Journal of Business Venturing (journal-of-business-venturing)

Journal positioning

Journal of Business Venturing (JBV), published by Elsevier, is one of the two flagship entrepreneurship journals and the premier outlet for research on the entrepreneurial process — new venture creation, opportunity identification and evaluation, and the behaviors and cognition of entrepreneurs. It rewards work that makes a clear contribution to entrepreneurship theory backed by rigorous empirics (or, less often, strong conceptual development). JBV is distinctively focused on the act and process of venturing, not generic small-business management or a strategy paper set among startups. The audience is entrepreneurship scholars, so the contribution must be entrepreneurship-central and theoretically grounded.

This skill is a fit / venue-selection / re-framing tool. It does not replace the journal's current official submission guidelines. Before submitting, re-check the live author instructions on the Elsevier / JBV site and the submission system.

When to trigger

• The author names JBV (or the entrepreneurship flagship tier) as the venue.
• A paper studies the entrepreneurial process — opportunity identification, venture creation, entrepreneurial cognition/behavior, founding teams, or new-venture growth.
• A management/strategy paper set in startups needs re-framing around an entrepreneurship-theory contribution.
• The author needs JBV's desk-reject risks and a credible entrepreneurship-theory-and-practice / strategic-management-journal / academy-of-management-journal alternative list.

Scope & topic fit

• Opportunity identification, evaluation, and exploitation; the venture-creation process; effectuation and entrepreneurial decision-making.
• Entrepreneurial cognition, behavior, motivation, and identity; founders and founding teams.
• New venture emergence, growth, financing (angels, VC at the venture level), and exit.
• Entrepreneurship across contexts (corporate, social, technology, international) when the entrepreneurial process is central.

Method & evidence bar

• The contribution must advance entrepreneurship theory and turn on the entrepreneurial process, not a generic management effect observed in startups.
• Empirical rigor is high — sound design, identification or careful inference, construct validity, and treatment of the selection and survivorship problems endemic to venture data.
• Process and longitudinal designs are valued; cross-sectional survey work must address common-method bias and causality.
• Conceptual papers must be genuinely novel and rigorously argued.

Structure & house style

• The front end frames an entrepreneurship-theory problem about the venturing process and develops hypotheses or a grounded model with explicit logic.
• A strong JBV paper states its contribution to entrepreneurship theory and bounds its conditions.
• Methods address venture-data hazards (selection, survival, small/skewed samples); exhibits make the process legible.
• House style rewards clear, theory-forward writing focused on the entrepreneurial phenomenon.

Official-submission checklist

• Before giving submission-ready advice, read ../../resources/source-basis.md and ../../resources/official-source-map.md; start from the official source anchors for this journal family, then cite the current journal-specific page you checked.
• Search the live site for "Journal of Business Venturing submission guidelines / Elsevier guide for authors" and follow the current version.
• Re-check word/length limits, abstract format, anonymization for double-blind review, reference style, and data/code availability expectations.
• Re-check current open-science, data-availability, and AI-use disclosure policies, and any article-type rules.
• If the live official instructions conflict with this skill, the official instructions win.

Pre-submission self-check

• One sentence stating the contribution to entrepreneurship theory — and confirming the entrepreneurial process is central.
• Methods address selection, survivorship, and the hazards of venture data.
• Hypotheses (or the inductive model) follow from explicit theoretical logic.
• The paper is entrepreneurship-central, not a strategy/OB paper set among startups.
• Framing, references, and anonymization match the current JBV guide.

Common desk-reject triggers

• A generic strategy/OB study set in startups with no entrepreneurship-theory contribution.
• Venture data analyzed without addressing selection/survivorship bias.
• A descriptive small-business study with no theoretical contribution.
• Cross-sectional survey with unaddressed common-method bias and weak causal logic.

Re-routing decision

• Theory-driven entrepreneurship across diverse methods, including more conceptual work → entrepreneurship-theory-and-practice.
• Entrepreneurship with a firm-strategy/performance core → strategic-management-journal; theory-driven management empirics → academy-of-management-journal.
• Pure entrepreneurship theory, no data → academy-of-management-review; review of the entrepreneurship stream → academy-of-management-annals.
• Org theory of new organizations → organization-science; broad management empirics → journal-of-management-en; international new ventures → journal-of-international-business-studies; innovation-driven venturing → research-policy.

Output format

[Fit] High / Medium / Low (one-line reason)
[Target] Journal of Business Venturing
[Topic tags] <2–3 closest topics>
[Method/evidence] <is the entrepreneurship-theory contribution + rigor at JBV's bar?>
[Top risk] <the single most likely reason for rejection>
[Official items to re-check] <submission system / length / references / data-code / article type>
[Re-route suggestion] <if not a fit, a better-matched venue>