Manuscripts are considered for publication on the understanding that they are not currently under consideration elsewhere and that the material—in substance as well as form—has not been previously published.
Manuscripts should be submitted by e-mail to bhr@hbs.edu.
Authors must remember not to identify themselves in the body of the manuscript; specifically, references to their own work in the text should be in the third person, and citations should be written without possessive pronouns—not "See my …."
It will save considerable work for all parties in the event of acceptance if authors follow a few rules from the beginning:
- In general, use as few formatting commands as possible.
- Send a bio of three to four sentences, stating affiliation and recent publications.
- Make sure all material—including extracted quotations and notes—is double spaced.
- Number notes consecutively and place citations as footnotes or endnotes, in the format indicated by The Chicago Manual of Style.
- Each table and figure must be accompanied by a complete source.
Be sure to include an abstract of about 100 words outlining the main point(s) of the paper and placing the article in context. Subheads should be used to divide the manuscript into three or four sections (or more, depending on length). Articles should not be more than 10,000 words in length, including footnotes.
We are always eager to publish illustrations. Authors are responsible for obtaining all illustrative materials and permissions for reproduction, and for writing captions.
Authors of accepted manuscripts will receive three copies of the issue in which their article appears, and twenty-five free offprints.
Manuscript Preparation
We use the 15th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style (2003) and spell and hyphenate words according to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.
The journal encourages authors to use gender-neutral prose in all cases where it is not anachronistic to do so; male nouns and pronouns should not be used to refer to people of both sexes. We use the day-month-year form for dates in citations, as 11 February 2007. Double quotation marks should be used for journal article titles and direct quotation; single quotation marks are used for quoted material inside quotations.
Sample Citation Forms
Book: Thomas K. McCraw, Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction (Cambridge, Mass., 2007), 205-21.
Journal: Naomi R. Lamoreaux, "Scylla or Charybdis? Historical Reflections on Two Basic Problems of Corporate Governance," Business History Review 83 (Spring 2009): 9-34.
Note that we do not include the publisher in book citations. We do not use loc. cit., op. cit., or idem., but ibid. (not italicized) may be used.