I recently saw a LinkedIn post by Jason Thatcher that provided seven helpful sources on academic writing in the organizational sciences. These sources provide a wealth of useful information about how to write for organizational science journals in business management and industrial-organizational psychology. At the risk of being redundant, I thought I would take a stab at providing advice about publishing.
The Publication Process
Academic publication in the organizational sciences requires navigating a peer-review system where only 5-10% of submitted papers are accepted. Manuscripts are submitted to an online portal. Months later editors will provide feedback, attaching two or more reports by peer-reviewers. The minority of authors who are offered an opportunity to continue the process, the coveted R&R, must address the points raised in the review and then submit the new version. This can occur through several rounds, and success is never guaranteed. In fact the organizational sciences has created a system that takes gatekeeping to a ridiculous extreme where rejection is not uncommon after several arduous rounds of addressing the feedback. Needless to say, it is no longer enough to do rigorous science on important topics. The scientific report has become a piece of literature that requires careful strategy and attention to details of the narrative.
How to Write for Organizational Science Journals
Success in publishing, particularly in top journals requires strategy and hard work. It takes time to develop skill not only in science but in writing as well. I sometimes think that the best undergraduate degree for someone in our field is creative writing.
- Have something to say. Before you sit down to write the article, be sure you have thought through your message. If you are writing up a primary study or series of studies, be clear about what that research shows and why it is important. Take nothing for granted. It is not enough to write that you have developed a cure for cancer. You have to establish why that cure is important and where your paper fills a gap in the scientific literature.
- Make your contribution clear. What were you trying to learn? How does it contribute to what is already known on the topic and how does your paper advance our understanding. Too often I review papers that are just rehashing what has already been done to death. If yours is the 10th replication of something that has been established, what’s the point? It is your job to make it.
- Offer a new contribution. We all agree that independent replication is vital for a healthy science, but the best replications also offer an extension. A successful paper might rule out an alternative explanation for established results. For example, if studies show that two variables are related, your research might rule in or rule out a feasible explanation for why. This might have to do with individual differences, the context in which the research is conducted, or methodological issues. Replications with extension not only show that a finding can be independently replicated, but they offer insights into what might or might not be the underlying reasons.
- Pay attention to existing papers. Before submitting a paper to a particular journal, take some time to examine a few papers from the last few issues. Experienced researchers will develop a sense of what journals like to see, but this evolves over time. At the current time in my area of business management/industrial-organizational psychology the introductions are long with lots of citations, and the statistical methods are complex. Examining published papers can show you how to write for organizational science journals.
- Cite everything. There is no detail of your method or statistics that is too trivial for a citation. The more you can justify your approach by citing a paper recommending it the better. Herman Aguinis has written a series of best practices papers that can be helpful.
- Theory is king. The science is no longer enough. Papers in the organizational sciences must tell compelling stories. The most common reviewer complaint is about insufficient theory, although what they mean by “theory” is not always clear. What papers need is a theoretical framework, ideally based on an established theory that can provide a context for hypotheses and interpretation. The most compelling papers provide a coherent framework based on an existing theory as opposed to just theory salting by sprinkling names of theories.
- Statistical modeling is the key to the realm. I recently did a quick content analysis to a few issues of one of the top organizational journals, and every paper used some form of complex statistical modeling. This approach is terribly overused, often giving an illusion of rigor by testing a causal process with a cross-sectional survey. As much as I hate to admit it, including some sort of complex modeling can enhance your publication prospects. An even better approach is to use statistical modeling with a study that includes some sort of manipulation of at least one variable to enhance the rigor of the research design and not just the statistics.
- Complexity is more important than clarity. When I look at papers in top journals today, I am struck with how complex they are. Papers have grown in length several fold during my career, with more complexity in the argumentation and statistics. Often papers include several studies that can address different aspects of a problem. As you develop a research program, it is important to think, not in terms of single studies, but in terms of a series of studies that address a different pieces along the way. Sometimes this means having to pilot test and develop measures or procedures, addressing alternative explanations, and attempting to answer the questions that prior studies have raised.
At the end of the day, while you need to play the game to increase chances of success, it is the science that matters. You might have to dress up your paper with theory, citations, and complex statistics, but there should be scientific substance to what you do. Provide new insights on an important topic using rigorous methods, and your paper will find a home. Learn how to write for organizational science journals in order to increase your success.
Image generated by DALL-E 4.0. Prompt “image that illustrates the writing process. Picture of a scientist sitting at a desk using a feather quill pen” “Wider aspect”
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