Prelims

Half Title Page

ACADEMIC RESEARCH, PUBLISHING AND WRITING

Endorsement Page

This essential book for researchers, students, and policymakers contains seven chapters from Professor John Dumay on developing critical research, writing, and publishing strategy. It is writing in a storytelling style using the author’s experience as to how he developed the skills to be an excellent publisher of scholarly work in journal articles, book chapters, books, and the media. This book testifies that writing scholarly work is an art form to be experienced and learned.

—James Guthrie, Macquarie University, Australia

We can all learn from this book. Follow even a fraction of John Dumay’s advice and you’ll increase your chances of publishing more academic articles that are more engaging and easier to digest by your intended audience. Your papers will be cited more, and you’ll have fun while writing them. This book should be required reading for all postgraduate research students and early career scholars, and the rest of us should re-read it every so often to ensure we stick to the success formula John advocates.

—Charl de Villiers, University of Auckland, New Zealand

Title Page

ACADEMIC RESEARCH, PUBLISHING AND WRITING

Critical Thinking and Strategies for Business Scholars

BY

DR JOHN DUMAY

Macquarie University, Australia

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Emerald Publishing, Floor 5, Northspring, 21-23 Wellington Street, Leeds LS1 4DL.

First edition 2024

Copyright © 2024 Emerald Publishing Limited.

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No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters’ suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-80071-291-1 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-80071-288-1 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-80071-290-4 (Epub)

Dedication

To my darling wife, Jenny, thanks for your patience.

Contents

List of Figures and Tables

Preface

Helen Sword

I vividly remember the first time I met John Dumay. I had been invited to facilitate an academic writing workshop for early career lecturers at the University of Sydney. The topic was ‘Stylish Academic Writing’ (echoing the title of the book I was working on at the time) (Sword, 2012), and I was scanning the room to check how things were going.

I had just asked the workshop participants to tell me what the phrase stylish academic writing means to them, and they had responded with the same list of attributes that I’ve heard hundreds of times from researchers across many different disciplines, countries, and contexts. Stylish academic writers, they told me, express themselves with energy, elegance, and flair. They convey complex information using carefully crafted, accessible language. They write like human beings communicating with other human beings, not like robots on Mars.

Whenever I’m teaching or presenting, I try to find at least one person in the room who nods and smiles at everything I say. I call that person ‘The Cheerleader’; they make me feel supported and heard, even when the going gets tough. If I’m unsure whether my message is getting through, I look to the Cheerleader for affirmation. And when I feel the energy in the room starting to drop, a quick glance at my bright-eyed Cheerleader inspires me to redouble my efforts to connect.

As I wrote the words ‘engaging’ and ‘lively’ and ‘jargon-free’ on the whiteboard, I was pleased to see most of the workshop participants nodding in vigorous agreement – a whole room full of Cheerleaders. But then I spotted John across the room, frowning. Or maybe he was actually scowling? Either way, it didn’t look good. Even while I rely on the Cheerleader’s smiles for encouragement, I always keep an eye out for anyone who looks bored, confused, or, worst of all, sceptical. I call that person The Doubter – someone whose negative energy I must defuse before it infects the rest of the room.

At the next opportunity, I wandered over to John’s table for a chat. Over the years, I’ve developed a pretty effective technique for dealing with the Doubters. First, I disarm them by listening to their grumbles and enthusiastically agreeing with them: ‘That’s a great point, John!’ Then I air their concerns to the rest of the room: for example, ‘John here has pointed out that scholars who write in a personal voice often end up getting shut down by conservative editors and peer reviewers. John, that’s so true!’ Finally, I execute a deft twist to transform the Doubter into an ally: ‘John, what strategies do you use for pushing through that kind of resistance? I’ll bet that everyone here would love to hear about them!’

But John, as it turned out, wasn’t frowning because he disagreed with me. On the contrary – when I asked him how things were going, he told me that he had just experienced a kind of stylistic epiphany, and he was annoyed that it had taken him so long to see the light. Since leaving behind his business career to pursue a PhD in Accounting and Finance, he had been trained to produce the same kind of wordy, wooden, impersonal academic prose that filled most of the journals in his discipline. But now, he realised that the researchers he most admired were ‘stylish academic writers’ who wrote in the kind of lively, engaging mode I was encouraging. ‘They use first person pronouns, they play with metaphor, they tell stories’, John told me. ‘That’s how I want to write too – but I’ve never been taught how. If anything, I’ve been actively discouraged from writing that way!’

Thus began a long and fruitful academic friendship, as John set about learning out how to write like a human being, while I conducted research, published books, and developed online tools designed to empower writers like him. From time to time, John would get in touch to ask me a question, invite me to speak at a conference, or let me know about a new article. Eventually, I invited him to be interviewed for my book Air & Light & Time & Space: How Successful Academics Write (Sword, 2017). The resulting profile is worth printing in full:

‘I don’t think I’m there yet, but I’m certainly working on it’. Reading through this book, I’m struck once again by John’s relentless commitment to learning. A decade and a half after that writing workshop in Sydney, he is now a full professor with an impressive publication record, including several articles about writing and publication. But he didn’t become a successful academic writer merely through instinct or osmosis. He got there by emulating the best writers he could find, by challenging his own assumptions, and by asking the same question over and over again: ‘How can I change and improve it?’

Who better, then, to write a book about the scholarly strategies that he has used to achieve such success? John practices what he preaches: you’ll find here relevant anecdotes, playful metaphors, meticulously crafted sentences, and vivid storytelling. Best of all, as you shift outside your comfort zone into the world of stylish academic writing – a place still beset by grumpy Doubters – you can be assured that you’ll have a supportive Cheerleader in your corner.

Acknowledgements

When considering who to acknowledge, it is impossible to name everyone who influenced my career. To my students, colleagues, lecturers, professors, and mentors and my over 100 co-authors, I sincerely thank you. Each of you has influenced my academic career and is an important part of the journey. However, a few people deserve a notable mention. Prof James Guthrie for being a long-term mentor and friend. Prof Lee Parker, thank you for teaching me qualitative research methods all those years ago. Prof Helen Sword, thank you for inspiring me to write with my own voice rather than try to mimic others. Prof Charl de Villiers, thank you for joining me on the journey to understand the recipe of high-quality academic writing. And lastly, to two wonderful proofreaders, Fiona Crawford and Jemima de Vries, your guidance throughout my career has helped and continues to teach me to be a better writer.

Introduction

This book is about developing a critical research, writing, and publishing strategy. Using my experience, I outline the specific skills that I believe are essential for academic researchers in the social sciences, and particularly business studies, to develop and execute a personal strategy to achieve their goals and advance their careers.

This book stems from lectures I have been giving for over a decade. These lectures originated during my time as a visiting scholar in Italy in 2011, where many business academics were eager to learn about publishing in prestigious English language academic journals. The pressure to publish frequently and make a significant impact is a global phenomenon known as the ‘publish or perish’ pandemic. This pressure is particularly prevalent in the social sciences, especially within business. The ability to publish regularly and with influence is crucial for achieving academic success and building an academic career.

Throughout my academic journey, I have honed my writing abilities by seeking guidance from mentors, studying examples of successful writing (de Villiers & Dumay, 2013, 2014), cultivating critical thinking and analysis skills, and striving to comprehend the impact of research. However, I have noticed that many of my colleagues overlook or lack these essential skills when conducting and documenting their academic research. I, too, was once in this same position back at the beginning of my career.

Nevertheless, I always approach my research with a well-defined strategy in mind. This strategy includes determining the research topic, evaluating its potential impact, identifying suitable publishing platforms, tailoring the writing style to the target audience, and devising methods to promote the research and get citations after publication. By formulating a strategy before commencing their research, academics can enhance their chances of publishing in reputable outlets and thus thrive in the demanding ‘publish or perish’ environment.

The ‘publish or perish’ pandemic continues to evolve in academia. In response, academics are under increasing pressure to publish now rather than later. Issues such as open-access publishing, predatory journals and research impact are becoming increasingly tricky pathways and even minefields to navigate. An inexperienced researcher could easily take the wrong step and damage their career forever. As a result, they need a clear and concise guide on navigating the minefields and developing survival skills. Thus, I use my experience from navigating the ladder of success to outline academic research, publishing and writing strategies that deal with the current ‘publish or perish’ world. The book has seven chapters that I summarise below.

Chapter 1: Critical Thinking and the IDEALS Framework

This chapter introduces critical thinking and the IDEALS framework as two core foundations of my approach to academic writing. Critical thinking is essential to research and writing because it causes us to question existing knowledge in a way that allows us to create new knowledge. For this reason, critical thinking is a fundamental part of the IDEALS framework. I teach these skills and this writing framework to my students because, with these tools, they are more likely to produce quality research outcomes and, in turn, get better grades. Moreover, academic authors who apply critical thinking and the IDEALS framework can produce high-quality research suitable for publication in the best academic journals.

Chapter 2: Becoming a Critical Scholar

The first step in becoming a critical scholar is understanding how one’s beliefs, education, environment, and experiences shape oneself as an academic and a researcher. It is a myth that research in the social sciences can be unbiased; what is true is that we all bring our biases to research. As such, this chapter provides a journey of self-analysis from personal recognition to pragmatism to understanding how we can leverage our beliefs to develop research that impacts business, the environment and society. This chapter also explores the different stages of critical research. Using The Chocolate Scorecard as an example project, it introduces the link between critical research and solving wicked problems.

Chapter 3: Developing a Publishing Strategy

In this chapter, I outline that having specific strategies about what, how, and where to publish is critical to success. In this chapter, I explore strategy and engineering before dispelling some academic myths, dealing with several issues stemming from the ‘publish or perish’ problem, and negotiating the minefield of academic journals and open-access publishing. I then explore how to plan for impact by examining how you can critically participate in academic debates, co-authorship, and testing the waters with your ideas. Armed with this knowledge, you will better understand how to strategically approach academic research, design your research to make an impact and formulate firmer ideas of where to publish your papers.

Chapter 4: Undertaking a Critical Literature Review

The core to developing any research is the literature review. Hence, this chapter explores different types of literature reviews, their purposes and epistemology, and how each is critical in different ways. I build on the IDEALS framework and critical scholarship to develop guidelines for undertaking a critical literature review. I also demonstrate how researchers should link academic literature to practice and current issues. I then link the literature review process to developing a single informed research question or problem important to academia and society.

Chapter 5: Designing Research for Reliability, Validity, and Generalisations

The previous chapter focuses on identifying a research question or problem, whereas this chapter discusses designing your research for reliability, validity, and generalisation. I review the case study as a methodology and primary model for building reliability and validity in social science research. Through these tools, researchers can avoid criticism while presenting research that tells a story based on multiple data sources. I then address the generalisation controversy in qualitative research and the fallacy that qualitative researchers must apologise for not generalising their research. I demonstrate why such an apology is not needed.

Chapter 6: Writing Structure Using Reasoning and IDEALS

This chapter presents a basic recipe for structuring an academic article in the social sciences. I developed this recipe by researching the attributes of articles published in highly-ranked accounting journals. With this recipe in hand, I then demonstrate how different sections rely on different forms of reasoning, followed by a demonstration of how to write argumentative paragraphs, which are the core means of expressing critical research.

Chapter 7: Polishing the Diamond

This chapter outlines how to write concisely and clearly. I explore several tools to increase your writing productivity, diagnose your writing, help reduce word counts, improve your grammar and punctuation, and increase your writing confidence. I also discuss how artificial intelligence can assist the academic research process and some of its dangers. Last, I discuss why you should have someone proofread all your writing before submitting the paper to a journal for review. Overall, you will learn how to take your ideas, a rough diamond, and apply tools to polish the diamond, which will hopefully shine as a published star.

Conclusion

I hope you enjoy reading the book as much as I enjoyed writing it. I purposely kept the chapters as short as possible because I believe writing clearly and concisely is a hallmark of good academic writing and my success. Learning the art and craft of academic writing is taking me on a journey to places that I never imagined and will continue to take me, and hopefully you, further than we ever imagined.