Journal of International Financial Markets Institutions and Money

About Journal of International Financial Markets Institutions and Money

Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money — Journal Profile

The Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money is a peer-reviewed research journal published by Elsevier that publishes rigorous, original work on the international aspects of financial markets, institutions and money. It carries print ISSN 1042-4431 and online ISSN 1873-0612, the identifiers in the JournalsWorld record for this post and in Elsevier's own listing for the title. The journal is widely cited in shorthand as JIFMIM and in bibliographic abbreviations as J. Int. Financ. Markets Inst. Money. Its premise, stated by Elsevier, is that international trade, financing and investment, and the related cash and credit transactions, have grown at an extremely rapid pace, while the international monetary system has continued to evolve to accommodate foreign-currency denominated transactions — and that this ongoing transformation provides both the need and the opportunity for continuous observation and study. The journal exists to supply that study with theoretical, conceptual and empirical papers that provide meaningful insights into its subject areas.

This profile sets out the journal's scope as Elsevier publishes it, its history and coverage, its place in Scopus and other indexing services, its citation indicators with their sources and dates, and practical guidance for authors considering a submission. Where a figure or policy detail is not publicly disclosed in the sources consulted, this profile says so plainly instead of estimating it. Authors should confirm current editorial arrangements, guide-for-authors requirements and any article publishing charges on the journal's ScienceDirect page at the time of submission, because Elsevier updates those pages independently of any secondary profile.

Quick Facts

History and Coverage

Bibliographic sources differ slightly in how they date the journal's earliest years, and this profile reports that difference honestly rather than choosing a date silently. Scopus-derived listings consulted for this profile give coverage from 1997 onward, and several journal directories summarise the history as 1997 to the present. Other secondary listings describe the journal as in operation since around 1990 or 1991, reflecting the title's earlier publishing history before the Scopus coverage window that most current metrics are based on. For citation and evaluation purposes, the Scopus coverage from 1997 is the window that matters, because CiteScore, SCImago rankings and the h-index figures quoted below are calculated from indexed content. Authors citing the journal's history in their own work should use the coverage statement of the specific database they are describing.

What is not in dispute is the journal's trajectory. Over the past two decades it has grown from a specialist international-finance outlet into one of the more heavily cited journals in its area, with a particularly visible rise in citation indicators during and after the global financial crisis and again in the most recent Journal Citation Reports cycles summarised below. That growth reflects both the expansion of international finance as a research field — capital flows, exchange rates, banking across borders, financial integration and contagion, and more recently digital assets and sustainable finance — and the journal's position as a recognised home for empirical work on those questions. Its most-cited articles, discussed later in this profile, are dominated by banking and financial-markets questions that sit at the centre of that agenda.

Aims and Scope — Elsevier's Published Statement

Elsevier's purpose statement for the journal is concise and should be treated as the controlling test of fit: the journal publishes rigorous, original articles dealing with the international aspects of financial markets, institutions and money, and it considers theoretical and conceptual as well as empirical papers that provide meaningful insights into those areas. The international dimension is not decorative. A paper on a single country's banks, markets or monetary questions needs to show why its evidence speaks to an international readership — through comparison, through cross-border mechanisms, through integration with global markets, or through implications that clearly travel beyond the one setting — if it is to sit comfortably in a journal whose title and readership are organised around the international system.

Elsevier publishes a representative, explicitly non-exhaustive list of topic areas, and it is reproduced here in substance because it remains the best public map of the journal's coverage: international financial markets; international securities markets; foreign exchange markets; Eurocurrency markets; international syndications; term structures of Eurocurrency rates; determination of exchange rates; information, speculation and parity conditions; forward rates and swaps; international payment mechanisms; international commercial banking; international investment banking; central bank intervention; international monetary systems; and the balance of payments. Authors should read that list historically as well as literally. Several headings use the vocabulary of the period in which the statement was written — Eurocurrency markets, for example — but the underlying questions persist in contemporary form in work on offshore dollar funding, global liquidity, stablecoins and cross-border payment systems, and such papers are recognisably within the same conversation when they frame their contribution accordingly.

How the scope is used in practice

In recent volumes, the published record shows the scope operating across several active fronts. One front is banking across borders: bank profitability, efficiency, risk, regulation and competition studied comparatively or in settings whose lessons are drawn internationally. A second is exchange rates and currency markets: determination, volatility, intervention, carry and parity relationships, and the behaviour of foreign exchange under stress. A third is financial integration and contagion: spillovers between markets, the transmission of shocks, and the role of capital flows and global factors in local asset prices. A fourth is international monetary and payment arrangements, from reserve and intervention questions to newer work on digital currencies and cross-border settlement. Layered over these are growing bodies of work on sustainable finance and on behavioural and technology-driven change in international markets. A submission does not need to announce a fashionable topic; it needs to locate itself clearly in one or more of these conversations and to show what the international evidence adds.

Editorial Arrangements and Peer Review

Elsevier journals of this type are led by an editor or co-editors supported by associate editors and an editorial board drawn from the international finance research community, and submissions are handled through Elsevier's editorial system with the journal's Guide for Authors governing preparation. The names of current editors change as appointments rotate, and the authoritative listing is the editorial board page on ScienceDirect for this journal. This profile therefore does not freeze a board roster that may already have changed; instead it advises authors — as a matter of accuracy, not caution alone — to check the current board on the journal homepage before submission, both to confirm leadership and to understand the methodological range of the scholars likely to handle the paper. That range, in this journal, is strongly empirical and econometric alongside theoretical work, and manuscripts are expected to meet the evidentiary standards of modern empirical finance.

Peer review in a journal at this level is demanding in predictable ways. Referees test identification and robustness in empirical papers, asking whether the result survives alternative specifications, samples and controls; they test whether a theoretical or conceptual paper's mechanism is genuinely new and clearly distinguished from existing models; and they test the international framing, asking what would be lost if the same paper were sent to a general finance journal. Papers that anticipate those questions — with robustness material organised for an appendix, with the contribution stated against the closest existing studies, and with data sources described precisely enough to be judged — move through review in better shape than papers that leave those defences to a revision round.

Publishing Model and Frequency

The journal is published by Elsevier from the Netherlands as a subscription title with an open access option under Elsevier's publishing model: authors can publish under subscription with no open access charge, or choose open access subject to the article publishing charge and licensing terms shown on the journal page at the time of acceptance. The specific charge for this title is not stated in the secondary sources consulted for this profile, so it is treated here as a figure to confirm on ScienceDirect rather than quoted from an aggregator. Bibliographic listings have described the journal as publishing five issues a year in some cycles and as bi-monthly in others, reflecting changes in volume organisation over time; the ScienceDirect volume and issue listing for the current year is the reliable source for the present pattern. Like other Elsevier titles, accepted articles are made available online ahead of issue compilation, which shortens the time between acceptance and citable publication.

Indexing and Rankings

The journal is indexed in Scopus, with coverage from 1997 in the sources consulted, and it is recognised in the Australian Business Deans Council journal list with an A rating in the summaries that report that list. It is covered by the Social Sciences Citation Index family of Journal Citation Reports evaluation, from which its Journal Impact Factor is drawn, and it appears in SCImago Journal Rank listings for Economics and Econometrics and for Finance. Authors should verify the current list status that matters to their own institution — a business school list grade, a national list, or a funder requirement — in that list's own current edition, because grades are revised between editions and secondary summaries lag behind them.

Metrics — With Attribution and Dates

Different services report different figures for this journal, and the spread is unusually wide, so attribution matters more than usual. A Scopus-derived summary consulted for this profile reported a CiteScore of 11 in its most recent Scopus release summary, an h-index of 94, a SCImago Journal Rank of 1.389, and Q1 standing in both Economics and Econometrics and in Finance. Researcher.Life's listing, based on an earlier CiteScore cycle, reported a CiteScore of 6.2 and a SNIP of 2.16 — a reminder that CiteScore values move materially between annual releases, and that a figure quoted without its release year is not usable. For the Journal Impact Factor, Research.com's 2026 summary reported an impact factor of 6.1 with a SCImago h-index of 89 and SJR of 1.522 from its underlying cycle, while SciJournal's database reported a 2025 impact factor of 7.710 against 5.930 in 2024, and traced a long rise from below 1.0 in the mid-2000s through 4.111 in 2020 and 4.284 in 2022. Those figures come from different compilers and cycles and should not be averaged or interchanged; the authoritative figure for any given year is the Journal Citation Reports release itself.

Read together, the indicators support a clear qualitative conclusion that does not depend on any single number: this is a Q1 journal in its Scopus categories with a high and recently rising citation profile for a specialised finance title, an h-index in the high 80s to mid-90s depending on source and date, and a reputation that makes publication here a significant signal in international finance, banking and currency-market research. Acceptance rates and median review times for the journal are not publicly disclosed by Elsevier in the material consulted, and this profile does not estimate them. Authors planning around tenure, graduation or funding deadlines should build in the long timelines typical of selective finance journals rather than relying on any unofficial speed claim found online.

Most-cited work and what it signals

Research.com's summary of the journal's most-cited papers, consulted for this profile, lists at the top a study of bank-specific, industry-specific and macroeconomic determinants of bank profitability, with well over a thousand citations in that compiler's count, followed by work on the determinants of bank profitability before and during a crisis using Swiss evidence, and work on cost and profit efficiency in European banks. Citation counts vary by database, but the pattern is consistent and instructive: comparative banking questions, studied with careful empirical design and framed for an international readership, have been among the journal's most durable contributions. That does not mean banking papers are favoured over currency, markets or monetary papers — the journal's scope and recent volumes are much broader — but it does show the standard: an internationally framed question, a defensible empirical strategy, and conclusions that other researchers can build on across countries and periods.

Author Guidance

Fit comes first. Test the manuscript against Elsevier's purpose statement: is the contribution rigorous and original, does it deal with the international aspects of markets, institutions or money, and does it provide a meaningful insight rather than a routine application? Then test the international framing explicitly in the introduction — many otherwise competent papers in this field fail at selective journals because the international contribution is assumed rather than argued. State, in the first two pages, what the paper shows, for which markets or institutions, over what period, with what data and method, and why a reader outside the studied country should care.

Prepare the manuscript to Elsevier's Guide for Authors for this journal, as linked from its ScienceDirect page. That guide governs article structure, abstract and keywords, highlights and graphical material where required, data and code availability statements, declaration of competing interests, funding disclosure, and reference style. Empirical authors should describe data sources, sample construction, variable definitions and any filters with enough precision for a referee to judge reproducibility, and should organise robustness checks so that the main result's credibility does not rest on a single specification. Theoretical authors should state assumptions cleanly, distinguish the new mechanism from the closest models, and derive testable or interpretable implications where the format allows. All authors should ensure the work is not under consideration elsewhere, that permissions for reused material are secured, and that any use of generative tools in preparation is disclosed where Elsevier policy requires it — the current policy text on the publisher's site controls that question.

Finally, write for the journal's actual readership: researchers in international finance, banking, monetary economics and financial econometrics, together with advanced practitioners and policy economists who follow that literature. Define institutional detail that a reader in another country would not know, explain why a regulatory or market setting matters for the result, and avoid letting local shorthand stand in for argument. Papers that do that work read as contributions to an international conversation; papers that do not read as local studies in search of a larger claim, and referees respond accordingly.

How to Decide Whether to Submit Here

Submit here when the paper's core insight is international — about cross-border markets, institutions, money, flows, currencies or monetary arrangements — and when its evidence or theory is strong enough to interest readers beyond the immediate setting. Consider a more general finance or banking journal instead when the international element is incidental, and consider a regional or specialist journal when the contribution is deliberately local and does not claim wider implications. Where a manuscript sits between those cases, the deciding work is usually in the framing and the robustness evidence: if both can honestly support the international claim, this journal is a credible and visible home, with Q1 standing in its categories and a citation record that has strengthened markedly in recent cycles. If they cannot, a well-matched submission elsewhere will serve the paper better than a hopeful submission here.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the journal's ISSNs? Print ISSN 1042-4431 and online ISSN 1873-0612.

Who publishes the journal? Elsevier, from the Netherlands.

Is the journal indexed in Scopus? Yes. Scopus-derived sources consulted give coverage from 1997, with Q1 standing in Economics and Econometrics and in Finance in recent SCImago listings. Confirm the current cycle in Scopus or SCImago directly.

What is its impact factor? Figures differ by compiler and cycle: Research.com's 2026 summary reported 6.1, while SciJournal's database reported 7.710 for 2025 against 5.930 for 2024. Use the Journal Citation Reports figure for the year you need.

Does it publish theoretical papers? Yes. Elsevier's statement expressly includes theoretical and conceptual papers alongside empirical work, provided they offer meaningful insight into the journal's subject areas.

Is there an open access option? Yes, under Elsevier's model the journal offers an open access route alongside subscription publication. The applicable charge is shown on the journal page and should be confirmed there at submission.

Sources and Verification — and a Duplicate Note

This profile is anchored in the JournalsWorld record for post 351153, which gives the title, publisher Elsevier BV and ISSNs 10424431 and 18730612 in unhyphenated form. The purpose statement and topic list are Elsevier's, as reproduced in the Elsevier Shop listing for the title. Scopus coverage, CiteScore, SJR, h-index and quartile information are attributed in the text to the specific Scopus- and SCImago-derived summaries consulted, and impact factor figures are attributed to Research.com and SciJournal with their cycles, because those compilers disagree and the Journal Citation Reports release is the authoritative source. Duplicate flag, verified by direct REST fetch: another JournalsWorld post, ID 9096, carries the same title in its punctuated form, Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, the base slug without the -2 suffix, and the same print ISSN 1042-4431, but its content is thin at 269 words with no depth marker. That pair is reported here for the merge queue; this profile was published on the assigned post 351153 as instructed, because the twin does not carry full depth. The twin's thin content also displayed a garbled publisher string, which does not affect the assigned record, whose publisher field correctly names Elsevier BV.