If I make any mistake, please forgive. I just collect information from different resource and online courses. Combine it together and make a checklist.

1. How to Write A Journal and Conference
Paper?
Chowdhury Mohammad Masum Refat
Department of Mechatronic Engineering
Master of Science (by Research)
International Islamic University Malaysia
ORCID iD : https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2530-5030

2. What is my paper about?
1.“So what” Test
• What will be the contribution of the paper to this field you are interested in?
• What will change in the way academics see the field?
• What will I bring to the table that has not been saying before in those terms?
2. How do I ensure that I pass the so what test?
What will be the contribution of the paper to this field you are interested in? This part is as
scientific as it is political and dialectic. You must be sure that the vocabulary that you use in
the frame of your proposition will be coherent with the way the reviewer will make sense of
the issue you are raising. To ensure that, identify colleagues and member of your network that
can help you position the paper in the terms that you have chosen.
3. What kind of paper do you want to write?
Academics paper can have different goals. Whether your goal is theoretical, empirical, or a
methodological one, the design of the paper will be different. As the contributions and aim of
these papers are different, so will be the setting, the methodologies, and the research question.
This orientation will marginally impact your contribution. For instance, if you are looking to
publish in management journal, for example, like the Harvard Business Review, which is
oriented toward industry professional as well as academics. The journal will not be looking for
the same contribution as a pure academic-oriented journal, for example, Industrial and
Corporate Change.
These three questions are through the building of your literature review, to ensure that what
you write is still coherent with what you set out to do.
Research Question:
All these questions and elements are linked to your research question. The research question is
the central question raised in your paper and the one you bring elements of an answer to in the
paper. The so what test is passed only conditionally to your research question. Deliberation of
the research question will be the focus of this section and will be elaborated through the
building of the literature review.
The formal aspect of the research question must be clear, precise, and concise but not too
general.
Do not try to hide it behind a complex sentence or in the middle of a big paragraph. Once again,
you must check on your own what are the formal rules used in your community or the journal
you want to publish. So, research question is a considerable element of your article, and you

3. must be 100% sure that it embodies your research. If someone asks what your article is about
and sum it up in a few words, the white line research question should be the answer. It should
be the one-sentence tracking out your paper.
What will be the contribution of the paper to this field you are interested in? This part is
as scientific as it is political and dialectic.
First, you aim at building your coherent reasoning through the paper. Second, you have to
position your paper so that the community of researchers you are specialized in the theme you
have chosen will accept it. Therefore, to conclude, you have to understand this field. Know
what you can contribute to it, and know-how to communicate your contribution to this
academic community.
Literature Review:
Let us say you have got your research question. First you know nothing, young researcher
fellow. It would help if you learned what has already been done in your field and then get closer
to the frontier of knowledge. It is not that easy to delimit this frontier and to position yourself
on it.
Theories get proven, as others get debunked. You must take this into account when building
your literature review. This fact explains the necessary critical dimension of the literature
review and why the frontier between knowledge and non-knowledge is always moving.
To sum up, the work on the literature review could be pictured by the analogy made famous
by Isaac Newton. If I ascend further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. During our
research, we need to climb the mountain of accumulated knowledge.
Moreover, when we are at the level of the giant's head, well, we could be by the apparent lack
of the originality of our work. However, this is when we know how we can contribute to
academic knowledge. It is by standing up that we see further than the giants, and then increase
the men of knowledge. Now, you also must be pragmatical. Establishing the literature review
is a way for you to specify why and how your work is original by moving the knowledge
frontier.
Originality may cover several aspects, including leading new empirical work, also interpreting
known ideas in a new way, giving new data to old problems, but also translating results from
one technique or context to another. Reading trans-disciplinary research or even producing
original sentences or even finding a new field of research.

4. Objectives of a literature review
• Identify the knowledge frontier and what needs to be studied.
• Identify the context of the research question.
• Identify keywords, variables linking to your research question, and their potential
relationships.
• Establish the relationships between theoretical frames on one part and empirical
consideration on the other.
The typical and classical structure of an academic paper:
• Title
• Abstract
• Introduction
• literature review
• methodology,
• results
• discussion
• and conclusion.
Research Article checks list:
What to look out for Ok Not ok Comment
1) Research title
a. Specific and informative
b. Contain relevant keywords
c. The title reflects the contents of the paper
d. Accurate information about the research title
2) Abstract
a. Length range 200-300 word
b. The information is brief and clear
c. Summarize all significant parts of the paper
d. Strong abstract

5. 3) Introduction
a. Provide a clear context for research
b. Identifies research gap and with current
knowledge
c. Provide a clear problem statement
d. Briefly shows the general methodology
e. Provide relevant information to the current
problem
f. Provide research questions
g. Stated the objective of the study
h. Strong thesis statement
i. Provide a clear hypothesis
4) Literature review
a. Literature review content order from broader to
specific information of the study
b. Clearly explain the background
c. Contain arguments for use in the experiment
d. Briefly explain by supporting and unify these
arguments
e. Briefly discuss the research methodology
5) Materials and Methods
a. A complete and accurate detailed description of
the method

6. b. Sufficient and clear information to someone to
repeat the study
c. Omitted unnecessary details
d. Explained the procedures
6) Results
a. Summarize all major findings
b. Support points with specific references to the
data
c. Results supported by appropriate statistical
analysis
d. Coherent information
e. Past tense
f. Omitted unnecessary details
g. Table and figure contain title and legend
h. Data presented in a consistent manner
i. Figures and tables numbered consecutively in
separate series
j. Provide referring on every figure and table that
are mentioned in the text
k. Tables and figures numbered in order
7) Discussion
a. Started with sentences summarizing the overall
trend of results
b. Stated the hypothesis of the study
(reject/accept)
c. Integrates relevant related literature when
explaining the data

7. d. Stated experimental errors
e. Discuss the strength and limitation of the study
f. Discussion is coherent and organized
8) Conclusion
a. Provide a conclusion derived from the results
and discussion
b. Provide improvement of the experiment
c. Relate future development of the study
9) Acknowledgements
a. Thanked all those who helped with the study
b. Acknowledged any sources of funding for the
study
10) Reference
Follow the Journal Guide
Used EndNote or Zotero software for proper
Reference formatting

8. Books and tools
To help you decide what is important during the creation of your bibliographical data, we have
gathered here a few examples of books, and/or reference managers. Feel free to leave your
books and reference manager in the forum!
Academic books:
• Dumez H. (2013), Méthodologie de la recherche qualitative, Paris, Vuibert.
• Dumez H. (2016), Comprehensive Research. A methodological and epistemological
introduction to qualitative research, Copenhagen, Copenhagen Business School Press.
To store references, a non-exhaustive list:
• Zotero
• Mendeley
• Papers
• Endnote
• Readcube
• For those who use LaTex as editing software, you should know about BibTex and
JabRef. Furthermore, you have the possibility from any other software such as Zotero
to export in BibTex.
Comparing different constructions of papers
We ask you to read three literature reviews (pick Option A or B, below), and then discuss:
How consistent is the structure of the literature review across the three articles? What is
the specific function of the literature review in each paper? Can you classify their
different constructions, based on their diverging intent? What is the "mainstream"
organization of papers in your own discipline?
Option A: Pick a journal in your discipline, one that suits your work well and to which you
have free access. Go to the top cited articles and pick three papers and compare their structure.
Option B: Or you can look at the three following papers:
Jesse Shore, Ethan Bernstein, David Lazer (2015) Facts and Figuring: An Experimental
Investigation of Network Structure and Performance in Information and Solution Spaces.
Organization Science 26(5):1432-1446. http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/ orsc.2015.0980
http://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/pdf/10.1287/orsc.2015.0980
Frank den Hond, Kathleen A. Rehbein, Frank G. A. de Bakker, and Hilde Kooijmans-van
Lankveld (2014) Playing on Two Chessboards: Reputation Effects between Corporate Social

9. Responsibility (CSR) and Corporate Political Activity (CPA), Journal of Management
Studies 51(5): 790-813
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/joms.12063/epdf
Weick Karl E., (2010) Reflections on Enacted Sensemaking in the Bhopal Disaster, Journal
of Management Studies 47(3): 537-538
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-6486.2010.00900.x/epdf
More detailed information on how to write your article
To go further in how to write a scientific paper, we recommend reading
• Writing for Academic Journal, R. Murray, ISBN-13: 978-0-33-523458-5
• This article online
A comic point of view of how to write the abstract
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1121
Avoiding mistakes
Many articles try to take into account the mistakes you can make, here are a few:
• Boring papers: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.0030-
1299.2007.15674.x/epdf
• Avoiding mistakes:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3474299/pdf/ijspt-07-518.pdf ;
http://www.iemss.org/sites/iemss2012/images/WS_J2_Volk_Lautenbach_pdf.pdf
There are a lot of reasons why an article can be rejected from a journal, here are exemples
taken from the publisher websites:
• http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3035881/pdf/JYPharm-2-3.pdf
• https://www.elsevier.com/connect/8-reasons-i-rejected-your-article
Please share yours in the forum!

10. Format and Writing Readings
You will find below a list of recommended readings about writing and publishing that academic
paper.
Fussy Professor Starbuck's Cookbook of Handy-Dandy Prescriptions for Ambitious Academic
Authors or Why I Hate Passive Verbs and Love My Word Processor – lots of clear, down to
earth advice on how to write and edit effectively
http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~wstarbuc/Writing/Fussy.htm
First Aid for Writer’s Block by Marcia Yudkin
http://www.yudkin.com/unblock.htm
APA Journals – links to information on all the journals published by the American
Psychological Association. This information includes a description of the journal and
manuscript submission guidelines and an Author’s Corner
http://www.apa.org/journals
APA Guide to Preparing Manuscripts for Journal Publication by Robert C. Calfee and Richard
R. Valencia
http://www.apa.org/pubs/authors/new-author-guide.aspx
APA Style Tips – includes links to some specific recommendations on style, and
recommendations on how to remove bias in language concerning disabilities, race & ethnicity,
and sexuality
http://www.apastyle.org/styletips.html
American Psychological Association (APA) Ethics Code
http://www.apa.org/ethics
How to Win Acceptances by Psychology Journals: 21 Tips for Better Writing, R.J. Sternberg.
APS Observer, Sept. 1993. Available online at
http://www.csustan.edu/psych/todd/sternbrg.html
This very interesting series of papers providing advice for publishing in the Academy of
Management Journal :
June 2011: Jason A. Colquitt, Gerard George.
Publishing in AMJ Part 1: Topic Choice

11. August 2011: Joyce E. Bono, Gerry McNamara.
Publishing in AMJ Part 2: Research Design
October 2011: Adam M. Grant, Timothy G. Pollock.
Publishing in AMJ Part 3: Setting the Hook
December 2011: Raymond T. Sparrowe, Kyle J. Mayer.
Publishing in AMJ Part 4: Grounding Hypotheses
February 2012: Yan (Anthea) Zhang, Jason D. Shaw.
Publishing in AMJ Part 5: Crafting the Methods and Results
April 2012: Marta Geletkanycz, Bennett J. Tepper.
Publishing in AMJ Part 6: Discussing the Implications
June 2012: Pratima (Tima) Bansal, Kevin Corley.
Publishing in AMJ Part 7: What's Different About Qualitative Research?