Business Ethics Quarterly: Scopus, Scope, Metrics & Submission Guide

Quick Answer: What Is Business Ethics Quarterly?

Business Ethics Quarterly is the multidisciplinary journal of the Society for Business Ethics and is published by Cambridge University Press. It publishes peer-reviewed scholarship on ethical questions involving business organizations, markets, managers, corporate governance, corporate responsibility, sustainability, globalization, finance, accounting, marketing, public policy, and related social and institutional issues.

BEQ is indexed in Scopus. The journal’s print ISSN is 1052-150X and online ISSN is 2153-3326; it publishes four issues per year. Its current Cambridge journal-metrics page, checked on 10 August 2026, lists a 2-year Impact Factor of 4.3, 5-year Impact Factor of 4.7, CiteScore of 7.5, SJR of 1.834, and SNIP of 2.074. Cambridge’s page does not label those headline values with a reporting year, so researchers using them for formal evaluation should confirm the applicable reporting year in Clarivate, Scopus, or their institution’s approved database.

BEQ may be a strong fit for manuscripts that make an original theoretical contribution to business ethics. It is not enough for a paper merely to involve a company, workplace, ESG issue, or ethical controversy; the manuscript should connect the problem to a scholarly conversation and show what new conceptual or explanatory insight it adds.

Key Takeaways

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press, published on behalf of the Society for Business Ethics.
• Core focus: interdisciplinary theoretical and empirical research on the ethics of business, corporate responsibility, and corporate sustainability.
• Scopus: the journal is listed in Scopus; supplied Source ID 22717.
• Peer review: double-anonymized; neither authors nor reviewers know each other’s identities.
• Submission: ScholarOne; initial submissions are limited to 12,000 words for body text plus footnotes and 50 pages total.
• Open access: hybrid; Gold OA is optional, with Cambridge currently listing APCs of £2,610 or US$3,655 when an APC is required.
• Author priority: demonstrate a novel theoretical contribution and comply carefully with BEQ’s anonymity, formatting, and style rules.

Business Ethics Quarterly Information at a Glance

What This Page Covers

• BEQ aims, scope, disciplines, and types of contributions
• Scopus and other verified indexing information
• Current journal-level metrics and how to interpret them cautiously
• Manuscript length, formatting, anonymity, citation, and submission requirements
• Double-anonymized peer review and stated decision-time targets
• Hybrid open access, APCs, and publication-fee considerations
• Journal-fit examples, pre-submission checks, and ethical publication-readiness guidance

Methodology and Source Note

This guide was prepared using the current Cambridge Core pages for Business Ethics Quarterly, including the journal overview, author instructions, submission guidelines, peer-review information, fees and pricing, open-access policy, editorial board, publishing-ethics policy, abstracting and indexing list, and journal-metrics page. The supplied journal record was used to identify the Scopus Source ID and source title. Metrics, fees, editorial leadership, database coverage, and policies are time-sensitive; reconfirm them before submission.

What Is Business Ethics Quarterly?

BEQ is a specialist journal with a deliberately interdisciplinary reach. The common denominator is not a single method or home discipline but a research problem connected to ethical dimensions of business. Cambridge describes the journal as publishing both theoretical and empirical research and explicitly welcomes contributions from humanities, social sciences, and professional fields.

That makes the journal relevant to scholars in management and business ethics, but also to researchers working in philosophy, economics, finance, accounting, law, political science, sociology, psychology, history, anthropology, marketing, religious studies, and other fields when the manuscript’s central contribution speaks to business ethics.

Business Ethics Quarterly Aims and Scope

BEQ’s scope centers on original scholarship that advances understanding of ethical questions in business. Official topic areas include internal organizational ethics; ethical decision-making and behavior; corporate responsibility, citizenship, and political activity; governance; law and regulation; sustainability; globalization; justice and capitalism; professional standards; NGOs in capitalism; marketing and consumer ethics; finance and accounting ethics; and public policy involving business or markets.

The journal is also explicit that its topical history should not be treated as a closed boundary. It welcomes new issues and approaches. For authors, the more important test is whether the manuscript develops a defensible theoretical contribution that matters to business-ethics scholarship.

Research approaches the journal publishes

• Normative, analytical, and conceptual theory
• Descriptive theory and conceptual development
• Qualitative research, including interview, ethnographic, participant-observer, and case-based work, when it makes an original theoretical contribution
• Quantitative work, including experimental, field, and measure-development research, when it advances theory
• Historical research with an original theoretical contribution

BEQ identifies largely descriptive case studies, narrowly pedagogical work without theoretical development, and some studies relying only on inexperienced student samples as examples that may be poor fits unless the manuscript provides a compelling rationale and theoretical contribution.

Subject Areas Covered by Business Ethics Quarterly

Officially encouraged disciplinary homes include accounting, anthropology, economics, finance, history, law, management, marketing, philosophy, political science, psychology, religious studies, and sociology. Based on the official scope, potentially relevant research themes include:

• ethical decision-making in organizations
• corporate social responsibility and corporate citizenship
• business and human rights
• stakeholder theory and stakeholder relationships
• ethical leadership and managerial responsibility
• corporate political activity and legitimacy
• governance, accountability, and board ethics
• justice, capitalism, and market institutions
• sustainability and environmental ethics
• ethical globalization and global supply chains
• marketing and consumer ethics
• ethics in finance, accounting, and investment
• professional standards and organizational conduct
• business regulation and public policy
• the role of NGOs and civil society in market systems

This list is guidance derived from the journal’s stated scope, not an exhaustive official topic catalogue.

Is Business Ethics Quarterly Indexed in Scopus?

Yes. Cambridge’s official abstracting-and-indexing page lists Scopus, and the supplied source record identifies Scopus Source ID 22717. Cambridge also lists the Social Sciences Citation Index, Current Contents/Social & Behavioral Sciences, ABI/INFORM, EBSCO services, JSTOR, ProQuest services, Philosopher’s Index, PhilPapers, SocINDEX, ERIH PLUS, Medline, and other discovery and indexing services.

For university, PhD, promotion, or funding requirements, verify the journal directly in the exact database your institution recognizes. A journal can be indexed across multiple services while institutional rules may require a particular database, category, coverage year, or quartile.

Current Journal Metrics

Cambridge’s current journal-metrics page, checked on 10 August 2026, lists the following headline values: 2-year Impact Factor 4.3, 5-year Impact Factor 4.7, Eigenfactor 0.00162, Article Influence Score 1.733, CiteScore 7.5, SJR 1.834, and SNIP 2.074.

The page does not display a reporting year beside those headline values. It also contains older ranking narrative elsewhere on the page with different CiteScore and SJR figures. For formal use, rely on the latest dated record in Clarivate, Scopus, or SCImago rather than mixing values from different reporting cycles.

What about the quartile?

A current category-specific quartile was not stated on the Cambridge metrics page reviewed for this guide. Because quartiles can differ by database, year, and subject category, authors should verify the latest applicable quartile in the official database required by their institution instead of treating an undated third-party label as definitive.

Publisher and Editorial Leadership

Cambridge University Press publishes Business Ethics Quarterly on behalf of the Society for Business Ethics. The current Cambridge editorial-board page lists Danielle Warren of Rutgers University and Jeffrey Moriarty of Bentley University as Editors-in-Chief. Joanna Osiewicz-Lorenzutti is listed as Managing Editor, and the journal has an international group of associate editors and editorial-board members.

Editorial roles can change. Authors should consult the official editorial-board page before addressing a cover letter or contacting an editor.

Types of Articles Published

BEQ’s author information identifies several contribution types. The main route is the original research article, which may be normative/conceptual, qualitative, quantitative, or historical as long as it makes an original theoretical contribution. The journal also publishes review articles, commentaries, and book reviews.

• Research articles: original scholarship with a significant theoretical contribution.
• Review articles: comprehensive scholarly reviews that use the literature synthesis to make a novel theoretical contribution; proposals are requested before a full manuscript.
• Commentaries: shorter analytic essays engaging recent BEQ work at a theoretical level; normally limited to 6,000 words and expected within one year of the relevant article’s print publication.
• Book reviews: critical reviews, typically 1,500–1,800 words; handled through the book-review editor rather than normal external peer review.

Who Should Consider Publishing in Business Ethics Quarterly?

Researchers should consider BEQ when the manuscript’s central question is genuinely about ethics in business and the study makes a scholarly theoretical contribution. Academic rank is secondary to fit. A doctoral researcher, professor, early-career scholar, or interdisciplinary team may all be appropriate authors if the work engages the journal’s conversations at the expected level.

Researchers should be more cautious when the study is mainly descriptive, primarily a teaching paper, only loosely connected to business ethics, or empirically interesting without a clear theoretical advance. In those cases, another journal may offer a better audience and evaluation framework.

How to Decide Whether Your Manuscript Fits the Journal

1. Match the ethical problem. Is the research question centrally about ethical dimensions of business, markets, organizations, or business-society relations?
2. Define the theoretical contribution. Can you state what concept, mechanism, framework, normative argument, or scholarly conversation the paper advances?
3. Check recent BEQ articles. Compare how current papers frame contribution, evidence, and implications without assuming recent topics define the journal’s outer limits.
4. Confirm the article type. A full research article, review proposal, commentary, or book review follows a different route.
5. Assess methodological fit. Empirical work should be explanatory and theoretically meaningful, not simply descriptive.
6. Check audience value. Explain why business-ethics scholars, not just specialists in the paper’s home discipline, should care about the result.

Journal-Fit Checklist

• My manuscript falls within BEQ’s ethics-of-business scope.
• I can articulate a novel theoretical contribution.
• The paper is more than descriptive reporting or journalistic commentary.
• The article type is one BEQ publishes.
• My empirical design supports the theoretical claims I make.
• I have reviewed recent BEQ papers for framing and presentation expectations.
• I can comply with the journal’s anonymization and formatting rules.
• I have checked current indexing, metrics, and any institutional publication requirements separately.
• I understand the hybrid open-access model and any possible APC implications.

Business Ethics Quarterly Submission Guidelines

BEQ uses ScholarOne Manuscripts. Authors must confirm that the submission is not published elsewhere, is not under review elsewhere, will not be submitted elsewhere during BEQ review, and complies with the journal’s originality and conflict-of-interest requirements.

Core manuscript requirements

• Initial submission: no more than 12,000 words for the body text plus footnotes, excluding abstract, tables, figures, and references.
• Total manuscript: no more than 50 pages including all materials.
• First page of the anonymized manuscript: abstract of no more than 150 words, up to six keywords, and the selected citation/reference style.
• Single manuscript file containing abstract, text, footnotes, references, tables, and figures; Word or PDF accepted for consideration.
• Double-spaced pages, one-inch margins, 12-point Times New Roman or similar serif font, page numbers, paragraph indents, and ragged-right margins.
• No identifying author information in the anonymized manuscript; author details and acknowledgements belong in a separate title-page document.
• Remove tracked changes and comments before upload.

Citation, Reference, and Language Requirements

BEQ permits multiple approved citation systems and requires the manuscript to use one consistently. The official instructions include Academy of Management Journal style and Chicago author-date and notes systems; authors should consult the current author instructions for the complete set of permitted styles and exact variations. Notes are formatted as footnotes rather than endnotes, and the journal uses the heading “References” where a reference list is applicable.

Either British or American spelling is acceptable if used consistently. BEQ’s instructions emphasize clear, professional prose and warn that papers with poor writing or careless copyediting may be desk rejected. Language editing can improve readability and consistency, but it cannot substitute for a sound research question, theoretical contribution, or valid evidence.

Business Ethics Quarterly Peer-Review Process

BEQ uses double-anonymized peer review. The journal first conducts an editorial assessment to determine whether the manuscript should be desk rejected or sent for external review. If it proceeds, an anonymous manuscript is sent to reviewers; the journal states that it aims to include at least one editorial-board member and appropriate disciplinary coverage among reviewers.

BEQ states that it strives to make the initial desk-review decision within four to six weeks, usually sooner, and to reach a decision within three to four months of submission when a paper is sent for full peer review. These are stated aims, not guaranteed turnaround times.

First-round outcomes commonly include Reject, Revise-and-Resubmit, or Major Revision, with Reject-and-Resubmit also possible. Minor Revision and Conditional Accept are described as rare at the first round.

Typical Submission-to-Publication Workflow

1. Check scope and contribution type.
2. Prepare the anonymized manuscript and separate title page.
3. Format the manuscript to BEQ requirements and select one approved citation style.
4. Submit through ScholarOne and confirm submission eligibility.
5. Editorial screening for fit, theoretical contribution, quality, and compliance.
6. Double-anonymized external peer review if the paper passes screening.
7. Editorial decision and, where invited, revision.
8. Submit an anonymous point-by-point response document with revisions.
9. After acceptance, complete publisher documentation, copyediting, proof review, and licensing.
10. Accepted articles may appear online as FirstView before assignment to a print issue.

Common Reasons a Manuscript May Be Unsuitable

BEQ’s own submission instructions identify several recurring desk-rejection reasons. These include being outside scope, failing to promise a novel theoretical contribution, repeating existing work without sufficient new insight, being more journalistic than scholarly, using empirical data descriptively rather than explanatorily, serious research-design problems, inadequate writing quality, failure to follow submission rules, and revealing author identity.

For publication readiness, the practical implication is clear: scope fit, theory, anonymity, methodological credibility, and presentation should be checked before submission rather than treated as post-submission fixes.

Publication Ethics and Research Integrity

BEQ publishes under Cambridge University Press research-publishing ethics policies and is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). The journal’s policies address authorship, affiliations, competing interests, funding, research integrity, data and supporting evidence, misconduct, corrections and retractions, and other ethical responsibilities.

Authors should ensure that every listed author qualifies appropriately, all authors approve the submitted work, affiliations are accurate, funding is disclosed, conflicts are handled transparently, and any research involving participants or regulated data follows applicable ethical and legal requirements. BEQ also states that accepted papers are checked with iThenticate before publication.

AI and Generative-AI Use

Cambridge’s publisher-wide policies on authorship and publishing ethics should be checked for the latest rules on generative AI, disclosure, confidentiality, and responsibility for submitted content. Regardless of tool use, authors remain responsible for the accuracy, originality, citations, analysis, and ethical compliance of their manuscript. AI tools should not be used to fabricate data, references, reviewer identities, or scholarly claims.

Open-Access Model and Publication Fees

Business Ethics Quarterly is a hybrid journal. Authors may publish through the subscription route or choose Gold Open Access under a Creative Commons licence. Cambridge also provides Green Open Access routes, including repository sharing under the applicable policy.

Cambridge’s fees page currently lists Gold OA APCs of £2,610 or US$3,655 when an APC is required, with additional taxes potentially applicable. Institutional open-access agreements or Cambridge initiatives may cover charges for eligible authors. For articles not published Gold OA, the Gold OA APC does not apply. Cambridge also lists colour charges of £200 or US$320 on the current fees page, although authors should check the latest production instructions because figure requirements and charges can change.

Acceptance Rate and Publication Timeline

The journal’s current Cambridge pages reviewed for this guide do not publicly state an official acceptance rate. It should not be estimated from third-party websites.

For timing, the journal states process targets rather than a guaranteed average: an initial editorial decision within four to six weeks and, for manuscripts sent to full review, a decision within three to four months of submission. Revision cycles, reviewer availability, editorial workload, manuscript complexity, and production schedules can all affect the total time to publication.

Practical Journal-Fit Examples

Example 1 — Strong theoretical fit

A management researcher tests how moral identity affects executive decision-making and uses the results to extend an established theory of ethical behavior. This could fit BEQ if the theoretical advance is clear and the empirical design supports it.

Example 2 — Important topic, weak contribution

A survey reports that employees prefer companies with strong ESG policies but does not explain a mechanism, challenge theory, or develop a new conceptual insight. The topic is relevant, but the paper may be too descriptive for BEQ without a stronger theoretical contribution.

Example 3 — Philosophy-led manuscript

A philosopher develops a new normative account of corporate political responsibility and connects it directly to business institutions and existing business-ethics debates. This is compatible with BEQ’s interdisciplinary scope if the contribution is original and positioned for the journal’s readership.

Example 4 — Anonymity problem

A strong manuscript contains author names in acknowledgements and obvious self-identifying language. BEQ specifically requires anonymization, so those elements should be moved to the separate title-page file before submission.

Example 5 — Major revision

An author receives extensive reviewer comments. A stronger revision responds point by point, identifies where changes were made, explains respectfully when a suggestion is not adopted, and keeps the response document anonymous if the paper may return to reviewers.

Pre-Submission Checklist

• Confirm BEQ scope and contribution type on the current official site.
• State the manuscript’s theoretical contribution in one or two precise sentences.
• Verify the 12,000-word and 50-page limits remain current.
• Keep the abstract at or below 150 words and use no more than six keywords.
• Prepare an anonymized manuscript and a separate title page.
• Remove identifying acknowledgements, affiliations, tracked changes, and document comments from the review file.
• Choose one permitted citation style and apply it consistently.
• Review figures and tables against current BEQ formatting instructions.
• Check all citations, quotations, data statements, ethics statements, funding, and conflicts.
• Confirm all authors approve the submission and authorship order.
• Verify current Scopus/indexing status and any institutional journal requirements.
• Understand the hybrid OA route and current APC before choosing Gold OA.

How Researchers Should Evaluate Business Ethics Quarterly

BEQ should be evaluated as a potential scholarly home, not just as a metric. Consider the match between your research question and its business-ethics scope; the value of your theoretical contribution to its readers; the article type and methodological expectations; the journal’s current indexing and metrics; your institution’s rules; the double-anonymized review process; open-access choices; and the practical timing of submission and revision.

For PhD scholars, Scopus indexing alone does not automatically make any journal suitable. Confirm your university’s exact rules, including whether it recognizes the journal’s database coverage, category, quartile, publication type, and timing.

How Contentxprtz Can Support Authors Preparing for Business Ethics Quarterly

Preparing for BEQ involves more than grammar correction. Authors need a clearly stated theoretical contribution, strong scope alignment, consistent academic language, anonymized submission files, correct references, and careful adherence to detailed author instructions.

Contentxprtz can support ethical publication readiness through manuscript assessment, academic editing, proofreading, ESL language polishing, title and abstract refinement, structural review, journal formatting, reference and citation checks, cover-letter editing, submission-document review, and reviewer-response editing. Journal publication support is intended to help authors present their own research clearly and professionally.

Contentxprtz does not control editorial decisions and does not guarantee acceptance or publication. Final decisions remain solely with the journal and its editors.

Summary: Business Ethics Quarterly

Business Ethics Quarterly is a Cambridge University Press journal published on behalf of the Society for Business Ethics. It publishes interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed work on the ethics of business and places strong emphasis on original theoretical contribution. It is indexed in Scopus (supplied Source ID 22717) and numerous other major discovery and indexing services. The journal uses double-anonymized review, publishes four issues per year, and offers a hybrid open-access model.

Before submitting, authors should verify the current official author instructions, metrics, indexing, APCs, and editorial information. The most important manuscript-level checks are scope fit, theoretical contribution, anonymity, research quality, and compliance with the journal’s detailed formatting and submission rules.

Official Sources for Final Verification

• Business Ethics Quarterly journal homepage
• Aims, scope, article types, ISSNs, and frequency
• Official author instructions
• Detailed manuscript and submission guidelines
• Peer-review process
• Cambridge journal metrics
• Abstracting and indexing
• Fees and pricing
• Scopus source profile 22717