Maritime Business Review: Scopus, Scope, Metrics and Submission Guide

Quick Answer: What Is Maritime Business Review?

Maritime Business Review is an international scholarly journal for research on maritime business. Its stated aim is to provide current research insights, state-of-the-art theory and management practice to maritime researchers and practitioners. Its scope spans shipping markets, ports and terminals, finance, insurance, chartering, fleet management, maritime safety and security, sustainability, technology, human resources, intermodal transport and legal issues.

The journal is published by Emerald Publishing on behalf of the Pacific Star Group Educational Foundation. It carries ISSN 2397-3757 and eISSN 2397-3765. The supplied Scopus Source Record ID is 21100913309, and Emerald explicitly lists Scopus among the journal’s indexing services.

Researchers considering MABR should check more than indexing alone. Topic fit, contribution to maritime business knowledge, manuscript quality, article type, word limit, structured abstract, anonymisation, reference style and ethical compliance all matter at submission.

Key Takeaways

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing, on behalf of Pacific Star Group Educational Foundation.
• Scopus: Indexed; supplied Scopus Source ID 21100913309.
• Current official metrics: 2025 CiteScore 5.6; 2025 Impact Factor 3.0; 5-year Impact Factor 2.4.
• Open access: Diamond open access under CC BY 4.0; no APC for authors.
• Peer review: Double-anonymous, normally involving at least two independent external reviewers after editorial screening.
• Core manuscript rules: Maximum 7,000 words, title up to eight words, structured abstract up to 250 words, maximum 12 keywords, Harvard references.
• Official operating data: 27.6% acceptance rate and 44-day average time to first decision for submissions from 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025.
• Publication frequency: Four issues per year according to the journal’s transparency statement.

Journal Information at a Glance

What This Page Covers

• Journal identity, publisher, ISSN and Scopus record
• Aims, scope and subject areas
• Indexing, CiteScore, Impact Factor and quartile context
• Article classifications and manuscript requirements
• ScholarOne submission and peer-review process
• Diamond open access, copyright licence and fees
• Research ethics, originality, conflicts and AI-use policy
• Journal-fit and publication-readiness checklists
• Ethical ways Contentxprtz can support authors before submission

Methodology and Sources

This journal profile was prepared primarily from the official Emerald Publishing page for Maritime Business Review, including its aims and scope, author guidelines, transparency statement, indexing list, editorial information, citation metrics and publication-timeline data. The Scopus Source ID and ISSN were cross-checked against the supplied journal record. Where Emerald does not display SJR, SNIP or Scopus quartile, this article labels older university-library-reported Scopus values as reference points rather than presenting them as current official figures.

Because journal metrics, editorial teams, database coverage and author policies can change, researchers should verify time-sensitive details on the official journal and database pages immediately before making a submission or using a metric for institutional evaluation.

What Is Maritime Business Review?

MABR sits at the intersection of maritime studies and business-management research. Rather than limiting itself to a single operational topic such as ship design or marine engineering, it focuses on how maritime organisations, markets, ports, terminals, shipping companies, logistics networks and associated institutions are managed, financed, regulated and transformed.

This makes the journal relevant to scholars in shipping and transport management, logistics, operations, international business, strategy, technology and innovation, sustainability, finance, marketing, organisational behaviour and maritime law where the research question has a clear maritime-business contribution. The journal’s recent calls for papers also indicate continuing interest in themes such as sustainability and digitalisation in maritime logistics.

Editorial interpretation: the scope is broad within maritime business, but “broad” should not be read as “anything related to the sea.” A manuscript should make its business, management, policy or operational relevance explicit and should engage with the scholarly conversation in maritime business rather than merely mentioning a maritime setting.

Maritime Business Review Aims and Scope

Emerald states that MABR aims to provide the latest research insights and state-of-the-art theory and management practice to maritime researchers and practitioners on all aspects of maritime business. Its listed areas include:

• shipping market analysis and forecasting;
• customer services and marketing;
• organisational behaviour in maritime business;
• innovation management;
• maritime security and safety management;
• shipping finance, marine insurance and ship chartering;
• bulk shipping and fleet management;
• maritime education and training;
• human resource management and strategic alliances;
• intermodal transport operations;
• port and terminal management and operations;
• green ports and sustainability;
• cruise operations and management;
• technology in maritime business; and
• legal aspects of maritime business.

Within these themes, suitable research may be quantitative, qualitative, conceptual, technical, case-based or review-oriented, provided it matches one of the journal’s accepted article classifications and makes a coherent contribution. Topics such as port competitiveness, vessel supply and demand, maritime digitalisation, sustainability investment, service quality, supply-chain resilience, decarbonisation, automation and maritime workforce transformation may be relevant when they are framed against the journal’s stated scope.

Potentially weak fit: purely technical naval architecture, oceanography, marine biology or engineering work without a meaningful maritime-business, management or operational dimension may be outside the journal’s core editorial purpose.

Is Maritime Business Review Indexed in Scopus?

Yes. Emerald lists Scopus among the abstracting and indexing services for Maritime Business Review, and the journal record supplied for this article identifies Scopus Source ID 21100913309. The Emerald page also reports a Scopus CiteScore, providing additional confirmation of active Scopus metric coverage.

The journal is also listed by Emerald in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) from Clarivate, along with services and databases including ABI/INFORM, EBSCO Discovery Service, EconBiz, Google Scholar, ProQuest collections, the Norwegian Register for Scientific Journal, Taiwan Social Sciences Citation Index and WorldCat.

For PhD or university requirements, authors should not assume that “Scopus indexed” alone satisfies every institutional rule. Some universities specify a particular quartile, category, database year, list, or publication status. Verify the institution’s exact requirement and check the current source profile at the time of submission and again at the time of publication if required.

Current Metrics: CiteScore, Impact Factor, SJR, SNIP and Quartile

The official Emerald journal page currently reports a 2025 CiteScore of 5.6, a 2025 Journal Impact Factor of 3.0, and a 2025 five-year Impact Factor of 2.4. Emerald also displays a 2026 CiteScore Tracker, but tracker values are provisional and updated monthly, so the completed 2025 CiteScore is the cleaner figure to cite for annual comparison.

Emerald does not currently display SJR, SNIP or the journal’s Scopus quartile in the same metric panel. A Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam library journal guide reports 2024 Scopus metrics of SJR 0.587, SNIP 0.851 and Q2 across Business and International Management, Management of Technology and Innovation, Strategy and Management, and Transportation. These are useful historical reference values, not substitutes for checking the latest Scopus source profile.

Why this distinction matters: CiteScore, Impact Factor, SJR, SNIP, percentiles and quartiles are calculated using different datasets and methodologies and may update on different schedules. A journal can therefore have different quartile labels across Scopus and Web of Science categories. Researchers should cite the metric source and year rather than writing simply “the journal is Q2” without qualification.

Who Should Consider Submitting?

MABR may be a suitable target for researchers whose work makes a clear contribution to maritime business knowledge and speaks to both scholarship and management practice. Potential authors include university researchers, maritime-economics and logistics scholars, PhD candidates, port and shipping researchers, operations and supply-chain academics, professionals conducting publishable empirical studies, and interdisciplinary teams working on maritime sustainability, technology or regulation.

A strong candidate manuscript will usually have four characteristics: a clearly defined maritime-business problem, engagement with relevant scholarly literature, a defensible method or conceptual approach, and findings or arguments that matter beyond one isolated organisation or case. Practical relevance is valuable, but it should be supported by scholarly framing and evidence.

Article Types and Classifications

Authors must classify their submission in ScholarOne. Emerald lists the following categories for the journal:

• Research paper: reports original research such as model development or testing, surveys, market research, empirical analysis or other systematic study.
• Viewpoint: presents an author’s informed opinion or interpretation.
• Technical paper: describes and evaluates technical products, processes or services.
• Conceptual paper: develops ideas or hypotheses through discursive, theoretical or comparative argument.
• Case study: describes real interventions or organisational experiences.
• Literature review: critically reviews or synthesises a defined body of literature.
• General review: provides an overview or historical examination of a concept, technique or phenomenon.

Choosing the classification is not only administrative. It helps the editor and reviewers interpret the manuscript’s purpose and expected evidence. Authors should select the category that best reflects what the paper actually does.

Manuscript Requirements Authors Should Check

Authors should read the official instructions again before submission because detailed figure, permissions, supplementary-file and reference-format rules may be updated.

How to Submit to Maritime Business Review

1. Recheck the journal’s aims and scope and compare your manuscript with recent MABR articles.
2. Format the manuscript to the journal’s current author guidelines, including the title, structured abstract, keywords, references and anonymisation requirements.
3. Prepare separate files for items such as author biographies, acknowledgements and tables where required.
4. Go to the journal’s ScholarOne Manuscripts system and create or use your author account.
5. Enter all authors in the correct order with accurate email addresses and affiliations; add ORCID details where applicable.
6. Select the most appropriate article classification.
7. Upload manuscript and supporting files, complete required declarations, preview the generated proof and submit.

Emerald notes that authors may encounter Paperpal Preflight before submission, but they can bypass that step and submit directly to ScholarOne.

Peer Review and Editorial Decision Process

MABR uses a double-anonymous peer-review process. Each submission is initially checked by the editor. A manuscript may be declined or returned at this stage if it does not fit the aims and scope or if the language and manuscript quality are considered too low. If it appears suitable, it is sent to at least two independent referees.

After reviewer reports are received, the editor may accept, request minor or major revisions, or decline the manuscript. Emerald’s author guidance says the journal’s goal is to communicate a first decision within 60 days. Its journal metric panel reports an observed average time to first decision of 44 days for submissions between 1 April 2024 and 31 March 2025.

The same panel reports an acceptance rate of 27.6% for that submission period. This should be treated as historical operating data, not as a prediction of an individual manuscript’s chance of acceptance. Topic fit, originality, evidence, presentation and reviewer evaluation remain manuscript-specific.

Open Access, APCs and Copyright

Maritime Business Review is currently a diamond open-access journal. Emerald states that publication costs are funded through its partnership arrangement with Pacific Star Group Educational Foundation, so authors do not pay an APC. Articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) licence.

The journal’s transparency statement says that since January 2024 the journal has published under this diamond open-access model and that authors retain copyright while permitting sharing, reuse and adaptation with appropriate attribution. Authors should nevertheless read the licence terms and current open-access page before submission, especially if funder or institutional licensing rules apply.

Publication Ethics and AI Use

Emerald states that its journals follow COPE guidance and require original work that is not simultaneously under consideration elsewhere. Authors must declare conflicts of interest, respect copyright and permissions, and provide appropriate ethics approval and informed-consent information where human participants or sensitive data are involved.

Emerald’s current policy also distinguishes between generative-AI copywriting and copy-editing. The MABR author-guideline page states that using generative AI to create or draft new submission material is not permitted, while using such tools to copy-edit an author’s own original existing work for structure, clarity, language and grammar can be permitted subject to Emerald’s policy. Authors should consult the current ethics policy and disclose AI use where required.

As a practical rule, researchers should keep authorship accountability human, verify every source and claim, protect confidential data, and avoid any editing workflow that introduces fabricated evidence, invented citations or undisclosed substantive authorship.

How to Decide Whether MABR Fits Your Manuscript

Before investing time in journal-specific formatting, run a fit check:

• Problem fit: Is the central research problem genuinely about maritime business, management, operations, finance, technology, sustainability, law or policy?
• Audience fit: Would maritime researchers and practitioners learn something useful from the paper?
• Literature fit: Does the manuscript engage with the scholarly literature relevant to MABR’s domain rather than using maritime context as an incidental setting?
• Contribution fit: Can the novelty be stated clearly in one or two sentences?
• Method fit: Is the method appropriate, transparent and adequately supported?
• Format fit: Can the paper meet the 7,000-word maximum, eight-word title and structured-abstract rules without damaging its argument?
• Ethics fit: Are permissions, approvals, consent, conflicts and originality issues resolved?

If fit remains uncertain after reviewing recent papers, Emerald’s FAQ suggests contacting the journal editor with the paper title and structured abstract to ask about suitability.

Publication-Readiness Checklist

• Read the latest aims and scope and at least several recent papers.
• State the maritime-business contribution clearly in the title, abstract and introduction.
• Check that the article classification matches the manuscript’s actual design.
• Reduce the manuscript to the journal’s word limit without removing essential methodological transparency.
• Use the required structured abstract headings and keep the total within 250 words.
• Limit keywords to 12 and choose terms that accurately represent the work.
• Audit Harvard references for completeness, DOI accuracy and one-to-one matching between citations and the reference list.
• Remove author names, acknowledgements and other identifying clues from the review manuscript.
• Confirm ethics approval, informed consent, permissions, conflicts and data-protection requirements.
• Check tables, figures and supplementary files against the current technical instructions.
• Proofread the final files and confirm that every author’s name, order, affiliation and ORCID information is correct in ScholarOne.

How Contentxprtz Can Support Ethical Publication Readiness

Contentxprtz can support researchers with manuscript editing, academic proofreading, journal-aligned formatting, reference and citation consistency, structured-abstract refinement, language polishing, submission-file checks, cover-letter editing and reviewer-response editing. Support should strengthen the author’s own work rather than replace the author’s research decisions or fabricate scholarly content.

For MABR in particular, ethical support can focus on whether the manuscript communicates its maritime-business contribution clearly, follows the journal’s structure and formatting requirements, preserves double-anonymous review, uses consistent Harvard references, and presents methods and findings in precise academic English.

No legitimate editing or publication-assistance service can guarantee acceptance, peer-review success, indexing or publication. Editorial decisions remain with the journal and its reviewers. Explore Contentxprtz journal publication support for preparation assistance that keeps author responsibility and publication ethics at the centre of the process.

Authoritative Sources and Verification Links

• Emerald Publishing — Maritime Business Review: aims, scope, indexing, metrics, author guidelines, peer review, open access, transparency and editorial information.
• Emerald Insight — Maritime Business Review: journal content and published articles.
• Scopus Source ID 21100913309: source profile and current Scopus metrics/category information.
• Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Journal Publishing Guide: reference record for 2024 Scopus SJR, SNIP and category quartiles.

Conclusion

Maritime Business Review is a Scopus-indexed, ESCI-listed, diamond open-access journal with a broad but clearly maritime-business-focused scope. Its official 2025 metrics, no-APC model, double-anonymous review process and detailed author requirements make it a credible option for researchers whose manuscripts connect rigorous scholarship with maritime business and management practice.

The best submission decision is still manuscript-specific. Check the latest scope, read recent MABR papers, verify current metrics and institutional requirements, and make sure the manuscript satisfies the journal’s format, ethics and anonymisation rules before uploading it to ScholarOne.

At Contentxprtz, we don’t just edit; we help ideas reach their fullest potential.