March 14, 2013

Tips on publishing from ECRQ editor

Today the School of Teacher Education research committee invited Professor Adam Winsler, editor of Early Childhood Research Quarterly to present a workshop titled:  "Publishing and reviewing in top-flight peer-reviewed journals: A mentoring workshop for early-career (and seasoned researchers)". The workshop was attended by students and academics who learned a lot of information and strategies for publishing in high quality journals. Here are  Adam's top 10 tips for why quantitative and qualitative papers don't get published in ECRQ (and other journals):
"1. Not enough methodological detail or clarity provided 
2. No clear focused, specific, research questions/goals articulated
3. Literature review doesn’t set up the questions/hypotheses
4. Problems with spelling, grammar, writing, English, and APA style
5. No policy/educational/practice implications given
6. Conclusions don’t follow from the data (could have made the points in the discussion without doing the study)
7. Contribution to the literature unclear
8. Bad fit between research goals and method/design/analysis
9. Poor fit between content of paper and scope of journal
10. Poor data analyses or design" (Winsler, 2013)