Guide to getting published

With the aim to provide an understanding and enhance academic writing and preparation skills while focusing on best practice for submission and post-publication promotion, UTAR Centre for Sustainable Development and Corporate Social Responsibility in Business in collaboration with Main Library successfully organised a research talk titled “A Guide to Getting Published” at Kampar Campus on 11 July 2018.

Delivered by Elvin Cheah, the Business Manager of the Emerald Group Publishing Limited, the two-hour talk served as a platform for budding and aspiring authors, editors, reviewers, researchers, faculty members and doctoral candidates to acquire the right tips on publishing their research in international peer-reviewed scholarly journals.

Cheah delivering his talk 

Cheah gave a brief introduction about Emerald Group in his talk which was attended by more than 100 participants, “Emerald Group has been a leading scholarly publisher in business and management area, and it is still one of the independent publishing corporations. It is comprised of 300 journals, more than 2,500 books and more than 1,500 case studies. Over 33 million Emerald articles were downloaded in the past year, which means more than 87,000 Emerald articles were downloaded in one day.”

Cheah said, “Our aim for this guide today is to provide the participants with all the information you need to optimise your academic writing and preparation skills whilst focusing on best practice for submission.” He added, “Publishing your work is important to both personal and professional development. Authors whose research have appeared in peer-reviewed publications often see professional growth after publishing their work. Among the other reasons to publish are subject, promotion of business for professionals and recognition. Once you have completed your research, you have got to select where to submit your work. There are many factors that need to be considered when choosing where to submit. Think ‘why do I want to publish my work?’.”

He explained, “Choosing a journal is an investment decision, one that will raise your profile and further disseminate your work, if chosen correctly. Often, academics identify the right journals based on these criteria, namely relevancy, internationality, time from submission to publication, JCR ranked and Open Access. Be strategic when choosing journals. Quality journals have Clarivate Analytics Journal Citation Report rankings, but there are other ranking systems to consider. Scopus and Cites=Score, H-index, Google Scholar as well as checking the usage and peer perceptions of the journals will help you narrow down the contenders.”

Throughout his talk, he offered a simple guide in developing the publishing strategy and in selecting the right journals. He highlighted that finding the right journal with the right fit should be more important than finding the top-ranked journal, especially for students who have only a short period of time to publish their article. He explained, “Finding the right journal is a part of the investment decision because it’s time-consuming and a tedious work.” 

Participants listening attentively to Cheah’s presentation

With his rich experience in the publishing field, Cheah discussed the keys that one must consider before submitting a journal article for publication and he also provided some writing tips to ensure the best chance of one’s article acceptance.

“Before the submitted article is published, the reviewers will read through and give the comments. This is called the peer-review. In order to prevent biases, all of Emerald journals are double-blind peer reviewing—both the reviewer and the author are anonymous. Many papers are rejected because they do not fulfill journal requirements, and they don’t even go into the review process,” he explained.

Apart from offering practical advice on article preparation and submission, the talk also included an interactive Q&A session to clarify enquiries regarding the publication of articles. The talk then ended with a photo-taking session. 

Cheah has conducted numerous workshops to promote and manage Emerald’s publishing business in Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei. He conducts “User Trainings” and “Guide to Getting Published” workshops frequently at institutions of higher learning.

Emerald Publishing was founded in 1967 to champion new ideas that would advance the research and practice of business and management. It manages a portfolio of over 300 journals, more than 2,500 books and over 1,500 teaching cases. The success of its new books and Open Access programmes was recently recognised at the Independent Publishing Awards where Emerald was awarded IPG Academic and Professional Publisher of the Year 2018.

Cheah (front row, third from right) with the participants