How to improve the hit rate of paper submission?
Source "How to improve the hit rate of academic papers?"
-Take East China Economic Management, the source periodical of CSSCI, as an example.
Author Jing Cheng
As we all know, scholars' learning and research results are reflected in academic papers. With the increase of doctoral students in domestic colleges and universities, the intensification of competition in colleges and universities has pushed up the overall level of journals, which makes it difficult for CSSCI journals to publish articles and requires higher quality papers. The highest contribution value of academic papers is to publish them in the highest-level journals at the fastest speed, so that readers can search and communicate with peers in the maximum time and space. In order to achieve the above goals, it is necessary to study the journals and choose the appropriate target journals according to the articles. Starting with the characteristics of rejected articles, this paper discusses the strategies to improve the hit rate of academic papers.
Characteristics of rejected papers
(A) from the way of writing
1. Write a paper according to the textbook model.
The framework of this kind of articles lacks originality, and the content usually expounds the concept, definition, necessity, significance, theoretical basis and preconditions of a certain problem, and the content is mostly a summary of research results, lacking core viewpoints, theoretical basis and argumentation process; Lack of strong conclusions.
2. Suggestive and countermeasure academic papers
Academic papers, especially those on economic management, are mostly empirical, and their writing should focus on the procedural process of paper writing. However, if the writing focuses on various rationalization suggestions and countermeasures, it lacks the reasoning and argumentation process of the conclusion, and the conclusion drawn out of thin air lacks theoretical basis. This kind of academic paper can only be regarded as a proposal, and the lack of research process will lead to the hollowing out and generalization of academic research, which is not conducive to the exercise and cultivation of the author's academic thinking.
(2) From the content of the topic.
1. The title is not new, but the content is the same.
It is impossible to make it clear in a short article that the topic is not suitable for the journal style, or the topic is outdated, or the coverage is too wide, resulting in vague, uncontrollable and too grand content. Authors often just mix up the current statements and simply integrate them together, which is more about the synthesis of knowledge than academic research. This writing method lacks academic experience; However, articles with narrow topics are not universal, or the topics have been published many times in other journals or similar articles have been published in this journal.
Some articles are scattered in content, lack of emphasis, lack of systematicness and orderliness, lack of innovation, obscurity and lack of "concrete" thinking. That is, there is no case, metaphor, chart and other forms to explain abstract theories and judgments. Academic papers do not need to be as gorgeous and vivid as literary and artistic works, but they must be concise, accurate, fluent and easy to understand. Some empirical articles are more empirical than economic analysis. The empirical articles are unreasonable in structure, too long and too short in length. Insufficient data, such as the number of samples is too small, the sample recovery rate is too low to reach the statistical standard, the conclusion is not objective, or the well-known common sense conclusion can be drawn without argument. The summary article simply lists the literature, without summary, analysis and discussion.
2. The references in the article are not standardized.
Reference is an important part of academic articles, which reflects the breadth and depth of the literature read by the author and is the objective basis for reviewers to judge the value and level of the manuscript. References may not be published, but articles without references will certainly not be published.
Strategies and methods to improve the hit rate of submission
(a) Searching for background materials of periodicals
1. Study the purpose of running a journal.
It can be said that the purpose of running a journal determines the academic style of the journal, and then determines the scope, style and style of the article. The articles submitted must be highly relevant to the purpose of running the journal! Therefore, before submitting a manuscript, you should choose a publication that suits you according to the style of your article. If it is an article that does not conform to the purpose of the journal, no matter how well written, the hit rate will not be high!
The aim of East China Economic Management is to devote itself to economic management research and serve China's economic construction. It shows that the articles published in journals must reflect the hot issues of economic management. If they are articles on education, teaching and legal psychology, they will definitely fail in the first instance.
2. Understand the column arrangement of the journal and the catalogue of articles published.
This column reflects the academic vane of the magazine. These characteristic columns are often marginal subjects, problem research columns or columns with the nature of filling gaps, which can enliven the academic atmosphere, promote the in-depth academic research on this issue, and expand the influence and competitiveness of periodical academic circles.
The columns of East China economic management include: East China economy, current affairs, economic observation (China economy, regional development, industrial economy, etc. ), management vision (logistics and supply chain, marketing practice, financial management, knowledge management, strategic management, public management, etc. ), theoretical practice (case analysis, practical methods, theoretical summary and comparative reference), East China Economy
3. Understand the review process of journals.
"East China Economic Management" implements the system of four examinations and four schools. The first trial is conducted by the responsible editor according to the column, and the manuscript passed by the first trial enters the expert review, and the manuscript passed by the expert review is reviewed by the editorial department, and the review opinions are sent to the final review. Many CSSCI journals in China have many manuscripts. How to make editors pay attention to the manuscript depends largely on whether the title, abstract and format of the paper are standardized, whether the title abstract can clearly express the problems, methods, conclusions and innovations to be studied, and whether the editors and readers can be persuaded to read your paper in the most concise language.
4. Browse the essay and recent situation to understand the dynamic changes of the journal.
Understand its scholar group, readers, academic status, periodical grade, publishing cycle, paper capacity, page fee, contribution tendency, etc.
(two) a solid academic foundation, highlighting innovation and academic.
Academic journals have a small audience, and their authors and readers are basically well-trained in a certain discipline and are still engaged in the research and teaching of this discipline. His reading interest focuses on the new academic viewpoints put forward in the article; Use new analytical methods; Provides new empirical evidence; And new ideas to solve the problem. So innovation is the soul and foundation of academic articles.
The emergence of innovation is based on previous studies. The generation of an article needs to refer to a large number of documents, and a certain amount of literature reading is the source of innovation. The principle of reading literature is to start with the latest literature, select authoritative literature, start with a comprehensive literature review, keep in mind the correlation between literature and research, pay attention to the alternation of reading and collection, and combine intensive reading with "skipping reading".
By screening, quoting and summarizing the previous research conclusions, we can understand the current situation of relevant knowledge, reveal the background of the problem or provide a basis for the research hypothesis, learn from other people's research work, find out the advantages and disadvantages of previous research, avoid unfounded research, avoid excessive repetition of previous research, help the author identify new frontier topics, provide ideas and methods to deal with special specific problems, and show his own ideas according to his own thinking after certain argumentation.
A typical academic paper reflects the process of scientific research and has a fixed writing structure, which is the default of scholars. This structure consists of questions, literature review, models, tests and conclusions.
This writing mode is more convenient for communication between scholars: readers can refer to literature review and references to understand the progress of a subject; You can also look at the theoretical derivation process of the model part; You can also read the abstract and conclusion to understand the suggestion and enlightenment of a problem. This writing mode requires the author to consider all parts of the full text as a whole, make reasonable arrangements and keep the balance of all parts. By extracting the most general title from each part, focusing on argumentation, the idea of the paper is clearly expressed, and the process of drawing conclusions is very rigorous, interlocking and step by step, so as to avoid publishing empty opinions without quoting. An excellent academic paper should not only have its own innovative ideas and profound themes, but also be rich in materials and perfect in structure, argumentative and highly comprehensive. Even if it is a summary of western theories, it should be from the perspective of problems. Some articles are almost all "so-and-so" and "so-and-so", but the author's own views are not clear, just listed.
(3) Respect academic norms
Academic papers are different from ordinary literary works, and writing must strictly abide by academic norms.
1. The topic is appropriate. First of all, we should choose topics of interest, and interest is the driving force to promote academic research. Economics topics are divided into basic problems (difficult problems) and specific problems (problems that can be studied). The basic problem is broad, background and macro. Such as: inflation, anti-dumping, agricultural trade, RMB exchange rate, etc. The specific problems are detailed, targeted and microscopic. We must comprehensively consider the difficulty and feasibility, the availability of academic resources, the value and innovation of research. The topic should not be too big or too small, and the question should be as detailed as possible. The topic is too big to be explained clearly in thousands of words, and the research object can be appropriately limited. From small to large, make a mountain out of a molehill, in-depth study and thorough analysis of the current hot issues.
2. Title: It is the label of the article and an accurate summary of the content of the paper. From the title, we can see the theme of the paper. The title should be appropriate, novel and concise. The title should reflect the theme of the article and make readers interested in reading. Headlines can express their views in the form of regular statements, questions and sub-headlines. Generally no more than 20 words. It is convenient for document retrieval and tracking. Literature retrieval system usually takes the subject words in the title as the retrieval object, which accurately reflects the core content of the paper and avoids missing inspection. Use abbreviations carefully; The title contains keywords.
3. the author. The height of the author group determines the height of the journal. Relevant research shows that in the group of highly cited authors, the combination of "professors and doctors" accounts for a large proportion, and the proportion of 2-3 authors is greater than that of a single author. The cooperation degree of the author reflects the intelligence degree of the author, and the cooperation between research teams is conducive to rapid achievement, especially for fund papers, the co-authorship rate can better reflect the academic development level of the journal.
4. summary. It is a quite independent paper, and it is the resume of the paper. Can fully express the whole point of view, generally about 100-300 words is appropriate, and summarize the content and innovation of the paper in the most refined professional language, rather than the simple superposition of the subtitles of all parts of the article; When writing an abstract, you should generally write a paper in the name of a third person in a relatively neutral position, avoiding writing in the first person such as "this article" and "myself"; Avoid asking what questions first, and then using "in short", "therefore", "thus" and "generally" to draw a conclusion.
5. Key words. Key words are the key words that indicate the content and intention of the paper, and are an important part of academic papers. Usually, the most core and concise professional vocabulary is used to reflect the author's views and intentions, and it is also convenient for article retrieval. Generally, there are 3-5 keywords, and the number of words in each keyword should not exceed 5 words.
6. English titles, abstracts and keywords. Chinglish cannot appear in this part, nor is it a complete translation of the Chinese part. Appropriate places need a certain degree of free translation, and attention should be paid to the accuracy of professional vocabulary and the characteristics of professional English.
7. Text. Text discussion is the process of reasoning, and the arguments should be clear and prominent. "Practice is the only criterion for testing truth", and economic papers often use empirical analysis to test and challenge theories, thus deepening people's understanding of an economic phenomenon. The format of general empirical papers is introduction, hypothesis, data, methods, empirical results, relevant discussions and concluding comments. In the process of writing, we should pay attention to the relationship between quoting predecessors' views and our own innovative conclusions.
Introduction. The introduction of the paper is generally a small summary, focusing on the literature related to the research, which is a synthesis of the ideas and methods of previous related research. Through literature review, this paper explains the existing research status and shortcomings, and clearly and concisely introduces the problems to be studied and the reasons for choosing the topic. If it is an exploratory problem at this stage, it must be pointed out that its future practical value or theoretical value; In the introduction, let readers know that the article has the characteristics of new topics, new methods, new achievements and new conclusions. When writing a literature review, we can sort out the literature in chronological or logical order by means of comparison and contrast.
Hypothesis: refers to the economic phenomenon that the author intends to test or reveal. The argument of hypothesis should be clear and reasonable.
Data: Data is the basis of economic model practice, the focus of historical description and analysis, and the symbol of research papers. Data sources should be true, comprehensive, sufficient, concise and direct. The data comes from published statistical yearbooks, published survey materials, open databases, enterprise data, author surveys, etc. At present, the data collection of economic articles is often obtained from China Statistical Yearbook, China Industrial Statistical Yearbook, China Agricultural Statistical Yearbook, China Labor Statistical Yearbook, China Input-Output Table and China Industrial Census, or the data that cannot be obtained from commercial databases is manually collected from tens of thousands of annual reports.
Toolbox: measurement estimation methods, etc. At present, econometrics is developing rapidly, and new research methods are emerging one after another, with rapid timeliness. Now the mainstream has turned to PSM, DID, SFA and other research methods. Many research methods may be out of date as soon as they are heard. These methods should not only have solid basic knowledge of econometrics, but also understand the idea of computer programming, and must be ahead of computer software, otherwise they will lose their competitiveness. For example, quantile regression, now stata software has a corresponding module, which has realized the fool-like operation, and no need to program or borrow other people's programs (structural equation model can also be completed in stata 12.0). At this time, everyone will know this method, and the competitiveness of the paper will be greatly reduced.
The argument is logical, clear-cut, concise and fluent, simple and clear. At present, empirical papers in economics are often aimed at an economic activity object, collecting real sample observation values, analyzing and processing the data according to statistical knowledge and combining with the needs of model analysis, independently establishing a single-equation multiple linear regression econometric model, and completing the test, revision and estimation of the model, and making necessary structural analysis, economic prediction or policy evaluation of the results. Through the model, the premise hypothesis is stated and analyzed, then it is deduced according to clear logic, and finally some propositions are obtained for testing; In the testing part, I use data or cases to test my proposition; The conclusion part will mainly introduce the shortcomings of the existing research, provide the direction of further research, or draw some policy suggestions according to your own analysis. The conclusion must be based on the aforementioned argumentation process.
8. References. Reference is an essential quality of an excellent paper, which embodies the author's academic research ability and thinking, provides evidence for his own arguments and viewpoints, reflects the author's ability to effectively collect, utilize, sort out, synthesize and process information, and embodies scientific professional ethics.
First, be good at quoting famous journals. Different academic journals have different popularity. The main viewpoints and arguments of this paper should come from the most convincing research results. The results reported by well-known journals should be more authoritative. The author should pay special attention to the trend of more authoritative publications in this major. For example, CSSCI of Nanjing University, Economic Research, China Social Sciences, Managing the World, World Economy and Economics Quarterly in Peking University. Or follow the best 3-5 magazines and 3-5 scholars active in this field.
Second, avoid using abstract retrieval documents, that is, secondary documents. Secondary literature is a shortcut to literature reading, and the author needs to further consult the original literature through secondary literature, but if only secondary literature is used, the credibility of the article will be greatly reduced.
Third, the balance between references and Chinese and English references in recent years. With the continuous development of science, the number of academic papers is increasing by hundreds every year. In recent years, new literature can cover old literature, so reference literature should be updated.
Fourthly, the quotations in the text should correspond to the references at the end of the text. Literature sources usually include papers (published papers/conference papers/unpublished papers/online papers/others), books (monographs/editors), reports (published/internal) and data (yearbooks/databases/online/private).
9. Pay attention to papers funded by scientific research projects. Because the research topic reflects the development direction of a discipline, what is its topic? This project has academic authority. Secondly, funded research projects can ensure that academic research can be carried out in depth. Thirdly, it is often a team of scholars who concentrate their collective wisdom on scientific research. Finally, the conclusions of scientific research projects need to be reviewed and approved by the expert group. Therefore, scientific research papers, as one of the manifestations of scientific research projects, have high academic gold content.
conclusion
Writing high-quality, high-level and high-standard academic papers can reflect the skills of scholars, which is conducive to the emergence and development of academic research vitality and helps the author gradually establish a good academic character. Of course, a good article is a proof of a good idea, research itself is the foundation, formal norms are the guarantee, and the improvement of academic papers is a long-distance race, which requires long-term scientific training.
Jing Cheng, deputy editor-in-chief and editor-in-chief of East China Economic Management magazine of Anhui Institute of Economics and Management.
Source: How to improve the hit rate of academic papers —— Taking East China Economic Management as an example.
Author: Jing Cheng
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