LSE - Small Logo
LSE - Small Logo
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERALSE library walkway (cropped), by SomeDriftwood, under a CC-BY-2.0 licence

Welcome to LSE Business Review

Businesses, firms and markets play an integral part in the development of human civilisation. So how they work, what evidence firms use, and what norms they follow, are of crucial significance for us all. LSE Business Review is a new 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 not of yesteryear). 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, 2014Hornung, 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.

FIGURES:

Figures are labelled the same way always, same font and style.

For LSE BR, a figure/table will always be presented this way:

“Figure 1. (Title of the figure) (Font: h5, bold)”

The figure goes here.

“Notes and sources” right below. (Font: h5, italics)

When authors send a chart containing a title inside, we will change it to the style above.

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

All of our original articles (please see Caveat below) are published under the Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. The hyperlink will take you to the explanation of the license. In short, CC = Creative Commons, BY = attribution required, NC = non-commercial use, ND = no derivatives. Other blogs and publications are free to use them as long as:

  • they do not charge for access to the blog post individually or as part of a bundle,  
  • they include a prominent credit to LSE Business Review and the article’s authors (please use the same bio provided in our article), and link back to the article.
  • they do not alter the blog post

Caveat: this licence does not extend to articles originally published in other websites which LSE Business Review reposts with permission. When we repost from other sites we write it on top of our Notes section. Please always read the Notes before republishing. If you’re interested in reposting one of these articles, please contact the website where it was originally published.

Featured image: Our Creative Commons license to republish our content does not extend to the featured images. Information on the photos we use are included in the Notes section, with a hyperlink. We generally use Creative Commons licenses, and provide a link to the original website. You must always check the original website and their specific licenses. We sometimes use images provided by the authors with special permissions. Please do not reuse these images, as you may incur in breach of copyrights.

LSE Business Review has agreements to share content with a number of other blogs, including those in the LSE family.

If you do not wish for your article to be republished anywhere else, please let us know.

Editorial Team

Patrick-Dunleavy-80x108Patrick Dunleavy – General Editor. Patrick is Professor of Political Science and Public Policy in the Government Department at the LSE, where he has worked since 1979. He teaches mainly on the LSE’s Executive MPA and MPA programmes and is chair of the LSE Public Policy Group (PPG). Patrick is also Centenary Research Professor at the Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis, University of Canberra. He studied PPE at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and then took his D.Phil at Nuffield College, Oxford, where he was also Research Fellow. Patrick has lead many PPG research projects funded by and working with major corporations, including the future of digital government for EDS and HP Enterprise Systems, governance reform for ICANN, and consultancy and MPA capstone projects with major consultancy firms. PPG also works closely with government agencies including recently the European Court of Auditors, and the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). Patrick is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences, and has received two impact awards from the UK Political Studies Association (in 2003 and 2013). He is a board member of the Campaign for the Social Sciences. His two most recent books (co-authored) are The Impact of the Social Sciences (Sage, 2014) and Growing the Productivity of Government Services (Elgar, 2013). He tweets at @PJDunleavy and @Write4Research. Email: businessreview@lse.ac.uk

Helena headshotHelena Vieira – Managing Editor. Helena joined PPG in March 2015 to help set up the blog. She has lived and worked in four continents as a journalist and communications consultant. Her experience includes the roles of reporter and editor for international media organizations such as Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, and Brazil’s Globo group. She holds an M.A. in International Development from American University in Washington, D.C. and an M.Sc. in Strategic Communications from Columbia University in New York. She tweets at @helenavieira1. Email: businessreview@lse.ac.uk

[/toggle]

[businessreview@lse.ac.uk

 

Receive our newsletter

Follow us on

Explore our sister blogs

Explore all our blogs

Additional resources