I went to some paper writing workshops last year.
The following are my tided up notes, along with my own thoughts, to share with
you guys. I believe they are more than useful for any assignment.
Think
about your contribution
A common reason for rejection of a paper is lack of
a solid theoretical contribution. Our contribution might be low, overly narrow,
not very surprising, or of unclear importance. Therefore, it is essential to
plan at the very earliest stage, i.e., we need to think about ways to enhance
the potential of our contribution. There are six factors associated with most
significant research project:
1. Activity
(frequent interaction)
2. Convergence
(several activities or interest converge at the same time)
3. Intuition
(importance is guided by intuition and feelings rather than by logical
analysis)
4. Theory
(want to explain to clarify)
5. Real
world / Relevance (ideas are tangible and useful to solve a real word problem)
6. Personal
commitment and motivation
In the introduction, we need to articulate the
significance of our research project. We need to frame and tell an interesting
story to keep the reviewer reading our work. If the reviewer is turned off by a
paper in the first few pages or so, i.e., they do not believe an interesting
story is in the paper, they are more likely to look for problems with the rest
of the paper. On the contrary, if they like the basic idea, they are more
likely to look for ways to improve the paper.
Join
the conversation / Literature review
At the beginning of each research venture, we need
to ask ourselves four questions, which are useful for getting a significant
research topic as well as narrowing down while keeping sufficient coverage of
the literature to review.
1. Which
conversation should I participate in?
2. Who
are the most important conversant?
3. What
are these scholars talking about now?
4. What
are the most interesting things I can add to the conversation? (Rynes)
Literature review is a critical element in a
research project. It tells the on-going argument in your research area, which
helps to identify the gap in the literature. I am pretty sure that all you guys
know what a literature review is about and what should be included it, so to
save your time, I will just outline some tips for reading the literature (from
Steven from Academic Skills & Learning Centre):
Suppose your topic is concentrated on A, B, and C (e.g.
how A in B is affected C). When you are reading papers, draw a diagram as
follows to help you categorise papers into their most relevant areas and find
the most relevant papers to your research topic:
For me, it is a great tip. Let me share with you my
experience. During the last 4 weeks, I was reading papers on taxation on
dividend and the imputation system, which are from economics, finance, as well
as accounting. Obviously I am an accounting person and economics and finance
just piss me off. At the beginning, I tried my best to understand every piece
in those economics and finance papers, and I ended up giving up and feeling
exhausted and unconfident (I even left some paper I found relevant but unread).
Before starting to write a literature review on this area, I was thinking over
and over again, trying to get things organised (they looked like a mess) and
coherent. As you can imagine, I failed again and felt even worse. So I decided
to write straight away as the assignment due date was approaching. Suddenly, I recalled
the three-circle diagram. I drew one at the general level, and several at more
detailed levels. Things then became much clearer and I quickly finished the
unread papers because I knew what I was looking for.
So, for those who are still struggling on organising
their literature reviews or finding a research topic, this is really a great
tip.
Writing
and thinking
Another frequently mentioned tip is writing: write
while reading, write while thinking, and write while you do not know what to
write.
It is easy to fall asleep when reading a paper,
especially those who are not interesting to you. So, the best way to keep you
awake and continuously thinking is to take notes while reading. Taking notes
is, however, different from highlighting. Merely highlighting stuff is not
sufficient. It may even make you feel lost among so many ‘important’ things,
and even worse, make your paper nothing but a colourful picture.
There are a number to things to record while
reading:
·
The purpose of the study
·
The theoretical framework
·
Methodology
·
Your critical response (e.g. ‘Great for
my research!!!’, or ‘this is also mentioned in XXX’)
·
Particular content (possibly)
It is also a good idea to create an outline of the
paper being read, if time allows.
Further, writing helps to clarify thinking.
Sometimes, you may think that your idea is already perfect (in your mind), but
when you start to write it down, many flaws and other thoughts will appear. You
are more engaged and more active when writing. Like Venki (an IS professor in
ANU) said, the real ‘aha’ experience comes when you are writing. And this is
also mentioned by Kerry for thousands of times (it is not a repeat but an
emphasis (he is not that old and is still in his prime)).
Personally, I like creating PowerPoint slides as if
I were going to present my research. Compared to writing, creating slides makes
me to try harder to sell my story and convince others. Moreover, the low of
logic is also much better.
