Entrepreneurship, Innovation and SMEs: Which Index Actually Accepts Your Paper, and What It Costs

Entrepreneurship is a young field with a very steep top. Two journals dominate how the discipline judges itself, a middle band of solid titles absorbs most published work, and below that sits a long tail of journals with "innovation" in the name that have nothing to do with founders or small firms. Picking from that tail by title is the commonest mistake we see. Three questions about your own paper narrow it faster.

How to read a quartile before you read the list

Three systems matter for entrepreneurship. The Scopus quartile comes from Scimago, inside a Scopus subject category. The JCR quartile comes from Clarivate, inside a Web of Science category, using the impact factor. And in business schools the ABDC list often counts for more than either, while Chinese universities work from the CAS partition, covered in the questions further down.

The index tier matters more than any quartile. An ESCI journal shows an impact factor and a quartile that look exactly like an SSCI one on screen, so an ESCI Q1 will not satisfy a rule asking for SSCI. Where the tier is not recorded, the tables say so rather than guess. Settling this before the cover letter is the first step in Journal Submission Preparation.

Swipe the table sideways to see every column.

Not sure whether the journal you picked is still indexed? Run it through the Predatory Journal Checker at ai.researchramp.com, or send us the title on WhatsApp or WeChat for a same-day check. Two minutes to spare instead? Try the Smart Quiz.

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Indexed conference routes in entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship has one directly relevant indexed series and a handful of adjacent ones. Indexing is decided one volume at a time, so check the coming edition rather than the reputation of the series.

Co-authorship and supervisor credit in entrepreneurship research

This field brings people into papers that other disciplines rarely do: founders, incubator managers, investors, policy officers. That creates authorship questions that come up in almost every project we see.

1. Authorship follows contribution, not access. An incubator director who opened the door to fifty founders has made a valuable contribution, but providing access alone is an acknowledgement, not authorship. Name them in the acknowledgements with thanks.
2. Practitioners can be genuine co-authors. A founder or investor who helped design the study, interpret the results and revise the text meets the standard, and journals such as the New England Journal of Entrepreneurship and the Journal of Small Business Strategy welcome that kind of team.
3. The supervisor is not automatic. A supervisor who shaped the question, the design or the analysis should be a co-author. One who only read the final draft should not. Settle it in writing at the start, not after acceptance.
4. Order conventions differ by school. Business schools usually list by contribution, with the lead author first. Some economics-adjacent departments use alphabetical order, and some Asian institutions expect the supervisor last as the senior author. Agree the convention before drafting.
5. Use a contribution statement. Most publishers on this page now ask for a CRediT statement setting out who conceptualised, collected, analysed and wrote. It settles disputes before they start and makes the supervisor's role visible either way.
6. Thesis papers need the thesis disclosed. If the article comes from a PhD, say so in the cover letter and check the university's rules on publishing before examination, which vary widely.

Where a paper needs a co-author with a dataset or a second country, that is Collaboration Matching, and planning a thesis into publishable papers is the Mentorship Program.

What gets accepted in this field, and what gets rejected

What is the CAS partition, and how is it different from the JCR quartile, for entrepreneurship journals?

The CAS partition is a journal ranking published each year by the National Science Library of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, sorting titles into Zones 1 to 4 within a subject, with Zone 1 holding only the top five percent. The JCR quartile, from Clarivate, splits a comparable list into four equal quarters, so Q1 is the top twenty five percent.

For entrepreneurship that gap matters. Several SSCI Q1 journals on this page are unlikely to reach Zone 1, because the CAS cut is so much tighter, and the partition is revised annually, so a zone quoted from two years ago may no longer hold.

Which entrepreneurship journals are CAS Zone 1?

The CAS partition is published separately each year and is not part of the Scopus or Web of Science data behind this page, so no zone assignments are listed here rather than guessed. Check the current year's table through your university library, where almost every Chinese institution hosts it.

As a working expectation, the two flagship journals in Route 2 and the Journal of Innovation and Knowledge in Route 3 sit highest. Most of the ESCI titles on this page will not reach Zone 1. Confirm before relying on either expectation.

Do Chinese universities accept Scopus Q1, or only CAS Zone 1 and 2?

It depends entirely on the institution, and most Chinese universities do not treat Scopus Q1 as equivalent to CAS Zone 1 or 2. The usual hierarchy is CAS zone first, then an internal list naming specific journals, with Scopus counting for less and sometimes not at all.

That means a Scopus Q1 title with no Web of Science listing, several of which appear in Route 3, may count for very little at a Chinese university while counting fully at a Malaysian or Indian one. Get the written rule before choosing the venue.

Which entrepreneurship journals accept secondary data or publicly available datasets?

All of them, and the senior journals increasingly prefer it, because large secondary datasets solve the sample size and survivorship problems that single surveys cannot. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, national firm registers, patent data, venture databases and the World Bank Enterprise Surveys are all routine sources.

What editors require is a clear account of the source, the version or extraction date, every sample filter and how firms that exited were treated. A dataset described in one sentence is a common reason for a first-round rejection.

Do I need ethics approval for an entrepreneurship paper using open data?

Usually not, when the data are published, aggregated and not traceable to identifiable people. Company registers, published statistics and anonymised survey microdata generally fall outside review, but the decision belongs to your institution, so check your own policy rather than assuming.

Approval is required once individuals enter the study: interviews with founders, surveys of owners, or scraped profiles from platforms such as LinkedIn or crowdfunding sites. Scraped personal data is where most entrepreneurship authors get caught, because the posts are public but the people are identifiable.

Which entrepreneurship journals require a data availability statement?

Most of the publishers on this page now require one on every research article, including Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley, Taylor and Francis and Emerald. The statement is required even when the answer is that the data cannot be shared.

In entrepreneurship the honest answer is often a restriction: licensed databases cannot be redistributed, and founder interviews are confidential. Say so plainly, name the source, give the reason, and offer the code, instruments or interview guide instead. A reasoned restriction is accepted. A blank is not.

Can I publish an entrepreneurship paper without collecting primary data?

Yes. Secondary analysis of public datasets, systematic literature reviews with a registered protocol, bibliometric studies, meta-analyses and conceptual papers are all published regularly across the tables above, including in the flagship journals.

Two cautions. Bibliometric mapping of entrepreneurship has been done so many times that a new one needs a genuine question behind it. And conceptual papers are held to a high bar at the top journals, where they must change how the field thinks rather than summarise it.

The UGC CARE list was discontinued, so how do I verify an entrepreneurship journal now?

The UGC discontinued the CARE list in a public notice dated 11 February 2025, following its decision of 3 October 2024, and published the final list only as a reference resource with no endorsement attached. Verification now runs through the live Scopus source list, the Web of Science Master Journal List and your own institution's parameters.

For Indian authors in business schools the practical stack is Scopus or Web of Science for indexing, the ABDC list where the school uses it, and the institution's own recognised list. An archived CARE entry proves nothing today.

What editors screen before a reviewer sees your paper

The editorial office checks whether the English is clear enough to review, whether the structure and reference style match the journal, and what the similarity report says. Entrepreneurship papers often trip the similarity check innocently, because standard scales and construct definitions repeat across studies. Run your own check first with the Plagiarism & AI Similarity Checker, and settle language and formatting through Manuscript Editing rather than after a rejection. Preparation from outline to submission is Manuscript Preparation Support.

Before you shortlist, the AI Journal Finder matches your abstract against indexed journals in seconds.

Where Research Ramp comes in

We match a finished abstract against live indexing, tell you plainly when a design will not survive the first screen, and prepare the submission so the editorial office has no reason to bounce it on formatting. Subject-matched PhD editors, milestone payments, and the author stays the author throughout. The revision round is Review & Response Support, and past work is on our Case Studies page.

Questions we are asked about indexing status

Send us the abstract, we will send back the shortlist

Send us your abstract and we will return a shortlist that separates SCIE, SSCI, AHCI, Scopus and EI options, with the access model marked against each. Tap the WhatsApp icon, or scan the WeChat code. To hand over the whole route from venue choice to acceptance, that is the Full Publication Package.

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发送摘要，即可获得按检索类型分层的期刊清单。

Disclaimer. Every table on this page is correct as on October 2026 and no later. Article charges shown in US dollars are approximate conversions at October 2026 rates, and journals bill in their own currency. Indexing, quartile, access model and charges change through the year, and journals can be added to or removed from Scopus and Web of Science at any time. This page is general information only. Research Ramp Private Limited accepts no responsibility or liability for any decision made on the basis of it, including the choice of journal, any charge paid, or the outcome of any submission. Every detail must be independently verified by the author with the journal's own website and the live Scopus source list and Web of Science Master Journal List before submitting. If you would like an informal second check, send us the title and we will look at it for you.

本页所有列表数据截至 2026 年 10 月，仅供一般参考。Research Ramp 不对任何依据本页作出的选刊、付费或投稿结果承担责任。投稿前请务必通过期刊官网及 Scopus、Web of Science 实时数据自行核实收录情况与费用。