What we're looking
for in AJMSI's
inaugural issue.

Submissions for the inaugural issue of the AmpliSkill Journal of Management, Strategy & Innovation will open on June 1, 2026, and close on August 31. The first issue will publish in January 2027. The Editorial Board is in place. The submission portal is being built. The peer-review pool is forming.

This is, in other words, a real journal preparing to do real editorial work. And before submissions open, it seems useful to write down, plainly, what we are looking for — and what we are not.

This is not the formal call for papers. That document, with its word counts and formatting requirements and ethical declarations, will follow. This is the editorial framing that sits behind it — the answer to the question we have been asked most often by prospective authors: what kind of paper are you actually looking for?

Section 01Why a new journal

There is a reasonable question to ask before launching any new academic journal: does the world need another one? It is not as if there is a shortage. A practitioner-author looking to publish work on management can already submit to dozens of credible outlets, ranging from the rigorously academic to the deliberately popular.

What we believe is genuinely missing — and what AJMSI is trying to fill — is the space between the two. The space where empirical research is held to a high methodological standard but is also written to be read by people who actually run organizations. The space where practice notes from senior practitioners are taken seriously as primary evidence, not merely as illustrations of someone else's theory. The space, in short, where the gap between management science and management practice is treated as a serious editorial problem rather than an inevitable feature of the genre.

Section 02What we are looking for

The Editorial Board has converged on five article types for AJMSI, and the inaugural issue will publish across all of them. What follows is, for each type, a working description of what we are looking for in practice.

Leading articles (8,000–10,000 words). These are the agenda-setting pieces of the issue. We are looking for one to three of these for the inaugural issue. They should advance a substantive argument about a major theme in management, strategy, or innovation, and they should be written by an author or authors who have either deep empirical grounding, deep practitioner experience, or both. We are particularly interested in pieces that complicate — rather than confirm — current consensus.

Empirical research (6,000–10,000 words). Quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-method studies. We are looking for three to four for the inaugural issue. Standard methodological rigour applies. What we particularly want, beyond standard journal expectations, is a clear connection between findings and practice — a section in which the authors articulate, in their own voice, what a practitioner should do differently in light of the work.

Practice notes (2,500–4,000 words). Short, sharp pieces from senior practitioners describing patterns they have observed in real organizational work. These will be peer-reviewed for plausibility and originality, but the standard is not academic citation density — it is whether the practitioner has seen something genuinely worth knowing. We expect three for the inaugural issue.

Case studies (4,000–8,000 words). Teaching cases with accompanying notes, suitable for use in executive education. We will publish one or two in the inaugural issue. Cases should describe a real (or carefully disguised) organizational decision, present the relevant data, and pose a question rich enough to anchor a two- to three-hour classroom discussion.

Essays and reviews (1,500–3,500 words). Thoughtful, well-argued pieces on emerging management themes, plus book reviews. These go through editorial review rather than peer review, and we welcome submissions from a wider range of authors — including senior practitioners who do not consider themselves academic writers.

Section 03What we are not looking for

It is sometimes more useful to say what a journal is not looking for. AJMSI is not the right venue for:

• Pieces that simply summarize the state of the field. A literature review can be useful, but the paper has to do something with the literature beyond cataloguing it.
• Marketing dressed as research. Pieces that are essentially a vendor's white paper, repurposed with academic-sounding citations, will be returned. We are explicit and slightly stern about this.
• Theoretical pieces with no connection to practice. AJMSI is an applied journal. We will publish theoretical work, but it has to land somewhere a practitioner could use.
• Pieces that have been substantially published elsewhere. Standard exclusivity rules apply. Working papers and conference papers are fine; full publications elsewhere are not.

Section 04How to submit

The submission window opens June 1, 2026. Submissions are accepted via the AJMSI editorial portal (link will be live on the journal page from May). Each submission requires a blinded manuscript, a cover letter explaining the contribution and intended audience, and a short author statement.

Pre-submission inquiries are not just permitted but actively encouraged, particularly from authors who are unsure whether their work fits AJMSI. A 200-word abstract sent to editor@ampliskill.com is enough for us to come back with an honest indication of whether to proceed to a full submission. We would much rather have that conversation early than have an author spend three months on a piece that was never the right home.

First-round editorial decisions on submissions to the inaugural issue will be issued within four weeks of receipt. Peer review for accepted-for-review submissions will run through October and November. Final decisions for the inaugural issue will be communicated by early December.

An invitation.

Launching a new journal is, on one level, a straightforward administrative undertaking. On another level, it is a small statement of editorial intent — a wager that there is genuine work being done, in management research and management practice, that does not currently have a comfortable home.

If you have been working on something that fits the description above, we would like to hear from you. If you know someone who has, please pass this along. The success of a journal is, in the end, simply a function of the quality of the people who choose to send their work to it.

The Editorial Board and I are looking forward to reading what you send us.