The 2017 spreadsheet of IE articles includes papers found in:
- IE-friendly journals (n = 28); and
- the Journal of International Entrepreneurship (the only journal devoted to IE).
The set of journals was expanded from 2016 to include 28 IE-friendly journals with an Impact Factor > 1.0 (we used 5-year Impact Factor where available).
Editorials/introductions to special issues were excluded and core exclusion criteria are as follows:
- Studies focused on SME internationalization rather than IE per se, i.e. where entrepreneurship issues and theories are not integrated or addressed in the study;
- Studies in which the primary focus is not international entrepreneurship. E.g. studies of biotech firms in global industries or in which the focus is on technological innovation rather than business or entrepreneurial processes;
- Studies focused on domestic entrepreneurship in one country;
- Cross-cultural assessments of (e.g.) EO measures that focus on scale and measure development or validation;
- Studies on transnational and/or immigrant entrepreneurship.
The spreadsheet is in excel format, allowing you to search by keyword, date, author or journal: IE-Spreadsheet-2017-v5
Patterns?
- In 2017, 88 articles were identified which is an increase from 2016 (55 articles) and from 2015 (83 articles).
- Of these 88, ten (11%) were from the elite group of our IE-friendly journals (FT List): JIBS (3), JBV(3), ETP (1), SMJ (1) and SEJ(1) and 41 (47.1%) were in highly regarded journals (Impact Factor > 3).
- Besides JIE, the only journal devoted to IE, IBR continues to publish most IE articles (16). SBE and IEMJ have also published significant numbers of IE articles – 14 and 11 for SBE and IEMJ, respectively. Those published in SBE focused primarily on cross-country comparative issues.
What does this mean?
Bucking the two-year trend, the IE research seems to have picked up. This may be, in part, because of the increased numbers of journals considered in compiling the list but it is good to see that top journals continue to find the area interesting. Another factor that may be bearing on the higher number is the somewhat arbitrary/subjective criteria for inclusion/exclusion. While we made the best effort to follow these (using two raters to determine inclusion/exclusion of ambiguous cases), the definitions of what constitutes IE area and IE article can differ. One of the examples is the Meuleman et al. (2017) article which doesn’t address the “traditional” IE themes such as international sales, opportunity identification, networks, and business models but examines cross-border partner selection in venture capital syndicates.
NOTE – Many thanks to Igor Laine for his contribution in compiling the list. Please email Martina Musteen at mmusteen@mail.sdsu.edu to report any errors or omissions.