In search of Readability across Entrepreneurship Research journals

The entrepreneurship research field has grown dramatically over the last decades in terms of overall rigor, relevance, and impact. However, we arguably still need to improve how our research translates to other audiences outside of academia. Given that most of our empirical work surveys entrepreneurship practitioners, our scholarship should have practical significance and relevance to their endeavors. The purpose of this paper is to examine the overall readability and accessibility of published entrepreneurship research with implications for its relevance and knowledge creation for stakeholders such as entrepreneurs, investors, policymakers, and students. Data were collected from the most cited articles from ten entrepreneurship journals between 2000-2019 (N=281). Surprisingly, empirical articles had a higher readability score than conceptual and qualitative articles and there was significant variation on readability across the journals. Lastly, we found support that readability scores of articles were positively related to their citation scores after controlling for number of authors and article age.