Editorial for EJKM Volume 15 Issue 2 by Academic Conferences and publishing International

Editorial for EJKM Volume 15 Issue 2 New publishing directions in Knowledge Management, Intellectual Capital and Intangible resources In opening my first editorial as the new Editor of the EJKM I would first like to extend my warm thanks and appreciation to Professor Ken Grant who has guided the journal until the end of 2016. Currently, EJKM is emerging as a viable research outlet for knowledge management researchers and scholars with several papers being well cited on the Google Scholar citation database. Thus, I take the reins of a journal that is making a significant contribution to developing insights into knowledge management theory, research and practice. However, regardless of the success of EJKM to date, I am aiming to continue to improve the journal’s status along with improving the author experience. Therefore, there will be some noticeable changes in the way I edit EJKM and the way we publish the journal. In an academic world where we all live with the “publish or perish” mindset (de Villiers and Dumay, 2013), to have an open access journal dedicated to a specialised topic like KM has advantages and disadvantages. The main advantage is that we have a publication outlet for our work so we can share our research with likeminded academics. Second, because EJKM is an open access journal, we also have the opportunity to reach out to practitioners (and scholars) who might have been locked out of reading about our research because of the academic paywall (Guthrie et al., 2015). Reaching out to readers who might otherwise be marginalised because they do not have access to the latest academic research is a growing and important issue because most academic research is funded by the public purse. Therefore, to have that research locked up, waiting for the University who paid for the research costs to once again pay for access to the research its scholars’ have produced is a perverse and declining business model. Thus, as more and more research institutions turn towards the requirement to have research published as gold open access, it raises the prospects of journals like EJKM to grow in submissions, and potentially publications. The main disadvantage of a specialised journal is its narrow appeal to a particular group of academics and practitioners. While knowledge management is a commonly used term in academia and practice, there are several journals that EJKM competes with to garner quality submissions for publication. Therefore, as a journal we need to be an attractive place to publish and even expand our scope. As such, I am encouraging more submissions from the related fields of intellectual capital, and intangible resources because these are underrepresented in EJKM, and will allow for a greater breadth of submissions (see Cuozzo et al., 2017). To launch this effort, a special issue is being dedicated to knowledge management and intellectual capital case 1 studies. Additionally, one of the conferences supporting EJKM is now renamed as the European Conference 2 on Intangibles and Intellectual Capital . In my prior experiences as an editor, another major challenge is receiving publications that are suitable to send out for review that have the potential make a contribution to our expanding scope and have the potential to garner citations. To transform a submitted paper into a publishable paper is a particular challenge because we need to find suitable reviewers and rely on their contribution via feedback on how the paper can best be transformed from a rough diamond into a polished gem, without offending the sensibilities of the articles’ authors. As such we have revamped our reviewers, we have created a new International Advisory Board and we have introduced new Associate Editors. Arguably, a strong representation of leading scholars will help us improve the attractiveness of the journal to other leading scholars. Another upcoming innovation is a move to a continuous publishing model, whereby accepted papers appear in the journal with a Volume, Issue number and page references shortly after they have been accepted for publication. EJKM is going towards the continuous publication model because we want to get current research out to our readers in a timely fashion. Additionally, the benefit for our authors is that their article appears sooner, and they do not have to wait many months until an issue is ready. We need to do this to ensure we offer our authors the same or an improved time from acceptance to publication. 1 2

See http://www.ejkm.com/SpecialCall.html See http://www.academic-conferences.og/conferences/eciic

ISSN 1479-4411

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Reference this paper as: Dumay J “Editorial for EJKM Volume 15 Issue 2” The Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management Volume 15 Issue 2 2017, (pp59-60) available online at www.ejkm.com

The Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management Volume 15 Issue 2 2017

Last, I want to reassure all authors and potential authors of our commitment to ensuring EJKM has a robust, ethical and transparent review process. Although we are an open access journal that requires a small fee for publication to cover the journal’s costs, payment is only required after the review process is completed, and thus there is no guarantee that a submission will be published. EJKM abides by the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) to ensure the scientific contribution of articles via the double-blind peer review process. EJKM is a serious academic journal and desires to publish the articles that make important contributions to knowledge management, intellectual capital and intangible resources. I thus invite you to use the articles published in EJKM as part of your future research, and to submit your high quality research for publication.

References Cuozzo, B., Dumay, J., Palmaccio, M. and Lombardi, R. (2017), “Intellectual capital disclosure: a structured literature review”, Journal of Intellectual Capital, Vol. 18 No. 1, pp. 9-28. de Villiers, C. and Dumay, J. (2013), “Construction of research articles in the leading interdisciplinary accounting journals”, Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 26 No. 6, pp. 876-910. Guthrie, J., Parker, L. D. and Dumay, J. (2015), “Academic performance, publishing and peer review: Peering into the twilight zone”, Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 28 No. 1, pp. 3-13.

Editor-in-Chief Dr. John Dumay