The Journal of Business Economics boasts a rich history. Founded in 1924 by Fritz Schmidt under the heading "Zeitschrift für Betriebswirtschaft" is was for a very long time one of the most prestigious journals for scientific articles written in German in the field of business economics. When Günter Fandel took over from Horst Albach in 2001, first together with Uschi Backes-Gellner and Wolfgang Kürsten until 2003, this was still the case. At least from 2004 on, Günter Fandel was the main face and voice of the Journal till 2020, when Wolfgang Breuer joined him as a co-editor in chief. Since 2001, the Journal has undergone significant changes. In particular, in 2004 a major restructuring took place with several department editors leaving the Journal, while fourteen new department editors joined in. Even since then, a dozen more department editors have left, but eight new ones have come aboard, and Günter Fandel has remained a constant presence.2013 marks the year where the most remarkable transformation was initiated by Günter Fandel with the support of his department editors by changing the Journal from an outlet almost exclusively for German-speaking scholars to a scientific journal with submissions written in English only from all over the world. This structural break first led to a decrease of the number of annual submissions from 152 in 2012 to only 90 in 2013 with the latter number being near to 99 submissions of 2000 and far below the average value of around 157 from 2000 to 2012. However, since then submission numbers are continuously on the rise reaching a new peak of 304 in 2022. At the same time, acceptance rates have fallen to currently about 16%, down from over 30% until 2018. Thus, competition among submissions is getting more challenging, although the numbers of articles (original papers) published has recently been continuously rising from 33 in 2018 to 45 in 2022. Certainly, this surge in submissions reflects a general increase in research activities worldwide.
