Author Guidelines

Template files

Title page template file Manuscript template file

Enacted December 1, 2017
1st revised April 1, 2018
2nd revised January 1, 2020

Business Communication Research and Practice (BCRP) is the official journal of the Korean Association for Business Communication (KABC) and is published biannually in English on January 31 and July 31. The journal publishes original research articles, reviews, case reports, tutorials, communications, editorials, and book reviews that contribute to the knowledge and theory of business communication as a distinct, multifaceted field approached through the administrative disciplines, liberal arts, and social sciences. Accordingly, BCRP seeks manuscripts that address all areas of business communication and accepts all rigorous research methods, including but not limited to qualitative, quantitative, and critical. Manuscripts for submission to BCRP should be prepared according to the following instructions. Failure to comply with these instructions will result in the return of the manuscript and a possible delay in publication. Please read the Author Guidelines carefully prior to submission.

SUBMISSION & REVIEW PROCESS

All authors of a manuscript must have agreed to its submission to BCRP and are responsible for the entire content, including literature citations and acknowledgments, and must have agreed that the corresponding author has the authority to act on their behalf on all matters pertaining to the submission, revision, and publication of the paper.

The “Author checklist” provided helps to ensure that your submitted manuscript is not returned to you for incomplete content or formatting reasons. Manuscript should be submitted on-line to BCRP via our e-submission system, http://submission.e-bcrp. org/. Once a corresponding author has logged into his/her own account, the system will guide the user through the submission process.

Copyright policy

All copyright and other intellectual property rights in the journal are licensed to KABC. Therefore, all authors must sign a copy of the Journal’s ‘‘Authorship Responsibility and Copyright Transfer’’ form and submit it at the time of manuscript submission. Authors of papers selected for publication are also encouraged to license their submission under a Creative Commons license.

Peer-review process

All manuscripts are treated as confidential and peer-reviewed by 3 anonymous reviewers selected by the Editor. Selected reviewers who cannot review the article for reasons of expertise, time, or conflict of interest should reply to the Editor immediately. If necessary, the Editor may assign the article to the statistical editor to review statistical methods. The acceptance criteria for all manuscripts are based on the quality and originality of the research and its clinical and scientific significance. When the final revised manuscript is completely acceptable according to BCRP format and criteria, it is scheduled for publication in the next available issue. Rejected papers will not be peer-reviewed again.

Revision of manuscripts

The corresponding author will be notified as soon as possible of the Editor’s decision to accept, reject, or request revision of the manuscript. When referees’ comments are returned to the corresponding author for revision, a cover letter from the Editor will provide directions that should be followed carefully. When submitting the revised manuscript, the corresponding author must provide a cover letter describing the alterations that have been made in response to the referees’ comments point by point. Failure to resubmit the revised manuscript within 6 weeks of the editorial decision will be considered a withdrawal.

Accepted manuscripts

BCRP will send all page proofs electronically to the corresponding author in PDF format, and the corresponding author must review the e-Proof within 48 hours. This proof stage is not a time for extensive corrections, additions, or deletions. It is advised that editing be limited to the correction of typographical errors, incorrect data, and grammatical errors, and the updating of information on references that were in press. Authors are required to mark up their corrections on eProofs and attach a typed list of corrections (noting PDF page, column, and line of correction). The marked-up pages and itemized corrections list can be sent by e-mail at journal.kabc@gmail.com.

PREPARATION OF MANUSCRIPTS

Publication types

Original articles are the predominant publication type and are reports of the results of qualitative and quantitative investigations that are sufficiently well documented to be acceptable to critical readers.

Review articles provide comprehensive and thorough reviews of existing published literature in a field through summary, analysis, and comparison, often identifying specific gaps or problems and providing recommendations for future research.

Case reports are short applications of specific theoretical concepts or industrial cases of business communication interests.

Tutorials are instructionals that provide reasonably thorough coverage of a specific subject or field for researchers to update their awareness and knowledge.

Communications are short discussions of active fields of research, critical notes of perspectives of opinion leaders, current interests, fresh insights, debates on important topics, readers’ comments on articles published in BCRP, and replies from the authors.

Editorials are statements of the opinions, beliefs, and policies of the editors or experts in business communication fields, usually on current matters of significance to the academic community or society at large.

Book reviews are brief reviews, insights, and opinions on recently published scholarly books across subfields in business communication.

Organization of manuscript

The manuscript should be prepared in the following sequence: cover letter, title page with authors and affiliations, abstract and keywords, main text, acknowledgments, references, tables, figure legends, followed by figures. The cover letter, title page, and figures should be on separate files, and the main text is differently organized according to the publication type.

Cover letter

The cover letter to the Editor must declare that the submitted manuscript, in whole or in part, has not been published or is not currently under consideration elsewhere, including media in other languages. The cover letter must also state that authors understand that the manuscript may be regarded as redundant or duplicate if it contains any portion (defined as a paper, data, tables, or figures) that overlaps substantially with already published information. The cover letter accompanying the manuscript must specify the type of manuscript and include an ethical statement as well as the complete contact information for the corresponding author.

Title page

The first page should include the title of the manuscript, the authors of the manuscript with their highest degrees attained (e.g., PhD) and affiliation with position, the name and full address and contact details (phone number and email) of the corresponding author, and a running title (less than 50 characters including spaces).

Abstract and keywords

All original articles, review articles, case reports, and tutorials must include structured abstracts of 200 to 250 words and should be organized into Objectives, Methods, Results, and Conclusions of the study. Five keywords should be listed at the bottom of abstract. Considerable care should be used in selecting keywords because they will be used for subject indexing in this Journal and in other databases.

Main text

The main body of the original articles should be prepared under the designated subheadings: Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusion. Other forms of publication are organized in different formats. More details are explained in later sections for the original articles and the other types of publications, respectively. The subheadings for this section are classified as I, 1. 1), and (1) in sequence.

Acknowledgments

All persons who have made substantial contributions but who have not met the criteria for authorship such as administrative support, technical assistance, and critical reviews of the manuscript, are acknowledged here. All sources of funding applicable to the study should be stated here explicitly.

References

BCRP has adopted the stylistic and formatting recommendations of the APA (Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 6th edition), from which highlights are given below. Visit http://www.apastyle.org/ for more details. All of the sources cited in the manuscript should be found in the reference list, and any source should not be listed if it does not have an in-text citation. The citations or references are in alphabetical order by the author’s name, and, for sources with the same author(s), they are sorted based on the publication year listing the oldest source first. When two different sources have the same author and the same year of publication, they should be sorted alphabetically according to the title, and lower-case letters added after the year to distinguish them. Authors are responsible for the accuracy and completeness of their references and citations.

Main-text guidelines

Baseline guideline

Introduction: Start the introduction on a separate page. The introduction should supply sufficient background knowledge and information to allow the reader to understand and evaluate the value of the study. It must also provide a rationale for the study. Cite references to provide the most salient background rather than an exhaustive review of the topic. If necessary, the “Literature Review” or “Theoretical Framework” sections may be rearranged in order to improve the flow of the paper.

Methods: This section must include sufficient technical information to allow other researchers to be able to reproduce the results. Previously published or standardized techniques can be simply referred to with reference citations. The statistical procedures used should be explained.

Results: Present the results clearly and concisely in logical sequence in the text. Tables and figures can be used, but information presented in tables and figures should not be repeated in the text. Extensive interpretation of the results should be moved to the Discussion section. Number tables and figures in the order in which they are cited in the text, and be sure to cite all tables and figures in the text. All statements concerning the significance of differences observed should be accompanied by probability values given in parentheses.

Discussion: The discussion section should provide an interpretation and explanation of the results in relation to existing knowledge. Emphasis should be given to important new findings, and new hypotheses should be described clearly. The limitation of this current study might be included in this section. This section should not contain extensive repetition of the Results section or a reiteration of the Introduction section.

Conclusion: The conclusive remarks must be supported by facts found in the study. In addition to what was already known on the topic, it should address what this study has proven and what insights and knowledge have been gained.

Special guideline by publication types

Original article: An original article should not exceed the following maximums: word count of main text, 5,000 words; number of references, 50; and number of figure or tables, 10.

Review article: The main text for a review article is organized as follows: Introduction, body text, and Conclusion. The body text is written in a free style. All sections except the body text are in the form described for original papers. The maximum length of the main text for review articles is 8,000 words.

Case report and Tutorial: All sections follow the form described for original papers. If necessary, the sections of Methods and Results can be replaced with the body text of a case description or tutorial. The body text is written in a free style. The word count of the main text should not exceed 3,000 words.

Communication, Editorial, and Book review: The manuscript includes the title page, text, and references, and the text is written in a free style. Tables and figures can be included, if necessary. These types of publications should not be longer than 2,000 words.

Requirements by publication types are summarized in the table below. Any failure to comply these requirements should be discussed with the Editor.

Type	Abstract	Format of main text	Word limit
Original article	Required	I-M-R-D-C, I-(L/T)-M-R-D-C	5,000
Review article	Required	I-M-R-D-C, I-text-D-C	8,000
Case report	Required	I-M-R-D-C, I-text-D-C	3,000
Tutorial	Required	I-M-R-D-C, I-text-D-C	3,000
Communication	-	Free style	2,000
Editorial	-	Free style	2,000
Book review	-	Free style	2,000

I(Introduction), M(Methods), R(Results), D(Discussion), C(Conclusion), L(Literature Review), T(Theoretical Framework)

General document format

• ∙ The manuscript should be double spaced on 21.6 × 27.9 cm (letter size) or 21.0 × 29.7 cm (A4) paper with margins of 1 inch, preferably using MS Word. All text should be Times New Roman 11-point font with 1.5 spacing.
• ∙ All manuscript pages are to be numbered consecutively, beginning with the abstract as page 1. Neither the authors’ names nor their affiliations should appear on the manuscript pages.
• ∙ The use of acronyms and abbreviations is discouraged and should be kept to a minimum. When used, they are to be defined where first used, followed by the acronym or abbreviation in parentheses.

References and citations

Journal article

• ∙ [One author] Craig, R. T. (1999). Communication theory as a field. Communication Theory, 9(2), 119-161.
• ∙ [Two authors] Rust, R. T., & Chung, T. S. (2006). Marketing models of service and relationships. Marketing Science, 25(6), 560-580.
• ∙ [Three to seven authors] Kernis, M. H., Cornell, D. P., Sun, C. R., Berry, A., Harlow, T., & Bach, J. S. (1993). There’s more to self-esteem than whether it is high or low: The importance of stability of self-esteem. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65(3), 1190-1204.
• ∙ [More than seven authors] Miller, F. H., Choi, M. J., Angeli, L. L., Harland, A. A., Stamos, J. A., Thomas, S. T., ... Rubin, L. H. (2009). Web site usability for the blind and low-vision user. Technical Communication, 57(1), 323-335.

Book

• ∙ Calfee, R. C., & Valencia, R. R. (1991). APA guide to preparing manuscripts for journal publication. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
• ∙ Duncan, G. J., & Brooks-Gunn, J. (Eds.). (1997). Consequences of growing up poor. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.

Chapter in an edited book

• ∙ O’Neil, J. M., & Egan, J. (1992). Men’s and women’s gender role journeys: A metaphor for healing, transition, and transformation. In B. R. Wainrib (Ed.), Gender issues across the life cycle (pp. 107-123). New York, NY: Springer.
• ∙ Babcock, R. D., & Du-Babcock, B. (2009). Strategic versus nonstrategic organization development in overseas Chinese family firms. In T. F. Yaeger, & P. F. Sorensen (Eds.). Strategic organization development: Managing change for success (pp. 279-304). Charlotte, NC: Information Age.

Conference papers and poster sessions

• ∙ [Published] Heo, M., & Lee, K. (2017). Case analysis of chatbots as business communication methods. Proceedings of the 2017 Summer Korea-Japan Joint Conference on Business Communication (pp. 51-62). Gwangju, Korea.
• ∙ [Unpublished] Victor, D. (2017, October) Language strategy and the politics of language choice in international business communication. Paper presented at the 82nd Annual International Conference of the Association for Business Communication, Dun Laoghaire, Ireland.

Government document

• ∙ U.S. Bureau of the Census. (2002). Statistical abstract of the United States (122nd ed.). Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
• ∙ Canada. Dept. of Finance. (2005). The budget plan 2005 (Cat. No. F1-23/2005-3E). Ottawa, ON: Author.

Dissertation/Thesis

• ∙ [From a commercial database] Bradinova, M. (2006). Exploring students’ and university teachers’ perceptions of plagiarism (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database. (UMI No. 3240167)
• ∙ [From an institutional database or web] Cao, D. (2008). Multiplied cultures and market information communication behaviours (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from http://lbms03. cityu.edu.hk/theses/c_ftt/phd-en-b23406999f.pdf
• ∙ [In print] Kelly, S. E. (2012). Examining the role of perceived immediacy as a mediator: Revisiting the relationships among immediate behaviors, liking, and disclosure (Doctoral dissertation). University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN.

Sources on the Internet

• ∙ [Online journal article] Lacity, M. C., & Willcocks, L. (2015, June 19). What knowledge workers stand to gain from automation. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2015/06/what-knowledge-workers-stand-to-gain-fromautomation
• ∙ [Online newspaper] Walker, R. (2018, April 27). When headphones get in the way of office communication. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/27/business/when-headphones-get-in-the-wayof-office-communication.html
• ∙ [General website article] Du Toit, G., & Burns, M. (2016, November 29). Customer loyalty in retail banking: Global edition 2016. Retrieved from https://www.bain.com/insights/customer-loyalty-in-retail-banking-2016

In-text citations

In-text citations should be indicated by the author’s last name and year of publication, and also include the page number if citing a direct quote. Close the parentheses and add a period afterwards. If the author’s name is included in the text, omit the name from the in-text citation and only include the other identifying pieces of information.

• ∙ [One author] (Craig, 1999) or Craig (1999); (Craig, 1999, p. 51) or Craig (1999, p. 51)
• ∙ [Two authors] (Rust & Chung, 2006) or Rust and Chung (2006)
• ∙ [Three to five authors] (Wu, Yuen, & Zhu, 2001) or Wu, Yuen, and Zhu (2001) for the first use; (Wu et al., 2001) or Wu et al. (2001) in subsequent citations
• ∙ [More than five authors] (Kernis et al., 1993) or Kernis et al. (1993)

Tables and figures

Each table should be prepared on a separate page. Tables are used to present data that cannot be incorporated conveniently into the text. Number of tables in order of citation in the text and avoid repetition of data. Tables should have a concise and informative title with the table content between horizontal lines. Vertical lines are not used. A table should not exceed one page when printed. Use lower case letters in superscripts a, b, c... for special remarks.

Figures and illustrations should be prepared professionally. Graphics should be prepared in high quality with high tones and resolution. Photographs must be of sufficient contrast to withstand the inevitable loss of contrast and detail during the printing process. If a figure is to be reduced, be sure that all elements, including labels, can withstand reduction and remain legible.

Citations of tables and figures in the text or parentheses are presented as follows; Table 1, Figure 1, Tables 1, 2, Figures 1, 2, Tables 1-3, and Figures 1-3. When the text refers to both figures and tables, they should be mentioned in parentheses, e.g., (Table 1; Figure 2) or (Tables 1-3; Figures 4-6).

CONTACT FOR INQUIRY

The Editorial Office
BCRP, Business Communication Research and Practice
513-1 Orbis Hall, Business Communication Center
Kyung Hee University School of Management
26 Kyungheedae-ro, Dongdaemun-gu, Seoul 02447, Korea
Tel: +82-2-961-9225
E-mail: journal.kabc@gmail.com
http://www.e-bcrp.org