Innovation & Management Review: Scopus, Metrics, Scope and Submission Guide

Quick Answer: What Is Innovation & Management Review?

Innovation & Management Review (INMR) is an academic, peer-reviewed journal focused on innovation and management. It is owned by Universidade de São Paulo (University of São Paulo) and published by Emerald Publishing on the university’s behalf. Its subject emphasis includes innovation management, entrepreneurship, business-model innovation, digital transformation, technology management, innovation ecosystems, research and development, sustainability, and related managerial questions.

The journal is indexed in Scopus; the supplied Scopus Source Record ID is 21101064919. Emerald also lists the journal in the Web of Science Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), DOAJ, Crossref, EBSCO, ProQuest, Google Scholar and several other discovery services. Emerald currently reports a 2025 CiteScore of 8.6 and a 2025 Journal Impact Factor of 3.4.

INMR is a Diamond Open Access journal. Emerald states that Universidade de São Paulo funds the open-access publication arrangement, so there is currently no APC and no submission charge for authors. Since 1 January 2026, original manuscripts must be submitted in English.

Researchers considering INMR should verify topical fit, manuscript category, the current author guidelines, and the latest indexing/metric requirements of their university or funder before submitting. A journal being indexed or highly cited does not by itself make every manuscript a good editorial fit.

Key Takeaways

• Publisher and ownership: Emerald Publishing publishes the journal on behalf of Universidade de São Paulo, which owns the journal.
• Scopus: Indexed in Scopus; supplied Source ID 21101064919.
• Current metrics shown by Emerald: CiteScore 2025 = 8.6; 2025 Journal Impact Factor = 3.4; 2025 five-year Impact Factor = 2.9.
• Open access: Diamond Open Access under CC BY 4.0; currently no APC or submission fee.
• Peer review: Double-blind, with initial editorial assessment and at least two external reviewers for suitable manuscripts.
• Core manuscript categories: Research paper and literature review; ThinkBox contributions are invitation only.
• Length: Maximum 7,000 words including references and appendices, with 280 words counted for each figure/table.
• Submission: Through ScholarOne; all authors must have valid ORCiDs for publication.

Journal Information at a Glance

What This Page Covers

• INMR aims, scope and subject coverage
• Scopus, Web of Science and other indexing information
• Current verified citation and publication metrics
• Article categories and manuscript specifications
• Submission workflow through ScholarOne
• Peer-review, open-access and publication-fee arrangements
• Ethics, originality and responsible AI-use considerations
• A practical journal-fit and publication-readiness checklist

Methodology and Sources

This profile was prepared from the journal information supplied with the request and cross-checked against current authoritative sources, primarily the official Emerald journal page and author guidelines, the journal transparency statement, and DOAJ. The supplied Scopus source record identifies the journal using Source ID 21101064919.

Metrics, indexing, fees, editorial teams and policies can change. Where an official current SJR, SNIP or quartile value was not verified from the preferred authoritative sources used for this article, the field is deliberately left as “verify current value” rather than filled from a ranking aggregator.

What Is Innovation & Management Review?

INMR serves researchers working at the intersection of innovation, management, entrepreneurship and applied organisational research. Its positioning is broad enough to include strategic, technological, organisational and market dimensions of innovation, but its central scholarly question remains how innovation is created, managed, adopted, organised and connected to business and society.

The journal is organised by the Business department of the University of São Paulo and has an international editorial structure. Emerald currently lists Alceu Salles Camargo Junior and Rafael Morais Pereira as Editors-in-Chief. For a prospective author, the practical implication is that a manuscript should contribute explicitly to innovation or innovation-management scholarship rather than merely use the word “innovation” around a general management problem.

Journal Aims and Scope

Emerald describes INMR’s objectives as disseminating intellectual production in technological, organisational and market innovation; increasing knowledge production in applied innovation sciences; spreading conceptual and methodological advances; and encouraging theoretical and empirical development in the field. In practical terms, the journal is interested in research that advances understanding of innovation processes, capabilities, systems, strategies, outcomes or societal implications.

The publisher specifically identifies topics including innovation management, business-model innovation and startups, social and responsible innovation, entrepreneurship, innovation ecosystems, technology-management innovation, service innovation, innovation strategy and capabilities, R&D, new-product development, digital transformation, Industry 4.0, sustainability and innovation in emerging economies, and the integration of innovation for business and society.

Topics that may fit well

• How firms build and renew innovation capabilities.
• Business-model innovation in established firms or startups.
• Open innovation, ecosystems, platforms and inter-organisational collaboration.
• Digital transformation, AI adoption or Industry 4.0 when tied to innovation-management questions.
• New-product/service development and R&D management.
• Responsible, social, sustainable or inclusive innovation.
• Entrepreneurship research with a clear innovation contribution.
• Innovation in emerging-market and cross-country contexts.

Topics that may be weaker fits

A purely operational, finance, HR, marketing or information-systems paper may be less suitable if innovation is peripheral. Likewise, a descriptive industry report with limited theoretical or methodological contribution may not align with the journal’s stated objectives. This is an editorial-fit interpretation, not an official rejection rule: authors should compare their manuscript with recent INMR articles before deciding.

Indexing, Visibility and Journal Metrics

Emerald’s current indexing list includes Scopus and the Web of Science Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), together with DOAJ, Crossref, EBSCO Discovery Service, EBSCO Publishing, ProQuest, Google Scholar, REDALYC, Latindex, WorldCat and other services. DOAJ also lists the journal under ISSN 2515-8961 and records its open-access status.

Emerald reports a 2025 CiteScore of 8.6. It also displays a 2026 CiteScore Tracker, which is a provisional monthly indicator rather than a completed annual metric. For Clarivate metrics, Emerald reports a 2025 Journal Impact Factor of 3.4 and a 2025 five-year Impact Factor of 2.9.

Quartile caution: quartile labels can vary by database, subject category and reporting year. If a university rule requires a specific Scopus quartile or JCR category, check the current official database at the time of submission rather than relying on an older screenshot or third-party ranking page.

Article Types Published by INMR

The current author guidelines identify three article classifications:

• Research paper: research using quantitative, qualitative or mixed methodologies, including model/framework construction or testing, action research, surveys, market research and other empirical approaches.
• Literature review: work whose main purpose is to critically evaluate a body of literature. Emerald explicitly notes that merely descriptive reviews, reviews without critical analysis, or reviews without a well-grounded future research agenda will not be considered.
• ThinkBox: an essay-style, theoretically grounded and potentially provocative format based on interpretation and position rather than conventional empirical data collection. This format is invitation only.

Manuscript Requirements

The guidelines also ask authors to avoid personal pronouns in the structured abstract and body and to keep heading levels concise and distinguishable. Figures must be clear, high quality and submitted electronically. Supplementary materials should be provided at initial submission and clearly identified.

How to Submit to Innovation & Management Review

1. Read the current author guidelines and confirm that the manuscript fits the journal’s scope and category.
2. Prepare the manuscript in the required file format and check the title, structured abstract, keywords, word count, references, figures and supplementary materials.
3. Ensure every author’s name, email, affiliation and ORCiD are correct.
4. Go to the INMR ScholarOne portal. Emerald may offer Paperpal Preflight before ScholarOne; authors may use or bypass that step.
5. Complete the manuscript fields, including the author-contribution information using the CRediT taxonomy where requested.
6. Upload all required files, preview the generated submission PDF, resolve any formatting or metadata errors and submit.

Submission-system details can change, so the ScholarOne page and the current Emerald author-guideline page should be treated as the final operational source on the day of submission.

Peer-Review Process and Publication Timeline

INMR uses double-blind peer review. The transparency statement says manuscripts first undergo an initial editor assessment. If suitable, the paper is reviewed by a minimum of two external reviewers. The Editor-in-Chief retains final responsibility for editorial decisions.

Emerald currently reports a time to first decision of 130 days using submissions from 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025. The publisher also displays 138 days from acceptance to publication, with that figure noted as based on the previous 12 months and last updated in July 2024. These are historical averages, not promises for an individual paper.

Emerald currently reports an acceptance rate of 11.7%, based on submissions from 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025. This is an official publisher-reported statistic, but authors should not treat it as a prediction of their own probability of acceptance.

Open Access, Copyright and Publication Fees

INMR is published under a Diamond Open Access arrangement. Emerald states that Universidade de São Paulo funds publication costs and that the journal currently charges authors no APC and no submission charge. Articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) licence.

Under the stated licence model, authors retain copyright while allowing sharing and adaptation with appropriate attribution. Because funding and fee policies can change, authors should still reconfirm the fee statement immediately before submission.

Publication Ethics and Responsible Use of AI

Emerald states that its journals follow Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) principles for research and publication misconduct. Authors must include genuine contributors as authors, exclude non-contributors, disclose relevant conflicts of interest, and consider ethical approval and informed consent where human participants are involved.

The journal’s author-guideline page also states that the editor may use iThenticate for originality checking. A manuscript should therefore be original, properly cited and not under simultaneous consideration elsewhere.

Emerald’s current AI policy distinguishes between generative creation and editing. The guidance states that using generative AI to copywrite or generate new submission content is not permitted, while copy-editing an author’s own original work with AI can be permitted when used responsibly and transparently under Emerald’s policy. Authors should read the latest publisher AI policy because these rules are developing quickly.

Who Should Consider Submitting?

INMR may be a strong candidate for researchers whose paper makes a clear contribution to innovation scholarship and connects that contribution to management, organisations, entrepreneurship, technology, markets or society. It may be particularly relevant for empirical or theoretical work on innovation capabilities, ecosystems, new-product development, digital innovation, sustainability, startups and emerging-economy contexts.

For PhD scholars, postgraduate researchers and early-career authors, the most important question is not “Is INMR indexed?” but “Does my study answer a question that INMR’s readers and editors are likely to regard as an innovation-management contribution?” Reading several recent articles is one of the most reliable ways to test that.

Journal-Fit Checklist Before You Submit

• Can you express the paper’s innovation-management contribution in one or two sentences?
• Does the research question fall within one or more of the journal’s stated scope areas?
• Does the literature review engage with current innovation scholarship rather than only adjacent management literature?
• Is the method rigorous enough for the claims being made?
• Does the manuscript offer a theoretical, empirical, methodological or practice-relevant advance rather than only description?
• Is the article type correctly chosen: research paper or critical literature review?
• Is the paper within the 7,000-word limit after counting figures and tables?
• Is the title eight words or fewer and is the abstract structured as required?
• Are all authors, ORCiDs, affiliations and contributions accurate?
• Have you checked the latest official Scopus/JCR status if your institution has a formal indexing or quartile requirement?

How to Prepare a Stronger INMR-Aligned Manuscript

Make the innovation contribution explicit

A manuscript can analyse digital technology, entrepreneurship, sustainability or strategy and still be out of scope if the innovation contribution is unclear. Use the introduction to identify the innovation-related problem, the gap in existing knowledge and the specific contribution the paper makes.

Build a critical rather than descriptive literature review

INMR’s guidance for literature reviews explicitly rejects merely descriptive submissions without critical analysis and a well-grounded future research agenda. For empirical papers too, the literature review should do more than list studies: it should establish tensions, gaps, constructs and the logic of the research question.

Connect theory, evidence and implications

The required structured abstract asks authors to state research limitations/implications, practical implications and social implications. That structure is a useful signal that the journal values the connection between scholarly contribution and broader relevance. Avoid overclaiming beyond the design and data.

Perform a final compliance pass

Before submission, check every mechanical requirement: title length, structured abstract headings, word count, keywords, author metadata, ORCiDs, Harvard-style references, figure quality and supplementary files. A strong paper can still be delayed or screened out if the submission fails basic journal instructions.

Common Reasons a Manuscript May Be Unsuitable

• Innovation is peripheral rather than central to the research question.
• The paper does not explain its theoretical or empirical contribution.
• A literature review is mainly descriptive and lacks critical synthesis or a future research agenda.
• The manuscript exceeds the required length or ignores the required structured abstract.
• References, author details or ORCiDs are incomplete or inconsistent.
• The manuscript contains unsupported claims, weak methods or conclusions that exceed the evidence.
• The work has originality, authorship, disclosure or ethics problems.
• The manuscript is prepared for a different journal and only superficially adapted to INMR.

How Contentxprtz Can Support Publication Readiness

Contentxprtz can support researchers with ethical manuscript preparation such as academic editing, proofreading, language polishing, journal-format alignment, reference and citation consistency, structured-abstract review, manuscript assessment, journal-selection guidance, cover-letter editing and reviewer-response editing. For ESL researchers, support can focus on clarity, logic and academic expression while preserving the author’s research meaning and responsibility.

Contentxprtz does not guarantee acceptance, publication, peer-review success, indexing, citation performance or any journal outcome. Editorial decisions remain entirely with INMR’s editors and reviewers. Authors remain responsible for the originality, accuracy, data, analysis, disclosures, citations and final submission.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion: Is Innovation & Management Review a Good Fit?

Innovation & Management Review is a Scopus-indexed, peer-reviewed, Diamond Open Access journal published by Emerald on behalf of Universidade de São Paulo. Its current profile combines broad innovation-management scope, no author APC, double-blind review and visible citation metrics. Those characteristics can make it attractive to researchers in innovation, entrepreneurship, technology management and related areas.

The best reason to submit, however, is a strong match between the manuscript and the journal’s intellectual scope. Before uploading, compare your paper with recent INMR articles, follow the current author guidelines closely and verify any institutional metric or quartile requirement in the latest official database.

Authoritative Sources Used

• Emerald Publishing — Innovation & Management Review
• ScholarOne — INMR submission portal
• Directory of Open Access Journals — INMR record
• Scopus source profile — Source ID 21101064919

Dr. Aanya Mehta

Research Writer & Professional Business Communicator

Dr. Aanya Mehta is a research-oriented writer and professional communicator with a strong focus on accuracy, clarity, and evidence-based insight. Her work combines analytical thinking with accessible writing, helping readers understand complex business topics through well-researched, credible, and practical content.