About the Journal

The Journal of Research Management and Administration is an international refereed journal aimed at those interested in the management of research in any sector or organization. We publish articles, essays, and papers covering all aspects of research management and administration. JoRMA is an open access journal published by Coventry University. 

JoRMA welcomes submissions on topics relevant to the management and administration of research and innovation, namely:

  • Strategy and policy
  • Governance, management and leadership
  • Information systems, processes, procedures and administrative systems
  • Finance and compliance
  • Researcher development
  • Communication, impact, and enterprise
  • Responsible research and innovation, and research integrity
  • Career progression for researchers and research-related professionals
  • Equality, diversity, inclusion, and research culture
  • Open research, open science, open access, open innovation
  • Assessment & evaluation
  • Partnerships and collaborations

Priority will be given to articles that are based on original research, and that provide high quality analysis of issues pertaining to RMA that can be used to inform RMA practice.  All articles should consider the implications of their analysis and discussion in terms of how this could be applied to, or used to inform, RMA practice. If you are unsure whether your article would be relevant for this publication, please contact the Managing Editor in the first instance for further guidance.

Peer Review Process

The Journal offers a supportive and professional approach to help authors develop their articles.  JoRMA is double-blind peer reviewed and authors are supported in submitting contributions and with making amendments.

When a manuscript is submitted, the managing editor (or delegate) will make initial checks with regard to originality, including a plagiarism check, and the fit of the article with the remit of the journal.  An editor will then be assigned to the submission and they will source at least two independent peer reviewers to assess an anonymised version of the submission.  Following their recommendations a decision will then be made as whether to accept, accept with revisions, request a resubmission for re-review, or reject the article.  In all cases feedback will be given to the corresponding author.  When a final approved submission is made it will then go through a final plagiarism check and copy-editing process prior to publication.  

Frequency of Publication

As an on-line only journal we publish articles as soon as they are ready.  There is no set publication schdule.  All articles published in the same calendar year will be bundled into a single volume for the year - this volume expands as new articles are published.

Open Access Policy

To ensure the research published reaches as wide an audience as possible, all articles are open access.  JoRMA is diamond open access meaning that there are no fees to  submit, publish, or read and download articles. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a  Creative Commons License "Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International" (CC BY-NC 4.0) which permits others to use the publication as long as the authors are appropriately cited.

Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

The Author grants to Coventry University an irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide, non-exclusive licence to publish this article in this journal in addition to the Creative Commons licence cited above.

Ethical Practice and Codes of Conduct

Authors will be expected to adhere to all standards of research integrity and responsible codes of conduct. For the purposes of this publication, JoRMA adopts the processes and guidelines specified by the Committee on Publication Ethics.  Authors are encouraged to use the NISO contributor role taxonomy (CRediT) to specify their specific input to the work.

As well as our standard plagiarism checks (we use TurnItIn and similarity scores of over 15%, excluding the references section, are investigated), the Editorial Board will also investigate well-founded allegations of plagiarism. This will include where an author can be shown to have used someone else’s work as their own without obtaining permission or referencing and/or quoting appropriately.  It will also include an author’s reproduction of their own published work without appropriate referencing.

 JoRMA expects that all authors of the article will disclose any conflicts of interest upon submission of the article for consideration.  This should include a declaration of any financial interest or any financial payments received in relation to the work described in the article. 

All questions relating to ethics and code of conduct issues should be referred directly to the Managing Editor in the first instance.  Any issues or disputes which may arise will be referred to the Editorial Board.

In the event of any disputes arising after publication, JoRMA reserves the right to issue errata or other corrections in future editions.

Sponsorship

JoRMA does not receive any financial sponsorship.

Support

We are grateful to the Research & Scholarly Publications (RSP) unit, Coventry University for their support in hosting and maintaining the Open Journal Systems software that JoRMA uses.

In terms of sourcing submissions, we often partner with Research Management and Administration (RMA) societies around the world to encourage those presenting at their annual conferences to make submissions to JoRMA.

Publisher

JoRMA is published by the Coventry Univerity, Priory Street, Coventry CV1 5FB, United Kingdom .

ISSN

The International Standard Serial Number for JoRMA is: 2753-9245.

History

The idea for the journal came from a group of ARMA members (some of whom are still part of the editorial board) who rued the paucity of academic/practioner outlets for the profession of research management and administration.  After a few years of failed attempts to get the project running, we expanded the prospective editorial team to be international and Kieran Fensby-Hulse finally managed to find the time to lead us through the process of setting up the journal.  The first JoRMA articles were published in 2021.