The Value Examiner (TVE) invites practitioners and academics to submit articles for consideration for publication. TVE is a double-blind, peer-reviewed journal published by the National Association of Certified Valuators and Analysts (NACVA). We seek timely, insightful articles on issues that affect: (1) the valuation of businesses, business interests, debt and equity securities, and intellectual property and other intangible assets; (2) the quantification of lost profits and other economic damages; (3) financial forensics and fraud risk management services; and (4) practice management and development for consulting services.

TVE welcomes submissions on a wide range of subjects of interest to the business valuation and forensic litigation services (BVFLS) community, including:

• Financial statement and financial ratio analysis and interpretation
• Inputs and considerations for economic/normalized financial statements, including tax-affecting concepts
• Determination of reasonable compensation and economic rents, including CMS regulatory fair market value compliance concepts under the Stark Law
• Models and methods for calculating and validating estimated future benefits
• Development and defense of discount and capitalization rates, including:
  • Resource inputs, models, and subjective adjustments to the capital asset pricing model (CAPM), modified CAPM (MCAPM), the buildup method, and the weighted average cost of capital (WACC)
  • Selection of appropriate equity risk premiums, size adjustments, industry beta, or risk premiums
  • Development of market multiples, converting pre-tax rates to after-tax rates, etc.
• Application of statistical, econometric, and options-based analyses in the valuation, economic damages, and financial forensics disciplines
• Methods for valuing intangible assets, including the differences under varying standards of value
• Merits, methods, and justification of tax-affecting pass-through entities
• Valuation considerations with complex capital structures
• Valuation discounts and premiums—e.g., control premiums, lack of control discounts, discounts for lack of marketability, liquidity discounts—and the reliability of methods and models used to estimate these discounts, including benchmark, securities-based, and analytical approaches; quantitative marketability discount model (QMDM); Partnership Profiles; NICE and NERA; use of restricted stock and pre-IPO studies; and other private market data
• Additional adjustment-to-value concepts at the enterprise level, such as built-in capital gains tax adjustment, key-person elements, and relationship between company size and value
• Special focus valuations, such as ESOPs, stock options, and deferred compensation plans
• Industry-specific issues and methods
• The process of preparing and writing valuation and financial forensics reports
• Considerations in the development of economic damages calculations—e.g., lost profits, lost value, lost cash flow—as well as related issues, such as saved or avoided costs, step-fixed costs, extra or extraordinary costs mitigation, incremental value and decremental cost savings, time value of money, and proper ex-ante and ex-post application
• Personal injury and business interruption damages calculations, including lost earnings, medical expenses, lost household services, wrongful death, property damage, and temporary vs. permanent loss of use of personal or business property
• Methods of calculating intellectual property (IP) damages and related issues, e.g., entire market value rule, price erosion, unjust enrichment, corrective advertising, relief from royalty approach, brand value equation method, and competitive advantage techniques associated with technology-related, data-process-related, engineering-related, contract-related, and internet-related IP
• Financial forensics issues in family law engagements, including identification of assets, valuation methods, valuation of goodwill, use of excess earnings method, income analysis, lifestyle analysis, fraud detection, tracing, and varying standards of value
• Business valuation nuances in litigation—standard and premise of value, forensic techniques, data collection, financial statement analysis, report writing, and defending expert opinions
• Fraud investigations—audit vs. investigation, types of fraud, fraud red flags, techniques for detecting and proving fraud, digital data analysis, and unique differences between civil and criminal fraud cases
• Valuation issues in restructuring, bankruptcy, and insolvency, including financial distress, receivership, creditor/debtor considerations and rights, alter ego allegations, and piercing the corporate veil
• Expert witnessing issues and best practices
• Ethics, professional standards, and integration into financial forensics and business valuation practices
• Practice management issues, e.g., pricing and billing; marketing; leadership; partner admission, compensation, recruitment/retention, and buyouts; mergers and acquisitions; strategic planning; and succession planning

Case studies and best practices are always welcome. And, because many valuation and economic damages issues are matters of dispute, we welcome articles on controversial topics as well as dissenting views on recently published articles.

Editorial Guidelines

Articles submitted for publication should range from 1,500 to 6,000 words. In some cases, expansive articles can be split into a series and span multiple issues. Submitted manuscripts are initially reviewed by TVE’s editor, who will recommend that the manuscript be selected for peer review, revised and resubmitted, or rejected. Recommended feature articles are peer-reviewed by at least two members of TVE’s Editorial Board or, in some cases, by guest reviewers with special knowledge or experience relevant to the topic. Departmental articles (e.g., Academic Review, Healthcare Insights, Legal Insights, Technology Review, Practice Management) generally are not subject to peer review, although they may undergo a technical review by one or more Editorial Board members or guest reviewers at the discretion of the editor.

Articles are accepted on the basis of suitability, quality, timeliness, professional interest, clarity of expression, and style. Articles will not be considered, and should not be submitted, if they are under consideration for publication elsewhere, nor should articles under consideration for publication by TVE be submitted for consideration to other publications. Except in very unusual circumstances, TVE will not consider articles that have been published previously, in whole or in part, or that are substantially similar to previously published work. (Posting an article draft on SSRN or a similar prepublication site is permitted.)

TVE’s editorial staff reserves the right to accept or reject any article; to condition acceptance upon revision of submitted material to conform to its criteria; to schedule an article for publication at its discretion; and to change an article’s scheduled publication date based on the number of timely submissions or other factors.

Submission Guidelines

Articles should be submitted via Scholastica. Scholastica is a comprehensive academic and professional journal management platform that helps authors, editors, and reviewers efficiently track submissions, automate administrative tasks, and coordinate communications throughout the peer review process.

To submit an article, click on the “Submit Manuscript” button above. There are no submission fees, but if this is the first time you have used Scholastica, you will need to create an account and verify your email address. Note: If you are a BVFLS practitioner, when completing your Scholastica profile, in the field labeled “Institution” enter your firm or company name and in the field labeled “What best describes your academic position?” select “Professional/Practitioner.”

In addition to your manuscript (see below), you will need the following:

• Your article’s working title
• The name, title, affiliation, and email address of each author
• An abstract, up to 250 words, summarizing the content of your article
• Five to seven carefully chosen keywords to help searchers find your article
• Separate files for tables and figures used in your article (see below)

Manuscript Standards

• Manuscripts should be thoroughly edited and proofread.
• Manuscripts should be in Microsoft Word format (preferably, DOCX files), with one-inch margins, 12-point Times New Roman font, double-spaced text, and single-spaced footnotes (not endnotes).
• Text and citations generally should conform to the Chicago Manual of Style, 17th ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017) (CMOS) or—for legal-style citations not covered by the CMOS—The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, 20th ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Law Review Association, 2015).
• Manuscripts should be anonymized—that is, stripped of authors’ names and other identifying information—to facilitate TVE’s double-blind peer review process. Scholastica provides forms for entering identifying information during the submission process.

Tables and Figures

Tables and figures, such as charts or graphs, should be embedded in place in the Microsoft Word manuscript for the reference of editors and reviewers. If your article is accepted for publication, you will be asked to upload individual figure files via Scholastica. The preferred file types for figures are TIFF, EPS, or high-resolution PDF, although other file types may also be acceptable, including PNG, PS, and XLSX. Minimum resolution is 300 dots per inch (DPI), although 600 DPI or greater is preferred for line art.

Embedded tables are acceptable for publication, provided they are created using Microsoft Word’s table function, are single spaced, and are not created with spaces or tabs. If tables are created using Excel or another spreadsheet program, tables should be submitted as separate XLSX or CSV files.

Other Information

If your article is accepted for publication, you will also need to provide the following:

• A brief biography (up to 100 words) of each author to place at the end of the article
• A color head and shoulders photo (resolution should be at least 300 DPI at 1.5" x 1")
• The number of hours it took to research and write the article (for CPE credit)
• Five multiple-choice questions and answers to be included on a CPE exam
• Signed Author Agreement (see below)

Author Agreement

By submitting a manuscript to TVE for review, each author warrants that the article is original, is not subject to any existing copyright, has not previously been published, and is not under review by any other publication. Should the article contain any material that requires written permission for use in TVE, the author agrees to obtain such permission from the copyright owner and provide it to TVE’s editorial staff.

Prior to publication, and as a condition of publication, each author must sign NACVA’s standard Publishing Agreement. The agreement provides, among other things, that NACVA acquires the exclusive worldwide right of first publication of the article, as well as exclusive worldwide publishing rights for 30 days after initial publication. Authors retain remaining rights after that 30-day period, including the right to grant permission to another publication to reprint the article (or an updated version of it) provided they instruct the publication to include a conspicuous acknowledgment stating as follows: “This article (or a version of it) originally appeared in The Value Examiner, [Issue Date] issue, published by the National Association of Certified Valuators and Analysts® (NACVA®). All Rights Reserved. To learn more, please visit www.NACVA.com/ValueExaminer.”

To begin the submission process, click on the “Submit Manuscript” button at the top of this page. If you have questions, please contact Dan Shiffrin, Editor, at DanS1@NACVA.com, or Lynne Johnson, Associate Editor, at LynneJ1@NACVA.com.