Open Access Teaching Case Journal (OATCJ)

“OATCJ is aligned with the United Nation's Principles of Responsible Management Education by offering a multi-disciplinary repository of quality, real-world teaching cases for students and instructors that are free and accessible to all. OATCJ provides rigorous and developmentally supportive peer-review process for case authors without the expectation of financial remuneration. OATCJ has a robust reviewer community from a broad spectrum of disciplines.         

(SDG #4 Quality Education, SDG #10 Reduced Inequalities)”         

The OATCJ publishes cases exclusively using open licenses such as Creative Commons (CC) licenses. Applying a Creative Commons (CC) license to creative works helps creators retain some copyright “rights” while at the same time sharing their work with a clear indication of what others may and may not do with that shared work. The Open Access Teaching Case Journal (OATCJ) requires case writers to choose one of the open licenses. Creators will retain some rights to their creations.         

Licensing the case study

Since cases are non-fictional events with non-fictional people, creators will want to choose a license that allows others to retain, reuse, and redistribute cases but not allow for revisions or remixes. The Creative Commons license choice is between CC-BY-NC-ND and CC-BY-ND. In both choices the creator retains some copyright rights for their creations and students are not required to pay. Once a Creative Commons license is applied to a work, it cannot be revoked.         

CC-BY-NC-ND allows others to download and share the work if they give the creator attribution, do not make changes, or use it commercially.         

CC-BY-ND allows others to download and share the work (even commercially) if they give the creator attribution and do not make any changes.         

Creators may choose CC-BY-ND if they want to submit the case to a publisher journal. Keep in mind that publisher journals may not want to accept a work that has a CC-BY-ND license and has been published for free in an open journal.        

Publisher journals typically require the creator to give up their rights to the work. This results in paywalls for the creators and their students. Once a creator has given up their rights to their work, they no longer have the right to apply an open license to that work.  

Teaching notes

Teaching notes will be treated like test banks and faculty wishing access to teaching notes will be vetted and made aware that teaching notes are to remain confidential and not be redistributed. We ask that any requests for teaching notes be made to the OATCJ so that appropriate vetting and data collection for knowledge dissemination can be calculated. Once per year the reported adoptions and associated statistics about your case will be sent to you.  

Please see the Creative Commons website for other open license choices.  

To access cases, please visit OATCJ: Open Access Teaching Case Journal, or our distribution partner, The Case Centre. Cases are available in HTML and PDF format. When linking to individual cases from Learning Management Systems or other classroom management software, please use the "permalinks" available for each case by right clicking on the case titles (or command button clicking with Macs), and selecting "copy link location".

Authors should submit their manuscripts using our online submission platform. All submissions must include a manuscript for the case study and a separate teaching note. Please carefully read the case study and teaching note guidelines before submitting your manuscript to avoid delays in the review process.

Submissions must include a release form signed by the authorized people within the organization referenced in the case. This case release form requirement also applies to the cases where names are disguised.  The case release form is not required for cases developed using publicly available resources (published sources) or secondary sources instead of personal experience or interviews. The case release form will be distributed at the time of case publication. All sources are required for secondary source cases.        

Case authors who submit cases for review at OATCJ will be asked to review cases in the future. This reciprocity is part of the scholarly process, and we very much appreciate your continued collaboration.     

The OACTJ is actively looking for contributors to act as reviewers and editors. As a multi-disciplinary journal, we are actively soliciting reviewer participation from a broad swath of scholarly disciplines. These may include disciplines outside of business and management studies. We invite those who have experience writing and reviewing pedagogical business cases based on real-world situations to apply.     

To apply as a reviewer, please complete the OATCJ Reviewer Application Form, and we will send you a reviewer invitation.     

To contact the editorial team at the Open Access Teaching Case Journal (OATCJ):