Research in International Business and Finance: Scopus, Metrics & Submission Guide

Key Takeaways

• RIBAF is published by Elsevier and uses print ISSN 0275-5319 and online ISSN 1878-3384.
• The supplied Scopus source record is 12056; Elsevier officially lists the journal as indexed in Scopus and SSCI.
• Elsevier currently displays CiteScore 11.1 and Impact Factor 6.9; 2024 institutional Scopus records report SJR 1.415 and SNIP 1.869.
• The journal prioritises international-finance research, but single-country studies can fit when their theoretical or methodological contribution and country relevance are convincingly explained.
• Recent issues include both Research articles and Review articles, alongside editorials/corrigenda where applicable.
• The journal is hybrid: Elsevier lists a USD 3,630 open-access APC excluding taxes, while the subscription route carries no publication fee for authors.
• Publisher-reported journal insights list 18 days to first decision and 95 days to decision after review, but these are descriptive metrics rather than promises for an individual paper.

Journal Information at a Glance

What This Page Covers

• Aims, scope and subject fit
• Scopus and SSCI visibility
• Dated journal metrics
• Research and review articles
• Hybrid open-access choices
• Submission preparation
• Peer-review expectations
• Ethics and declarations
• Journal-fit checklist

Methodology and Sources Used for This Journal Guide

This guide prioritises the official ScienceDirect journal page, Elsevier’s Journal Insights and editorial-board pages, the supplied Scopus source record, and institutional pages that reproduce Scopus reporting-year metrics. The journal’s live Guide for Authors is treated as the authoritative location for submission formatting and policy details, even where the guide could not be fully fetched for quotation during preparation of this page.

Journal information is time-sensitive. Indexing, editorial appointments, APCs, decision-time statistics, citation metrics and author instructions may change. Accordingly, this page distinguishes stable identity details from reporting-year metrics and recommends rechecking the official journal and database records immediately before submission.

What RIBAF Is Trying to Publish

RIBAF positions itself around international finance rather than around business studies in the broadest sense. Elsevier’s aims and scope emphasise high-quality work that addresses current or emerging financial questions, encourages new intellectual connections and examines how finance interacts with wider societal concerns. The journal explicitly welcomes varied methodologies and interdisciplinary studies when the finance contribution remains clear.

Its named areas of interest include financial markets and institutions; sustainability and financial practice; cultural, formal and informal institutional influences on finance; privatisation and public or nonprofit finance; international development; financial crises and regulation; financialisation; international financial integration and architecture; behavioral finance; consumer finance; and finance-related methodological or conceptual questions.

Why the international dimension matters

Large international datasets are particularly welcome. A paper does not necessarily need to compare many countries, but a local study must do more than report a locally interesting result. Elsevier’s scope specifically indicates that single-country work should either deliver a novel theoretical or methodological advance or fall within the journal’s priority themes, while making a persuasive case for why that country is especially informative for the research problem.

Theoretical framing is not optional decoration

The official scope places unusual emphasis on theoretical context. Even applied empirical work is expected to be situated within a considered theoretical framework. In practical terms, a technically strong model with a thin research story may be less aligned than a paper that uses evidence to resolve a meaningful finance question, explains the mechanism and connects its results to broader scholarship.

Understanding Its Scopus Coverage and Journal Metrics

For researchers whose doctoral programmes, universities or funders recognise Scopus-listed journals, RIBAF has a straightforward visibility signal: Elsevier’s Journal Insights page lists Scopus among its indexing services, and the supplied source record points to Source ID 12056. Elsevier also lists the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), which places the journal within Clarivate’s Web of Science ecosystem.

The same Elsevier page displays CiteScore 11.1 and Impact Factor 6.9. For the 2024 Scopus reporting year, institutional records based on Scopus metrics report SJR 1.415 and SNIP 1.869, with Q1 ranking in relevant business/finance categories. A quartile is category- and year-specific: saying only “the journal is Q1” without a reporting year or subject category can be misleading.

Metrics can help you understand the journal’s citation visibility, but they do not establish fit. An off-scope paper does not become suitable because a journal has a high CiteScore, and a metric cannot substitute for checking recent papers, methods and editorial priorities.

Is This Journal a Good Match for Your Research?

A strong RIBAF candidate usually has an identifiable finance contribution, a research question that travels beyond a narrow descriptive setting, and an empirical or conceptual design capable of speaking to an international scholarly audience. The recent issue mix reinforces themes such as climate and sustainable finance, digital finance, banking, financial stability, ESG, market uncertainty, cryptocurrency and tokenisation, trade-policy uncertainty, financial inclusion and international market connectedness.

Before submission, read several recent articles that are close to your topic and several that use a method similar to yours. Look not only at titles but at how authors establish international relevance, theory, identification strategy, robustness, contribution and implications. That comparison is a practical publication-readiness step, not an official journal requirement.

What Does the Journal Publish?

Recent ScienceDirect issues label papers as Research article and Review article, while issues may also contain editorials, corrigenda and special-issue material. Because submission categories can evolve, the live Guide for Authors should be checked before choosing an article type.

The journal’s scope also gives a useful clue about what “review” should mean. It describes paradigm-oriented papers as especially suitable when structured as thorough reviews that build new perspectives by identifying new linkages or reorganising a topic. A literature summary that merely lists past findings is therefore unlikely to capture the spirit of that description.

Special issues and article collections have recently addressed sustainability, ESG integration, regulatory innovation, energy-transition finance and changing banking/insurance risk. A special issue may offer close thematic alignment, but its call for papers, deadline and guest-editor instructions should be checked independently of the regular journal scope.

Preparing and Submitting a Manuscript

Submission is handled online through Elsevier. A historical RIBAF author-information pack documents Elsevier’s “Your Paper Your Way” approach for new submissions, allowing a manuscript file suitable for refereeing before final production formatting. Because author instructions are periodically revised, use that history only as background and follow the current official Guide for Authors for the files, declarations, reference presentation and revised-manuscript requirements that apply today.

Build the manuscript around the journal’s stated expectations

1. State the finance problem clearly. The introduction should explain what is unresolved, why it matters to international finance and what the paper changes.
2. Make the setting earn its place. For a single-country study, explain why the institutional setting helps test theory, reveal a mechanism or address a priority theme.
3. Strengthen the theoretical framework. RIBAF’s scope explicitly expects empirical investigations to be supported by a considered theoretical context.
4. Show methodological credibility. Explain identification, variable construction, model choice, robustness and limitations in a way that an international finance reviewer can audit.
5. Write for reviewability. Dense language, unclear tables, weak signposting and inconsistent notation can obscure the contribution even when the underlying research is sound.

Submission files and declarations

Before uploading, verify the current requirements for title page information, abstract, keywords, highlights if requested, figures/tables, funding, conflicts of interest, author contributions, data availability and any research-ethics statements relevant to your study. Do not assume that requirements from another Elsevier finance journal are identical.

What Happens After You Submit a Manuscript?

The journal’s official scope says that submissions which do not meet its quality and writing standards may be returned without external peer review. That makes the first editorial screen particularly important: fit, originality, presentation quality and a credible finance contribution need to be visible early rather than buried in later sections.

Elsevier currently reports journal-level timelines of 18 days from submission to first decision, 95 days from submission to decision after review, 261 days from submission to acceptance, and 5 days from acceptance to online publication. These figures describe past journal workflow at an aggregate level; they should not be interpreted as a promised schedule for a specific paper, special issue or revision cycle.

An official acceptance rate was not found in the authoritative sources used here. It would be misleading to estimate one from the number of papers published, review-time data, online anecdotes or third-party “acceptance probability” tools.

Responding to reviewers

If invited to revise, treat the response document as part of the scholarly argument. Quote or paraphrase each reviewer point accurately, explain the change, identify where it appears in the manuscript and justify respectfully when a suggestion is not adopted. Do not manipulate citations, invent analyses or add claims that the data cannot support simply to satisfy a comment.

Open Access, APCs and the Subscription Route

RIBAF is a hybrid journal. Elsevier currently lists an open-access Article Publishing Charge of USD 3,630 excluding taxes. The publisher notes that the payable amount may be reduced during submission where an agreement, discount or other eligibility applies. Authors choosing the subscription option are not charged a publication fee, and access is provided to subscribers.

The right choice depends on funder mandates, institutional agreements, budget and desired access route. Before committing to an APC, check whether your institution has an Elsevier read-and-publish or open-access agreement, whether your funder requires immediate open access, and what licence options are offered for the article.

Do not confuse the optional open-access APC with an acceptance fee. Paying an APC is a publication-model choice after editorial acceptance and does not buy acceptance or favourable peer review.

Publication Ethics and Author Responsibilities

Elsevier journals operate within publisher-level publishing-ethics policies covering originality, authorship, conflicts of interest, research integrity, corrections and responsible peer review. Authors should consult the journal’s current ethics and declaration instructions together with Elsevier’s publishing ethics guidance.

• Use only data, analyses and citations that can be substantiated.
• Do not submit substantially the same manuscript to multiple journals simultaneously.
• Credit authorship according to genuine scholarly contribution and obtain all co-author approvals.
• Disclose funding, competing interests and relevant use of research tools where required.
• Do not fabricate reviewer identities, citations, data, ethics approvals or institutional affiliations.
• Keep an auditable record of dataset versions, code, approvals and major analytical decisions where relevant.

Professional editing can improve clarity, structure and compliance, but it should never replace the researcher’s responsibility for the study design, data, analysis, interpretation and final claims.

Practical Examples of Journal Fit

RIBAF Publication-Readiness Checklist

How Contentxprtz Can Support Ethical Publication Readiness

Contentxprtz can help researchers prepare a clearer, more journal-aligned manuscript without crossing the boundary into guaranteed-publication claims or deceptive authorship. Relevant support may include academic editing, language polishing for ESL authors, manuscript assessment, journal-format checking, reference and citation consistency, cover-letter editing, reviewer-response editing and a publication-readiness review.

That support is most useful after the research contribution is genuinely defined. Editing can help a strong idea become easier for editors and reviewers to evaluate; it cannot create missing evidence, guarantee peer-review success or influence an editorial decision.