Doing research and getting published – challenges and possible solutions

1. Doing research and getting published – challenges and possible solutions Anabela Mesquita ISCAP / IPP

2. Instructor profile • PhD in Management Information Systems from Minho University, Portugal (2002) • Lecturer since 1990 • Vice Dean of ISCAP (one of the schools of Polytechnic Institute of Porto) • Editor in chief of the IJTHI • Co-editor of two special issues – JCIT and IRMJ • AE for IRMJ, JCIT • Scientific Committee of several international conferences for some years • Some books edited and papers published (journals and conferences) • Book about how to do a Master or a Phd – the process • Coordinator of European Projects and coordinator of partner http://livraria.vidaeconomica.pt/62-temas-diversos/711-mestrados-e-doutoramentos.html Anabela Mesquita 2

3. Anabela Mesquita 3

4. Anabela Mesquita 4 actions resultsinputs

5. The “Process” • Research process • Conference paper writing process • Journal paper writing process • Electronic submission process • Resubmission process • Paper review process • Paper publishing process • Academic networking process • Scholarly process Anabela Mesquita 5

8. Before looking for a journal ask yourself… • Do I have a contribution to make? • Who is going to be interested? • How does it build on what we already know? • How significant is my message? • How sure I am about my findings? Anyway… • It is important for the career • Publication is part of our academic role Anabela Mesquita 8

9. Tips before submitting • High risk submissions: conversion of a big report or monograph or doctorate thesis; straight conference paper, not focused for the journal, not formatted for the journal and it might be published elsewhere in the conference proceedings (not original) • Low risk submissions: papers written for the journal, i.e., it fits with the genre, the scope of the journal, engages with the debates, refers to previous work published in the journal and related publications. Anabela Mesquita 9

10. A target journal • What is the mission / policy / objective of the journal? Does the paper fit the journal’s aim and scope? • What type of submission is it? Empirical research, review paper, brief report, thought piece, book review. Does the journal publish these kinds of papers? • Does the journal have a good reputation in the field? Are the Editor and Editorial Board high profile? • What is the acceptance / rejection rate? • What is the turn-around time? • Does the journal have an international audience? • Special issue? Anabela Mesquita 10

11. Anabela Mesquita 11 Example

12. • Is the journal peer reviewed? • Who are in the editorial board? • Is the journal available online? • Is the journal published by an international association, University or a publishing company? Anabela Mesquita 12

13. Anabela Mesquita 13 Is the journal in the ISI- ranked database? Or is it ranked highly with other metrics, eg h-index, ABS, ERIH, ERA, SCOPUS, SCIELO, Web of knowledge? IJTHI

14. Anabela Mesquita 14 Example of an academic journal

15. Anabela Mesquita 15 Web of Knowledge index

16. Anabela Mesquita 16 The same for SCOPUS

17. First homework… • Read the journal’s aim and scope • Look at past issues of the journal • See what kind of things / topics / research designs are published. • Look at the best papers and see how they have been constructed and try to do the same • You may wish to discuss your paper with the journal Editor Anabela Mesquita 17

18. • Sometimes, as Editor in chief, I receive papers that do not fit within the scope / mission of the journal and I have to reject them, before sending them for review Advise… • Look for the adequate journal Anabela Mesquita 18

20. What should you do to prepare your manuscript? • Read the manuscript submission guidelines. Make every effort to improve the quality of the manuscript before submission • Ba as objective as possible about your work IJTHI http://www.igi- global.com/journal/i nternational- journal-technology- human- interaction/1084 Anabela Mesquita 20

22. Paper title • It should be concise, accurate and informative • Titles are often used by Google search engines • The title should be specific and it should contain words that readers might be searching for • Impact of the paper title: strong and attractive Anabela Mesquita 22

23. Paper title • The title will make it more likely people will find and want to read your article • The title must reflect the content of your article; if not readers will be confused and disappointed • The title must also be comprehensible to the general reader outside your field • The title should not bear any abbreviations Anabela Mesquita 23

24. Anabela Mesquita 24 “Improving Decision Making in Extreme Situations: The Case of a Military Decision Support System” Example Topic (depend. variable)methodology Topic (indep. variable) “Factors Influencing Citizen Adoption of E- Government in Developing Countries: The Case of Jordan”

25. Abstract • Your abstract is what readers / reviewers / editors will use when they are deciding whether to read through your article or not • You should spend some time making sure that it is readable and that it contains a complete description of your research Anabela Mesquita 25

26. • Must be accurate as a reflection of what is in your article • Must be self-contained, without abbreviations • Check the journal’s Authors Guidelines to see what length of abstract is required • See if there are specific guidelines such as word count, subject matter, method of submission (e-mail, paper copy, or fax, for example), as well as qualifications and letters of recommendation the journal might require • Selling points • Check that the abstract reads well • Structured abstract Anabela Mesquita 26

27. • “The main purposes of this study are to investigate citizen adoption of e- government services in Jordan and to explore factors affecting the level of adoption of e-government services. Importantly, this study aims to develop a conceptual framework that is based on previous literature of Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) in order to examine the relationships between certain factors (government trustworthiness, service quality and citizen satisfaction) and citizen adoption of e-government services. A self-administered questionnaire was used to capture data from 356 Jordanian citizens across the country randomly. The findings indicate that perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, citizen satisfaction and trustworthiness are significant predictors of the Jordanian intention to use an e-government service. The results also showed that the service quality dimensions: responsiveness, reliability, and empathy have significant impacts on the citizen satisfaction. The study has made significant contributions to the body of knowledge at academic and practical levels as an important exploratory study that was conducted in the context of Jordan, a developing country with genuine need for more research works on e- government issues. In addition, this study provides some valuable insights into the performance and adoption of e-government in Jordan that could help government agencies to improve the effectiveness of their services.” Anabela Mesquita 27 Example of an abstract

28. Writing • The language should be clear and to an acceptable standard. Ask a colleague to read through your final draft, in particular if you are not an English native speaker • Reviewers are not expected to correct or copyedit manuscripts Anabela Mesquita 28

29. • If English is not your first language… • Emerald provides a service for any articles that might need copyediting: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/authors/editing_s ervice/index.htm • SfEP* suggested minimum freelance rates: http://www.sfep.org.uk/pub/mship/minimum_rate s.asp • The copyediting editors will be editing primarily for the quality of the english and will not necessarily be able to advise on the quality of the content Anabela Mesquita 29 *SfEP – Society for editors and proofreaders

30. Copyediting solutions allow you to: • Prepare an error-free manuscript, ready for submission to journals • Convey your research ideas and results clearly and effectively • Increase the chances of acceptance of your paper Anabela Mesquita 30

31. Journal styles • Sometimes journals have a style associated with it • http://www.igi- global.com/publish/resources/journal- guidelines-for-submission.pdf • Look for the guidelines or template, if available Anabela Mesquita 31

32. Keywords • It is essential that authors, editors, publishers make every effort to ensure articles are found online, quickly and accurately, ideally within the top five hits • The key to this is the appropriate use of keywords. This will help to increase the chances of the article being located and therefore cited • Recent evidence suggests that a strong correlation exists between online hits and subsequent citations for journal articles. Search engines rank highly as starting points Anabela Mesquita 32

33. • After submitting an article, it is ok to stay in touch with the journal / editor. Most journals allow to login to the system to check on the progress of the review process. • If you see that it is stuck for some weeks at any stage, don’t be afraid to send a polite and respectful inquiry, asking if there is anything you can do to help it along. • If you are in a time-crunch because you are looking to make a job-change or are being considered for a promotion, it is ok to kindly mention this in the note. Anabela Mesquita 33

35. Steps in Research Process • 1. Formulating the Research Problem • 2. Extensive Literature Review • 3. Developing the objectives • 4. Preparing the Research Design including Sample Design • 5. Collecting the Data • 6. Analysis of Data • 7. Generalisation and Interpretation • 8. Preparation of the Report or Presentation of Results-Formal write ups of conclusions reached. Anabela Mesquita 35

36. Literature review • Show what is already available in your area of interest. • It is an integral part of entire research process and makes valuable contribution to every operational step. • Can be time-consuming, daunting and frustrating, but is also rewarding. Its functions are: ▫ a. Bring clarity and focus to your research problem; ▫ b. Improve your methodology; ▫ c. Broaden your knowledge; ▫ d. Contextualise your findings. Anabela Mesquita 36

37. • What has already been said about a topic. ▫ Step 1 – Framing questions for a review ▫ Step 2 - Identifying relevant work (databases, e.g., b-on; search engines) ▫ Step 3 - Assessing the quality of studies ▫ Step 4 - Summarizing the evidence ▫ Step 5 - Interpreting the findings http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC539417/ http://www.emeraldinsight.com/authors/guides/write/evidence_based.htm http://eppi.ioe.ac.uk/cms/Default.aspx?tabid=67 http://eppi.ioe.ac.uk/cms/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=hQBu8y4uVwI%3d&tabid=88&mid=6162 Literature review helps you to show… Anabela Mesquita 37

38. Importance of Literature Review A common mistake is wanting to publish papers in areas without ever referring to previous papers in the same area Anabela Mesquita 38

39. Research method • If the paper covers empirical research (survey, desk- based research, etc.) it is necessary to tell the reader something about the methods. At least give enough information for the reader to have a sense of whether he can trust you. • Moreover, it is needed to prove that theoretical framework and literature review clearly influence any empirical study that is being reported Research questions Research Framework Empirical study Anabela Mesquita 39

40. Research method • Need to justify the research method • Justify the sample size • Clarify how the stratified random sampling methods was implemented (if the case) • How the survey instrument was developed, validated, administered • How the interview script was created • What are the hypotheses (if any) Anabela Mesquita 40

41. Qualitative research • Use words rather than numbers to describe findings • Emphasize seeing the world from the perspective of the participants • Goal is understanding rather than predicting • Emphasize the subjective dimension of human experience • Holist rather than reductionist • Associated with the interpretive approach which is discovery oriented, explanatory, descriptive and inductive in nature Anabela Mesquita 41

42. Conclusion • Research contributions and / or implications for research • Implications for practice • Research limitations • Future research directions Anabela Mesquita 42

43. Limitation - example • Our study has some limitations within which our findings need to be interpreted carefully. Some limitations of this study should be mentioned. First as in most empirical studies, the research presented here was limited by the measures used. Because environments are composed of numerous uncorrelated facets, … • Second, our study was cross-sectional in nature and assessed respondent perception of the obligations at a specific time. • Third, our study did not examine the impact of … • Last but not least, results of this study may not be completely generalizable because the sample was restricted to XXXX Anabela Mesquita 43

44. Future research directions - example • The results of this study suggest that the concept of… This study is therefore a pioneering attempt to adapt the concept of … Opportunities for further are abundant. This study suggests the following future research directions. First… • Second this study concentrated on… among three dimensions of a … We encourage other to carry out further research in this area. • Third, while XXX theory is based on the assumed difficulty of… future research may wish to explicitly consider this aspect of XXX in understanding… Anabela Mesquita 44

46. • Editor’s decision • The aim of the initial screening of new submissions is to prevent editors wasting their time on submissions that are ▫ Unsuitable, erroneous or malicious • Important screening criteria include: ▫ Fit with the mission of the journal ▫ Significance of the research ▫ Likelihood of moving forward acceptance in two rounds of review Anabela Mesquita 46

47. Understanding the review process • Work is received electronically by the Editor and skimmed for reasonable fit, quality and impact • Work is sent to 2 reviewers (at least) • Work is judged be reviewer’s report: ▫ Major revisions ▫ Minor revisions ▫ Reject • Associated Editor Anabela Mesquita 47

48. Need to justify the marks given for each criteria Include some comments that should not be available to authors Anabela Mesquita 48 Example of a template used for review

49. Resubmission process • Respond point-to-point to each suggestion / comment (e.g. using a table) • Update the manuscript • Deadline • Attitude • Online resubmission Anabela Mesquita 49

50. Typical research process problems • Too many focus • Poor literature review • Database & Sampling Subjects • Un-researchable or poor research questions • Not defined research problems • Project management • Weak conclusion • Outdated references Anabela Mesquita 50

51. Good research does not publish itself • Logic alone is not enough to win the approval of reviewer, editors and program chairs • Becoming an expert on the logical side of research is critical too. Anabela Mesquita 51

52. Tips for increasing your impact • Actively involve academic conferences • Choose an attractive title • Get known in your community • Improve your web presence • Make sure that relevant terms are included in the abstract • Publish with an author with high h-index • Review papers for conferences / journals • Target journals in rapidly growing research fields • Use blogs to leverage ongoing researcher discussion • Write a review article Anabela Mesquita 52

53. Anabela Mesquita 53 http://www.edanzediting.com/blog/man uscript_submission_process_visualized#. Umg2TPk_vzM Summary of a journal submission process

55. Anabela Mesquita 55 ? Anabela Mesquita sarmento@iscap.ipp.pt

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