Journal of Place Management and Development: Scopus, Metrics & Submission Guide

Quick Answer: What Is the Journal of Place Management and Development?

JPMD is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by Emerald Publishing and identified by print ISSN 1753-8335 and online ISSN 1753-8343. It is the official journal of the Institute of Place Management. The journal’s archive begins in 2008, and the current 2026 volume is Volume 19.

The journal is suitable for research that advances understanding of place management, place branding, place marketing, placemaking and place development. Its scope is deliberately interdisciplinary and includes empirical, conceptual and methodological contributions. The journal is indexed in major scholarly discovery systems, including Scopus; the supplied Scopus Source Record ID is 21100242603. Emerald currently reports a 2025 CiteScore of 5.2 and a 2025 Journal Impact Factor of 1.6.

Before submission, authors should still verify the live journal homepage and author guidelines because metrics, fees, editorial information and submission requirements can change.

Key Takeaways for Researchers

• Publisher and identity: Emerald Publishing; official journal of the Institute of Place Management.
• Scope: place management, place branding, placemaking, place marketing and place development across multiple geographical scales.
• Scopus visibility: Scopus Source ID 21100242603; Emerald reports a 2025 CiteScore of 5.2.
• Clarivate metric: Emerald reports a 2025 Journal Impact Factor of 1.6 and five-year Impact Factor of 1.9.
• Review model: double-anonymous review with at least two independent anonymous reviewers.
• Core manuscript types: Academic Paper, Practitioner Paper, Book Review, News and Editorial.
• Submission basics: Microsoft Word, UK or US English, Harvard referencing, up to six keywords and a structured abstract for articles.
• Open access: hybrid; gold OA involves an APC, while Emerald also offers a green self-archiving route.

Journal Information at a Glance

What This Page Covers

• the journal’s identity, publisher, aims and scope
• Scopus and Clarivate visibility and the latest metrics currently displayed by Emerald
• subject areas and examples of in-scope research
• article types and word limits
• manuscript formatting, structured abstract and reference requirements
• peer review, publication timelines, acceptance rate and open-access choices
• journal-fit and publication-readiness checks
• ethical ways Contentxprtz can support manuscript preparation without promising acceptance

Methodology and Sources

This guide was prepared from the journal’s current Emerald homepage, Emerald’s 2026 author guidelines, the Emerald open-access pricing page, the official issue archive and the supplied Scopus Source Record ID. Journal metrics, editorial teams, APCs, indexing status and review statistics can change, so authors should reconfirm live values immediately before submission.

Primary references: journal homepage, aims and scope, Emerald author guidelines, open-access and APC information, and the Scopus source profile.

What Does the Journal Aim to Publish?

Emerald describes JPMD as a journal that advances understanding of place management, place branding and related fields across geographical scales from micro and hyperlocal contexts to regional and national settings. Its central concern is how places are created, curated, revitalised, promoted, sustained and experienced, and how the people and organisations involved in those processes build the capability to lead change.

The scope gives particular attention to place stakeholders such as local authorities, destination management organisations, business improvement districts, collaborative partnerships, citizens, local businesses and grassroots movements. It also welcomes research on the skills and knowledge required for place leadership, the effectiveness of placemaking interventions, tourism-place relationships, sustainability, entrepreneurship and the production and consumption of places.

Importantly, JPMD is not confined to one discipline. Emerald explicitly positions the journal across management, real estate, marketing, business studies, tourism, retailing, geography, public administration, sociology, planning and design. It welcomes empirical, conceptual and methodological work when that work meaningfully advances place-related scholarship and practice.

Subjects and Research Themes Commonly Within Scope

Recent 2026 content reinforces the breadth of this agenda, including work on place-based innovation, tourism governance, digital place innovation, 3D city mapping, green hospitality signals and the symbolic characteristics of place. For fit assessment, recent articles are usually more informative than a broad subject label alone.

How Established and Visible Is JPMD?

The official Emerald archive shows JPMD publishing since 2008. That matters because it gives prospective authors a substantial back catalogue for assessing topic fit, methods, theoretical traditions and citation communities. The journal is currently on Volume 19 in 2026.

For Scopus-based evaluation, Emerald reports a 2025 CiteScore of 5.2. It also displays a 2026 CiteScore Tracker of 5.6, which is a provisional, monthly updated indicator and should not be reported as the final 2026 annual CiteScore. For Clarivate-based evaluation, Emerald displays a 2025 Journal Impact Factor of 1.6 and a 2025 five-year Impact Factor of 1.9.

Researchers working under university or PhD rules should confirm which metric system their institution recognises. “Quartile” is category- and database-specific; a journal may sit in different quartiles across different subject categories. For that reason, this guide does not collapse multiple category rankings into a single universal quartile.

Indexing and Abstracting

Emerald’s current indexing information lists the journal in sources including the Emerging Sources Citation Index, ABI/Inform, ProQuest, ReadCube Discover, the Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals, CABS and other recognised lists. Scopus visibility is additionally supported by the journal’s Scopus Source ID and the Scopus CiteScore metrics displayed by Emerald.

If Scopus or Web of Science inclusion is mandatory for a degree, promotion or funding requirement, authors should verify the journal directly in the live institutional database on the date of submission rather than relying on screenshots or third-party journal-ranking sites.

Which Manuscript Types Does JPMD Accept?

Emerald states that the word count includes all text, figures and tables, and advises authors to allow 280 words for each figure or table when estimating the total. Authors should therefore plan visual material early rather than treating tables and figures as “free” additions.

Manuscript and Formatting Requirements

The journal’s current submission page and Emerald’s 2026 author guidelines establish several practical requirements:

• Submit the article file in Microsoft Word. A PDF may accompany it, but a PDF alone is not acceptable.
• Use UK or US English consistently.
• Provide a concise, descriptive title.
• Include a structured abstract using Purpose, Design/methodology/approach, Findings and Originality; optional headings include research limitations/implications, practical implications and social implications.
• Keep the abstract to the Emerald-stated maximum of 250 words in total, including keywords and article classification.
• Provide up to six short, relevant keywords.
• Use the journal’s Harvard reference style and check every citation for accuracy and completeness.
• Remove identifying information from the review manuscript. Author biographies and acknowledgements should be uploaded separately where required.
• Tables should be supplied separately and clearly numbered; figures must be high quality and appropriately captioned.

Submission Process and Peer Review

JPMD uses ScholarOne for manuscript submission. Emerald explicitly states that the corresponding author should submit directly through the journal’s ScholarOne site, not by email and not through a third-party proxy. That distinction is important for authors using external editing or publication-support services: support can prepare files and explain the workflow, but the authors should control their own submission account and make the submission themselves.

The journal uses double-anonymous peer review. Emerald states that submissions are sent to at least two independent and anonymous reviewers. In practical terms, the manuscript should not contain author names, affiliations, self-identifying acknowledgements or wording that reveals authorship unnecessarily.

The current Emerald Insight journal homepage displays a 31-day time to first decision, 43 days from acceptance to publication and an acceptance rate of 10.5%. These operational statistics can change as Emerald updates its data, so they should be treated as a current snapshot rather than a promise for an individual paper.

Open Access and Publication Fees

JPMD is a hybrid journal. Authors may publish through the normal subscription route without an article-processing charge, choose gold open access, or use Emerald’s green open-access self-archiving route.

For gold open access in a hybrid Emerald journal, Emerald’s 2026 pricing page states a standard APC of £3,222 / US$4,351 / €3,710, plus VAT where applicable. Emerald also notes that institutional agreements or regional arrangements may cover or reduce the charge for eligible authors. Because APCs and agreements can change, authors should confirm the amount in ScholarOne or Emerald’s current APC page before making funding commitments.

Emerald states that payment for gold OA is requested after acceptance, not at initial submission. Green open access is available without an APC, and Emerald says the author-accepted manuscript can be made openly available after official publication without an embargo period under its current policy.

Research Ethics and Author Responsibilities

JPMD follows Emerald’s publication-ethics framework. Emerald is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and requires original work, appropriate authorship, disclosure of relevant prior publication, permissions for third-party material and ethical conduct in research involving people or non-public organisational information.

Where human participants are involved, Emerald requires informed consent and, where applicable, an ethics statement that identifies the reviewing body, approval number, approval date and relevant guidelines. Authors should also follow current policies on data transparency, research integrity, AI use and image generation. These requirements are not administrative extras: missing or inadequate ethics documentation can stop a manuscript from progressing.

Would My Manuscript Fit the Journal?

A manuscript is more likely to be a credible fit when the place dimension is central to the research question, theory, data or implications—not merely the location where the data happened to be collected. A study of consumer behaviour in one city, for example, is not automatically place-management research. The author should be able to explain what the paper teaches readers about place governance, branding, placemaking, development, experience, tourism-place relations, local economies or another clearly journal-relevant theme.

Strong fit signals

• The paper engages directly with place-management or place-branding scholarship.
• The research question has implications for how places are governed, represented, experienced, designed or developed.
• The contribution would interest more than a narrow single-discipline audience.
• The literature review includes recent JPMD work and adjacent high-quality scholarship.
• The methodology is appropriate to the place-based question and is explained transparently.
• The discussion shows why the findings matter for place theory, policy or practice.

Possible mismatch signals

• “Place” appears only as a geographical setting and is not theoretically meaningful.
• The manuscript is mainly a generic tourism, marketing, retail or planning paper without a clear place-related contribution.
• The submission is descriptive but does not explain what new understanding it adds.
• The paper ignores current debates in place management, placemaking or place branding.
• The manuscript is substantially outside the journal’s stated article types or word limits.

Publication-Readiness Checklist for JPMD

How to Prepare a Stronger Journal-Aligned Manuscript

As a practical publication-readiness step, compare the manuscript with five to ten recent JPMD papers that are close in topic or method. Look at how they frame the place problem, connect disciplines, present methods and translate findings into implications. This is not a substitute for originality; it is a way to understand the journal’s scholarly conversation.

For conceptual work, make the theoretical advance explicit rather than offering only a broad overview. For empirical work, show why the selected place, stakeholders and method are analytically important. For applied or practitioner work, connect local experience to principles that readers elsewhere can evaluate or adapt. In all cases, avoid overselling. A clearly bounded contribution is stronger than a manuscript that claims to solve place management in general.

How Contentxprtz Can Support Ethical Publication Readiness

Contentxprtz can help authors improve the clarity and readiness of a manuscript while preserving the researcher’s ownership of the ideas, data, analysis and submission decision. Relevant support may include academic editing, proofreading, language polishing, manuscript assessment, journal-format checks, reference consistency, structured-abstract editing, cover-letter editing and reviewer-response language support.

For JPMD specifically, publication-readiness support can focus on whether the paper communicates a clear place-related contribution, whether the abstract and keywords match the manuscript, whether the article is anonymised for review, whether Harvard references are consistent, and whether tables, figures and supplementary files are presented coherently. Contentxprtz should not submit on the author’s behalf through a proxy, fabricate citations, invent results or guarantee acceptance.

Summary: Is JPMD a Good Journal Choice for Your Research?

Journal of Place Management and Development is a well-established Emerald journal for multidisciplinary research on how places are managed, made, branded, marketed and developed. Its scope is broad enough to include management, tourism, marketing, geography, planning, sociology, public administration, retailing, real estate and design, but the manuscript still needs a genuine place-centred contribution.

Researchers considering JPMD should evaluate fit against recent articles, follow the current Emerald author instructions closely, anonymise the manuscript for double-anonymous review, and verify live metrics and APC information before submission. The journal’s current reported metrics and low acceptance rate suggest that clear scope alignment and a well-articulated contribution matter from the first editorial screening onward.

Final Submission Reminder

Use the official Emerald journal page and ScholarOne link for final checks and submission. Journal information can change after this guide is published, especially metrics, editorial roles, APCs and publication timelines. No editing or publication-support provider can guarantee peer-review success, acceptance or publication.