World School of Business, World University of Bangladesh (WUB)
organized a workshop on “How to Publish in Scopus & Web of Science Indexed Journals” on 19th
August (Monday), 2019 at the Board Room, Main Campus, WUB. The Resource Person
was Dr. Muhammad Mohiuddin, Associate Professor of International Business,
Thompson Rivers University (TRU), British Columbia, Canada, and
Editor-in-Chief, Academy of Entrepreneurship Journal (Scopus Indexed), and
Associate Editor, Transnational Corporations Review (Taylor & Francis).
The faculty members of WUB attended the program. The purpose of the workshop
was to discuss about publishing a scholarly paper. The sub purposes were:
Importance of topic selection; Importance of writing papers in high quality
journals; and main points that need to be addressed in each of the major sections
commonly found in scholarly papers.
He emphasized on topic selection because a good topic is a
key for publication in good journal. To get a good topic one should read, read
& read and know good journals and conferences in his/her research area.
He suggested that a good research topic should be: feasible (can be done); interesting
(up-to-date, wider audience); novel; ethical; and relevant (has an
implication). To assess the novelty of any research, one should do systematic
review to know the state of the art; to see the position of the research work
among others; and to know whether the research work just repeating other
researcher’s work. He highlighted the importance of publishing in indexed
Journals indicating the following issues: publish or perish; greater visibility
of research findings; increase chances of citations; greater recognition among
peers; and associated benefits such as promotions, productivity allowances,
etc. The attributes of a good manuscript are: concise but powerful; story like;
to the point; free from grammatical and stylistic errors; recognizing
contributions of others, and technically correct. He suggested some points
which should be considered before publishing. Those are: targeted audience;
prestige of journal and your own institution; access (open access/ subscribed);
impact factor of the journal; probability of acceptance, and publication time.
He guided about the structure of a good manuscript. He showed the standard
guideline about the various parts of a manuscript i.e., title; abstract;
introduction; methods; results; discussion; acknowledgements; references.
He informed about the criteria for acceptance in an indexed
journal. Those are: originality; novel or creative research methodology; new
and important research findings; scientific quality; and experimental design
and methodology (research data representation; depth of the investigation;
thorough and logical discussion of results). He showed the major reasons of
manuscript rejection. Those are: the study is just confirmation of previous
research i.e. not novel; poor experimental design; targeted journal is not
suitable; and weakly written/presentation and language.
In the last stage of the workshop, he provided
some tips. Tips for the writing stage are: 1) focus on a story that progresses logically,
rather than chronologically; 2) don’t try to write and edit at the same time;
3) don’t bury your argument like a needle in a haystack; 4) ask a colleague to
check your work ; 5) get published by writing a review or a response;
6) don’t forget about international readers; 7) don’t try to cram your PhD into
a 6,000 word paper; and Tips for the submission stage are: 8) pick the right
journal: it’s a bad sign if you don’t recognize any of the editorial board; 9)
always follow the correct submissions procedures; 10) don’t repeat your
abstract in the cover letter; 11) a common reason for rejections is lack of
context; 12) don’t over-state your methodology; and Tips for dealing with
feedback are: 13) respond directly (and calmly) to reviewer comments; 14)
revise and resubmit: don’t give up after getting through all the major hurdles;
15) it is acceptable to challenge reviewers, with good justification; 16) think
about how quickly you want to see your paper published; 17) remember: when you
read published papers you only see the finished article. It should be mentioned
here that after the workshop Dr. Muhammad Mohiuddin was appointed as a visiting
professor.
