My presentation at the PhD training of the 3rd CSR Communication Conference, in Ljubljana, september 16, 2015

1. How to get published
3rd CSR Communication Conference
PhD Training
Wim J.L. Elving

2. Agenda
• How to get started with publishing
• Focus
• Writing tips
• Selecting a journal
• Other tips & tricks

3. Wim
• Editor in chief Corporate Communications, an
International Journal (2006 – 2015)
• Editorial advisory board
– Journal of brand management
– International Journal of Management, Economics & Social Sciences
– Interactive Communication Systems and Technologies
– Tijdschrift voor Communicatiewetenschap (Dutch journal of
communications)
• about 35 peer reviewed articles, 4 books, 15
book chapters, 18 editorials

4. Publishing
• Get your work out
• Proof you fit within
Academia
• Proof that your research
is contributing
• Because your University
wants you to
• Because you are
brilliant!

5. Publishing
• Do groundbreaking
research
• Conduct the best
research
• Your ideas have not
been tested before
– Well at least not on this
way, in this sample, on
this scale, with this
method, etcetera

6. Publishing

7. Publish or Perish
• Your position at the University forces you to
join in to the rat race of getting publications
out
• If you don’t have enough publications in the
end, you will end up as lecturer or adjunct
lecturer, but not as professor

8. How to get published
• Do descent research
– Adopt the highest academic ethical standards
• Know what is happening in the field of study
– Read all new articles, books, blogs, and other
information available in your expertise / research
area
• Add to our knowledge!

9. Keep It SIMPLE!
• Terms in RQ need to be clarified
• A confusing RQ will lead to a confusing article
(read low grades)
• One key question with several subcomponents
can help you

10. Interesting
• Essential
• Need for a real grounded interest in your
question
• Academic and intellectual debate
• It is your interest that will motivate you to
keep working and produce a good publications

11. SMART

12. ‘Skinny’ Questions
• Skinny questions have simple answers
• RQ’s starting with (in general)
– When?
– How many?
– Who?
– Where?
ARE NO GOOD RESEARCH QUESTIONS


13. ‘Fat’ Questions
• Cannot be answered in one sentence
• Make you think of other questions
• Begin with:
– Why
– Which
– How
ARE GOOD RESEARCH QUESTIONS


14. Skinny and Fat
Change
• WHEN
• HOW MANY
• WHO
• WHERE
In
• WHY
• WHICH
• HOW

15. AVOID
• Questions that can’t be answered
– What is the best way to communicate
• Opinion questions
– What does the general public feel about X
• Closed questions
– A YES or NO as answer

16. Data  Publication
• Once you have collected your materials start with
a scheme for your article
• All (!) academic articles have
– Title
– Introduction
– Theoretical background
– Method
– Results
– Discussion
– References

17. Title
• Often neglected
• Often a long (boring?)
representation of the RQ
• In CCIJ: the articles with relatively shorter
titles were seem as more attractive and
received more downloads & more citations!
• Come up with a sexy title!

18. Abstract
• Abstracts are published separately from
articles in on-line indices, SO MAKE IT CLEAR!
– Accurate
– Self contained
– Concise and specific
– 5% of article, or 500 words at most
• CCIJ (and all Emerald journals) use structured
abstracts

19. Abstract
PROBLEM
OBJECTIVE
METHOD
RESULT
The must haves in every ABSTRACT

20. Introduction
• Context, what is the environment in which
your publication is positioned
• (Research) Question
• What is new?
• Why is this relevant to know!
• A outline of what the reader can
expect
– Take the reader by the hand

21. Theoretical background
• What is known about what you are telling
• Did you check all recent literature
– Make sure that half of your references are from the
last 10 year, because
• If not, than you are not joining in the current scientific
debates
• If not, than we are apparently not that interested
• (it is really hard as a starting researcher to create a new field
of study)
• Make a scheme, ending with propositions or
hypothesis
There is nothing so practical as a good theory (Albert
Einstein)

22. Method
• More important in surveys, experiments,
content analysis than for qualitative work
• However, also for qualitative work it is
necessary to give information about how you
get the data, what you did ask in an interview
and how you processed this data into the
results

23. Exceptions
Conceptual paperCritical paper

25. Method II
• Be clear about validity, reliability and
relevance
• Scientific research = systematic approach
– Raise the same questions at any respondent
– Use same time frames
• Translation of Research Question into
Research
• Information on how you conducted research

26. Method III
Quantitative Qualitative
Procedure Procedure
Respondents Respondents
Questionnaire/survey/experim
ent questions
• Use existing scales
• Use existing methods
• Etc.
Interview questions / other
material
• How these are used
• What is used
• Etc.
Give examples of questions Give examples
How you will analyze your
data
How will you analyze your
data
How you will present your
results
How will you present your
data

27. Method IV
• Standardize!
– Reputation was measured with the Reputations
Institute (XXX, 200X). This scale consists of XX
elements, that were all satisfactory reliable
(Cronbach’s alpha > .XX). Respondents had to
indicate to what extend they did agree on a 7-
point Likert scale. An example of an item is:
‘…………………’. Scores will be presented on a XX
scale where a low score represents a low
reputation, and a high score a high reputation.

28. Results
• Systematic presentation of what your research
results are
• No INTERPRETATION
• Facts
• Present only what is needed in your argument
• Select!
– Don’t present a
correlation table of all
variables

29. Results II
• Do present logical statistics
• Don’t overdo
• Since we are in communication / business / or
other social science, limit (or preferably don’t)
use of formula’s
• If your sample size is less than 100, do not use
more than 2 decimals
• Follow your hypothesis / propositions.

30. Not
everything
that can be
counted
counts, and
not
everything
that counts
can be
counted

31. Discussion
• What is your research contributing?
• What are the conclusions
• What consequences have your conclusions on
– Practical issues
– Theoretical issues
• Are your results undermining current theoretical
insights?
– Don’t state that theory is wrong, but rather, based on
these results the theory of XXX might be troublesome,
because of these and that circumstances

32. Discussion II
• Add limitations
– Sample
– Theories used
– Procedures
– Scope
– Etcetera
– Don’t overdo limitations, but certainly add them
• Always: more research is needed!
• And with a positive, conclusive remark

33. Discussion III
• Tip: start with a small summary
– In this contribution we wanted to gain more
information on XXXX. Based upon theory X YYYY,
but based on theory Z XXXX. We conducted a
<kind of research>. Our main conclusions are that
……….

34. Publication process
• Check manuscript requirements of journal
– If 8,000 words is word limit, don’t use more!
• Citations system (APA, Harvard) needs to be
applied
• Way of presenting manuscript needs to be
applied
• If not  DESK REJECT

35. Example CCIJ
• During the time I was editor in chief I had four
indicators for desk rejecting manuscripts
1. Length
2. Scope of journal, if no reference was made to
CCIJ or other communication / corporate
communications / PR / organizational journals
3. If references were old (for instance if only 3 out
of 50 references were from last 10 years)
4. If reference system was not applied

36. Review path
TIME
Manu
script
Reviewers
Desk reject
About 2 months
• ACCEPT
• MINOR REVISIONS
• MAJOR REVISIONS
• REJECT & RESUBMIT
• REJECT
Editor in chief
decision
Max 3 times
Article

37. Revise, resubmit, major & minor
revisions
• Reviewers need to be critical, and ALWAYS will
give suggestions what is not good and what
should be improved
• That is the task of reviewers!
• Carefully read those comments
• Think about how you will start the revisions
• Think about which revisions are needed and
which not

38. Add a document!
• Always add a document in which you step by step
describe what you did with the suggestions and
what you did not do
• Always be very polite!
– (First we would like to thank the anonymous
reviewers for their suggestions and positive feedback
we received on the previous version of our
manuscript.)
• Sometimes the extra document might become
longer than the original manuscript

39. Time
• Up to publication, this might take 2 years
• Example
– 2 months reviews; revise & resubmit
– 2 months work; + adding another review (2 months)
– Maybe a third (final round) adding another 4 months
(2 months writing + 2 months review)
– Extra time needed for editor
– Accepted, but editors will have other manuscripts
accepted already, sometimes up to 3 or 4 issues
– Print, takes time

40. Tips
• Use paper & pencil to draw up a scheme of
your manuscript at the start
• Be consequent in terminology, use the same
word for each time you mention it, and do not
start the creativity process in using all kind of
different words for the same phenomenon
– organization, institution, company, etcetera
• Add yourself as a reviewer for journals, by
being reviewer yourself you learn

41. Tips II
• Don’t overdo with sending emails to editors, like:
– Dear sir, can you give me more information on the
status of my manuscript
– I saw in manuscript central that there weren’t any
reviewers assigned. Can you please clarify?
• Being editor is not a full time job (& sometimes
not a paid one). I can assure you that being editor
costs a lot of time, and (s)he is doing its best to
manage all manuscripts the best

42. Tips III
• Write attractive
• Don’t make your paper or study active
– This study examines  In this study we examine
– This paper reveals  In this paper we reveal
• Be sure to have the goals, contribution and gap
of your research explicit
• Do not talk about the superiority of your
method
• Do not take too much words on irrelevant parts

43. Tips IV
• If you are a non-native English speaker lets have
your text checked with a language agency!
• It can be quite irritating to see the following
comments at regular basis in your reviews
– It is clear that the author is a non native English
speaker…
• Make sure that no comments can be given on
your language, your references system, and other
parts of the presentation of your paper

44. TIP V
• Do not send in your manuscript to different
journals at the same time!
• If your manuscript is rejected by one journal,
it is OK to send it to another journal; BUT be
sure to check whether you have references to
that journal, and your manuscript fits in that
journal

45. Finally

46. Useful tools
• Check your paper quality – be your own editor
http://www.hemingwayapp.com
• Grammar & writing:
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar