Economics and Marketing Professors Relaunch Leading Academic Journal

Kamal Upadhyaya, Ph.D., an economics professor, and Subroto Roy, Ph.D., a marketing professor at the University of New Haven, have been named co-editors for American Business Review, a multidisciplinary academic business journal. They are confident it will foster important research while enhancing the reputation of the University to a global audience. They discuss relaunching the journal and the impact they hope it makes on business leaders, scholars, educators, and students around the world.

Renee Chmiel: Please tell us about American Business Review.

Kamal Upadhyaya, Ph.D., and Subroto Roy, Ph.D.: American Business Review (ABR) is a leading academic business journal with a global audience of businesses, business faculty, and business students. Manuscripts published can be from any discipline or multidisciplinary area, as long as the ABR audience takeaways are clearly articulated.

Relaunched in 2020, ABR is published by the University of New Haven, and the relaunch coincided with the Centennial celebration of the University. ABR is rated as an A-level journal in the Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC) list. It is indexed in Scopus, DOAJ, Econlit, RePEc, ProQuest ABI/INFORM, EBSCO MainFile, and Google Scholar.

We welcome submissions of manuscripts by researchers, and scholars from all disciplines provided the manuscript speaks to one or more of the global ABR audiences. These audiences are (1) Businesses (2) Business faculty (3) Business students. We define businesses to include small, medium and large businesses in any country.

Our definition of businesses also includes organizations in the nonprofit sector and non-governmental organizations. We welcome submissions from global business faculty, including all faculty who teach at any level (including bachelor’s, master’s, doctorate, or executive programs). Similarly, all full-time and part-time business students and alumni are also welcome to submit their scholarly work.

Manuscripts that are conceptual or empirical are both welcome. We welcome both qualitative and quantitative methodologies for empirical manuscripts.

RC: What are your goals for ABR?

KU & SR: Our hopes and goals for ABR are to primarily enhance the scholarly reputation of the Pompea College of Business and the University of New Haven in the global academic and professional business world. We are confident that, due to the high quality of articles in the ABR and because it is open access, authors can expect wide dissemination of their best research.

RC: What has been your impression of the manuscripts you have received thus far?

KU & SR: We have received about 400 manuscripts at the time of this writing, with an acceptance rate of about 10 percent. The acceptance rate is in line with other premier academic business journals. The submissions are from all continents and include all business disciplines. We are delighted that elite global business schools submit papers to ABR. These business disciplines include mainstream scholarly works in accounting, business law, economics, finance, management, marketing, and information systems/operations. Specific areas such as COVID response, leadership, strategy, and international business has have also yielded some good submissions.

A well accepted measure of an academic journal’s impact is the number of scholarly citations of the journal’s publications. Starting from the first issue of the relaunch in May 2020, articles have received citations in a remarkably short time. Naturally, the overall citations of ABR from its origin in 1983 continues.

RC: How has the pandemic impacted the publication?

KU & SR: It was just plain luck that we started on the all-digital relaunch of ABR in the Fall of 2019. PCOB Dean Brian Kench supported our initiative, and University librarian Hanko Dobi offered the use of the BE Press/Elsevier software that the University already had.

Upon the Journal website going live, Hanko wrote on November 22, 2019, “This is wonderful news! A really big step forward for you both as editors, the Pompea College of Business, and the Library’s Digital Commons initiative. It will make such a splash being a part of the University’s Centennial.”

Little did we know that COVID would appear in 2020!

We feel that it was just good luck that our entire effort since 2019 was digital. We gathered about 800 email addresses of AACSB accredited global business school deans and launched an email marketing campaign to solicit editorial board members and authors.

By November 2019, we were ready to process manuscripts and a 50-member group of global range of business scholars had joined our editorial board. Editorial board members at ABR have an active Google Scholar account and should have published in A/A* level journals.

The pandemic raged across the globe, and the University had gone to remote teaching and learning. Yet we were able to put out our debut relaunch issue in May 2020. This is thanks to the great help from Amber Montano, production coordinator for ABR who is also the access services manager at the University’s Peterson Library.

RC: What did it mean to you to be able commemorate the University’s Centennial with ABR?

KU & SR: Business education has been a great success at the University since its inception in 1920. In fact, the University of New Haven started at the Yale Campus primarily for the education and training of regional business professionals of the era. The AACSB accreditation process highlighted the link between scholarly research in business and teaching.

If you are not up to speed with the latest, you cannot publish your research. This process of keeping up with the latest has been a great motivator for all faculty in the PCOB. The students are assured that they are gaining cutting-edge knowledge with application to their future professions.

As editors, we have spent a large portion of careers at the University and our efforts to relaunch ABR are a gift of love for the University. It is a token of our gratitude for the enormous research and teaching opportunities we have enjoyed over the years.

To the best of our knowledge, business journals published by AACSB Business Schools are very few. These include prestigious names such as the Harvard Business Review from Harvard Business School, MIT Sloan Management Review from MIT, California Management Review from the University of California Berkeley’s Haas School. These are all renowned business schools and universities that are older than the University of New Haven.

It is a matter of great satisfaction and pride that we were able to get ABR into an all-digital format in 2020 to coincide with the University’s Centennial celebrations, despite the pandemic!

RC: Why is it so critical for the Pompea College of Business to publish an academic journal of this caliber?

KU & SR: There are three benefits to the Pompea College of Business:

1. Graduate student recruitment: For example, all notable business schools in Australia, India, and Europe have heard of ABR and University of New Haven. It is likely that when an Indian student speaks with their business school professor, they are likely to be aware of the University of New Haven because of the familiarity with ABR. A publication in a journal such as ABR helps business faculty obtain an academic position and also helps in tenure and promotion globally.
2. Faculty recruitment: ABR enhances the research reputation of the University drastically. Globally, the University is comparable to research-oriented schools in the U.S.
3. Potential PCOB/University ranking improvement: An important component of University ranking is research reputation. While most universities encourage faculty to publish, ABR adds a great new dimension to PCOB and the University of New Haven. This should help enhance our reputation and ranking.

RC: What else would you like the University to know about ABR?

KU & SR: ABR has great prospects because America is a beacon of hope for the world, and American Business Review was a brand advantage.

It was extremely fortunate that Hanko Dobi suggested the use of the existing BEPress/Elsevier platform. We are also grateful that Dean Brian Kench supported our idea. By anchoring the ABR at the PCOB, with strong links to the Peterson Library, we have created something that should endure for the next 100 years of the University.

Our all digital strategy in 2019 for ABR turned out to be prescient for the challenges of the pandemic!

For more information about the American Business Review, please visit its main webpage.