Abstract
Publishing in quality academic journals is challenging. Authors who want to improve their chances of publishing in management and allied business and social science journals can save themselves much time and frustration by ensuring that manuscripts are consistent with the journal’s aims and scope and what the field requires in terms of addressing unanswered research questions or improvements to current theory and evidence. It is well-understood if a manuscript lacks theoretical grounding or makes significant methodological or research design mistakes, it will likely be rejected. Researchers in the social sciences are typically well-trained in methods, statistical analysis, and research design. But many scholars have much less training on the situating, motivating, and organizing of manuscripts, particularly in the all-important introduction of the paper. Oftentimes, an author may face rejection of his or her manuscript not because of bad data or methods, but because of major framing and organizational issues with the paper, as well as a lack of clear contributions. These problems are addressed within the context of writing a clear research question and introduction section, which form the basis for the overall organization of the paper. Numerous helpful sources are also provided.
Highlights
Writing and publishing good quality academic articles is a demanding task
Most authors understand that when a paper is not grounded theoretically or has significant methodological or research design flaws, it is
This paper provides readers with some exemplary research both from the micro and macro sides of management and suggests some helpful sources for learning more about this topic of paper framing and organization
Summary
Writing and publishing good quality academic articles is a demanding task. Researchers face many challenges from getting the right data and analyzing it correctly to positioning the paper clearly and showing its contributions to current theory and evidence in its area. Many papers I review have a poor focus and provide lists of literature and pedestrian analyses, and fail to contribute much of anything to the research in their domain (Ahlstrom, 2012, 2015; Ahlstrom and Bruton, 2014) This perspectives paper addresses these problems and provides some examples of good (and weak) research questions, introductions, and paper framing and organization. More than half of all the papers I review, edit or otherwise vet for conferences and workshops have very serious problems with their organization and framing, in the introduction This hurts what could be otherwise good research and often causes leads to the paper’s rejection (Grant and Pollard, 2011). Some of the main upfront problems with these manuscripts are discussed below with suggestions for improving them and helpful sources with more information and examples
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