MISQ Submission Guidelines 2026: Article Types and Limits

Source: MIS Quarterly, Association for Information Systems, Clarivate 2026 JCR release, accessed 2026-10-10.

This is the MISQ-specific structural detail authors most often get wrong:

MIS Quarterly is published by the Regents of the University of Minnesota, according to the journal's publication policies. Submissions must comply with the AIS Code of Research Conduct, but the journal does not describe itself as an AIS member-owned journal.

The strategic implication: the publishing structure affects pricing and open-access pathways. Authors who want open access pay a fee of $5,000 USD (per the journal's FAQ) and can choose their preferred Creative Commons license, and accepted papers carry a copyright assignment to the Regents of the University of Minnesota.

Maximum lengths include all content: text, tables, figures, references and appendices. Special issues are run through calls for papers, not as a separate submission category.

Three operational signals govern editorial assessment:

1. IS centrality. Pure-CS or pure-management-without-IS-framing fits other venues.

2. Substantive contribution. Research Articles require substantive empirical or analytical contribution; Theory and Review papers require substantive theoretical advance or comprehensive integrative review.

3. Article-type fit. The manuscript must align with the chosen article type's editorial focus.

Recent MISQ issues span:

• Digital innovation and digital transformation

• AI/ML in organizations and IS-mediated decision-making

• Cybersecurity and information security

• Healthcare IS and IT-enabled health

• Social media, online communities, and platform IS

• IS economics and value of information systems

• Crowdsourcing and crowdfunding IS

• Emerging IS topics (generative AI, blockchain, semantic IS)

For specific recent papers and DOIs, see MISQ on its journal site.

• Initial decision: about 3 to 5 months, according to the MIS Quarterly review process page

• External reviewers: 0 to 3, according to the same page

• Revision rounds: many submissions undergo one or more rounds of revision

• After acceptance: the journal's FAQ says it aims to publish First Look versions within one month of acceptance; accepted manuscripts are first posted as Forthcoming with a permanent DOI

The instructions cover process. Reading the package as an editor would covers the rest. The review tells you whether your paper clears the MIS Quarterly fit check before upload, especially around iS framing thin, wrong article type chosen, and wrong IS journal chosen. Paid Manusights reviews include a 60-day money-back guarantee, and we do not train models on submitted manuscripts.

Three patterns create the clearest avoidable rejection risk: information systems is peripheral to the contribution, the selected manuscript category does not match the argument, or another journal owns the paper's real scholarly conversation.

IS framing thin

MISQ requires IS centrality. Pure-CS or pure-management work without IS framing faces redirection. The fix is to articulate the IS contribution explicitly.

Check is framing thin before submitting to MIS Quarterly →

Wrong article type chosen

Research Articles submitted as Theory and Review face routing issues; Issues and Opinions essays submitted as Research Articles face desk-rejection. The fix is to identify the target article type explicitly.

Check wrong article type chosen before submitting to MIS Quarterly →

Wrong IS journal chosen

MISQ competes with ISR (INFORMS quantitative/economic), JMIS (managerial-IS), and JAIS (AIS open-access). The fix is to read recent papers from each and route based on contribution type. A MISQ manuscript readiness check can identify whether IS centrality, article-type fit, and substantive contribution align before submission.

Check wrong is journal chosen before submitting to MIS Quarterly →

MIS Quarterly requires these at first submission:

• main manuscript file anonymized for double-anonymous peer review (author names and affiliations removed from all manuscript documents, no identifying information, and discretion when self-citing)

• author names, affiliations and contact information entered in ScholarOne

• cover letter entered in ScholarOne (part of the ScholarOne submission steps since 2026)

• abstract and 5 to 10 keywords on page 1 of the manuscript

• disclosure of any personal, professional or financial conflicts of interest to the editor-in-chief

• Transparency Commitment (template) uploaded in ScholarOne Step 2 under Miscellaneous; where applicable, transparency materials are made publicly available in an external repository

• provenance disclosure of related work (previously published work, work under consideration elsewhere and conference proceedings), explaining the distinct contribution and the copyright status of any conference version (required by the publication policies)

• agreement, by submitting, to review up to three papers for the journal within a year if invited

• editor and reviewer nominations entered in ScholarOne

• no submission fee; open access publication, if chosen, carries a $5,000 USD fee (per the journal's FAQ) and a Creative Commons license of the authors' choice

• for revised submissions, a revision response document (a summary of changes of at most 2 pages plus point-by-point responses, without author names) uploaded in both Step 2 and Step 3 of ScholarOne; revisions must stay within the page limits

For MIS Quarterly submissions, the most common artifact-related issue is missing or perfunctory Provenance Declarations on submissions that draw on author dissertations, prior conference papers, or earlier MISQ submissions. MISQ's publication policies say that failure to comply with the provenance disclosure requirements may result in withdrawal of the manuscript.

Run a MIS Quarterly pre-submission readiness check before clicking submit to verify the package meets the journal's IS-centrality-with-substantive-contribution bar and full anonymization standard.

MIS Quarterly manuscripts move through a four-stage editorial timeline shaped by the journal's Editor-in-Chief, Senior Editor and Associate Editor structure. MISQ publishes only an initial decision timeline of about 3 to 5 months, so the day and week ranges below are unofficial planning estimates, not MISQ figures. The editorial triage pattern at MISQ favors submissions where the cover letter names a failure pattern in current IS research or practice that the manuscript addresses. Editors routinely reject pure-CS or pure-management submissions without IS centrality and consistently screen for cover letters that demonstrate awareness of the journal's recent editorial culture around IT-management-and-organizational-economics integration.

Day 0 to 7: ScholarOne intake and MISQ editorial-office technical check

The platform and editorial office check formatting, anonymization and declarations (the Transparency Commitment upload, provenance disclosure, page limits). Submissions or revisions that exceed the category length are returned to the authors.

Day 7 to 28: Editor-in-Chief and Senior Editor desk-screen

The Editor-in-Chief conducts a preliminary review of each submission and assigns it to a Senior Editor. The Senior Editor and an Associate Editor then conduct an initial review before peer review by external reviewers.

Week 5 to 16: External peer review (double-anonymous)

Manuscripts that pass the initial review go to external reviewers (the MISQ review process page says 0 to 3) under double-anonymous peer review. The page states no reviewer deadline.

Week 16 to 32: Decision and revision rounds

The review process page gives an initial decision timeline of about 3 to 5 months. Many submissions undergo one or more rounds of revision, and the Senior Editor makes the final editorial decision for each round. MISQ does not provide a reject-and-resubmit decision.

• Is MIS Quarterly a good journal?

• Information Systems Research Submission Guide

• Journal of Management Information Systems Submission Guide

• European Journal of Information Systems Submission Guide

• Journal of the Association for Information Systems Submission Guide

Before the reviewer-invitation stage, read the MIS Quarterly package against the same risks this guide flags in the Manusights section. The test is whether abstract, methods, figures, and references agree on where this belongs.

• If the abstract still points toward iS framing thin, revise the central claim before upload.

• If the evidence package leaves wrong article type chosen, strengthen the methods, controls, figures, or supplementary material rather than expecting reviewers to infer it.

• If the cover letter cannot resolve wrong IS journal chosen, compare the target journal against the adjacent venues named above before submitting.

Last verified: 2026-10-10 against MISQ editorial pages.