[Private] SBM Research Postgraduates (RPG) Guide: Publication Process

Scholarly Publishing

Publishing is an essential step in the information life cycle. At the start of of your academic career, you may have questions about how and where to publish.

Getting your research published in a scholarly journal involves a number of stages including (1) Preparation, (2) Submission, (3) Review, (4) Production and (5) Publication . The following discussion is adopted from Taylor and Francis Author Services. It gives you some advices and tips for publishing in academic research journals.

How to Choose a Journal?

Some questions you might wish to consider:

• What is the aims and scope of the journal?
• What is the journal's target audience? Researcher? Practitioners or general public?
• What is the readership and usage? The top cited or downloaded papers may be on the journal website.
• Is the journal peer-reviewed? (What is peer-review?)
• Who is the Editor?
• Who is on the editorial board
• Is the journal indexed in any citation databases like Web of Science and SciVerse Scopus? Does the journal have an Impact Factor?
• Is the journal available online and/or in print?
• Is it published by a major publisher, society or association?

When you have found the most suitable journal for your submission, read through the instructions for authors carefully. Each journal has its own specific publishing standards and ethics which can be found on the journal's web page.

Writing for Your Chosen Journal

• Look at previous papers to get a feel for what is accepted.
• Read and follow the submission guidelines carefully. Take note of maximum extent of the submission.
• Check the guidelines on copyright
• How should you submit your paper (online or in paper form)? Many publishers now have the online submission service.
• Do you need to submit a cover letter of your article?
• Do you need to provide a keyword list?
• Ensure all references are mentioned in the reference list are cited in the text, and all tables, figures are clearly presented.
• Ensure you have the correct copyright clearance, especially for photographs/images.
• Ask a colleague to read your draft prior to submission.
• If English is not your first language, consider using "English polishing" service provided by many publishers.

Now, you are ready to submit your manuscript to the publisher.

Review Process

After submitting your manuscript, the editor will assess your work and decides whether to send it for peer review.

Peer Review

The peer review allows an author’s research to be evaluated and commented upon by independent subject experts, and it can take different forms depending on the preference of the journal.

• Single-blind review - where the reviewer's name is hidden from the author.
• Double-blind review - where the reviewer's name is hidden from the author and the author's name is hidden from the reviewer.
• Open review - where no identities are concealed.
• Post-publication review - where comments can be made by readers and reviewers after the article has been published.

Advantages of Peer Review

• Helps to bring errors and gaps in literature to the attention of authors
• Helps to make the work more applicable to the Journal readership. i.e. if parts of your article are too difficult to understand, the reviewer will advise you to fix it.

Reviewers will then make a recommendation to the editor to accept, accept with revisions or reject your article.

If your paper gets accepted with revision, address all points raised by the editor and reviewers. Provide a polite rebuttal to any comments you disagree with. Remember, your reviewer is probably a highly knowledgeable subject expert. If their comment is incorrect, it is likely because they misunderstood your manuscript, indicating that you should make your point or statement clear.

What Next?

Once your manuscript has been accepted, the editor will send your article to the production editor. You will also be informed your proofs are available for proofreading.

Be careful, this is the final check before your article is ready for publishing. Check the proofs against the original text for accuracy (e.g. spelling, punctuation, complete citation, etc). Please also check all affiliation details for all authors.

Beyond Publication

Your article is now available either online or in print. The next question is how to promote your paper to more potential reader?

Social media is a good way to increase the visibility of your article as many scholars and researchers are now connected by the Internet. In addition to LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Weibo; academics and researchers are increasingly using social communities such as MyNetResearch as a way of meeting people and sharing the same research interest.

Don't forget to publicize your article on your blog, department website or personal webpage. You can also create a Research ID, ORCID iD and My Citation on Google which help you to create your own unique research profile. The aim of an unique ID is to avoid name ambiguity issue that impacts research accuracy and quality.

Open Access (OA)

At the beginning of your academic career, you may find it difficult to publish on the top tier journals. To make your publications more visible to potential readers, put your article in an institutional (HKUST Institutional Repository - HKUST IR) or subject repository (e.g. Social Science Research Network) which is one of many strategies for achieving open access to research output. The HKUST IR not only provides barrier-free access to researchers worldwide, it also brings advantages to the University and the contributing authors:

• Provides open and perpetual residence for research output, using a robust, standard compliant infrastructure.
• Enhance access to and visibility of HKUST research; research has demonstrated that open access articles have appreciably higher citation rates than traditionally published articles.
• Enhance communication and exchange by providing simple and persistent links to individual items as well as authors' research portfolio.
• Serves to establish priority of ideas and intellectual property by registering the work with a date stamp.

Visit http://repository.hkust.edu.hk/ir/about/repository for more information about HKUST IR and OA.

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