Click to edit Master title stylePublishing in journals:WR PhD students session

Dr Robert WapshottCentre for Regional Economic and Enterprise Development

@RobertWapshott @UoS_Management

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• Associate Editor Personnel Review

• Editorial Advisory Board International Small Business Journal

• Editorial Review Board International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behvavior & Research

Ad hoc reviewer for journals including Human Relations and Human Resource Management Journal

Background and introductions

Click to edit Master title stylePowerPoint headerfor front cover• Why write articles for journals?• The importance of ‘so what?’• Problems not gaps• Basic rules

Session Structure

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Why write articles for journals?

Click to edit Master title stylePowerPoint headerfor front cover• The ‘so what?’ of an article is when the authors

explain the importance/ significance of what they are writing about

• It needs to be explicit and it’s the author’s responsibility for telling the reader what it is – why they should continue reading the paper

• If you don’t know the answer, you can’t expect someone else to work it out for you

The importance of ‘so what?’

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• The ‘so what?’ issue can reflect a tendency to focus on research gaps rather than research problems

• “Gap”: Very limited research on employment relationships in small professional firms

• “Problem”: Existing knowledge on employment relationships in small firms is based on predominantly low-skilled, manufacturing, owner-manager dominant contexts – sPSFs represent a very different context so current knowledge may not readily explain relations in these kinds of firm…

Problems not gaps

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Try unpacking the terms you’re using• Rather than ‘employment relationships in small

professional service firms’ [which would be an empirical gap]

• Think about what these firms are like; how is that different from / similar to existing knowledge? What does that mean for the generalisability of existing knowledge? Its power to explain phenomena in different contexts?

• Maybe it becomes: studying employment relationships in contexts where employees have relatively high power, employees central to value-creation (& portable in labour market), owner-manager dependence

Problems not gaps

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“Employee training practices in small businesses growing potatoes in East Anglia”

[a very slight adaptation]

Problems not gaps

Click to edit Master title stylePowerPoint headerfor front coverHave a go yourself

(a) Write down your research title / focus

(b) Describe your research focus as a ‘problem’ that matters

(c) Share with colleagues and give feedback to each other – can convince someone that your work matters?

Problems not gaps

Click to edit Master title stylePowerPoint headerfor front cover• Many of the basic rules come down to

common courtesy!Read the ‘guidance for authors’ pageRead & use your target journal!Respect word limitsInclude a letter that explains what your contribution is and how it is relevant for the journal you are submitting to

Basic rules

Click to edit Master title stylePowerPoint headerfor front cover• Be positive! Remain positive!

Any reviews provide useful informationReviews can be painful!R&R – understand the feedback and work at your changes and your response letter

Basic rules

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