International Journal of Hospitality Management: Scopus, Metrics, Scope & Submission Guide

Key Takeaways

• Publisher: Elsevier; the official journal platform is ScienceDirect.
• Identity: Print ISSN 0278-4319, online ISSN 1873-4693, Scopus Source ID 28686.
• Scope: Hospitality-focused management research across people, consumers, operations, strategy, finance, technology, design and legislation.
• Indexing: Elsevier lists Scopus and the Social Sciences Citation Index among the journal's abstracting and indexing services.
• Publishing model: Hybrid—authors can choose open access or subscription publication.
• Open-access fee: Elsevier currently lists USD 4,210 excluding taxes; subscription publication has no publication fee.
• Metrics: Elsevier currently displays an Impact Factor of 8.3; cached official pages retrieved in 2026 show inconsistent CiteScore values, so the live value and reporting year should be rechecked.
• Fit matters more than metrics: authors should demonstrate why the research advances hospitality-management knowledge rather than merely using a hospitality sample.

Journal Information at a Glance

The table below consolidates the most decision-relevant facts that could be verified from the supplied record and current Elsevier pages. Values that change over time are deliberately qualified.

Identity note: the supplied record contained an incomplete numeric ISSN string. The formatted ISSN above follows Elsevier's official journal page and should be used when matching the journal in databases.

What This Page Covers

• Aims, scope and subject fit
• Scopus and major indexing
• Metrics and metric cautions
• Article types and recent content
• Open access and publication fees
• Editorial and peer-review evidence
• Submission-readiness checks
• Ethical Contentxprtz support

Methodology and Source Note

This journal profile was prepared by matching the supplied journal record to authoritative identifiers and then checking the official Elsevier journal page, Elsevier Journal Insights, the official editorial-board page, the journal's open-access information, the official issue archive and the supplied Scopus source profile.

Journal information is time-sensitive. Metrics, fees, editorial roles, indexing coverage, submission links and author instructions can change. For that reason, this guide distinguishes publisher-reported facts from publication-readiness advice and marks uncertain or conflicting values for reconfirmation.

What Is the International Journal of Hospitality Management?

IJHM is a specialist hospitality-management journal with a broad management lens. It is not limited to hotel operations, nor is it a general tourism journal. The journal's identity comes from applying management, behavioural, economic, technological and policy perspectives to questions that matter to hospitality organizations, employees, customers and related service systems.

The archive demonstrates a long publication history: ScienceDirect hosts Volume 1 material from 1982. The journal continues to publish active 2026 volumes, and its editorial board includes members from multiple countries and regions. That combination suggests an international research audience, although authors should evaluate international relevance through the content of recent papers rather than inferring it from the title alone.

For a PhD scholar or early-career researcher, the journal may be worth considering when the manuscript has a clear theoretical or evidence-based contribution tied directly to hospitality management. A study of employee behaviour in hotels, for example, may fit if it advances hospitality workforce knowledge; a generic organizational-behaviour paper that happens to sample hotel employees may need a stronger hospitality-specific rationale.

International Journal of Hospitality Management Aims and Scope

The official scope centres on major trends and developments across disciplines as they apply to the hospitality industry. Elsevier specifically names human resources management, consumer behaviour and marketing, business forecasting and applied economics, operational management, strategic management, financial management, planning and design, information technology and e-commerce, training and development, technological developments, and national and international legislation.

This breadth means the journal can accommodate multiple research traditions. Empirical studies may examine employees, customers, managers, organizations, markets or technologies. Theoretical papers and reviews can synthesize or extend hospitality-management knowledge. Applied work can analyse business practice, provided the contribution is sufficiently rigorous and relevant to the journal's scholarly audience.

Likely scope risk: manuscripts whose main contribution belongs to a different field and does not explain why hospitality changes the theory, mechanism, evidence or managerial implication may be less compelling. As a practical publication-readiness step, authors should be able to state in one sentence what hospitality scholars learn from the study that they would not learn from the same study in a generic service context.

What Subjects and Research Questions May Fit?

The strongest topic fit is usually created by combining a journal-recognized subject area with a hospitality-specific research problem and a defensible scholarly contribution. The table below is interpretive guidance, not an official acceptance matrix.

Recent official issue listings reinforce the journal's breadth. Examples visible in 2026 include studies on zero-shot sentiment analysis, trust in governance systems, ethical decision-making in peer-to-peer accommodation, inclusive signals in online employee reviews, digital innovation in hotels, knowledge hiding and green-hotel purchase intentions. These examples should not be treated as a preferred-topic list; they simply show the variety of contemporary hospitality-management questions the journal is publishing.

Scopus Indexing, Impact Factor, CiteScore, SJR, SNIP and Quartile

Elsevier lists the International Journal of Hospitality Management in Scopus and the Social Sciences Citation Index. The supplied Scopus Source ID is 28686. Elsevier also lists SJR and SNIP among the journal's indicators on its Journal Insights page.

For metrics, caution is necessary. The current Elsevier pages retrieved for this article consistently display an Impact Factor of 8.3. However, official Elsevier pages in the same retrieval set showed two different CiteScore values: older cached journal pages displayed 20.7, while a more recent 2026 call-for-papers page displayed 13.3. This likely reflects update timing or cache differences, but the cause should not be guessed. Researchers should therefore use the live Elsevier/Scopus display and its reporting year when documenting CiteScore.

Similarly, numeric SJR and SNIP values were not independently verified in the official materials retrieved for this article. Their presence as tracked indicators is verifiable; their current values should be read from the live source profile. An author should avoid filling a CV, thesis form or promotion dossier with an undated metric copied from a third-party ranking site when an official or institution-recognized database is available.

What Types of Articles Does the Journal Publish?

The official journal homepage states that IJHM contains research papers, state-of-the-art reviews and analyses of business practice. Recent issue pages also categorize content as Research Articles and Short Communications, alongside non-submission content such as corrigenda and editorial material.

Article-type availability can change, and some categories may be commissioned or restricted. Historical journal notices, for example, describe invited “Luminaries” content and dedicated literature-review and qualitative-study sections. That history is useful context but should not be treated as the current submission menu. Before preparing files, authors should open the live Guide for Authors and the submission interface to confirm the active article type that best matches the manuscript.

For publication readiness, the article type should match the contribution. A research article needs a clear research problem, method and contribution. A review should do more than summarize literature; it should synthesize, critique, organize or advance a research agenda. A business-practice analysis should connect managerial evidence to a scholarly question rather than reading like consultancy commentary.

Editorial Leadership and What Is Known About Peer Review

Elsevier's current editorial-board page names Manuel Rivera of the University of Central Florida as Editor in Chief. The same page lists an international editorial structure with coordinating editors and board members across multiple countries and regions.

For peer review, a historical official IJHM notice states that its literature-review and qualitative-study sections used the journal's normal double-blind refereeing process. However, a current journal-specific Guide for Authors page was not fully retrievable in the source snapshot used for this guide, so this article does not convert that historical notice into an unqualified claim about every present submission category. Authors should confirm the current model in the live Guide for Authors immediately before submission.

Regardless of anonymization model, an initial editorial suitability check is likely to focus heavily on scope, contribution and manuscript quality. As a practical readiness step, remove avoidable presentation problems before submission: unclear research questions, inconsistent terminology, unsupported claims, poor figure/table labelling, incomplete references and weak articulation of hospitality implications can all make editorial assessment harder.

Open Access, Subscription Publication and Fees

IJHM uses a hybrid model. Elsevier's official open-access page gives authors two routes: open access or subscription publication. Open-access articles are immediately and permanently free to read under an available Creative Commons licence, while subscription articles are distributed through the journal's subscription model.

Elsevier currently lists an open-access Article Publishing Charge of USD 4,210 excluding taxes. It also notes that the amount offered during submission may be reduced depending on the author's circumstances, such as institutional agreements. For the subscription route, Elsevier states that there is no publication fee charged to authors.

Elsevier also lists a 36-month embargo for self-archiving the accepted manuscript under the subscription model. Authors with funder or institutional open-access mandates should check whether the chosen licence and repository route satisfy those requirements before signing a publishing agreement.

Manuscript and Submission Requirements: How to Prepare Safely

Use the current journal Guide for Authors as the controlling source for formatting and submission requirements. Because the exact current IJHM guide text was not fully retrievable in the source snapshot used here, this page does not invent a word limit, abstract limit, reference style, number of keywords, mandatory highlight count or file requirement.

Instead, use the following journal-specific preparation sequence before entering the submission system:

1. Confirm article type. Match your manuscript to an active category listed in the current IJHM Guide for Authors or submission system.
2. Recheck scope against recent papers. Read several recent articles close to your topic and method. Note how they frame hospitality relevance, theory and managerial implications.
3. Verify the contribution statement. Make the hospitality-management contribution explicit in the title, abstract, introduction and discussion without overstating novelty.
4. Check title-page and anonymization instructions. Follow the live peer-review requirements exactly, including separation of identifying details if required.
5. Audit abstract, keywords, highlights and graphical material. Use only the counts, length limits and file specifications in the current guide.
6. Review methods and research transparency. Explain sampling, measures, analytic choices, ethics approvals or consent where relevant, limitations and data availability as applicable.
7. Reconcile references. Every in-text citation should have a matching reference-list entry and vice versa; verify DOIs and bibliographic metadata.
8. Prepare declarations. Check authorship, competing interests, funding, AI-use declarations and other policies required by Elsevier and the journal.
9. Use the official submission route. Start from the journal homepage's “Submit your article” link rather than an unverified third-party submission site.

Publisher-Reported Review and Publication Timelines

Elsevier's Journal Insights page currently reports the following journal-level timing indicators. They are descriptive averages/indicators, not deadlines or promises for a particular paper.

The journal does not provide a guaranteed personal timeline. Researchers facing graduation, funding or promotion deadlines should build in substantial contingency time and avoid assuming that a published average predicts their own manuscript.

Publication Ethics and Author Responsibility

Authors should follow the journal's current policies and Elsevier's publishing-ethics framework. Core responsibilities normally include truthful reporting, appropriate authorship, disclosure of competing interests and funding, proper citation, permissions for reused material, avoidance of duplicate or concurrent submission, and compliance with applicable research-ethics requirements.

Generative-AI policies are particularly time-sensitive. Elsevier has publisher-level policies governing AI use in manuscript preparation and peer review, but the exact disclosure language and journal-specific implementation may change. Authors should consult the live Elsevier publishing ethics and policy information together with IJHM's current author instructions before submission.

Who Should Consider Submitting to IJHM?

Researchers should consider IJHM when their work addresses a meaningful hospitality-management problem and can speak to an international scholarly audience. This may include PhD scholars, faculty researchers, hospitality and tourism academics, business researchers, interdisciplinary teams and professionals conducting rigorous applied research.

A manuscript may be less suitable when hospitality is incidental, the contribution is mainly to a different discipline, the paper is purely descriptive, or the managerial claims exceed the evidence. Journal fit is not a prestige ranking; it is a match between the manuscript's contribution and the journal's scholarly conversation.

Publication-Readiness Checklist for Researchers

Before submission, separate journal compliance from manuscript quality. A manuscript can follow every formatting rule and still be weak conceptually, while a strong study can be delayed by avoidable presentation and compliance errors.

How Contentxprtz Can Ethically Support IJHM Publication Readiness

Contentxprtz can support researchers before submission through academic editing, proofreading, publication support and the dedicated journal publication services route.

Support may include language polishing, logical-flow review, manuscript assessment, reference consistency, journal-format checks, cover-letter editing, response-to-reviewer editing and publication-readiness feedback. The appropriate role is to improve communication and compliance while preserving the author's intellectual ownership and responsibility.

No editing or publication-assistance service can guarantee acceptance. IJHM's editors and reviewers decide whether a manuscript fits the journal and meets its scholarly standards. Contentxprtz should therefore be used as a preparation resource, not as a promise of publication, indexing, citation performance or peer-review success.