Speaker 1: how to write and publish a good research paper. In this tutorial, you are going to look into what are the key ingredients of a good research paper and what one should do in order to publish a good research paper. Now, the focus will be a general introduction to publishing, how to write and publish great papers and what authors should avoid. OK, now you want to publish. Yes, everybody wants to publish. That's the reason we write. But what you need is that you need to have a new and original research that advances the knowledge. If you fail to do this, obviously, do not consider to publish if the results lack interest or there is the work is outdated or it is just a mere replication of what has been already done. So there is no originality in it. A research must have value, contribution, originality and free. You need a strong manuscript to present your contributions to the scientific community. In order to publish, these three points are considerably important. Now, a strong manuscript, what is a strong manuscript? Number one, it is one with good content, one that is novel, useful and exciting. Number two, it has to have good presentation. It has to be well structured, logically constructed, clearly presented. And three, reviewers and editors are able to grasp the scientific significance easily. You present your ideas, you present your concept, you present the novelty in a manner that they are able to understand the contribution of your research to the body of knowledge. Now, before you start on this journey, before you start writing about a particular topic, before you start conducting your research, if you are looking for some exciting topics, the first thing that you can do is you go on to these research databases, go on to Emerald, Sage, Springer, Elsevier, ScienceDirect. One of the example could be top25.sciencedirect.com to identify what are the top 25 topics or you identify what is being cited these days. So you go to Scopus and Web of Science. Or if you want to share sharing information at what is being shared in the scientific community, then you go to Altmetric. Your university will have access to these websites. You identify the trends in the subject area. Keep informed of advances in the field through journal alerts. Set yourself alerts from the journal and identify what the journals are publishing these days. Do follow the author guidelines, structure and format according to what has been prescribed by the journal. And finally, evaluate the journal. Does it have impact factor? What's the journal rank? Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4. And is it in ABS list or ABDC list? So you get this information and then you start your journey towards research and publication. Now, getting a research paper published can be a challenge or can be challenging. Well, it is a big challenge with these days. So many papers being written with limited outlets with so much scrutiny in the paper. Well, there is a high risk of rejection, but obviously one should not get discouraged. Risks that come from submitting a paper to a journal that is not the right fit. It's important that you submit to the right journal. What are the risks? The first is rejection. And that would add months to publication. Slowing your career progress. Look at your references. Now, how do I select the right journal? Look at your references. Where have previous authors or scholars have published with this particular area, with this particular concept, with this particular variable? These will help you narrow your choices. On the other hand, every big database like Elsevier, Springer have got their own journal finder. You put in your abstract and then they will suggest the right kind of journal for you. So it's very important that one looks into the language. Obviously, for most of us, English might not be our first language. But obviously, this is no excuse. So save your editor and reviewers the trouble of guessing what you mean. Obviously, they won't read your manuscript the second time. You have to make sure that it is understandable the first time they read. Now, these are one of the comments or some comments that are received when someone sent a paper. For example, the first one you can look that they require that go give your paper to a native English speaker because there are grammatical mistakes. This does not go well with the editors and obviously the reviewers. The second example is again of the same nature that English obviously needs to be a very high standard. Now, what you need to do is you need to write direct in short sentences, more professional looking. One idea or piece of information per sentence is sufficient. Do not repeat your ideas. Do not mix your ideas. Do not put many ideas into one single sentence. Avoid multiple statements in one sentence. They are confusing to the reader. For example, this is one example. Similarly, there are research studies which have ascertained the impact of service quality on organizational performance. But there is a lack or there is a significant lack of internal service quality perspective in existing research. Most of the now what you see is that there are there are if and buts, there are commas, but the whole paragraph is just one single sentence. So this is not a short sentence. There are a lot of things that are missing. This is not a short sentence. There are too many ideas in this particular paragraph. So you should avoid such paragraph. Divide into multiple sentences. It should look like a paragraph, not a sentence that spans over a paragraph. The communication is good. Text corrections are needed to eliminate typical typing errors and reformulate some paragraphs which are hard to read. For example, this is a review received from a reviewer. Now, if you look at this sentence or read the sentence, there is a certain lack of clarity, plus the writing is somewhat informal. For example, KM can act as an antecedent of knowledge worker satisfaction. The arguments are as follows. This is not how you write. This is not how you provide your arguments. This sentence is unnecessary. The arguments are as follows. So avoid such lack of clarity in your writing. Now, what is the structure of a research article? You start with the title, then you write your abstract, provide your introduction, your literature review, research methodology, data analysis and results, discussion, conclusion, limitations, future research directions, implications and references. Now, these are at least these 12 things should be part of a research article. Now, what should be included in each one of them? We'll be discussing this through the course of this session. Now, the title and abstract. How should my title be? A good title should contain the fewest possible words that adequately describe the contents of a paper. Now, your articles with short, catchy titles are better cited. Now, your article should be understandable. It should convey the meaning that what you intend to do in your study and your abstract. It is your advertisement. It is the first impression that the reviewers have of your writing and your article. So it is what you are doing, how you are going to sell your article to your reviewers and the editors. It should be one paragraph, but obviously that depends on the format of the journal as well. Now, you have to be accurate and very specific. The abstract should be very clear. A clear abstract will strongly influence if your work is considered further or not. So this is your first impression. Make it count. So how do you write your introduction? What are the key ingredients of the introduction? You start with, it's a sort of a funnel approach. You start with general introduction about the value of your topic. Then narrow it down to why this particular area, why this particular variable, why this particular concept is important in this or in a particular field where you want to study it. What existing research is available on your variables? What relationships have been studied? Now, obviously, existing research will have certain limitations. So what are the limitations, gaps and future research directions on your topic or on your variable or on the concept that you want to work on? It should be latest. Preferably, obviously, must be latest past one year. What theoretical lens are you going to use? What theory are you going to use to develop your conceptual or theoretical framework? What are the contributions of your study? These, this is particularly important and the proposed structure of your thesis. Obviously, you can add to it. Now, how do you write the literature review? What are things that are to be considered when writing your literature review? You start with the individual or independent discussion on variables. So what are the key things that one should include? Obviously, this list is not exhaustive. So you start with the concept of the variable and then what's the definition of the variable? Is there a particular definition of this particular variable in your area of study? For example, higher education. What does this variable do for the organization? Why is it important for this variable to be studied in a particular organizational setting or industry setting? Or why is it important in your area of study? What are the general consequences? Why should this be studied? And finally, what conceptualization operational definition are you going to use in your study? Does the conceptualization reflect an instrument or measurement? Why use a conceptualization? Is it very close to your area of study? Now you need to identify how are you going to define a particular concept in your study? And obviously, this particular definition will guide the choice of instrument or measurement that you are going to use. Now, when you develop your theoretical framework, what things should you include? For example, you are writing about relationship of variables. For example, you are writing about how career satisfaction influences life satisfaction as part of your literature review. So how do you write it? What things you need to include? Has previous studies linked the two concepts? If yes, what were their findings? Are the variables in any way linked with each other? Were the findings of the previous studies unanimous or contradictory? Now, obviously, if they are unanimous, you need to mention it. If they are contradictory, you need to mention it. And this contradiction will give rise to the need of further research. Now, why studying this linkage is important? And why studying this linkage in a particular area of study is important? How the independent variable affect or influences the dependent variable? Or has there been studies that have evaluated the impact of individual dimensions for a particular variable? And most importantly, use theory to develop the linkages. A detailed session on writing the literature review is available on the channel. Please go and see. And that obviously explains with examples. Now, once you are through your literature review, the next step is writing about your research methodology. What is your population? What is your sampling size and samples technique? How and when the questionnaires were distributed if it was a primary study? And what are the sources of the questionnaire with sample items? And if it is a secondary study, you need to mention these sources of the data. And why a particular sample was selected? Maybe if you are doing it in five countries, why those five countries? Why not 10? Why not 20? What were the data collection and analysis techniques? And in case of research in finance and economics, you need to mention your regression model and explain it. The next step is once you are done with the methodology, the next step is data analysis and results. Start by providing the descriptive statistics. The next step is establishing reliability, convergent and discriminant validity in case you are using survey-based study or conducting a survey-based study. The next step is hypothesis testing and then finally providing a summary of your hypothesis. An important thing is discussing your results. Some of the research which I reviewed or which students come up with, they do not write a discussion. Without discussion, there is no research. So, you start your discussion by identifying the objective of your study. And how the second step is how your results compare to the results of previous research. Now, if you have documented your literature, this will be very easy. That's the reason we strongly recommend documenting your literature. In excel sheet, there is a video available. Link will be shared in the description. Why certain relationship may be significant or insignificant? Now, in your research, if you found certain relationship to be significant, why was it significant? Why? What's the reason? What does the significance and insignificance of the relationship show in your field of study? So, why is it important in your area of study? The next thing is you write about the conclusion, an overall conclusion from your research in light of your research objectives. The next thing, limitations. Identify the limitations of your study in terms of sample, in data collection, measurement, analysis, conceptual limitations. What are the future research directions? What variables could be studied in future? What do you recommend for future researchers? What future analytical techniques might be used? Maybe they need to change the sector or conceptual scope. And finally, you write about the implications of your study. What are the theoretical implications? What have you done for the theory to improve the theory? And how can your research benefit at individual management or organizational level? What are the policy implications of your study? Well, implications would change with the sector and area of study. I hope this session, short session would have helped you understand the structure of a research paper and what things to include in a research paper. Thank you very much.