Submission Preflight (jais-submission)

When to trigger

• "Submitting this week" — the last compliance pass before pressing submit
• Unsure which JAIS category to declare or whether you are within its length budget
• Need to confirm double-blind anonymization and APA-6 formatting are complete
• You want to avoid an administrative return before review

Submission channel and format facts (检索于 2026-06；以官网为准)

• Portal: submit online via ManuscriptCentral at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jais. JAIS is the flagship journal of the Association for Information Systems (AIS); ISSN 1536-9323.
• Review: double blind — authors are anonymous to reviewers and vice versa; avoid self-identifying language in the text and references.
• Reference style: APA 6th edition.
• Review-copy formatting: for the review version, double-space the document and use Times New Roman 12 pt.
• Body: "text, tables, and figures only"; the body must "function as a standalone document"; links/multimedia go in appendices; complex materials in separate files.
• Fees / OA: JAIS follows AIS Green Open Access (authors may self-archive with no embargo; articles free to AIS members); no article processing charge is stated. Copyright is transferred to AIS prior to publication.

Declare the right category and check the length budget

Self-select among JAIS's seven categories and confirm the budget (检索于 2026-06；以官网为准):

• Research Articles / Theory / Literature Reviews / Foundational Research — over ~15,000 words "are very likely to receive extra scrutiny… and may be returned to be shortened."
• Research Perspectives — approximately 10,000 words.
• Editorials — 6,000–8,000 words (typically invited).
• Policy and Impact — 5,000–7,000 words.
• Absolute ceiling: "Manuscripts that exceed 65 pages including everything will not be sent out for review."

Confirm the abstract word limit on the live style guide — it is 待核实 from the public format page.

Confirm the category one last time

The single most consequential field in the JAIS submission form is the category, because it determines the Senior Editor, the reviewer pool, and the bar. Re-confirm at submission that the declared category still matches the paper after all revisions: a paper that drifted from an empirical test toward a construct-development contribution should move from Research Article to Theory; a synthesis that grew a forward-looking theoretical payoff may now be a Literature Review. A category mismatch is the most avoidable cause of a fit-screen return — fix it here, not after a rejection.

Double-blind anonymization

• No author names, affiliations, or identifying acknowledgments anywhere in the manuscript body
• Self-citations worded neutrally ("prior research (Author, 2020)"), never "our earlier work"
• Acknowledgments, funding, and grant numbers kept off the body (cover letter / separate page)
• Identifying site/dataset names masked; file metadata scrubbed of author identity

Cover letter and data materials JAIS expects

• Cover letter with authorship details, pre-submission history, prior publications, and acknowledgments
• Senior Editor nomination and two suggested unbiased reviewers (non-binding, but route the paper well)
• SEM studies: full correlation or covariance matrix plus descriptives included as an appendix
• Dataset prepared to be made available on request to SEs/reviewers, anonymized; dataset reuse justified if applicable
• AIS Code of Research Conduct adhered to; copyright-transfer expectation acknowledged

Format & files check

• Category declared and within its length budget; ≤65pp absolute
• Body is self-contained (text/tables/figures); appendices/multimedia in separate files
• Double-spaced, Times New Roman 12 pt for the review copy; APA 6th references
• First page elements (title, abstract, keywords) prepared per the style guide (counts 待核实)
• Statement that the paper is not under review elsewhere; prior versions disclosed

Open-access and rights expectations to confirm before you submit

JAIS follows the AIS Green Open Access model: authors of accepted papers may self-archive the accepted version with no embargo, and articles are free to AIS members. There is no stated article processing charge, but copyright is transferred to AIS prior to publication via the Copyright Release form, with certain author rights retained. Confirm the current rights and OA terms on the policies page before submitting, and make sure your coauthors and any funder mandates are compatible with green self-archiving rather than gold OA. These are policy facts that shift, so treat specifics as 待核实 at submission time.

Anti-patterns

• Submitting through the wrong portal — JAIS uses ManuscriptCentral, not an INFORMS or Wiley system.
• Declaring "Research Article" for a construct-development paper (route to the Theory category).
• Omitting the required SEM correlation/covariance matrix and descriptives.
• Leaving self-identifying citations or acknowledgments in a double-blind file.
• Exceeding 65 pages or sitting well past ~15,000 words without a category justification.

Output format

【Portal/format】ManuscriptCentral; double-spaced TNR 12pt; APA 6th: ready
【Category/length】declared category within budget; ≤65pp: yes/trim
【Anonymity】no identifying info; neutral self-cites: yes/fix
【Cover letter】SE nomination + two suggested reviewers + history: ready
【SEM matrix + data】correlation/covariance + descriptives; anonymized data on request: ready/gaps
【Body standalone】text/tables/figures only; appendices separate: yes/fix
【Source status】verified URL / 待核实 (abstract limit)
【Next skill】jais-review-process

Supplementary resources

• templates/checklist.md — submission self-check
• templates/manuscript_template.md — lightweight manuscript scaffold
• ../../resources/official-source-map.md — official URLs and volatile facts