LSE library walkway (cropped), by SomeDriftwood, under a CC-BY-2.0 licence

Welcome to LSE Business Review

LSE Business Review is a knowledge-exchange initiative designed to share the best of modern social science ideas, theories and evidence with business decision-makers and professionals, and to learn from them in turn. We present the expertise of professors in finance, economics, business studies, law, management, accounting, social psychology, mathematics, public policy, sociology, geography, philosophy, media, cultural and gender studies, and political science, in accessible and relevant ways for business. And LSE Business Review hosts business professionals and experts with knowledge to give and advice to offer academics. Our focus is topical, tackling the issues of today. And our writing is direct and clear, designed for an audience with much else to get done.

Information for contributors

Who are our contributors:

• Academic researchers from universities throughout the world – PhD student and above.
• Decision makers (leadership roles) in business, multilateral institutions, government and not-for-profit organisations based on their experience and/or on their organisation’s research.  Articles must be written by leaders themselves, not by their PR representatives. It makes a notable difference when leaders use their own voice.

LSE Business Review contributor guidelines:

• Length: 1000-1400 words.
• Audience: business and government decision-makers, professionals and professional bodies, academics, students, organisations.
• Language: We strive to use simple, direct and jargon-free language. We’re aware of the curse of knowledge, which keeps some people from being good at explaining things to audiences that don’t have the same knowledge background.
• What to avoid: repeated words, initials (don’t use them to avoid repeating words; they block the flow of the text), capital letters (unless strictly necessary), expressions in Latin; overusing adverbs. If you would like more complete guidance, we recommend The Economist’s style guide.
• Editing process: The editor will go over each post. If we have any questions and/or suggestions we will get back to you before publication, but we will not rewrite your piece. This is your voice and your signature. It works best when you turn in a final or close-to-final copy. Due to time pressures, you will have less than 24 hours to approve our edits. However, once articles are published, we are happy to make edits.
• Citations: We use links, instead of the traditional academic citation format. We avoid footnotes. Please insert the links throughout the text as appropriate (not in a list at the bottom of the Word document). Example (from this post): “While recent studies have documented how Huguenots fostered productivity and economic development in host countries (e.g. Fourie and von Fintel, 2014; Hornung, 2014), the overall effect of the Revocation in France is still not clearly understood.”
• We prefer open access links whenever possible. We thank our sister site LSE Europp for putting together this helpful explanation on how to add hyperlinks: “EUROPP uses direct links for referencing rather than citations (e.g. Simon Hix and Michael Marsh show that European Parliament elections…). The easiest way to do this in Microsoft Word is to highlight the words you would like to act as the link, press “ctrl+k”, and then paste in the URL of the page you would like to link to. If you are citing a direct quote from a particular page in a publication, please link to the full publication and include a page number at the end of the sentence (p. 54). We cannot publish bibliographies or reference lists at the end of articles.”
• How to send your blog post: Please email it to the editor in an attached Word file (see below for headshots, bios and charts).
• First person: Our blog posts use the voice of their authors, so it’s ok to leave first person references, such as “my/our research”, “I/We believe”. It’s best when authors use a more conversational tone.
• Concrete examples: It’s always a good idea to explain concepts with concrete examples. Consider mentioning people you ran into during your research, or a current event that relates to your analysis.
• Headshot: Please don’t forget to include a high-resolution headshot as a separate jpeg or png file. Photos added to a Word document usually come out with very low resolution. Send your photo in as large a size as you want. We will crop and resize it.
• Bio: Please add your job title/affiliation at the bottom of the blog post. We are moving away from long bios. For us, the shorter the sweeter.
• Title and subtitle: Your suggestions are welcome, but we must “own” the title and sub-title to make sure they fit our format and presentation style. Think of them as LSE Business Review introducing your article to our audience.
• Time lag between submission and publication: We plan our content way ahead of time. It takes weeks between submission and publication. We do try and publish posts as soon as possible, but must allow a large time window to organise a varied selection of posts each week. Thank you for your patience.
• For academics: If you have never written a blog post from a journal article and would like inspiration, check out this how-to: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2016/01/25/how-to-write-a-blogpost-from-your-journal-article/

Additional notes

The submission of an article does not guarantee its publication. If your article does not fit our remit of business-relevant research and experience-based insights by business decision-makers, we may ask you to rewrite it. Owing to events and other circumstances beyond our control, we may have to change our posting order at very short notice.

As part of our processes, the blog team will refer the following types of articles to the General Editor (which may cause your blog’s publication to be delayed or cancelled):

• Articles that are potentially libellous or defamatory
• Articles that cause the blog team to have concerns about author’s potential conflicts of interest
• Articles that are insufficiently evidence-based or lacking in academic rigour
• Any other articles that may affect the reputation of the author, the LSE, or the LSE Public Policy Group

 

Notes on our style

Here are some notes about our chosen style. This is a work in progress. Your comments are welcome.

CAPITALISATION

Capitalisation: avoid it. It’s distracting. The idea is to present a smooth visual experience to the reader. The New York Times has an interesting piece about it here.

For subject area: innovation, technology management, business models and human resources.

Other examples: blockchain, fintech, bitcoin, earth, moon

For school names: London School of Economics and Political Science, University of Oxford

NUMBERS:

• Numbers are spelled out from one to ten. After that, use numerals such as 11, 39 or 398.
• Use “per cent” instead of % as often as possible.

SPELLING:

Traditional British spelling: organisation (not organization); labour, not labor; start-up, not startup. When in doubt, we check the Oxford dictionary, The Economist, and The Guardian.

CONSISTENCY:

We try to follow our style every time.

Creative Commons and article sharing policy

Laurence Radford Senior Blogs Editor, LSE Blogs

 

 

 

 

 

Helena Vieira – Managing Editor, LSE Business Review

 

 

 

 

 

Advisory board:

Eva Micheler, Professor of Law (LSE Law School)

Saul Estrin, Emeritus Professor of Management Economics and Strategy (Department of Management, Centre for Economic Performance)

Wim Van der Stede, Dean, LSE Extended Education and CIMA Professor of Accounting and Financial Management (Department of Accounting)

Simeon Djankov, Policy Director with LSE’s Financial Markets Group (Department of Finance) and Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington DC.

 

 

 

businessreview@lse.ac.uk