[Ict4d] FW: Food for thought: fake journals

[Wallace Chigona]

Forwarded from Prof Ngwenyama (responding to the email forwarded by Melissa)

From: Ojelanki Ngwenyama
Sent: 16 May 2017 01:40 AM
To: Wallace Chigona <wallace.chigona at uct.ac.za>; inf-lecturers-l at lists.uct.ac.za
Subject: RE: [Ict4d] Food for thought: fake journals

Dear Colleagues;

The pressure to publish papers annually is stressful and can often lead to expedient decisions which can be very costly in the long run. One can get caught in the net of instant publications that turn out to be valueless when seeking promotion and applying research grants or exchange fellowships offered by international organizations.

When I was an assistant professor at University of Michigan many years ago a senior professor Michael Cohen advised me always to first submit my papers to the best journal, and only if I get a outright reject to consider a lower level journal. His reasoning is that one has a finite amount of energy and ideas during one's career, and you should try to maximize your return. He also told me that a single journal article could make one's career. And he was correct about that. When I met him in 1990 he was a full professor with a single seminal journal article: "Cohen, M. D., March, J. G., & Olsen, J. P. (1972). A garbage can model of organizational choice. Administrative science quarterly, 1-25." The few other articles had no citations.

Now I am fully aware that one has to 'feed the crocodiles, less we are eaten by them'. An appropriate strategy for the times and conditions we now face is 'priming' and 'hedging'. Since the review cycle takes 2-3 years to publish in the top journals, early in one's career it is necessary to prime the pipeline to top journals with about 2 articles each year, while you are submitting 1 article to a journal at the next lower level (hedging). If you get an outright reject from one of the top journals: (a) use the reviews to revise the paper then submit to a lower level journal; and (b) use the reviews to inform what you will change when writing the next paper for top journal submissions next year.

As an associate editor of EJIS I know that we get more than 100 submissions each month; when I was on the MISQ editorial board the count each month was around 300 submission. Many papers get a desk level rejected due to bad writing and not following closely the submission requirements. But the simple truth is that if you don't submit to top journals you will never publish in top journals and never know if you have the competence to publish in top journals.

This brings me to another important point; you cannot publish in a journal if you have no idea of the culture of the journal. You must understand the types of research and the genre of articles they give preference to. Early in my career I spent much time studying the genre of writing and the structure or argumentation in the top IS journals. I studied them just as I studied any other subject matter, to understand the nuances. Good papers are good because the authors put a lot of effort into designing them; yes I mean designing them. Examine carefully a set of papers of EJIS, MISQ, ISR, ISJ and you will start to understand that there is a preferred argument structure.

Please understand that earning your PhD is not the end of the road, it is the beginning of the journey into the scientific life. And it is hoped that since you have now learned how the rudiments of doing research, you will put in the effort to become an expert at doing research and telling others what you have discovered. A second strategy for furthering the development of your competence is collaboration with scholars who are publishing in top journals. Seek them out and as to work with them.

Finally an important caveat: When considering journals and conferences for submission make sure that they are listed in:

Institute for Scientific Information  http://isithomsonreuters.org/
https://apps.webofknowledge.com/WOS_GeneralSearch_input.do?product=WOS&search_mode=GeneralSearch&SID=2Di3tLy6CftUEp4KTZD&preferencesSaved=

Scopus
https://www.elsevier.com/solutions/scopus

https://blog.scopus.com/posts/titles-indexed-in-scopus-check-before-you-publish

Of course there is the Australian business dean's, but ISI is the definitive source.

Always love
Ojelanki


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