Format Guidelines

General

Articles published in or under consideration for other journals or as book chapters cannot be considered. Papers awaiting presentation or already presented at conferences must be revised (ideally, taking advantage of feedback received at the conference) in order to receive consideration. Presentation at a conference should be indicated in the acknowledgements.

A manuscript should be submitted electronically as an attachment to an e-mail cover letter. This e-mail should be sent to the Managing Editor misqe@indiana.edu. The e-mail cover letter should include:

• the names and e-mail addresses of all authors
• the authors' preference of Senior Editor (see the Editors page) to review the manuscript.
• the names of potential reviewers (and their e-mail addresses if the potential reviewers are not members of the Editorial Board). See the Review Process for more information about nominating reviewers.
• the authors' preference for review format, either open or double blind. See the Review Process for more information on open versus double blind reviews.

File Format

The preferred electronic format is Word for Windows, although RTF and HTML are also acceptable. PDF and Word for the Mac are not acceptable. For questions about using other formats, please contact the review coordinator (misqe@indiana.edu). All tables and figures should be included in Word file and should be in gif, jpeg, Powerpoint, or Illustrator format. Tables and figures should use the Arial font (or Helvetica if you don't have Arial).

Style

All manuscripts should be double spaced (not 1 1/2 spaced). If the paper has been presented previously at a conference or other professional meeting, this fact, the date, and the sponsoring organization should be given in a footnote on the first page. Funding sources should be acknowledged in the "Acknowledgements" section. Permissions for reprinted material are the sole responsibility of the author(s) and must be obtained in writing prior to publication.

The following information should also be included:

Page 1:

• Paper Title (6-12 words);
• Author Name(s): Do not include author(s) name anywhere else in paper except in the reference list as appropriate;
• Address(es);
• Phone numbers;
• E-mail addresses.

Page 2:

• Paper title;
• Abstract;
• Keywords: Select 5-10 words or phrases to be used for indexing. These might include important terms from the title, their synonyms, or related words. Do not use prepositions.
• Acknowledgements, if any.

Page 3:

• Paper title;
• Beginning of paper;

Headings

Headings should be clearly delineated. To reduce the possibilities for misinterpretation, degrees of importance of headings should be shown as follows:

 

HEADING 1

Separate line centered over text; bold, all caps;

 

Heading 2

Separate line centered over text; bold, upper/lower case;

Heading 3
Separate line, flush left; bold, upper/lower case;

Heading 4: On the same line as beginning of text, flush left, bold, upper/lower case, followed by a colon:

Citations

Citations to prior work should be done in a footnote style, with the footnote appearing on the same page as they are used. Citations can simply be a reference to the prior work in the format used by MISQ articles. However, we strongly prefer that citations serve as explanations of references to our practitioner readers who will be less familiar than academics with the role of citations. References must be complete, and should include as appropriate, last name & initials of all authors, title, journal or Web page, volume, number, month, publisher, city and state (for small publishers), editors, article page numbers, etc. A few examples are:

• One of the classic -- and still relevant -- articles that examines the problems introduced by information systems is: Ackoff, R.L. "Management Misinformation Systems," Management Science (14:4), December 1961, pp. 147-156.
• For a good primer that explains the current wireless technologies and their business implications, see: Bates, R. J. Wireless Broadband Handbook, McGraw-Hill Professional Publishing, 2001.
• A related article that explores these issues in the Australia economy is: Chenhall, R.H., and Romano, C.A. "Formal Planning and Control Presence and Impact on the Growth of Small Manufacturing Firms," in Job Generation by the Small Business Sector in Australia, W. C. Dunlop and A.J. Williams (eds.), Institute of Industrial Economics, Newcastle, 1989, pp. 71-89.

Footnotes

Footnote references to items in periodicals: Author, title, journal, volume, number, month, year, pages. For authors, last names are given first, even for multiple authors.

Footnote references to reports or proceedings: Author's name and title of report (same style as above), report number, source, editor and/or publisher as appropriate, city and state/country of publisher OR full name of conference as appropriate, including date and pages.

Footnote references to books: Author's name (same style as above), title, publisher, city, state/country, year, page, or chapter.