Objective

Marketing Science has a Practice Paper track to incentivize and encourage marketing scientists to collaborate with practitioners. This track is open to all marketing papers that demonstrate both science rigor and practical impact in industry and noncommercial settings. All submissions will go through a rigorous review process at Marketing Science. Manuscripts that pass the review process will be published as a Practice Papers by Marketing Science.

The Practice Paper track at Marketing Science reflects a collaboration between Marketing Science and the Gary L. Lilien ISMS‑MSI‑EMAC Practice Prize Competition. However, the submission and review process for the Practice Paper track at Marketing Science is independent from the submission and review process for the Gary L. Lilien ISMS‑MSI‑EMAC Practice Prize Competition. For example, papers may be submitted to the Practice Paper track at Marketing Science throughout the year, while the competition is only held biennially. The same paper may be submitted (independently) only to the Practice Paper track or only to the competition or to both, in any order. The outcomes of the review process at Marketing Science for a paper submitted under the Practice Paper track and for the Gary L. Lilien ISMS‑MSI‑EMAC Practice Prize Competition are also independent (see information under “Publication” below).

Papers submitted to the Practice Paper track at Marketing Science should have a maximum length of 25 double-spaced pages, including all references, tables, graphs, and appendices (online appendices, if submitted, do not count toward the page limit and can be of any length). In addition, all Practice Paper submissions to Marketing Science must submit an Impact Statement (500-1000 words) in addition to all other standard submission requirements by the journal. This Impact Statement is a supplementary summary of what was accomplished by the work and its organizational impact. A strong impact statement often comprises an endorsement letter from the industry/government partners. If providing an endorsement letter, please also include the impact statement summary in a separate file uploaded as Supplementary material. This statement will be provided to the review team along with the manuscript to judge the appropriateness of the work for the Practice Paper track. 

Articles published under the Practice Paper Track must:

1. Use suitable and appropriate methodology (does not have to break new methodological ground, but should be methodologically sound).
2. Have good appropriate discussion/framing of the marketing problem.
3. Have good but concise discussion of its technical approach in enough detail for readers to follow; but with complete references to original sources.
4. Have good discussion of the organizational engagement process, including barriers identified and overcome, and mistakes made.
5. Verify/quantify its impact. Examples of impact are, but not limited to, how the application showcases the work of marketing scientists to engage with organizational stakeholders, how the application impacts society and its newsworthiness, etc.
6. Describe key lessons learned, takeaways, and insights.
7. Clearly articulate transportability issues (to more general problems), including discussions on how the work is applicable to other contexts (whether potential or demonstrated) that is valuable to drive organizational adoption of marketing science forward.
8. Provide a clear view as to the contribution in terms of applying and implementing marketing science models. Papers will be judged according to the degree to which they focus on and achieve this claimed contribution.

Reviewers/Review Process:

1. The Senior Editor, AE and reviewers will be selected by the Marketing Science Editor-in-Chief. The reviewer team should (a) appreciate practice and (b) concur with the review criteria above. One member of the reviewer team should ideally have substantial industry experience who could comment specifically on the practical impact of the research.
2. The review team will be provided with the impact statement as well as the evaluation criteria as stated above when they are invited to review the manuscript.
3. As with any Marketing Science paper, the final publication decision is that of the Senior Editor.

Publication

Submissions (including winner and finalists of the Practice Prize) that pass the rigorous standards of peer reviews will be published as a Practice Paper by Marketing Science. Practice Prize submissions that fail to meet the publication criteria above will be integrated into Practice Prize Competition Report written by the Chairperson's of the competition, with appropriate co‑authorship or acknowledgement.