This document provides guidance on preparing and publishing academic papers in journals. It discusses best practices for each section of a paper from the title page to conclusions. It also covers the peer review process and strategies for revising papers based on reviewer feedback. Additionally, it examines debates around measuring the impact and quality of academic research, journals, and institutions. Metrics discussed include journal rankings, citation counts, the H-index, and holistic approaches that consider impact on knowledge, teaching, practice, policy, the economy, and society. The document aims to help authors navigate the publishing process and issues relating to research assessment.

1. Publishing, politics
and knowledge
transfer
Jeffrey Faux
Editor – Asian Review of
Accounting
June 2011

2. Preparing a paper for a journal
• Comply with journal’s guidelines to authors
• “Sycophancy” editorial board/likely referees –
the chances are their work is worth reading
• Be systematic in your working methods – keep
versions of your paper clearly labelled, data files
structured and maintained
• Be prepared for a long wait for reviewer’s
comments, especially from “better” journals
• Don’t be tempted to send to more than one
journal at a time it is unethical

3. Anatomy of a typical paper
• Title page
• Abstract
• Introduction
• Literature Review
• Method
• Findings
• Discussion
• Conclusions

4. Title page
• Title
• Authors & identification of corresponding authors
• Contact Details of all authors
• This page is removed by the editor before sending to
referees
• There should not be anything in the paper that
identifies the authors or their institution
• Use “Author, (2000)” or XYZ University

5. Abstract
• Your chance to make a first impression and keep it
simple!
• Conform to guidelines on word length
• Ask a non-specialist to read the paper
• Emerald’s abstract format:
• Purpose of the paper
• Design / Method / Approach
• Findings
• Implications for research, practice and/or society
• Does the paper identify clearly any implications for research,
practice and/or society?
• Does the paper bridge the gap between theory and practice? How
can the research be used in practice (economic and commercial
impact), in teaching, to influence public policy, in research
(contributing to the body of knowledge)?
• What is the impact upon society (influencing public attitudes,
affecting quality of life)?
• Are these implications consistent with the findings and conclusions
of the paper?
• Keywords (up to 6)
• Word limit

6. Introduction (See Ashton)
• Clearly state what the paper is about and why the
topic is important
• Reader needs a clear and concise statement about
the reason/s for doing the research in the first
paragraph
• Who cares and why?
• Provide the structure of the paper

7. Literature review
• Ashton talks of a model or framework – an empirical
bias
• Opportunity to position your work in the literature
• Need to ensure you have included seminal pieces
and up to date references to ‘quality’ journals
• This is the Editor’s first quality control check
• “Does this person know what they are doing?”
• “Does this paper have the potential to make a
contribution to the existing literature?”
• Ends with research questions/aims

8. Method
• Methodology is the study of methods
• In this section you justify your choice of method
• Need to demonstrate that this method will enable
you to answer the questions identified or achieve
your aims
• In your literature review you will learn the methods
tried previously and which worked and which didn’t

9. Results / Findings
• Chose how to analyse your data / present your
results
• Use appropriate statistical tests
• Simple and effective is better than complicated and
difficult to understand
• Provide dates of surveys, sample sizes, response
rates
• How have you dealt with outliers?

10. Discussion
• Implications of the study
• Link back to research questions
• Some of the author’s thoughts about such issues
• Do not repeat what is already in the paper
• Can the results be generalised?

11. Conclusion
• Revisit the aims – have you achieved them?
• Are the results capable of generalisation
• Limitations of the study
• Possible future research opportunities
• Extending the sample, international comparisons,
inter-temporal comparisons, different result methods

12. Why manuscripts are rejected
• Drawn from - Journal of Accounting Education –
1998 to 2004
• 1,300 submissions (estimated)
• 3,900 review hours (estimated)
• 75% rejection rate
• 2,925 hours on rejected manuscripts
• 73 work weeks on rejected manuscripts
• 1.41 work years on rejected manuscripts
(Data & graphs courtesy of Jim Rebele, Editor-in-Chief)

13. Analysis of 133 rejected articles
1. Motivation/Background (not interesting/relevant to
readers, etc)
2. Design Issues (flawed/poorly planned research
design, etc.)
3. Statistical Issues (inappropriate statistical
procedures, etc.)
4. Results/Implications/Conclusions (insufficient/trivial
contributions, etc)
5. Manuscript Preparation Issues (poor
organization/poor writing)

14. Analysis of 133 rejected articles
1. Motivation/Background (not
interesting/relevant to
readers, etc)
2. Design Issues
(flawed/poorly planned
research design, etc.)
3. Statistical Issues
(inappropriate statistical
procedures, etc.)
4. Results/Implications/Conclu
sions (insufficient/trivial
contributions, etc)
5. Manuscript Preparation
Issues (poor
organization/poor writing)
Main Section Articles--First-Round Rejections
(Aggregate Analysis)
100
80
60
40
20
0
1 2 3 4 5
Reasons for Rejection
Frequency (Absolute)

15. Analysis of Motivation/Background
Rejects
1. Not interesting or relevant to
the readers/reviewers
2. Not consistent with the
journal’s objectives/paper is
too “general” (e.g., not
accounting education)
3. Poor “motivation” (the authors
haven’t established a reason
for doing the study)
4. Failure to “position” the paper
vis-à-vis the existing literature
in education (both accounting
education and the general
education literature)/lack of
originality of thought/similar
paper published elsewhere
Main Section Articles: Breakdown of
"Motivation/Background" into Components
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
1 2 3 4
Reason for Rejection
Frequency (absolute)

16. Results, implications, conclusions
rejects
1. Paper does not represent a
meaningful contribution to the
accounting education literature
(i.e., insufficient/trivial
contribution)
2. Insufficient evidence/data are
not persuasive
3. Failure to adequately address
educational implications (e.g.,
does not provide meaningful
discussion of how the paper
can be used to improve the
process of accounting
education, broadly defined/the
authors fail to offer action-oriented
recommendations)
Main Section Articles Rejected after First-Round
Analysis: Breakdown of "Results, Implications, and
Conclusions" into Components
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
1 2 3
Reason for Rejection
Frequency (Absolute)

17. Receiving the Reviewers’
comments
• All academic papers will be criticised – don’t take it
personally
• Read the reviews and the editor’s comments, but
don’t do anything on the day you receive them
• Discuss with co-author, mentor, colleagues
• Is the paper fundamentally “flawed”?
• Are the inadequacies in method (data) irreparable?
• Can the data be re-analysed?

18. Revising
• A request for revision is good news! It really is
• You are now in the publishing cycle. Nearly every
published paper is revised at least once
• Don’t panic!
• Even if the comments are sharp
or discouraging, they aren’t personal
• Demonstrably and systematically deal with points
raised by reviewers
• Can you satisfy (to a large extent) the reviewers’
criticisms?
• Be polite and engaging in your response
• Don’t kid yourself – is it time to give up with this
journal?

19. The politics of research
• The impact of research outside academia is gaining
increased prominence as governments demand
Return on Investment measures
• Accreditation organisations such as the AACSB and
the EFMD recognise research impact as the key
indicator of quality
BUT IT REMAINS AS THE KEY INTERNATIONAL
ISSUE: HOW TO MEASURE RESEARCH IMPACT
• The Excellence of Research for Australia (ERA)
journal rankings created a deal of hysteria and the
reason was that the rankings were not going to
achieve a quantifiable quality measure. (Hence the
dumping last week)

20. Senator Kim Carr 20 May to ERA
2010 methodology for the ERA2012
assessment
The changes include:
• The refinement of the journal quality indicator to remove the prescriptive A*,
A, B and C ranks;
• The introduction of a journal quality profile, showing the most frequently
published journals for each unit of evaluation;
• Increased capacity to accommodate multi-disciplinary research to allow
articles with significant content from a given discipline to be assigned to that
discipline, regardless of where it is published (this method was successfully
trialled in ERA 2010 within Mathematical Sciences);
• Alignment across the board of the low volume threshold to 50 outputs
(bringing peer-reviewed disciplines in line with citation disciplines, up from
30 outputs);
• The relaxation of rules on the attribution of patents, plant breeders’ rights
and registered design, to allow those granted to eligible researchers to also
be submitted; and
• The modification of fractional staff eligibility requirements to 0.4 FTE (up
from 0.1 FTE), while maintaining the right to submit for staff below this
threshold where affiliation is shown, through use of a by-line, for instance).

21. Other measures of impact – the
H-Index
The H-Index
• The H-Index was formulated by a physicist called Hirsch to give
‘a robust single-number metric of a journal's impact, combining
quality with quantity.
• It can be represented thus:
There is anecdotal evidence
that it is being quoted by
academics in their CVs
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-index

22. H-Index
• The H-index aims to provide a robust single-number
metric of a journal's impact:
“An author with an index of 6 has published 6 papers
each of which has been cited by others at least 6
times. Thus, the h-index reflects both the number of
publications and the number of citations per
publication”
BUT… where are the citations from?
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-index

23. H-Index: Another view
Confusion reigns…
• Search on International Marketing Review for its H-index
had following results:
• On Web of Science (ISI): H = 12
• On Scopus: H = 19
• On Publish or Perish: H = 53
WARNING… where are the citations from?
• Published research should have impact and citation
alone is an incomplete measure of value

24. A holistic view of measuring the
impact of research
A holistic, more rounded approach that considers
research impact at many levels is needed:
• Knowledge
• Teaching
• Practice
• Policy making
• Economy
• Society
• This is the Emerald approach

25. Demonstrating impact as
knowledge transfer
• How can you demonstrate your research has
impact?
• How can you demonstrate that your teaching is
cutting edge in terms of content AND PRACTICE?
• Does your paper identify clearly any implications
for research, practice and/or society?
• How can your research be used in practice
(economic and commercial impact), in teaching, to
influence public policy, in research (contributing
to the body of knowledge)?
• What is the impact upon society (influencing
public attitudes, affecting quality of life)?

26. Accounting journals
• Thirty years ago there were only nine Accounting
journals published by major publishers
• In 2010 there were 47 (110)
• Cabells lists over 90 Accounting journals with
rejection rates
• ISI lists 12 accounting journals (approx)
• Scopus lists 50 accounting journals (approx)
Emerald’s Accounting & Finance portfolio:
• 15 Accounting journals
• 10 Finance journals
• 14 Accounting & Finance books
• 1.2 million article downloads in 2010

27. Useful resources
• www.isiknowledge.com (ISI ranking lists and impact
factors)
• www.harzing.com (Anne-Wil Harzing's site about
academic publishing and the assessment of research
and journal quality, as well as ‘Publish or Perish’
software to conduct citation analysis)
• www.scopus.com (abstract and citation database of
research literature and quality web sources)
• www.cabells.com (addresses, phone, e-mail and
websites for a large number of journals as well as
information on publication guidelines and review
information)

28. CONTACT DETAILS
Associate Professor Jeffrey Faux
Associate Dean Teaching & Learning
EMAIL jeffrey.faux@vu.edu.au