The DUT Journal of Green Economy and Development (JGDE) Conference kicked off on Wednesday (13 July 2016) this week where among many topics concerning the green economy and sustainability, delegates were also educated on how to get their academic papers published in top tier journals.
Themed: Advancing new thinking on sustainability and wellbeing, the JGDE conference is being organised and co-ordinated by DUT’s Journal of Green Economy and Development (JGED). Eskom, the KZN Premier’s Office, IQRAA Trust, eThekwini Municipality, the Department of Economic Development, Tourism and Environmental Affairs, Manchester University, the national Department of Public Service and Administration as well as the Institute of Economics at the Erlangen University, Germany, are DUT’s partners in hosting the conference. The conference is being held at the Salt Rock Hotel, Dolphin Coast, KwaZulu-Natal and ends today (Friday, 15 July 2016).
The talk: Barriers to publishing in top tier journals, which largely centred on the Top Ten Commandments of Publishing in Top Tier Journals, was delivered by Professor Jürgen Kaehler from the Institut für Wirtschaftswissenschaft, Germany. Prof Kaehler is Professor of Economics. He has a PhD in Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science for his thesis on Stochastic Models of Exchange-Rate Dynamics and Their Implications for the Pricing of Foreign-Currency Options.
Prof Kaehler’s commandments on Publishing in Top Tier Journals:
1. Form an interdisciplinary team of authors. The team will have different views of the world but those views are complimentary and not contradictory and you can only benefit from that. Importantly, it is always advantageous to have an experienced researcher on the team.
2. Get your paper proof-read. Importantly, there should not be any plagiarism on the paper.
3. Submit your paper to an appropriate journal. If you are a young researcher, use the “bottom-up” approach, otherwise your paper may be rejected. For example, if you are a young researcher, start at the D ranked journals instead of aiming for the A or B ranked journals. You do not want to be disappointed.
4. Do not critisise other papers too heavily (in your own paper’s literature review). There is a good chance that one of the people you are criticising will be one of your referee’s. Instead of criticising other papers or authors, refer to the paper/s as “important” and say that you “want to extend their important contribution”.
5. Stress the innovations on your paper (in the intro) and mention its policy implications. This will help the referee identify the novelty of your report because you are the expert on your paper, and often than not, the referee is not.
6. Do robust checks on your paper. If you do not do this, your referee will ask for robustness checks.
7. Present your paper at a conference. This allows you to get valuable feedback and you can revise your paper with these comments in mind which can only enrich your paper. Also, your paper being approved at a conference is a stamp of approval.
8. Distribute your paper to experts in your field for comments.
9. Take the comments of referees on board even if you don’t agree with them.
10. Resubmit rejected papers to another journal/s. Some of the most important papers in economics were once rejected by other journals. For example, a paper that earned a Nobel Peace Prize was twice rejected by two journals.
– Sinegugu Ndlovu
Pictured: Professor Jürgen Kaehler from the Institut für Wirtschaftswissenschaft, Germany, delivers his talk on the Top Ten Commandments of Publishing in Top Tier Journals.
