Some ideas about the research process and how to get published

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
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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
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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
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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.
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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?
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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?
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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

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Example of an
academic journal

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Web of Knowledge index

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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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“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
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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
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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.”
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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
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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
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*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
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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…
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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
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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
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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)
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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
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42. Conclusion
• Research contributions and / or implications for
research
• Implications for practice
• Research limitations
• Future research directions
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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
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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…
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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
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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
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48. Need to justify the marks given
for each criteria
Include some comments that should not
be available to authors
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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http://www.edanzediting.com/blog/man
uscript_submission_process_visualized#.
Umg2TPk_vzM
Summary of a journal
submission process

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? Anabela Mesquita
sarmento@iscap.ipp.pt