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How to Increase the Odds of Publishing Your Research?

The points below were collected in three sessions, namely Publishing Qualitative Research in Premier Academic Journals, How Can I Make An Impact? A Conversation with Management Researchers Seeking to Change the World and Publishing in the Top Tier.

What needs to be in it in terms of content?

  • Know your literature(s)
  • Follow events that are ongoing
  • Study longitudinal processes
  • Study field settings and diverse groups
  • Study how and why questions
  • Strategically choose your research question(s)
  • Focus on neglected problems
  • Have a bold vision
  • Focus on results/value creation
  • Use examplars (i.e. other articles in your journal of choice that have studied similar phenomena or used similar methodology)

How do you generate ideas and get access to data?

  • Use student projects
  • Come up with call for problems (much in the same way as we do call for papers or call for proposals)
  • Talk to big thinkers
  • Leverage partnerships/co-authorships

What are questions to ask yourself?

  • What are research questions you really care about?
  • What’s the career you would like to pursue and where can you make a difference?
  • What would you like to be your legacy?

Although I am aware that there is no recipe to publishing research, I do believe some of these suggestions will help me to focus my efforts. I hope the same holds for you.

Goodbye UK, welcome (back) Germany

I’ve recently switched universities and moved from the United Kingdom to Germany. I’m now enrolled in a program with the title ‘Dynamic Capabilities and Relationships’. The graduate school is run jointly by the Europa-Universität Viadrina, situated in Frankfurt (Oder), and the German Graduate School of Management and Law in Heilbronn. We’re a team of six researchers: five PhD students and one PostDoc. The aim of the doctoral program is to create knowledge about how organizations achieve and sustain competitive advantage in rapidly changing environments through relationships with other organizations and stakeholders. You can see the people involved in the picture below (photo credit: EUV press office, Heide Fest).

15_04_2011eoegad-kolleg_dcr

I’m excited to be part of this newly established program and, luckily, will be able to continue the work on my original research proposal which I developed in Nottingham. It suits well within the realm of the program, primarily because my focus has been on organizational efficiency and relationships from the very start.

I want to take this chance to thank my previous supervisors, John Richards and Iain Coyne, for their great support. Both of them have guided my thinking and my professional development significantly.

@cshirky on Institutions vs. Collaboration

This is a very enjoyable Ted talk by Clay Shirky which he delivered in 2005 (!). He speaks about how collaborative tools are changing the way human affairs are conducted. His main argument is that new technologies drive down coordination costs and replace institutional planning with looser types of coordination. He uses examples of Flickr, Meetup and online support groups. His talk also helps to understand the rationale behind the open-source movement. The way Clay talks about ‘tagging’ and content being produced or categorized by end-users immediately made me think of the mechanisms of emergence which I came across in Andrew McAfee‘s works before.

via ted.com

List of Social Network Courses in Europe

One particularly useful source of information that I draw on frequently is the SOCNET mailing list. Sometime towards the end of last year Christopher Tunnard collected information on the different types of social network courses being offered internationally. He consequently collected the data in a spreadsheet and you can now browse all courses by institution, instructor, category and name. I think this is pretty helpful when you’re trying to locate a course near you in a particular academic field. So, if you’re based in Europe and you’re interested in organization studies, psychology and communications – just like myself – you may find the following courses insightful:

Aarhus University: Introductory Social Network Analysis & Organizational Network Analysis

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona: Theory, Methods and Applications of Social Networks (Summer School)

University of Essex: Introduction & Advanced Social Network Analysis (Summer School)

University of Glasgow: Assessing the Impact of Social Networks on Organizational Performance

University of Greenwich: Business Networks

Universität Trier: Sum­mer School on So­ci­al Net­work Ana­ly­sis

Tilburg University: Interorganizational Relationships