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The Hitchhiker's Guide
to the Publishing Paper:
Quantitative research based article
Bojana Dinić, PhD
& Bojana Bodroža, PhD
Let’s get to know
Your name and area of academic interest
The year of your PhD studies or the stage of your
academic career
Your experience with publishing
The content of the workshop
1. Beginners’problems in academic work
2. What to prepare for submission
3. The most common reasons for rejection
4. How to chose a journal
5. Submission process
6. From accepted paper to published article
The content of the workshop
1. Beginners’problems in academic work
2. What to prepare for submission
3. The most common reasons for rejection
4. How to chose a journal
5. Submission process
6. From accepted paper to published article
Begginers’ problems in academic work
How do you come up with a research problem?
reading, reading, a lot of reading...
contemporary scientific literature
international literature
access to the scientific bases (Ebsco, APA,Wiley, ScienceDirect,
Sage, Springer...);Google Scholar, ReserachGate
Begginers’ problems in academic work
„Writer’s block“
the solution: reading
the most time consuming phase
of writing is reading
Style
transforming the too extensive and too detailed style into concise
and direct statements
eliminating non-essential information
avoid bold statements („the modern world is flooded by the wave of
aggression and destructive behavior”)as well as truisms
Citations
secondary references, too many or not enough references
The content of the workshop
1. Beginners’problems in academic work
2. What to prepare for submission
3. The most common reasons for rejection
4. How to chose a journal
5. Submission process
6. From accepted paper to published article
The content of the workshop
1. Beginners’problems in academic work
2. What to prepare for submission
Cover letter
Open data & materials
3. The most common reasons for rejection
4. How to chose a journal
5. Submission process
6. From accepted paper to published article
Cover letter
What to include in a cover letter?
title and brief content of the work - an opportunity to emphasize the
novelty of the work and contribution (highlights)
statement that the research was conducted in accordance with ethical
principles (no. of the approval and the name of Ethical Board)
statement that the paper has not been previously published or submitted
to another journal - an opportunity to note if part of the results was
presented at a conference, or published in another paper
if requested - a statement on the selection of the sample size, whether the
effect sizes and CIs are shown, whether the data and the code are open...
declaration that the authors have no conflict of interest
statement that all authors agree on the submission of the work; author
contribution (sometimes in title page)
word count (or character)
Example of cover letter
Dear Editor,
Please find enclosed our manuscript “The narcissism network and centrality of narcissism
features”, which we are submitting for review in the Current Psychology.
Since there were several proposals of "core" feature of narcissism, in this study we tested the
centrality of narcissism features by network analysis approach. By this approach we could directly
empirically test which narcissism feature is central.
We hereby state that the manuscript contains original work and has not been published
elsewhere and has not been submitted simultaneously for publication elsewhere. The part of the
results were presented at the ISSID2017 Conference, which we stated at the Title page. We also
state that the research was approved by the Ethical Committee of the Faculty of Philosophy,
University of Novi Sad, Serbia, which is the Second Instance Commission of the Ethical
Committee of the Serbian Psychological Society (code 201910190149_mOls). The manuscript is
written according to APA style, 7th edition and in accordance with the guidelines of the journal.
All authors read and approved the final manuscript. The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Data and R code are available at the blinded link:
https://osf.io/hfdsx/?view_only=246b76dd19484c159e131e77d7562284
Word count: 4879
Thank you very much for your time and consideration.
Kind regards,
Bojana Dinić, Valentina Sokolovska and Aleksandar Tomašević
Open data and materials
Think of published paper as a set of files:
article
dataset and codebook
other materials:
codes for statistical analyses (R script, SPSS syntax, etc.) and/or additional analyses
other materials (instruments, experimental stimuli, procedures, transcripts, etc.)
Why do we share all these materials?
dedication to credible science
replicability & reproducibility (reanalysis)
meta-analyses
getting credit for data (datasets get DOI and can be cited)
collaboration
data loss protection
Open data
Rules related to open data
personal data protection
not appropriate to require co-authorship as a condition for data use
standardized citation, e.g. APA7:
Cool, H. E. M. and Bell, M. (2011). Excavations at St Peter’s Church,
Barton-upon-Humber [dataset] (York: Archaeology Data Service),
https://doi.org/10.5284/1000389
Where to share (and browse) data?
•University repositories
•Open Science Framework
•Zenodo (CERN)
•Figshare
•Mendeley Data
•Elsevier Data Search
•Google Dataset Search
How to share open data?
Primary data (dataset) and meta-data (codebook, data dictionary)
Meta-data describe and explain primary data in digital form to facilitate
searching, discovering and using of research results via the internet
Creative commons licences
https://open.ac.rs/index.php/otvorena-nauka/podaci#ccLic
Creative commons licences
https://open.ac.rs/index.php/otvorena-nauka/podaci#ccLic
The content of the workshop
1. Beginners’problems in academic work
2. What to prepare for submission
3. The most common reasons for rejection
4. How to chose a journal
5. Submission process
6. From accepted paper to published article
The most common reasons for rejection
Plagiarism (including self-plagiarism) and salami-slicing
Technical aspects
The manuscript does not correspond to the filed of the
journal
read carefully Aims & Scope
The manuscript does not follow the instructions for the
authors
usually authors get manuscript back to format it in line with
the instructions
Bad English
https://www.writefull.com https://www.grammarly.com
Conceptual aspects
There is no rationale for the problem or the rationale is
unclear
The argumentation for the research problem must be
clear and up-to-date
do not miss a key references
references must be up-to-date
The contribution/novelty of your work is not highlighted
how is your study different (in conceptual and/or
methodological terms)?
what new did you find out?
The most common reasons for rejection
Methodological aspects
The design does not provide a rationale for answering the
research question
pay attention to methodology and terminology (causality vs.
correlation)
the methodology should be described in detail so that anyone
can repeat the research
how were participants recruited?
is the sample size sufficient?
have all measures and procedures been validated (in the used
language)?
open data, code, stimuli and materials (e.g., stored in open repository
such is https://osf.io –view only link)
The most common reasons for rejection
Have all measures and procedures been validated?
Report original reference and reference for a validation in
used language
Report psychometric properties:
reliability: Cronbach’s alpha (α), McDonald’s omega (ω)…
construct validity: CFA model fit, Average Variance Extracted
(AVE), validity correlations…
Remember: psychometric properties refer to scores, not
to measures
Statistical aspects
An appropriate statistical method was not used
it should fit the research aim
it should fit the measurement level of the variables (check
distribution)
report effect size, confidence interval (CI), exact p-level
http://www.psychometrica.de/effect_size.html#cohc
do not interpret marginal p-levels as significant (e.g., p= .06)
The most common reasons for rejection
Other
Unrelated parts of the paper: research question and
results, introduction and discussion...
what you mention in the introduction should also be in the
discussion (overlapping references)
The results are not interpreted and explained in the
discussion, but only repeated
The results are overinterpreted, conclusions without solid
ground in the analyses
Limitations and/or practical implications are not stated
(depending on the journal's focus)
The most common reasons for rejection
The content of the workshop
1. Beginners’problems in academic work
2. What to prepare for submission
3. The most common reasons for rejection
4. How to chose a journal
5. Submission process
6. From accepted paper to published article
How to choose a journal?
Check the list of cited articles
Make sure your manuscript fits within the journal’s scope
Has the journal published articles that are similar to yours?
Check journal’s reputation (impact factor and professionalism
of the editorial team, the journal’s audience and reach…)
Check indexing status
Check the quality of their website and submission platform –
whether all policies are there, instructions for the authors
Check number of published issues per year
https://journalfinder.elsevier.com/
https://www.wame.org/identifying-predatory-or-pseudo-journals
Impact Factor (IF)
The yearly mean number of citations of articles published
in the last two years in a given journal
The relative importance of a journal within its field -
higher IF = more important journal or carry more
prestige
However...
https://www.editage.com/insights/why-you-should-not-use-
the-journal-impact-factor-to-evaluate-research
https://sfdora.org/
The content of the workshop
1. Beginners’problems in academic work
2. What to prepare for submission
3. The most common reasons for rejection
4. How to chose a journal
5. Submission process
6. From accepted paper to published article
Submission process
submission:
preprint
dodeljivanje
uredniku i prva
procena
dodeljivanje
recenzentima
- who will be the corresponding author?
- cover letter
- open data & materials
Submission process
submission:
preprint
asignment to
action editor
asignment to
reviewers
- techical requirements
desk reject
- in a week or couple of months
- review in a 4-6 weeks
Submission process
after reviews
respons to reviews
and corrected
manuscript
2. krug recenziranja
reject
- the editor
sometimes points
out what should
you paid attention
to
How to respond to the reviews?
Polite, polite, polite...
answer point-by-point to all suggestions and comments in
the response to reviewers and indicate where corrections
were made in the manuscript (page and paragraph or line
number/s)
if you disagree with something, provide arguments
Dear reviewers,
We thank you for the useful suggestions and comments
that contribute to the better quality of our work...
Submission process
after reviews
respons to review
and corrected
manuscript
2. round of
reviews
accept
after reviews
respons to review
and corrected
manuscript
published
Submission process
accept:
postprint
reject
published
The content of the workshop
1. Beginners’problems in academic work
2. What to prepare for submission
3. The most common reasons for rejection
4. How to chose a journal
5. Submission process
6. From accepted paper to published article
How can you share your published article?