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Submission Guidelines

Acceptable Content
AMS Review will evaluate submissions based on contribution and conceptual rigor. Specifically, AMS Review seeks intrinsically interesting work, which contributes to the understanding of marketing or consumer behavior. AMS Review consists of seven sections, Theory, Measurement, Literature Reviews, Films, Interpretive Research, Replications, and the Data Base Section. AMS Review articles should be broadly generalizable and meaningful to an international audience. Contributors should find AMS Review open to many different formats. However, AMS Review will not publish practitioner-oriented, empirical, or modeling-based research; however, we will consider replications. If you would like to submit original empirical work, please consider the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science.

AMS Review: Theory publishes full-length articles that develop new theory, significantly challenge/clarify current theory, and carefully define important constructs. AMS Review: Theory also contains shorter articles that make a substantive contribution to the advancement of theory within a more narrowly focused domain. These shorter articles might rigorously develop a single proposition, clarify a certain aspect of theory, or add a new concept to existing theory. Authors may also critique, extend, or otherwise comment on previous theoretical work in meaningful and constructive ways. Manuscripts that debate conceptual or theoretical premises would also be considered. AMS Review: Theory will not publish empirical studies or tests of theory.

AMS Review: Measurement publishes full-length articles that develop measures of theoretical constructs. Measurement articles are intended to be a natural extension of the theoretical development process for a construct. As such, all measurement articles must start with a clearly stated and appropriately justified definition of the construct being measured. AMS Review: Measurement will not consider articles on measurement theory, methodology, or practice including discussions of statistical methods for analyzing data, new measurement methods and techniques.

AMS Review: Literature Review publishes extensive literature reviews of research topics in Marketing. The reviews must summarize the state of the art, note deficiencies, and suggest needed future research.

AMS Review: Films makes available short films of a scholarly nature on Marketing phenomena. The film must be accompanied by a written-text Introduction that will be available through the journal web page, and the film itself will be available from an AMS Review web site.

AMS Review: Interpretive Research publishes longer papers generated through qualitative methods in a variety of Marketing domains. In the consumer research domain, we would label these as Consumer Culture Theory papers (Arnould and Thompson, Journal of Consumer Research, 2004). However, similar work in non-consumer domains will also be considered.

AMS Review: Replications publishes replications, both those which replicate and those which do not.

AMS Review: Data Base Summaries publishes summaries of data bases made available through the AMS Web Site.

The AMS Review will also not publish manuscripts that have be submitted to, accepted by, or published in other outlets (including published conference proceedings). AMS Review will accept papers that have been published on personal web pages, but not other electronic journals.

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Instructions to Contributors
All manuscripts must be written in English and submitted as a word processing document attached to an e-mail message. Authors are encouraged to use hyperlinks in the document. Images should be included in the word processing document, but authors should also keep a separate gif or jpg file for all images since these will be needed for final publication.  The submission should be sent to amsreview@ams-web.org. A cover letter should accompany all submissions.  The cover letter should include the following information:

1. A statement of preferences for the reviewers to be assigned to the paper.   No more than one reviewer can be an ad hoc reviewer or not currently a member of the AMS Review editorial board.
2. A statement that the paper is not published or under review at other journals, proceedings, or other hard copy or electronic publications.
3. An alternative e-mail address if you will be unavailable at the primary e-mail address for an extended period.
4. A brief acknowledgment that the paper is not an empirical piece (unless it is a replication, which can be considered).

AMS Review encourages authors to take full advantage of the Web format when preparing their papers. This would include material requiring special visual displays, figures, pictures, or photos in color, animated effects, material that includes sounds or music, and material that depends strongly on hyperlinks for its most advantageous presentation.  Manuscript length should be reasonable for the contribution offered. Please proofread the manuscript very carefully (the editor may require the authors to pay for professional copy editing of accepted manuscripts).

The manuscript should include the following information:

1. Cover page showing title, each author's name, affiliation, complete address, telephone and e-mail address.
2. Executive summary of between 500-1000 words.
3. A list of keywords which describe the contents of the manuscript.

Review Policy - AMS Review uses a double-blind review process for all manuscripts.  The editor makes all final decisions based on input from 2-3 reviewers.  Reviews are normally completed within 45 days. 

Ethics Policy - It is expected that authors submitting papers to the Academy of Marketing Science Review will have conducted their work in an ethical manner. General guidelines for the conduct of ethical research are available at http://www.apa.org/ethics (see section 8). If evidence comes forward that a published articles violated ethical research guidelines it may be removed from the journal.

Formatting
AMS Review needs to produce documents in PDF format.  The easiest way to do this is to work from a word processing document.  A word processing template is available for your use.

Tables and Figures
Tables and Figures should be placed within the text, not at the end of the manuscript. The headings for Tables and Figures should start with the term "TABLE" or "FIGURE" centered, bold and in all capital letters.  A double space should separate the descriptive title for the table or figure which should be centered, bold, and in title case.  Tables should be centered on the page and have proper labeling of axes, column headings, and other notations. Tables should be free of cells or other dividing elements unless they are needed for clarity.  Figures and artwork must be high quality JPEG or GIF files.  The figure title should be typed on a separate line and should not be part of the image file.

References
Reference citations within the text should consist of the author's last name and date of publication, without punctuation, enclosed within parentheses, and should be inserted before punctuation and/or at a logical break in the sentence. Bookmark links from the citation to a reference are preferred but not required. If several citations are needed, separate them with semicolons, and list alphabetically. Give the page number only if necessary. If the author's name has just been listed in the text, the date in parentheses is sufficient. If two or more works by an author have the same year, distinguish them by placing a, b, etc. after the year. Use et al. for works by four or more authors. For example:

Jones' latest proposal (1979) has been questioned by some (Boston 1981; Brown 1990), but is generally accepted by others (Fritz 1979; Lang 1979; Rotwang 1984). Investigators (Cockburn et al. 1985; Hodges McCollum, and Hall 1981; Lee and King 1983) have found that . . .

References should be single-spaced and placed at the end of the manuscript. Works by a single author, list chronologically; for multiple authors, alphabetically and then chronologically. References should be in the following format:

Mathematical Notation
Notations should be clearly explained within the text. Equations should be centered on the page. If equations are numbered, type the number in parentheses flush with the right margin. Unusual symbols and Greek letters should be identified. For equations that may be too wide to fit in a single column, indicate appropriate breaks.

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Guidelines for Authors

Guidelines for Conceptual Articles
Good conceptual articles must be logical, consistent and explicit.  When preparing a conceptual paper, make certain you do the following:

1. State and formally define all the constructs (boxes in a figure). Make certain you maintain consistency in the level of abstraction and unit of analysis. When using multidimensional constructs, be certain to clearly explain all the relevant dimensions.
2. Not only must you justify the constructs included in your formulation, but also make clear why other possibly relevant constructs are not included.
3. State and justify all the relationships among the constructs (lines in a figure). Make certain to explicitly specify the nature of the relationships (causal, relational, sequential, etc.). Establish a clear link between your conceptual developments and previous research (including alternative perspectives).
4. Explicitly state the underlying assumptions of the theory or concepts (e.g., conceptual paradigm).
5. Explicitly state the boundaries of the theory or concepts. For whom and under what conditions is the theory/concept appropriate or inappropriate.
6. Make certain the theory/concept can ultimately be tested/measured empirically.
7. Clearly state how the conceptual develop changes our understanding of theory and practice. In other words, spend considerable effort establishing the implications of the conceptual developments you suggest.
8. Explain how the proposed theory/concepts improves upon existing conceptualizations.

Guidelines for Literature Review Articles
Literature reviews need to summarize and evaluate the literature and then present revisions to existing theory and suggest future research streams. The literature sections of most doctoral dissertations are a good example of a literature summary. You may want to consider reading one of the following books before you submit a literature review.

• Hart, Chris. 1998. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination. London: Sage Publications.
• Fink, Arlene. 1998. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From Paper to the Internet. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

When you are preparing a literature review, keep the following guidelines in mind.

1. Clearly define the domain of the literature review. Don't claim to be conducting a broad review of a topic when you only are covering a single perspective of that domain.
2. Avoid a study-by-study summary of findings. A good literature review should be an integrated discussion of key issues.
3. Organize the literature review around the key issues and clearly state what we know and don't know.
4. Be certain to include both early work as well as the most recent work.
5. Attempt to explain inconsistencies in the literature.
6. Where appropriate, discuss how methodological perspectives and limitations explain the inconsistencies and alternative perspectives in the literature.
7. Be balanced in your presentation of alternative perspectives. If you are only interested in a single perspective, make this clear when defining the domain of the review.
8. In addition to the reference section, include a bibliography of readings in the domain.

Guidelines for Measurement Articles
Papers which develop measures, scales, or indicators for latent constructs should describe the procedures used in sufficient detail so that another researcher could duplicate the process. Authors should be certain to include the following:

1. Formally define the construct and state its domain. Provide theoretical justification for the existence of the construct. Failure to define the construct adequately will result in rejection.
2. Formally state and justify whether your measure will be a reflective or a causal (formative) measure of the construct (see Bollen, Kenneth and Richard Lennox. 1991. "Conventional Wisdom on Measurement: A Structural Equation Perspective." Psychological Bulletin 110 (2): 305-14 for an explanation of the difference between reflective and causal indicators). Reflective measures are preferred, and authors should have rigorous justification for the use of causal measures.
3. Explain in detail the procedures used to generate items (how were descriptors of the construct, scale anchors, and other phrasing and wording selected).  The detail should be sufficiently clear that another researcher can duplicate the procedures.
4. List all the items for which you collected data and provide the covariance matrix for these items.
5. Confirmatory factor analysis should be used to assess the factor structure of the measure. Reliability of the measure should also be reported.
6. If you develop a reflective measure, make certain you test for unidimensionality (see Gerbing, David W. and James C. Anderson. 1988. "An Updated Paradigm for Scale Development Incorporating Unidimensionality and Its Assessment." Journal of Marketing Research 25 (May): 186-92). If you develop a formative measure, be clear how you recommend combining items.
7. Provide an assessment of the nomological validity of the scale. It is recommended you use a minimum of two additional constructs in your assessment.
8. Be certain to indicate under what conditions the scale is likely to be valid/invalid.

Guidelines for Films
Flims should be submitted to Russ Belk at mktrwb@business.utah.edu. Questions about suitable content should be directed to him. In general, films detailing marketing or consumer processes will be considered; case studies of incidents may be considered; firm-based films will not be considered. As of 2007, videos are limited to seven minutes in length.

Guidelines for Interpretive Research
Research on Consumer Culture Theory (Arnould and Thompson, Journal of Consumer Research, 2004) or of a similar nature in non-consumer domains will be considered for the journal. Such research often confronts page limit problems, which is not a concern for the AMS Review. These papers should be submitted to the journal editor, but they will be handled by the section editor, Ron Hill.

Guidelines for Replications
You are encouraged to report replications of previous work, whether successful or unsuccessful. State the steps taken to make your study as true a replication as possible. At the same time, take care to note context differences, especially if they may explain in part any failure to replicate. Please share insights gained as to needed changes to the conduct of future research. Research attempting to replicate studies across cultures are especially encouraged.

Guidelines for Comments
Comments on previous work in AMS Review are encouraged. They should be brief in nature, and will go through a limited review process. If accepted, they will be uploaded behind the article which was discussed.

Guidelines for Data Sets
Data sets made available for analysis by others will be described in detail in a short paper available in a special system of the AMS Review Web Site, and a link to the data set will be provided. The paper should provide a description of the organization of the data set, the conceptual and operational definitions of your constructs, the theoretical intent of the study, and the nature of the results.
We ask that those accessing the data set in order to use different analytical methods or to test an alternative framework to report their findings in a very short paper, discussing whether the results converge or not with those of the original author’s. If the results diverge, provide your conclusion as to what is needed in future research in the area.
Publication of this summary does not preclude you from publishing a paper from the data set in some other venue, but we do ask that you cite your short summary in the AMS Review and to thank the initial author for making the data available.

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_{Updated 7/2007}