Idea to Ink: Lessons From Failure to Publish

Lesson 1: Clarify the Frame

When embarking on a research project, our first task in contributing to academic knowledge creation is to clarify the existing theory (or theories) that serve as the lens through which we view and interpret a phenomenon of interest.

A theory offers an explanation of a phenomenon: why it happens, how it happens, and its impact when it happens (Sutton & Staw, 1995). Proposing and testing theories about how the world works is what we do. It is theory that makes scholarly contributions distinct. When insight strikes us, our first responsibility is to thus specify the theoretical frame that contextualizes our exploration of the phenomenon at hand.

In academic knowledge creation, the theoretical frame is just as important as the phenomenon. This is because there are competing explanations of the same phenomenon offered by different frames or schools of thought. It is the theoretical frame that puts the “sense” into sense-making. For our proposed scholarly contributions to make sense, we must let others know what lens we are employing in our investigation.

We are trained in our doctoral studies to ground our work in theory and contribute to the enrichment of that theory (or its alternatives). It was thus amusing, befuddling, and embarrassing for me to read my own rejected papers to find that I did not have a clear theoretical frame for many of them. If these manuscripts ended up on my associate editor desk, I would have rejected them too for lack of theoretical grounding.

Writing for JME

JME is a journal dedicated to the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). Its main audience is the educator inside the classroom. Therefore, the journal expects submissions to be about teaching and learning phenomena framed by relevant theories on why and how people learn, how to design approaches that inspire people to learn, and the impact of these approaches on learning. Scholarly contributions must help the dedicated educator hone and advance their craft.

Refer to Writing and Review Guide 1 for questions to help you frame your idea.

Lesson 2: Plot the Paper

Sometimes, when a thought bubble swells out of the breath of my subconscious thought, I seize my laptop to blast-freeze that bubble before it dissolves. While there is a strong urge to write the entire manuscript and send it out to a top journal before daybreak, I have learned that it is best to not surrender to this compulsion.

Efficiently writing papers that can withstand the rigors of academic debate requires planning and plotting. Plotting involves mapping out all the important elements of the paper before sitting down to write in earnest. This is in contrast to “pantsing” (etymology: flying by the seat of your pants) or writing the final manuscript as you think (Campbell, 2018).

To clarify, writing is an extremely valuable tool for thinking, learning, and problem-solving (Tynjälä et al., 2001). The important process of writing for discovery can result in critical drafts or fragments of thought that may or may not find their way into a journal submission. By contrast, pantsing is almost a form of stream-of-consciousness writing with the intention of submitting the end product to a journal.

Pantsing an entire manuscript on a plane ride may work for some. In my case, however, pantsing exposes me to the danger of being inside my head for too long. It is easy to forget that knowledge creation is social and that I need to explicitly relate my insights to other scholars’ insights. Establishing these conceptual links helps me clarify my contribution to the academic conversation. I have learned that pausing to plot is the way to save myself from the devastation of the dreaded rejection-for-lack-of-contribution email.

Plotting lays out a paper’s structure and gives bones to your thought bubble. In outline, diagram, or dot/bullet point form, the bones articulate the contribution of the paper and how the fragments of that contribution are arranged into a coherent whole. To be clear, plotting assumes that the research project is completed: that is, that you have clarified your theoretical frame (Lesson 1 above), completed the literature review, gathered and analyzed data, and summarized your findings and conclusions. The pieces of the research puzzle are there and the task at hand is for you to plot out how the pieces coherently and persuasively fit together before sitting down to write the manuscript.

Plot before you write: this is by no means a world-changing lesson. Most of us already do this in some form. The plot would most probably be in our heads. But taking the manuscript outline out of our heads and onto a page allows us to figure out the most compelling way to present our insights to others. This is why architects create blueprints on paper. Careful plotting before investing the time and effort to write well can mean the difference between a desk rejection and a first review round.

Refer to Writing and Review Guide 2 to help you plot your paper.

Lesson 3: Pitch to the Party

I have lost track of the papers I have peddled to countless journals. I dutifully followed well-worn academic publishing advice: I wrote my best work and sent it to a top journal. And when the paper got inevitably rejected, I progressively sent it to lower-ranked journals on the prestige ladder. I peddled downwards until it finally got accepted. Or until I hit the bottom of the ladder. I mostly hit bottom. And then I would dig. Dig a pit to bury my best work in.

This well-meaning advice can be equated to “throw (something) at a wall to see what sticks.” The origins of this expression are unclear. It may work for cooking pasta, building mud huts, or crafting public relations campaigns. But I have tested this strategy on academic writing, and it does not work.

I now understand that there is a critical component of this expression that unfortunately remains unsaid. That is, prior to hurling something, it helps to get to know the wall and aim at a specific section of that wall. In the case of academic writing, it helps to aim at a specific journal prior to writing your best work for that journal.

Having a target journal is yet another piece of well-worn academic publishing advice. However, as in the case of throwing something at a wall, there is also much that is implicit in the advice that needs to be made explicit.

I have learned that having a target journal goes beyond knowing its name, aims, and scope. A journal is as nuanced as a cocktail party: it is attended by a particular group of people who engage in particular kinds of conversations. The number of management journals out there is an indication that the Academy is not one big cocktail party. It is a myriad of cocktail parties. The onus is on us to understand their peculiarities and decide which party and conversation we want to join. We then need to prepare a pitch to persuade the bouncers at the door that we have something new and interesting to take to the party.

A strong pitch offers a better chance of gaining entry to a party. I have found that it also saves me from soul-crushing rejection-for-lack-of-fit emails. As in the case of plotting the bones of your manuscript on paper, it helps to write down your pitch. And what better way to write out a pitch than through a cover letter?

These days, I draft a cover letter that pitches a manuscript to a very specific target journal before I sit down to write the paper. This may seem odd, especially since it is typically not the intention to send the letter out to the journal for purposes of getting editorial buy-in before writing the final product. It is important to note, however, that some journals do require a pitch and a proposal prior to submission of a full paper such as the Academy of Management Annals (https://journals.aom.org/journal/annals).

I have learned that writing a pitch before writing the manuscript helps me give a face to my prospective readers as I write. A pitch is about deeply acquainting myself with the people at the cocktail party. It helps me craft the insights in my head into shapes and forms that are recognizable to the people at a specific cocktail party.

The pitch (cover letter) is just as valuable to you as it is to the journal. It not only helps you write the paper but also serves as the ticket that you present at the door to the party.

Refer to Writing and Review Guide 3 for questions to help you pitch your paper.

Writing for JME

JME is a scholarly community of educators interested in advancing the craft of teaching and learning. A unique feature of the conversations in the journal is the diversity of their forms. Some cocktail parties have a very strict dress code (e.g., black tie: theoretical and empirical research articles only). The JME party, however, is inclusive in that it welcomes a range of dress codes or ways of expressing contributions to the scholarly conversations (Robinson & Leigh, 2023b).

You can come in black tie and discuss your empirical or theoretical work. You can also come in your explorer or archeological gear and discuss insights and findings from your literature review. Those in camp or outdoor gear who propose instructional innovations and revisit the effectiveness and relevance of existing ones are welcome. Finally, you can come in smart casual attire to discuss insights from an interview or dress down (like me) to share personal experiences as a management education scholar. This diversity makes for an inclusive and interesting party.

Knowing what and how you would like to contribute to the conversation will help you plot the bones of your paper and prepare to pitch it to the journal. Because JME accepts a wide range of contributions, it will be helpful to include a bit more information on the history and context of your paper (Robinson & Leigh, 2023a). If you would like more targeted guidance, the JME editors accept abstracts (not full papers) to review by email and in online Editor’s Office Hours (Leigh & Robinson, 2023).

Lesson 4: Position and Emphasize

If the cover letter (pitch) is the ticket that gets us through the door to the party, then the Introduction of a paper is the opening line to the conversation we attempt at the party. The Introduction is critical as it can mean the difference between mingling with others (which is the aim of knowledge creation) or standing alone in a corner (which is just sad).

I was surprised to find that the structure of the Introduction as recommended by scholars and editors was fairly straightforward. It captures the tacit rules of scholarly engagement in knowledge creation.

To appreciate how to structure the Introduction (and why it is structured that way), we must remind ourselves that knowledge is not a monolithic bloc: rather, it is made up of smaller pieces of knowledge clustered together to create a gestalt—a whole—that represents our understanding of the world. This gestalt, however, tends to be an illusion because our brain tends to fill in gaps. Our primary responsibility as scholars is to find those gaps and fill them through research.

Therefore, the purpose of the Introduction is to show others that we have found a gap in the tapestry of knowledge that we intend to stitch up in our paper. We show where we found the gap in the tapestry (thus positioning it in the body of existing knowledge) and why it is important to stitch up this gap (thus emphasizing the importance of our little bit of contributed insight).

Referring to Figure 2, a robust Introduction can be divided into distinct sections for a compelling scholarly conversation starter (Barney, 2018):

This structure acknowledges the scholars who have previously contributed to creating knowledge in this space, positions our unique contribution, and establishes the legitimacy and importance of the contribution.

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Figure 2.

Positioning and emphasizing contribution.

Refer to Writing and Review Guide 4 for questions to help you craft a strong Introduction.

Lesson 5: Anchor

I still remember the day when I had a meeting with one of my PhD mentors. He had just read a draft of my Literature Review chapter and was going to give me feedback. I was ready to receive praises for my very hard work, but I was floored when he matter-of-factly intoned, “A Literature Review is not a summary of the literature.” I had to rewrite it. Significantly.

In response to my stunned silence, he explained that a Literature Review starts with our burning question about a phenomenon. We then take this question to the corpus of existing knowledge about this phenomenon and challenge the literature to answer our question. If we find that the literature cannot satisfactorily answer our question, then we would have called attention the existence of that elusive gap in our tapestry of knowledge of the world.

Proving that the gap exists establishes the legitimacy of our research question. Filling in the gap with an answer to the question represents the contribution of our research project: the threads that we uniquely stitch onto the tapestry of knowledge. A robust Literature Review demonstrates how our contribution is connected to the stitches that other scholars have contributed to the tapestry. It recognizes and reinforces the social dimension of knowledge creation. It gives our contributions the intellectual heft and grounding of the ideas that have come before ours. Indeed, studies have shown that the most influential ideas are clearly contextualized in established knowledge (Fortunato et al., 2018).

Some papers that come to my associate editor desk have literature summaries, not Literature Reviews. The most unsatisfying ones simply enumerate the studies that have been done without as much as an explanation of the significance of that previous body of work to the study at hand. Many of the full papers that I wrote and that are gathering cyber dust are those with orphan insights: they do not have clear intellectual connections, genealogy and grounding. The insights themselves may have been interesting but they would have been stronger if I had argued and anchored them on the existing thought that informed it.

Referring to Figure 2, the Literature Review essentially expands the first two boxes in the structure of the Introduction. Writing and Review Guide 5 offers questions to help you structure your Literature Review.

Lesson 6: Align

Having argued for the legitimacy of our research question in the Literature Review, we now set out to answer it.

Much of the advice on methodology has focused on approaches to data collection and analysis (new and shiny methods), analytical robustness (ever-sophisticated ways to show that data will produce the same results regardless of our battering and hammering), and data integrity and transparency (demonstrating data “cleanliness”). These issues are certainly critical to advancing scholarship and central to upholding the robustness of the insights that we contribute to the world. I learned, however, that these are in fact methods that do not equate to methodology. It is methodology that gives methods meaning and significance.

In academic research, scholars are artisans gazing upon the knowledge tapestry before them. For example, when aiming to investigate the impact of social connections on learning in a management course (a research question), they make a decision on the kinds of insights they want to generate to fill that gap in the knowledge tapestry. They also need to decide on an overall approach to arrive at those insights. Do they want to offer insights on the relationship between the breadth and diversity of friendships across the university on student learning? In this case, they may opt to analyze the university-wide social network cultivated by students enrolled in a management program. Alternatively, do they want to offer insights on the relationship between the quality of the student relationships (friendship circles versus study groups) on learning? In this case, they may opt to do in-depth interviews on social versus study relationships among students enrolled in a management course.

In this example, social network analysis and in-depth interviews are methods. However, the decision to undertake one or the other is a methodological one and is dependent on the research question and the kind of insights the scholar aims to contribute.

The choice of method answers a “what” question, but the choice of research approach or methodology answers broader and more fundamental questions. These are important questions of why that method was selected (alignment with the research question), on whom the method is employed (sample), how the data for that method is gathered (to include validity and reliability assurance techniques) and how the data is analyzed (to include analysis and robustness assurance techniques), and how the findings answer the research question (relevance; Andiappan & Wan, 2020).

I learned that if the Literature Review justifies that a knowledge gap exists, then the Methodology justifies that the overall research approach (sample, methods, data type, and analysis) is relevant to the research question. It also assures the validity, reliability, and credibility of the insights generated.

Most Methodology sections typically answer questions on the robustness of research methods. However, the more fundamental questions of relevance, validity and reliability are typically overlooked. We must answer these critical questions as they assure other scholars in the community that the stitches we contribute do belong to that particular section of the tapestry (thereby contributing to a richer and coherent picture of the world). It also assures other artisans that the stitches we contribute are of sufficient quality such that they can be combined with existing stitches to result in a more durable and elegant knowledge tapestry.

Writing and Review Guide 6 offers questions to help you write your Methodology.

Writing for JME

There is a sea of scholarly work on management education in JME and elsewhere. And there are oceans of scholarly work out there on higher education in various fields from archeology to zoology. This range is both a boon and bane to the management education scholar aiming to contribute to JME. The journal is inclusive in educational theory framing, scholarly approaches and—as the discussion in the section on Externalization underscores—in the form of scholarly contributions.

We must, however, acknowledge the challenges that the big JME tent poses. On the one hand, there is significant opportunity to draw from frames and practices in other fields to enrich our own. On the other hand, there are considerable challenges to positioning, anchoring, and aligning our work so that we clearly bring out the novelty of our contributions to the tapestry of management education knowledge.

Lesson 7: Advance

It is easy to lull ourselves into believing that presenting our findings signals the last stop in our scholarly journey, given that our insights cannot immediately find themselves in practice. Unfortunately, it is this thinking that is behind tired and repetitive Discussion sections. It blinds us to the true purpose of the Discussion, leading us to underappreciate, underestimate and underutilize the powerful opportunity that lies at the tips of our fingers hovering over the keyboard.

I have learned that the Discussion is not a summary of the research project and its results. That is what the Findings (or Results) section is for. Having contributed stitches to filling a gap in the tapestry of knowledge, the Discussion is where we invite other scholars to take a step back and view the tapestry anew. The Discussion is less about the stitches themselves but more about how the tapestry has changed on account of our stitches.

In this critical section, we must first articulate the answer to our research question (I am embarrassed to say that I have forgotten to do this in many of my papers). We then explain how our answer—our discovery—transforms and advances the way we view and understand the phenomenon that we investigated. I now understand that this is what it means to articulate a contribution to theory. And while our contribution may not as yet have found itself embedded in practice, we are responsible for describing a world that could be if this contribution were successfully internalized. Our Discussion offers a glimpse into the possibilities of advancement in practice, scholarship, and policy: how our work changes our view of the world and the ways to live in it.

If the Literature Review justifies the existence a knowledge gap and the Methodology justifies the relevance and robustness of the overall research approach, then the Discussion justifies the value of our contribution.

Writing and Review Guide 7 offers questions to help you write your Discussion.

Writing for JME

This takes us back full circle to the knowledge creation aim of JME outlined above in the Socialization phase of our research. The journal’s purpose is to advance the practice and scholarship of teaching and learning among management educators in the classroom. Therefore, the Discussion is where we shine a light on how our work transforms what we know about teaching and learning in management, how it challenges and transforms the frontiers of what we do in the classroom, and how it transforms our impact as management educators.

Lesson 8: Sense-Check

And here at last we have a full manuscript in hand. When I get to this stage, I find myself eager to tear through a journal’s submission system to get to that “submit” button buried underneath those manuscript information pages. In this moment of intellectual euphoria, I have found it best to step as hard as I can on the brakes.

It is useful to breathe, bring our heart rate down and recall the social character of knowledge creation. While our written draft effectively converses with other scholars, the scholars whose work we cite, rebut, and extend are not in the room where our writing happens. The scholarly conversation has been done asynchronously throughout the writing process. However, there is much value to having conversations of the synchronous, real time, and in-person kind.

All of us have blind spots that can be quickly highlighted and addressed through these synchronous collegial discussions. Seeking friendly feedback from other scholars will go a long way in giving the manuscript a further polish. I have learned to embrace brown bags, seminars, conferences, manuscript development workshops, or a combination of formal and informal review opportunities to tighten the focus, structure, and prose of a final draft.

Before uploading that manuscript to a journal submission system, I have further found it helpful to let the paper rest or “cool.” This consistent advice comes from different kinds of writers (academics, novelists, and journalists). Resting a piece of written work gives our brain some distance from the writing process so that it can read a manuscript with a reader’s eyes.

A reader’s fresh eyes allow us to see both small and glaring lapses in a written piece. More importantly, they allow us to critically assess if all the elements of the paper come together coherently. This is the time to dispassionately evaluate the manuscript’s ability to clearly guide the reader through the knowledge creation journey.

A simple way to do this would be to use the prompts in our Writing and Review Guides to check if each section in the draft effectively addresses the relevant guide questions. When serving as a reviewer for journals or conferences, we can also use the same Guides to structure our feedback to authors.

Figure 3 offers a visual representation of how the different elements of a conventional academic manuscript hang together. When you are satisfied with how the elements of your paper line up, it is time to take another deep breath and calmly click “submit.”

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Figure 3.

Sense-checking.

Clicking “submit” hands over our ticket and prospective cocktail party contribution to the bouncers at the door. The review process is by far the most unnerving nail-biting phase of sense-checking. The process may feel like an interrogation where beast-like bouncers appear intent to rip us and our manuscript apart (this is the subject of a whole new essay). Setting aside (for now) the possibility of post-traumatic review stress, engaging in a developmental process is crucial in fine-tuning the positioning and plot of our paper. Responsible editors and reviewers can carry the brightest torches to shine a light on the remaining gaps in our thinking and in the communication of our thinking. In productively conversing with us through the review process, they coax our voices out in sections of our paper where we may have been unconsciously mute.

The result of a constructive sense-checking process is a manuscript ready to go out and contribute a stitch to the tapestry of knowledge created by a community of scholarly weavers through the ages.

Figure 4 embeds my seven lessons in academic publishing within the knowledge creation framework of Nonaka and Toyama (2003).

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Figure 4.

Idea to ink: lessons in academic knowledge creation.