Statement from the Editor-in-Chief

It is a great honor to be assuming the role of editor-in-chief of Electronic Markets. For over 17 years Electronic Markets has been the premier outlet for scientific research addressing the relationship between advances in information and communication technology, new forms of value creation, and social change including societal and legal issues with editorial capacity in the Americas, Asia, Australia and Europe. For this tradition of excellence we owe all previous editors a great debt of gratitude. I am privileged to follow in their footsteps and will do my best to live up to the high standards they have set.

My overriding concern will be to maintain and increase the journal’s reputation for quality. I strongly believe that our mission is to publish papers which represent innovative and significant contributions to the research literature on electronic markets and business networking. My main goal for the next few years is to increase the global perception of EM as a premier international research outlet. To reach this goal I would like to pursue three strategies:

• Improve EM‘s rankings and place the journal on all major indices like SSCI, Scopus, etc. We are on a good way which is shown by the A rankings we have received in Europe and Australia. But a lot of work remains to achieve this status in the Americas and the rest of the world, too.
• Acquire more high quality submissions from authors in Asia and other, currently underrepresented, regions. Our statistics show that submission numbers from these regions increase and we will do our best to support and encourage those authors.
• Closing the gap between theory and practice. In academia the discussion of rigor vs. relevance is going on for a long time. While I think that scientific rigor is absolutely necessary and will always be an important evaluation criterion for submissions to EM my goal is to put more emphasis on the relevance of submissions especially for business and society. One step in this direction has been made by being able to bring aboard a competent partner from industry as Associate Editor who will be responsible for the industry relevance of research published in EM.

The combination of those strategies will hopefully move EM a big step forward and I enjoy being part of it in a time with exciting technology, interesting research opportunities and frequent changes.

Furthermore, I would like to encourage all researchers to consider submitting your best work to Electronic Markets. It will be double-blind reviewed by competent reviewers and the review process will be supervised by one of our eight Associate Editors. Our review process is based on an online submission system which means you can always follow your manuscript throughout the whole process. Finally, a first decision is usually made 6-8 weeks after submission and your research will be published within 9 months after submission provided it fulfills all quality requirements of Electronic Markets.

Yours sincerely,
Hubert Österle
Editor-in-Chief