How to publish in scientific journals 1 JORGE NIOSI CANADA RESEARCH CHAIR ON THE MANAGEMENT OF TECHNOLOGY UQAM MONTREAL
Use the English language Plan of the presentation Do your comprehensive literature review using scholarly databases Put both empirical and theoretical value added in the paper Avoid, if possible, case studies Read the journals where you wish to publish (assessors, style) Write the manuscript for that journal Respect the instructions of the journal and avoid long manuscripts Be patient: good journals are long to publish (but it pays) 2
Use the English language There are 5500 languages in the world, each with over 2000 present-day speakers. Yet, English concentrates some 60% of all articles in science, technology, investment and economics Use that language if you want to be read in the world English is today what Latin was in the times of Copernicus and Galileo: the lingua franca of science French, Spanish, German, Japanese or Mandarin still represent a very small fraction of scientific work. In the foreseeable future, none of them will displace English 3
Do your comprehensive literature review Any good paper (or thesis by the way) starts with a comprehensive literature review of the themes and concepts of the manuscript or thesis Search the bibliography using databases such as Emerald, Google Scholar, SSCI, Scopus and read it Avoid citing or putting in your work non refereed sources such as working papers, conference presentations, etc. A good high-quality bibliography adds quality to the manuscript, or thesis 4
Put both empirical and theoretical value added in the manuscript Many papers only summarize the state of theory and illustrate how it applies (or not) to a specific context. Instead, do your state of the literature review with the idea of finding new linkages among currents, put forward shortcomings, defining or redefining concepts, etc. Many of the most cited articles are basically theoretical (i.e. Martin & Sunley: Deconstructing clusters, 2003) Darwin is remembered because of his theory not by his numerous case studies on different species 5
Avoid, if possible, case studies Case studies, so often used in management science, present the sampling problem: the case may not be a representative sample of the issue it is supposed to illustrate It is difficult to publish a manuscript in a good journal with just case studies, unless the theoretical discussion is highly valuable Try instead to understand the frontier of the population you try to study (i.e. innovating firms in Nigeria), then draw a representative sample 6
Read the journals where to wish to publish 7 Choose a journal where you want to publish and read it. Find its style (more theoretical, more empirical, kind of statistics if any, they like, kind of references) Find also its theoretical leanings and be sure you agree with it (JEE versus Econometrica) Cite the articles of that journal in your manuscript: journals compete for citations Also, the assessors or your paper, or some of them at least, will be part of the invisible community of that journal, and they most probably publish in that same journal
Write the paper for that journal Once you find the journal you want to access, write directly your manuscript for that journal Avoid if possible writing working papers, research reports, and too many presentations in conferences: any paper is now easily accessible to anybody, anywhere through Internet. You risk being copied. Also, you loose your time and efforts writing such intermediary material 8
Respect the instructions of the journal and avoid long manuscripts 9 Read carefully the instructions for authors and respect them. Editors get angry at papers out of the required formats As to length, aim at the lower end of the suggested size. If the journal admits manuscripts between 6000 and 10000 words, then aim at a paper closer to 6000 words. A long manuscript displaces many more papers and forces the editor to reject them. And the editor knows that each rejected manuscript nurtures a potential deserter from the journal
Be patient: good journals are long to publish Avoid the easy temptation to publish in a non rated journal. The quality of the assessments will often be low. You do not learn from them. Prefer to aim as high as possible in the impact factor ISI (or other) scale. The number and quality of the assessments you will receive will be worth sending them your manuscript So, be patient. Good journals are a plus and will bring you a larger number of externalities than local ones. 10