutions and spectator sports).
The editors are also interested in firms that provide customized products and services to the hospitality sector such as food and beverage (including agriculture, aquaculture, viticulture, and manufacturing), information technology and media (including software and internet), real estate (including development and construction), professional services (including advertising, consulting, design, and law), and financial services (including accounting, investment banking, and venture capital). Authors should explicitly mention the relevance of any such companies to the hospitality sector.
Geographic Focus
BHR is intended for global distribution and the topics discussed will usually transcend geographic boundaries. The word ‘Boston’ in Boston Hospitality Review refers to the publisher (Boston University) and not to an exclusive focus on the Boston area for its content or audience.
The editors will consider articles that have no geographic references (such as a conceptual analysis of branding) or articles that have geographic references encompassing Boston (such as a study of place branding for five cities including Boston). However, the editors will generally reject articles with topics that focus exclusively on (or articles based on data that derive exclusively from) locations elsewhere (such as a study of place branding in China).
Audiences
BHR is intended to appeal simultaneously to academics, industry practitioners, and the informed public. These differing audiences may not consider every article to be equally useful or interesting, but hopefully, everyone will find something valuable in each issue. Academics may find articles that could be distributed to their colleagues or students, practitioners may find articles that could be discussed with their co-workers or employees, and the informed public may find articles that could be shared with their family or friends.
Article Style & Format
Types of Articles
The editors will consider academic papers based on research, scholarly articles that are conceptual or synthetic, essays that are based on informed belief or opinion, and creative work that is predominantly visual or expressive.
Disciplines and Contributors
BHR is an interdisciplinary journal. The editors welcome submissions from academic and non-academic contributors in a variety of areas. These may include hospitality administration, the business disciplines, the humanities and social sciences, the natural and physical sciences, medicine and nutrition, culinary arts and gastronomy, journalism, or the creative arts.
Peer review
BHR is peer-reviewed. This review process is not double-blind. The editor will assign authors to review articles but it is not an exchange of articles. (For example, author #1 reviews author #2; author #2 reviews author #3, author #3 reviews author #1, and the cycle continues until all articles are reviewed.) Submissions are subject to review and approval by the editors and publisher with supplemental review by academic peers and informed practitioners as necessary. BHR is committed to a high level of intellectual sophistication and validity.
Tone
Submissions should have a positive or neutral tone about business and the hospitality sector. Contributors should avoid discussing politics or ideology, but manuscripts on the business aspects of government relations will be considered.
Style
BHR represents a synthesis of the esoteric approach found in academic journals and the more approachable style found in popular media. Authors should review prior issues of BHR that are available on our website.
Contributors may also benchmark against a variety of other publications including academic management reviews (such as
Harvard Business Review or Sloan Management Review), popular business magazines (such as Forbes or Fortune), lifestyle magazines (such as Food & Wine or Travel & Leisure), magazines of current events and opinion (such as Atlantic or New Yorker), history and culture magazines (such as American Heritage or Smithsonian), or specialist publications (such as Gastronomica).
Manuscripts may be submitted using any style and citation system. Articles selected for further consideration will be revised by the author and editors collaboratively, or in some cases by the editor independently, to comply with BHR norms. Authors will be given the opportunity to approve a draft version of any revised article prior to publication.
The final decision to accept an article for publication will not be made until after the manuscript has been edited for style. Authors should be aware that writing quality and style are important criteria in the ultimate decision to accept or reject an article.
Methodology and Citation
The editors will consider research papers based on a variety of scholarly traditions, but they encourage the use of qualitative methodologies.
Manuscripts based on research should include the methodology, data, references, and citations that would normally accompany submissions to peer-reviewed academic journals. However, this information will be abridged or removed during the editorial process. When appropriate, such items may be discussed within a brief textbox insert.
Format
BHR is a multimedia journal that welcomes contributions in various formats, ranging from traditional text to video productions. For this reason, it is published in digital form.
Images
Visual images (such as photographs or artwork) are an important element in the editorial style of BHR. Every submission should include at least one image and/or specific suggestions about images that could be added during the production process. Data exhibits are allowed but do not satisfy this requirement.
Images that accompany textual articles are usually selected by the editors. They are obtained by the editors from the creators or owners of the images, from the inventories of stock image companies, or from historical sources that are exempt from copyright.
Archived versions of articles may not include all images due to copyright restrictions. Authors should plan accordingly when referring to images within the text.
Exhibits
Exhibits (tables, charts, and diagrams) are usually created by the authors and revised by the editors. Contributors of articles that are accepted for publication must submit the original electronic files that were used to create the exhibits.
Originality
All submissions must be original and cannot have been previously published elsewhere.
Length
Submissions may be of any length. The preferred range for text documents is 500 to 2,000 words (not including data exhibits or references).
Proposal & Publishing Process
Compensation and Expenses
There is no compensation for contributors. BHR will not reimburse any expenses incurred by contributors related to authorship or production. Under some circumstances, BHR may acquire rights on behalf of contributors, for images that have been selected by the editors for their articles.
The BHR does not charge author processing charges (APCs) or submission charges.
Proposals
The editors welcome proposals or inquiries from contributors regarding potential articles that have not yet been written. However, any positive reaction to a proposal is tentative and should not be interpreted as a final acceptance for publication.
Decisions
The editors are committed to providing preliminary reactions to contributors within 30 days. However, the final decision about whether to accept an article will be made shortly before its potential publication.
Manuscripts that receive preliminary approval may ultimately be rejected, depending on the outcome of the editing process.
Authors may not receive any reasons for rejection, and may not receive any comments or suggestions from editors or reviewers.
Articles received before the submission deadline for each issue will be considered for that issue. The decision to accept a manuscript and any subsequent editing process may be delayed by the editors, and manuscripts may be postponed to future issues.
Any submissions received after the closing date for a given issue will be considered automatically for publication in future issues.
Publisher
Boston Hospitality Review is published by the School of Hospitality Administration at Boston University.
Copyright Boston University owns the copyright for any material published within BHR.
Authors retain the right to republish their work after it has appeared in BHR, in whole or in part, and may do so automatically, without permission or royalty fee.
This right extends to any original material they submit, for which they have copyright prior to submission, including their own photographs or other visual images.
Reproduction
Contributors must agree to the following terms for the reproduction of material that appears in BHR.
Readers are welcome to share articles within their professional and personal networks. This means that individuals and organizations may reproduce and distribute unabridged articles, without permission or royalty fee, provided that the materials are distributed without charge. This permission extends to text excerpts, provided that attribution is given to the journal and the authors.
However, this permission does not extend to visual excerpts, such as photographs, which may never be reproduced separately from the articles in which they are embedded. For situations in which articles or excerpts are resold for a charge, permission is required and a royalty fee may be imposed. These regulations apply to all forms of reproduction, distribution or transmission, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, digital representation, or any information storage or retrieval system.
Legal
Legal
The words ‘author’ and ‘contributor’ are used interchangeably in this document and refer to the creators of manuscripts. The words ‘article,’ ‘paper,’ ‘manuscript,’ ‘work,’ and ‘material’ are used interchangeably in this document and refer to any materials submitted by authors in any format including text, image, or video.
Authors are individually responsible for the legality of their submissions. This includes issues of copyright, privacy, disclosure, permissions, and methods.
Contributors must specify the source and copyright status of any visual exhibits they provide.
Contributors of articles based on research must certify that their activities were approved or exempted by the Institutional Review Board at their home institution.
Manuscripts may be revised, rewritten, reduced, augmented, or otherwise changed by the editors prior to publication.
Authors may not have the opportunity to review or approve such changes prior to publication and must accept the decisions or judgments of the editors in this regard.
Authors agree to indemnify and hold harmless the publisher and the editors for any breach or negligence related to their submitted materials or the enforcement of the guidelines in this document. Authors further agree to indemnify and hold harmless the publisher and the editors for any legal violations that result solely from any action of the authors themselves.
The act of submitting a manuscript for consideration by the editors shall be deemed to constitute agreement and compliance with the guidelines stated in this document.
The editors do not provide legal advice to contributors.
Submitting Materials
Submission Method
Please read the guidelines above carefully before submitting any materials. The preferred submission method is by our online form or email. Use the words “BHR Submission” in the subject line and attach the manuscript in PDF format. Send your submission to our general email address bhr@bu.edu (not to the editor).
Submissions may also be sent by traditional mail, either as paper documents or as electronic files on a thumb-drive or CD. Electronic files that are 10MB or larger should be submitted using this method. Any materials submitted should be compatible with software typically found on personal computers (either PC or Mac).
The use of formats requiring specialized software may result in rejection of the submission. Submissions by email will be acknowledged immediately by the automatic responder feature in our email system. Submissions by traditional mail will not be acknowledged until a preliminary reaction is given by the editors, perhaps 30 days after receipt.
Materials should not be submitted by fax.
Any materials submitted will not be returned.
Contact
Please read the guidelines above carefully before contacting BHR.
If you have further questions, you are welcome to contact the editor of each issue directly.