An Inductive Exploration of Manuscript Quality and Publication Success in Small Research Teams

The Characteristics of Quality Scholarly Submissions

“…Whereas we did not find that previously presenting a paper at a conference was associated with how the paper fared at JOM, JBP data did reveal a significant, positive association between conference presentations and paper success (Berka et al, in press). Despite our null finding, we continue to see value in this practice, especially relative to the practice of obtaining a friendly review.…”

“…As such, addressing a friendly reviewer’s concerns might spark additional concerns of a journal reviewer. Berka, Olien, Rogelberg, Rupp, and Thornton (in press) also bring up the fact that since friendly reviewers are not anonymous, friendly reviewers may “hold back” on their criticism in order to maintain positive relationships, which would limit the developmental value of this exercise. Combined, these issues would call into question the utility of the friendly review process, at least among more expert author teams and for papers that are relatively more compelling theoretically and methodologically.…”

“…Paper titles and author names were removed immediately upon merging the journal- and author-sourced databases. Descriptive results pertaining to Journal of Business and Psychology ( JBP ) authors/papers is reported by Berka, Olien, Rogelberg, Rupp, and Thornton (in press).…”

Shared Authentic Leadership in Research Teams: Testing a Multiple Mediation Model

“…Author teams should be cautious about relying on their own judgment as a leading indicator of future publication success, and instead invite critical feedback from subject matter experts who are not on the author team ( Skilton & Dooley, 2010 ). However, it is important that author teams select reviewers who are indeed critical; otherwise, teams may end up with positively biased feedback that may do more harm than good (see Berka et al, 2014 ). As the design of a research study cannot be altered once the data have been collected, it seems important to receive such critical feedback early in the research process, instead of when a manuscript summarizing the findings is available.…”

“…We tested our hypotheses on author teams of scientific articles in peer-reviewed management journals (see Berka, Olien, Rogelberg, Rupp, & Thornton, 2014; Rupp, Thornton, Rogelberg, Olien, & Berka, 2014). We selected a sample of journals representative of the quality of research done in management science; specifically, we selected journals based on their classification in the 2012 Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) under the category of management/business.…”