March 7, 2019. Shanghai – The “2018 Global Contest for the Best China-Focused Cases” was officially launched on November 1, 2018. This year’s contest sets more specific requirements for case formatting, length and copyright regulations. As of the December 16, 2018 submission deadline, a total of 209 valid cases were submitted by authors from 74 colleges and institutions in China (including Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan) and other countries. Notably, the number of submissions from other Chinese provinces and cities outside of Shanghai increased 24% over the previous year.

 

The case review mechanism has also been improved to further ensure the quality of cases hosted at ChinaCases.org. The selection process is carried out in five phases:

    1) Initial review; 

    2) Blind review; 

    3) Area editor and chief editor review; 

    4) Nominated Case Award selection; and,

    5) Best Case Award selection.

 

The first three phases aim to evaluate whether the submitted cases meet the acceptance criteria of ChinaCases.org. During the initial review, submitted cases were evaluated in the light of content and compliance requirements and those that failed to meet the criteria were revised for resubmission. Around 80% of the cases passed this stage. During the blind review and area editor review, each case was scrutinised and assessed by two blind review experts and one area editor. The area editor provided detailed comments based on the opinions from the blind reviewers and his or her own judgment to help authors modify their cases to meet the acceptance criteria. Cases that provoked a considerable divergence of opinion during this process were subject to the chief editor review.

 

The expert committee for the blind review and area editor review was composed of more than 30 senior experts from CEIBS, member schools of the Shanghai MBA Case Development and Sharing Platform, Tsinghua University, award-winning case authors, and other well-known institutions in China and elsewhere. To ensure the fairness of the competition, cases were distributed to reviewers in relevant fields from different organisations. The cases to be revised according to review comments will be further evaluated by area editors to see if they can be reworked to meet the criteria.

 

The selection process of the Nominated Case Award was carried out in two steps. Cases that met the acceptance criteria of ChinaCases.org were ranked according to weighted scores with reference to comments from the blind review and area editor review. The top 18 cases were then added to the shortlist. On March 7, 2019, the Editorial Board for Management Disciplines, composed of six area editors from East China University of Science and Technology, East China Normal University, Nankai University, Tsinghua University, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, and CEIBS, was convened by the chief editor to review the shortlisted cases. They exchanged ideas and conducted a thorough evaluation from multiple perspectives, including the theme, focus of discussion, sophistication, logic and sufficiency of evidence, and writing norms of the case texts, as well as the teaching objectives, teaching plans, problem analysis, and supporting information in teaching notes. Finally the Nominated Case Award was selected and submitted to a panel of international experts, who will choose the winner of the Best Case Award. On April 18, 2019, the winners for the Nominated Case Award and the Best Case Award will be announced on ChinaCases.org. Please stay tuned!