International Small Business Journal
The International Small Business Journal (ISBJ) is a peer-reviewed academic journal that covers the fields of economics and entrepreneurship, especially small businesses. The journal's editor-in-chief is Robert Blackburn (Kingston University). It was established in 1982 and is currently published by SAGE Publications. The ISBJ is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). About. The journal was founded in 1982, under the former name European Small Business Journal, but had been changed to the International Small Business Journal in 1983. It was founded and originally published by Clive Woodckck, a journalist  for "The Guardian". The papers published in the ISBJ are submitted by international academics (from a broad range of disciplines) covering theoretical, methodological and empirical studies of small firms. The ISBJ places emphasis on research excellence in the field of enquiry, to publish the highest quality original research papers, on small business and entrepreneurship. The ISBJ endeavours to provide a critical forum for world class contributions on the analysis of small firms as the articles in the ISBJ important to academics, policy makers, practitioners and analysts in government and organizations, seeking to understand small businesses, entrepreneurial processes and outcomes. Abstracting  and indexing. The journal is abstracted and indexed in Current Contents, the Business Periodicals Index, the International Bibliography of the Social Sciences, Scopus, and the Social Sciences Citation Index. According to the "Journal Citation Reports", its 2016 impact factor is 3.677, ranking it 24th out of 121 journals in the category "Business" and 26th out of 193 journals in the category "Management". Virtual Issues. The "International Small Business Journal" has brought together several collections of research, previously published in the journal, in ‘virtual issues’ centered on key themes in the field. Recent virtual issues include "Female Entrepreneurship", which explores the  journal’s contribution to female entrepreneurship research, and "Remembering Jason Cope" which celebrates the life, and academic legacy, of the late entrepreneurship scholar. Best Paper Award. In 2008 "The International Small Business Journal" founded the ISBJ Best Paper Prize, which is awarded annually to the authors of one paper, published in the journal, in the year of the award. The papers are assessed in terms of "focus […]; theoretical positioning; methodological rigour; policy and or practitioner implications; and interest for future research activity". The ISBJ Best Paper Prize of is currently awarded to: Nick Williams and Tim Vorley (2016) for their  paper on "Between petty corruption and criminal extortion: How entrepreneurs in Bulgaria and Romania operate within a devil’s circle".