Publication Guide
The Strategic Management Society (SMS) is the definitive scholarly society for strategic management research. Established in 1981 at an initial meeting in London and now run from an executive office in Chicago, the society brings together roughly 3,000 academics, business practitioners, and consultants from more than 70 countries. Unlike large commercial houses, SMS publishes a deliberately small, elite portfolio: three peer-reviewed journals, all produced in partnership with Wiley and hosted on Wiley Online Library.
Its flagship, the Strategic Management Journal (SMJ), has been the field's premier outlet since 1980 and appears in both the Financial Times FT50 and UT Dallas UTD24 lists of top business journals. Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal (SEJ, est. 2007) and Global Strategy Journal (GSJ, est. 2011) extend the portfolio into entrepreneurship and international strategy. This guide covers how to choose among the three, what each publishes, open-access options and APCs, the review model, and how to submit.
Which SMS journal fits your paper?
All three journals are selective, double-anonymized, and aimed at theory-advancing empirical or conceptual work. The right choice depends on your core research question.
| Your paper is about... | Choose this journal |
|---|---|
| Firm strategy, competitive advantage, corporate strategy, strategy process, or strategic leadership | Strategic Management Journal (SMJ) - the field's flagship since 1980; broadest scope and highest visibility (2025 JIF ~7.6, FT50, UTD24). |
| Entrepreneurship at the interface with strategy - opportunity creation, new ventures, corporate entrepreneurship, innovation-driven growth | Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal (SEJ) - a general-interest entrepreneurship journal with a developmental review process. |
| Global, cross-border, or multinational strategy - internationalization, emerging markets, geopolitics and the MNE | Global Strategy Journal (GSJ) - the leading specialist outlet for global strategic management research. |
What the Strategic Management Society publishes
- Strategic Management Journal - founded 1980 as the society's official journal. Publishes empirical and conceptual research across all of strategic management; also runs research-methods and theory-development papers. The most cited journal in the field.
- Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal - founded 2007. Focuses on the strategy-entrepreneurship interface: opportunity identification, resource assembly, entrepreneurial firms and ecosystems.
- Global Strategy Journal - founded 2011. Covers global strategy, internationalization, cross-border competition, and the strategies of multinational enterprises.
Note that Strategy Science, a name researchers sometimes associate with the field, is published by INFORMS - not by SMS.
Open access and APCs
All three SMS journals are subscription (hybrid) journals: publishing is free by default, and open access is optional.
| Route | Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Standard (subscription) publication | $0 | Default route; no page or submission charges. |
| Hybrid OA (Wiley OnlineOpen) | ~4,460 | SMJ lists ~$4,460 USD; SEJ and GSJ are somewhat lower. CC BY available. Check Wiley's current APC list before choosing OA. |
| Read-and-publish (transformative agreement) | $0 to author | Wiley's institutional agreements cover OnlineOpen APCs for corresponding authors at participating institutions - check the ESAC registry or your library. |
| Green OA (self-archiving) | $0 | Accepted manuscripts may be self-archived under Wiley's standard policy, with a per-journal embargo. |
Peer review process
- Model: double-anonymized peer review at all three journals - prepare a fully anonymized manuscript.
- Style: explicitly developmental; editors and reviewers aim to improve promising papers across revision rounds rather than only filter.
- Turnaround: first decisions typically arrive in about 2-4 months, varying by journal and season; desk rejections come much faster.
How to submit
- Pick the journal. Match your core question to SMJ, SEJ, or GSJ using the table above; the journals discourage concurrent or serial resubmission of rejected papers between them without invitation.
- Read the author guidelines. Each journal posts detailed, regularly updated author instructions on its Wiley Online Library hub (SMJ's were last revised in 2025).
- Format the manuscript. Word or LaTeX are accepted; follow the journal's reference style (APA/Chicago-style author-date) and anonymization rules. SciSpace templates for SMS journals handle the formatting automatically.
- Submit via the journal's Wiley submission portal. Wiley has been migrating SMS journals to its Research Exchange submission interface, with manuscripts tracked in ScholarOne - the journal's author-guidelines page tells you the current system.
- Respond developmentally. Revisions are the norm at SMS journals; detailed response documents matter.
Ethics and integrity
The SMS journals operate under Wiley's publishing-ethics framework, which is aligned with COPE guidance, and Wiley is a COPE member. Double-anonymized review, declared conflicts of interest, and standard authorship rules apply. Data-transparency expectations have tightened across the portfolio - empirical papers should be ready to document data sources and analysis steps.
Reputation
SMS is the definitive society in its field, and SMJ is universally regarded as an A-list strategy journal - a fixture of the FT50 and UTD24 lists used in business-school tenure and ranking decisions. SEJ and GSJ are also highly ranked in entrepreneurship and international business respectively. Criticism of the society's publishing program is essentially nonexistent; the main practical constraint for authors is simply the journals' selectivity.
