Journal of Co-operative Organization and Management: Scopus, Scope & Submission Guide

Quick Answer: What Is the Journal of Co-operative Organization and Management?

JCOM is an international journal published by Elsevier that concentrates on cooperation-based forms of organizing and the managerial and governance questions surrounding them. Its scope is deliberately broader than legally registered co-operatives alone: the journal explicitly includes mutuals, credit unions, alliances, franchising, joint ventures, public-private partnerships, associations, networks, ecosystems, peer-economy arrangements, open innovation, collaborative governance and cooperation-enabling technologies or platforms.

Researchers working in business economics, economics, legal studies, administrative science and adjacent interdisciplinary fields may find the journal relevant when cooperation is central to the research problem. The journal publishes original research as well as reviews and syntheses, book and conference reviews, practical discussion papers and short communications. Before submitting, authors should compare their question, theoretical framing, method and practical contribution with JCOM’s current aims and recently published work.

For institutional verification, Elsevier lists Scopus and ESCI coverage. The official journal page currently displays CiteScore and Impact Factor values, but authors should verify the latest database year, category and quartile directly in the relevant source rather than treating a static web guide as permanent.

Key Takeaways

• Publisher: Elsevier; the journal is hosted on ScienceDirect.
• Identifiers: print ISSN 2213-297X, online ISSN 2213-2988, supplied Scopus Source ID 21100247045.
• Scope: organization, management and governance of cooperation-based economic organizations and institutional arrangements.
• Indexing: Elsevier lists Scopus and Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI).
• Displayed metrics: CiteScore 5.4 and Impact Factor 2.5 at the time of research; reporting years and quartiles should be reverified.
• Peer review: double anonymized; suitable papers are typically sent to at least two independent reviewers.
• Publishing model: subscription route with no author publication fee, or optional open access; Elsevier displayed an OA APC of USD 3,830 excluding taxes.
• Submission preparation: separate title page and anonymized manuscript, abstract up to 250 words, 1–7 keywords, highlights, APA 7 references and research-data compliance.

Journal Information at a Glance

What This Page Covers

• JCOM’s aims, scope and the cooperation-based organizations it studies
• Scopus, ESCI and currently displayed journal metrics
• Article types and examples of manuscripts that may fit
• Double-anonymized peer review and publisher-reported timelines
• Open-access and subscription publishing options
• Manuscript preparation, references, highlights and research-data requirements
• Ethics, authorship, competing interests, funding and generative-AI disclosure
• A practical journal-fit checklist and ethical Contentxprtz publication-readiness support

Methodology and Source Note

This journal profile was prepared by cross-checking the supplied journal record against authoritative sources, principally the official JCOM page on ScienceDirect, the official Guide for Authors, the supplied Scopus Source ID 21100247045, and the Clarivate Master Journal List as a verification route for Web of Science coverage.

Journal metrics, APCs, indexing status, editorial teams and timelines may change. The numbers reported here are the values visible on Elsevier’s journal pages during research for this article; they should be rechecked at the time of a consequential submission or institutional assessment. Where a current value was not reliably verifiable from the authoritative pages used—such as a numeric SJR, SNIP or category-specific quartile—this guide does not invent one.

Journal of Co-operative Organization and Management Aims and Scope

JCOM positions itself around a distinctive organizing idea: economic cooperation. The journal asks how cooperation-based organizations and institutions are formed, how they operate, why they succeed or fail, how they disappear or transform, and what managers, governors, policymakers or participants can do to influence outcomes. This makes its scope simultaneously organizational and institutional. A manuscript can be interested in internal governance, member relationships, network structure, strategy, regulation, technology or wider social outcomes, but cooperation needs to remain analytically central.

The journal defines cooperation-based arrangements broadly. Traditional co-operative forms—including co-operatives, mutual insurers and credit unions—sit at the core, but the scope also extends to alliances, franchising, joint ventures, family-owned enterprises, public-private partnerships, associations, clubs, guilds, networks, ecosystems, peer-economy models, open innovation, inter-organizational cooperation and collaborative governance. The current aims also recognize enabling technologies and models such as blockchains and platforms when they illuminate cooperation.

JCOM also encourages research on the role of cooperative models in major contemporary challenges, including sustainable development, climate adjustment, social inclusion, ethical digitalization and fair platform economies. Its intellectual tradition is multidisciplinary, drawing particularly from business economics, economics, legal studies and administrative science. The journal welcomes rigorous theoretical and methodological plurality rather than prescribing one dominant method.

Topics that may align well

• governance, ownership and member participation in co-operatives or mutuals;
• strategy, performance and organizational design in cooperation-based enterprises;
• credit unions, cooperative banks and mutual insurance;
• agricultural and producer co-operatives, including value-chain and development questions;
• public-private partnerships, alliances, joint ventures and inter-organizational collaboration;
• cooperative networks, ecosystems, open innovation and collaborative governance;
• digital platforms, blockchain-enabled cooperation and fair platform-economy models;
• legal, policy and institutional conditions influencing cooperative forms;
• cooperation-based approaches to sustainability, inclusion and other grand challenges.

Potentially weak fit

A manuscript may be weakly aligned when cooperation is only background context—for example, a generic consumer-behaviour paper sampled from cooperative members but without a cooperative organizational question. Likewise, a general management study of a conventional firm may not fit merely because the firm collaborates with suppliers. For researchers evaluating fit, the manuscript should be able to explain why a cooperation-based organizational or institutional arrangement is necessary to the research question, theory, evidence and contribution.

Who Should Consider Submitting?

JCOM may be relevant for researchers in management, organization studies, strategy, economics, public administration, law, governance, entrepreneurship, development, finance and related fields when their work contributes to understanding cooperation-based economic organization. This includes PhD scholars working on cooperative governance, faculty studying institutional design, economists analyzing cooperative incentives, legal scholars examining cooperative or mutual structures, and practitioners producing rigorous research on collaborative organizational models.

Doctoral researchers should check institutional rules independently. Scopus or Web of Science coverage does not automatically satisfy every university requirement on quartiles, approved lists, dates or authorship; verify the current category and reporting year when those rules apply.

Indexing, CiteScore and Journal Metrics

Elsevier’s journal insights list Scopus and Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) among JCOM’s indexing services. The supplied source record gives Scopus Source ID 21100247045, which is a useful identity check because journal titles can be similar across publishers. The record’s print ISSN 2213-297X is consistent with Elsevier’s official journal page, which also provides online ISSN 2213-2988.

At the time of preparation, Elsevier displayed a 5.4 CiteScore and a 2.5 Impact Factor. These indicators answer different questions and should not be treated as interchangeable. CiteScore is a Scopus-based metric; Impact Factor is a Clarivate Journal Citation Reports metric. Neither number alone establishes whether the journal is the right venue for a particular paper.

Elsevier’s insights page also references SJR and SNIP, but the current numeric values were not reliably exposed in the authoritative page text available during this research. The same caution applies to quartile: quartiles are category- and year-specific, and one journal may occupy different positions across categories or data products. Therefore, this guide uses “verify current value” rather than filling a gap from an unverified third-party metric page.

Article Types and Evidence of Recent Research Themes

The official aims and scope describes a broad set of contribution types: original research papers, reviews and syntheses, book and conference reviews, practical discussion papers and short communications. The live submission system remains the controlling source for the article types actually available at submission.

Recent ScienceDirect issue titles show work on cooperative-bank disclosures, circular-economy network governance, savings and credit cooperatives, cooperative law, agricultural institutions and opportunistic behaviour. The common thread is a substantive cooperation-based organizational question.

As a practical publication-readiness step, read at least five to ten recent JCOM papers closest to your topic. Compare not only subject labels but also the level of theory, methodological transparency, framing of the cooperative phenomenon and way the contribution is positioned for an international readership.

Preparing a Manuscript for JCOM

Editable files and anonymization

The Guide for Authors requests editable source files: Word submissions should use .doc or .docx, while LaTeX submissions use .tex; a PDF is not accepted as the sole source file. Because JCOM uses double-anonymized review, authors should provide the title page and anonymized manuscript separately. The title page contains author names, affiliations, acknowledgements, declaration of interest, and corresponding-author contact information. The anonymized manuscript contains the main paper, references, figures and tables without identifying author or affiliation information.

Abstract, keywords and highlights

The abstract must be concise and factual and should not exceed 250 words. The journal requests 1–7 English keywords and requires article highlights as a separate editable file. Highlights should capture novel results and any new methods in short bullet points. These elements are small in length but high in editorial importance because they shape discoverability and help editors understand the contribution quickly.

Article structure and references

The journal asks authors to use clearly defined and numbered sections and subsections. It also requests a glossary for field-specific terms where relevant and CRediT contributor roles for co-author contributions. References use the American Psychological Association (APA) Seventh Edition style. The reference list should be alphabetical and then chronological, with same-author same-year works distinguished using letters such as 2025a and 2025b.

Research data

JCOM’s Guide for Authors states that Elsevier’s research-data Option C applies. Authors are required to deposit research data in a relevant repository and cite/link the dataset in the article; when data cannot be shared, the manuscript should explain why. Researchers handling confidential organizational, member, financial or legal data should plan this early, because anonymization, consent, data-use agreements and repository choices may affect what can ethically be released.

Submission and Peer-Review Process

Submission is handled through the online system linked from the official Guide for Authors. The system collects manuscript details, files and declarations and produces a review PDF. Before submission, the corresponding author should confirm that all required files are present, references are mutually consistent between text and bibliography, figure and table materials are complete, spelling and grammar checks are finished, and permissions have been secured for copyrighted third-party material.

The journal uses double-anonymized peer review. Editors first assess whether a submission is suitable for the journal. If it passes that editorial assessment, it is typically sent to a minimum of two independent expert reviewers. The editors make the acceptance or rejection decision. Special issues follow the same core peer-review standards, although guest editors may manage reviewer invitations or make recommendations under journal-editor oversight.

Elsevier’s journal insights displayed indicative timelines of 39 days to first decision, 140 days to decision after review, 304 days from submission to acceptance, and 17 days from acceptance to online publication. These are journal-level statistics, not a schedule promised to any individual author. Complexity of revisions, reviewer availability, special-issue workflows and editorial decisions can make an individual manuscript faster or slower.

Open Access, Subscription Publishing and Fees

JCOM is a hybrid journal: it supports an optional open-access route and a subscription route. Elsevier’s journal page displayed an open-access APC of USD 3,830 excluding taxes at the time of research and notes that the amount may be reduced during submission when applicable. Funding agreements, institutional arrangements and author circumstances can affect the final charge, so the live quote in the submission workflow is the value that matters.

For the subscription route, Elsevier states that no publication fee is charged to authors, with published articles available immediately to subscribers. Researchers should distinguish this from unrelated costs that may arise in research itself; the statement is about the journal’s publication fee for the subscription option.

Choose the publication route only after considering scope, audience, indexing requirements, rights, funder mandates and institutional policy together.

Publication Ethics and Author Responsibilities

JCOM directs authors to Elsevier’s publishing-ethics policies. Submission implies that the work is not simultaneously under consideration elsewhere and has not been published previously except in recognized forms permitted by the policy, such as a preprint, abstract, thesis or registered report. All authors should approve the submission and meet authorship requirements based on substantial contribution and accountability.

Authors must disclose competing interests and funding sources. The Guide for Authors also gives detailed instructions for changes in authorship and indicates that changes after submission are restricted and require editorial consideration. For studies involving participants or identifiable personal information, researchers should follow applicable ethics approval, consent and privacy requirements.

The journal’s author guidance also addresses generative AI. Authors remain responsible for accuracy, originality, source checking and human oversight, and qualifying use of generative AI or AI-assisted technologies in manuscript preparation should be declared as required by Elsevier policy. AI tools must not be listed as authors. Researchers should review the current policy immediately before submission because publisher rules in this area can change.

How to Decide Whether Your Manuscript Fits JCOM

A useful fit decision can be made through five questions:

1. Is cooperation central? Could the same paper be written without the cooperative, mutual, alliance, network, partnership or collaborative-governance dimension? If yes, the fit may be weak.
2. Is there a management, organization or governance contribution? The paper should explain something about how cooperation-based arrangements are organized, governed, managed, formed, sustained, transformed, succeed or fail.
3. Does the theoretical framing speak to JCOM’s interdisciplinary readership? A narrow local case can still be valuable when the paper draws out transferable theoretical or institutional implications.
4. Is the method rigorous and transparent? JCOM accepts methodological plurality, but the research design should be appropriate to the question and reported clearly enough for scholarly evaluation.
5. Do recent JCOM papers provide a meaningful conversation? If the manuscript cannot identify relevant recent articles or explain how it extends the journal’s ongoing conversations, revisit journal selection before submission.

For example, member participation in a dairy cooperative or governance of a worker-owned platform can fit when the cooperative form drives the analysis; a generic employee survey may not fit if that form has no explanatory role.

Publication-Readiness Checklist

• Confirm the latest aims, scope and article type on the official JCOM site.
• Verify Scopus status, Source ID and any required quartile in the live database.
• Check the current CiteScore, Impact Factor, SJR/SNIP and reporting year where institutionally relevant.
• Read recent JCOM papers nearest to your topic and method.
• State clearly why the cooperation-based organizational form matters to the research question.
• Prepare a separate title page and a fully anonymized manuscript.
• Keep the abstract within 250 words and supply 1–7 keywords.
• Prepare the required highlights file.
• Apply APA 7 references consistently and verify every citation/DOI.
• Plan research-data deposit and linking, or prepare a defensible data-unavailability statement.
• Complete funding, competing-interest, authorship and AI-use disclosures as applicable.
• Choose open access or subscription publishing only after reviewing current fees, funder rules and institutional agreements.

How Contentxprtz Can Support Ethical Publication Readiness

Contentxprtz can help improve academic language, argument flow, formatting, references, anonymization checks, cover letters and reviewer responses while preserving the author’s research and responsibility.

For a JCOM-oriented manuscript, that may include checking whether the abstract accurately states the contribution, whether cooperation is visible in the title and framing, whether terminology is consistent across theory and analysis, whether APA 7 references are complete, and whether the submission package follows the current author instructions. Journal publication services may also support journal-selection reasoning and publication-readiness review.

Contentxprtz does not control editorial decisions, reviewer recommendations, database indexing, citation outcomes or acceptance. Editing can improve clarity and compliance, but it cannot guarantee publication.

Preparing a manuscript for JCOM? Explore ethical manuscript editing and publication-readiness support.

Summary

The Journal of Co-operative Organization and Management is an Elsevier journal centred on cooperation-based economic organization, management and governance. Its scope includes traditional co-operatives and mutuals but also alliances, partnerships, networks, ecosystems, collaborative governance and technology-enabled forms of cooperation. Elsevier lists the journal in Scopus and ESCI; the supplied Scopus record identifies Source ID 21100247045. The official journal page displayed a CiteScore of 5.4 and Impact Factor of 2.5 at the time of research.

JCOM uses double-anonymized peer review, supports both subscription and optional open-access publishing, and displayed an OA APC of USD 3,830 excluding taxes. Author preparation includes separate title-page and anonymized files, an abstract of no more than 250 words, 1–7 keywords, highlights, APA 7 references and research-data responsibilities. Researchers should confirm all current metrics, fees, indexing and author instructions immediately before submission.

Conclusion: Is JCOM the Right Journal for Your Paper?

JCOM is most defensible as a target when the manuscript makes cooperation itself analytically important—through ownership, governance, incentives, institutional design, collaboration, networks or another cooperation-based organizational mechanism. Its international and interdisciplinary scope can accommodate diverse methods, but a broad scope should not be mistaken for automatic fit. The paper still needs a clear contribution to the journal’s conversation about organizing, managing or governing cooperation.

Before submission, confirm the live Guide for Authors, current indexing and metrics, the article type available in the submission system, and the publication route that fits your funding and access requirements. Then review the anonymization, references, data statement, disclosures and submission files as one integrated package.

If specialist help is useful, Contentxprtz can support ethical editing, proofreading, formatting and publication-readiness review. The journal’s editors and reviewers alone decide whether a manuscript is accepted.