Journal Of Business Venturing

---
name: journal-of-business-venturing
description: Use when targeting Journal of Business Venturing (JBV) or deciding whether an entrepreneurship / new-venture manuscript fits this venue. Encodes the journal's fit, framing, method-and-evidence bar, house style, official-submission re-check, and desk-reject heuristics.
---

# 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

```text
[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>
```