1 Editorial status report

In 2023 there were 398 manuscripts under review; 388 of them were finally decided.

During the peer review process, submitted manuscripts go through one or more revision stages leading up to acceptance or rejection. Figure 1 summarizes the activity for the journal office between January 1st and December 31st of the last five years. The rejection rate for a year is calculated as the number of rejected manuscripts in this year compared to the total number of decisions in this year, which is defined here as the number of rejected manuscripts plus the number of accepted manuscripts.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Editorial status summary 2019–2023

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2 Downloads in 2013–2023

Downloads of full-text articles are a very good indicator of the interest of the scientific community in the papers of the journal and their content. This concerns in a positive way two aspects simultaneously: the relevance of the topics as well as the quality of the articles. As can be seen by Fig. 2, we had already about 60,000 downloads in 2013, in the first year after “Zeitschrift für Betriebswirtschaft” had been transformed into the “Journal of Business Economics”. In 2023, the downloads increased to 514,191. Some of the illustrated growth in downloads over the years is due to the greater availability of articles via open access.

Fig. 2
figure 2

Successful full-text article downloads in 2013–2023

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In addition, Table 1 gives an information about which articles, published in the years 2021–2023, were downloaded most frequently in the year 2023.

Table 1 Articles published 2021–2023: top 10 full-text article requests 2023
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3 Scores, indices and impacts

  • Coverage in Abstracting & Indexing (A&I) Services.

ABS Academic Journal Quality Guide; ANVUR; BFI List; Baidu; CLOCKSS; CNKI; CNPIEC; Dimensions; EBSCO Discovery Service; EconLit; Google Scholar; Japanese Science and Technology Agency (JST); Naver; Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals and Series;OCLC WorldCat Discovery Service; Portico; ProQuest ABI/INFORM; ProQuest-ExLibris Primo; ProQuest-ExLibris Summon; Research Papers in Economics (RePEc); SCImago; SCOPUS; TD Net Discovery Service; UGC-CARE List (India); WTI AG; Wanfang.

  • h5 Index 2023: 32.

  • Scopus CiteScore 2023: 5.2.

  • Scimago Journal Rank (SJR) 2022: Top quartile.

  • Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) 2022: 1.445.

  • Altmetric Social Impact 2023: 71.

4 Best paper award 2023

By decision of the editors of the Journal of Business Economics the Best Paper Award 2023 is given to Svenja Jarchow and Stefanie Weniger for their contribution “Between benefit and risk: how entrepreneurs evaluate corporate investors”, printed version in issue 5, July 2023. By this the editors like to prize a qualitatively outstanding publication. The editors and the publisher cordially congratulate the authors on this award.

Svenja Jarchow was born on November 10, 1980 in Hamburg, Germany. After graduating from the Technical University of Munich with a bachelor and master degree in Molecular Biotechnology, she pursued her doctoral studies in Entrepreneurial Finance, bridging both fields and her unique expertise by focusing on the financing of young biotech ventures. She spent research time in Madrid, Spain, and held research talks at numerous conferences in Europe and the US. During her postdoc time, she focused her research on early-stage finance, innovation management, and financing as well as ownership structures. Amongst others, Jarchow acquired a three-year funding with a total volume of appr. 800k€ for a project on the German Biotech Industry from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. She was Managing Director of the Center for Entrepreneurial and Financial Studies and has published in many knowledgeable journals.

Stefanie Weniger was born on November 9, 1988 in Ulm, Germany. She holds a bachelor degree in Corporate Management and Economics from Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen, and a master degree in Business Administration from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. Initially drawn towards the realm of Management Consulting, she opted to delve into the academic world of research and teaching at the Center for Digital Technology & Management, a joint institution of the Technical University and the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich. Under the mentorship of Reiner Braun from the Chair of Entrepreneurial Finance at the Technical University in Munich, Weniger successfully concluded her doctoral studies focusing on Corporate Venturing and Corporate Venture Capital. Her academic journey also led her to Harvard University, where she engaged in a research stay under the guidance of Josh Lerner. Throughout her academic pursuits, she delivered numerous research presentations across the EU and the US. Weniger’s research has additionally found great recognition through publications in well-received journals.

5 Best reviewer award 2023

Connected with giving away the Best Reviewer Award the editors and the publisher would like to thank all reviewers for their support to provide for best quality publications in the Journal of Business Economics. As representative for all reviewers of the last year, Andreas Ostermaier from the University of Southern Denmark, Department of Business & Management (DBM), Associate Professor in Accounting (ACCT) in Odense is given the Best Reviewer Award 2023. The editors and the publisher cordially congratulate him on this honor.

Andreas Ostermaier was born in Altötting, Germany, in 1981. He graduated in Intercultural and Business Studies from the University of Passau and in International Relations from the University of Strasbourg in 2006. He has also held a master degree in Business Research and a bachelor degree in Mathematics from the University of Munich since 2009 and 2021. Ostermaier earned his doctoral degree at the University of Munich with Hans-Ulrich Küpper in 2011 and his habilitation at Technical University of Munich in 2017 before he moved to the University of Southern Denmark in 2018. His research interests focus on management accounting, digitization, and sustainability.

6 Closing words

The Journal of Business Economics has experienced a remarkable development of the number of paper submissions and download figures since 2019. The editors and the publisher would like to conclude this editorial by expressing their warmest gratitude to all authors, readers, and reviewers of our journal who have made possible this success. We are looking forward to the years to come!