Tips to Publish in Journals

Tips to Publish in Journals Ismail Said Department of Landscape Architecture, FAB 23 Feb 2010

Requirements • Complexity of Data • Original or Novelty • Contextual/ Situadedness • Empirical findings • American or English English

What Makes a Good Scientist? • Scientists often compared to detectives, and both share a number of characteristics: • creative • logical • intuitive • imaginative • observant • persistent • able to learn from their mistakes

Fundamental Premises • Technological obsolesce can occur in as little as 5-10 years! • Excellence in research is one of the ultimate roots of all academic excellence, in both undergraduate and postgraduate educations • In science, no matter how spectacular the results are, the work is not completed until the results are published.

What is a journal paper? • Journal paper is a scholarly document; a sound judgment of a scholar on a particular subject matter. Scientific publishing is a rigorous effort of writing facts derived from a valid methodology. Journal paper is a concise, clear and accurate report; discussing a problem and its solution achieved through rigorous, valid methodology. It is not an aggregate of anecdotal evidences gathered by a researcher. It does not grapple with genes, fractals, synapses, and quarks. Journal writing tackles specific, detailed findings of a research. The information is current: relevant to the discipline of knowledge. Inasmuch, publishing is an act of disseminating of the knowledge to peers.

Impacts of Writing Article • Dissemination of empirical findings • Source of citations • A mode to get research collaborators and graduate students • Credential for researcher to apply for research grants and job promotion • Credential for university as research and learning center • In 2008, Yonsei University published 2547 papers in SCI journals; ranked 96th in the World in SCI Article Publication in 2007 • Researcher as a hub of a special study area and university as an academic hub • Citation is an important criteria use for benchmarking or rating universities

Types of Journals • Generalist Examples: Nature, Science, Indonesian and the Malay Worlds, Children’s Geographies, Journal of Asian Architecture and Building Engineering As such, from the 11,000 submissions reviewed by Science, only 1 in 14 is accepted. It is a serious scientific manuscript; more than 80% of the Science’s readers have doctorate level degrees. • Specialist Examples: Journal of Architecture, Buildings and Energy, Children, Youth and Environment, Landscape and Urban Planning, Energy and Buildings, Building and Environment

Criteria Used by Editors • This where it can be very frustrating… • Most good journal receive many more submissions that they can publish. Thus, the editors can usually afford to be very choosy. • All quality journals use a form of the “peer review process”

What if my paper is rejected? • Get used to it • Read the reviews very carefully – is there good insight or ideas you can use to improve the paper? • Mostly rejection is because of the relative quality of the paper, not because of editorial bias or idiocy (although it does exist) • The better the journal, the higher the rejection rate: 95% in some cases

Examples of Rejected Paper • Report on HABITATINT-09-00036, The Effect of Green Infrastructure as a Network of Social Spaces on Residents' Well-Being in a Small Town'This is quite a competent piece of research. It has a simple hypothesis and follows a traditional methodology. It is well written and reaches some specific conclusions. Having said this, it really contributes very little to our knowledge of social integration and as a result, cannot be published in an international journal. After following through the entire argument, I was left wondering 'so what?' How do the results of this paper actually help us to improve the planning of human settlements? We already have extensive evidence concerning the importance of open space and social interaction. This paper adds nothing to this knowledge.I would advise the author to consider working toward more objective definitions of the variables included in the study. Don't just rely on interviewee interpretations concerning what a word or descriptor might mean There is an extensive literature on this field, and it is just possible that a new idea could be triggered off. Get away from descriptive analysis and away from the Likert classifications that are used so often to little effect. Move into inductive statistics as a means of analysing human behaviour and see what comes out of the analysis. If successful, perhaps policy initiatives and suggestions would follow.

Rejected by Landscape and Urban Planning • A check of this manuscript has revealed potential problems with originality of this work. Two similar papers (by the same authors) have been published previously in the International Journal on Environmental Research and Technology (available at http://eprints.utm.my/6793/1/IsmailSaid2008_GreenInfrastructureNetworkAsSocial.pdf) and the other similar paper was found published online at http://eprints.utm.my/6793/1/IsmailSaid2008_GreenInfrastructureNetworkAsSocial.pdf

Rejected by Landscape Research The Effect of Green Infrastructure as a Network of Social Spaces on Residents' Well-Being in a Small Town • We are always looking for good research from around the world and therefore we are sympathetic with the difficulties faced by researchers in some countries. However we do need to ensure that papers provide really critical analysis based on strong research methods. The kind of methods you have employed here are generally used in conjunction with other methods and there really is no novelty in your methodology, nor does the data provide enough of a picture of what is going on for us to be able to accept the paper as a standard research paper. • Second, the English really does need some serious attention. It is more or less comprehensible, but that is about the best I can say. • If the authors can write something more concise and write it in better English, the paper might be considered for publication. In addition, the authors will, however, have to re-work their list of references to make it conform to the requirements of whatever journal they submit it to. They should also point out what their contribution to knowledge actually is from the research.

Suggestion by Editor of Landscape Research • You acknowledge that much more research - and probably qualitative methods - is needed in order to build on this work. I would suggest therefore that you restructure this paper, shorten it and resubmit it as a short communication - as work in progress. You should really try and pull out the importance of the findings that your study provides in relation to perhaps 'initial findings'. Most of the literature review etc is now quite well set out in other papers, so you could leave most of this out, providing instead good reasons for looking at the Malaysian context in particular. You could also provide some insights that are novel as compared to green infrastructure research already carried out.

Tips to Publish in Journals