EFFICIENT PLANNING FOR EFFECTIVE

RESEARCH & PUBLICATION

Md. Mahmudul Alam, Ph.D.

Senior Research Fellow, Economic and Financial Policy Institute (ECOFI)
Associate Professor, School of Economics, Finance & Banking (SEFB)
Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM)
Email: rony000@gmail.com , mahmudul@uum.edu.my
Website: UUM-Expert; SCOPUS; WoS; GScholar; ResGate; SSRN; RePEc;
Academia; MFPC; ADScientificIndex; Youtube; LinkedIn; Facebook; Twitter

Universitas Brawijaya
Malang, Indonesia
18 December 2023
 What is the position of publication in our life?

• Planning – objective & priority setup (success)

• Planning – Time management & allocation

– Personal, spiritual, family, society, job

– Job - administrative, teaching & grading,

supervision, project, seeking new grant, article
writing, conference, publication

– Publication – why do we publish or what is

our motivation for publication?

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What is the motivation for publication?
• Your motivations for publication is the most important matter to
determine your success! Why do you need publication? Where
will you use the publication? Who is your target audience? Who
will be benefited from the publication?
• To fulfil Job requirement: Job requirements like
promotions, bonus, KPI, degree requirement, university
reputation, and incentive, etc.
• To serve scientific community: Sharing knowledge &
invention, creating legacy, become famous, greater
recognition among peers, visibility
• To serve private for money: Serving donor, serving
industry, consultancy for agency, etc.
• To serve society: Action work, public benefits, social
benefit, policy benefit, serving community, serving religion,
personal satisfaction
Choice vs. priority
• Planning - short run vs long run
• Planning – quantity vs quality
• Planning – publication vs knowledge development
• Planning – popular topic vs self actualization
• Planning – project/ research vs publication
• Planning – publication vs real life impact
• Planning – individual work vs teamwork
• Planning – existing team vs exploring new team
• Planning – current vs future job requirements
• Planning – diversified vs focused area
• Planning – innovative vs. clerical job
• Planning – self centric vs open minded
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Know the barriers of publication

– Lack of motivation: No incentive, Lack of peer support,

Lack of feedback
– Difficult to start: No deadlines make it easy to delay, no
idea where to start or what to do
– Difficult Process: What, Where and How to publish, to
complete revision requests, Rejection of manuscript
– Tyranny of the immediacy : Long wait between
submission, acceptance and publication
– “Publish or Perish” or “Publish & Perish”– This is not
just about You & I

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Accumulate resources & plan accordingly
• Everyone is in different stage of maturity and experiences of
publication.
• So, without looking about others or comparing yourself to
others-
– Know - how do you work ?
– Know - what do you want?
– Know - what is your capacity and resources?
– Think – how can you utilize your resources?
– Plan – how to improve your existing works?
• Get ideas from other works but never ever compare with
others which will make you demotivated

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Take realistic action plan
• Make a holistic plan about how to include all of the available
resources – students, class & assignments, supervision &
examiner, alumni, colleagues, institution/ job, library/
database, connection/ network, online visibility/ lecture,
reputation, professional forum & membership, etc.
• Make Time & make it a habit —Excellent approach is to
write regularly, write half a page everyday, and don’t finish
the last sentence
• Think more than writing, think continuously about the issue
• Don’t try to boil down your whole research into one article
• Rough is better than nothing; one can not edit “nothing”
• Don’t rush, there is no shortcut in success !!!

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Setup appropriate timelines

• Timelines are established for each phase of the article

production.
• Deadlines must be seen as immutable—the same as grant
and conference abstract deadlines.
• All authors on the article must adhere to timeline.
• Self monitoring must occur continuously
• Follow 21-Days Theory to make it a habit
• Writing for publication is never a JOB, have passion, have
fun, enjoy the result

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Design your research properly
• Designing the work is the key to get maximum success
therefore spend huge time for designing
• Design your research to get maximum output from a single
work
• If your designing is good, rest of the works is just a routine job
that anyone (students/ RA) can continue
• Look different dimension of a single issue
• Very specific in data collection & collect as much as possible
but only the useful data
• Design the content of each article when initially design the full
work
• Work on a single issue but diversify it linkage with as many
topics as possible so that you will gain many publications,
project grants, expertise, citation, and continuity of works 10
Example of designing research
• Suppose you want works on Hotel & Tourism. Check few
related high impact journals and find out all the dimensions
of works, such as
Halal/ non-halal hotel, medium/large hotel, city/island hotel,
hotel quality service model, hotel energy use model, green
hotel management model, green procurement model,
technology use model, waste management model, pollution
model, women involvement, disaster management model,
emergency management model, SME model, supply chain
model, food quality model, ethical approach, customer
satisfactions model, event management model, marketing
policies, loyalty model, etc., related to hotel issue that are
applicable in our study.

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Example of designing research Cont..

• If you just work on the core/common areas, very difficult to

publish in top journal.
• Diversity with innovative & emerging topics such as,
– climate change impacts on the island hotel business and the
way of adaptation, the impact of technology usage on the
hotel business and customer satisfaction, the performance
of green procurement of hotel, the green waste
management practices of hotels, the way to gain energy use
efficiency from hotel customer, etc

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Example of designing research Cont..

• As a teacher, we have developed individual experiences

about student's development. Therefore, it is our
responsibility to develop the Education field on our
teaching area.
• It will be a very good, reliable, time & cost effective, and
easy work. Our students can make the survey in the
classroom and the data will be reliable and maybe they can
do our job if consider as course assignment.
• As a Finance teacher, anyone can develop a questionnaire
with many dimensions to make survey-based works on
finance education, such as
– students, gender, age, seniority, ethnicity, academic
discipline wise finance topic (investment, loan management,
etc) understanding and performance, etc.
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Example of designing research Cont..

• Many good Journals are also available in this Education area,

such as
- Journal of Behavioral Finance, Academy of Management
Learning and Education, Journal of Real Estate Finance and
Economics, Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Economics of
Education Review, Gender and Education, Higher Education:
the international journal of higher education research, Issues
in Accounting Education, Studies in Higher Education,
Advances in Financial Education, Decision Sciences Journal
of Innovative Education, Education Economics, Higher
Education Quarterly, Journal of Accounting Education,
Journal of Financial Education, Journal of Higher Education,
The Journal of Economic Education, Accounting Educators'
Journal, Journal of Business Education, etc.
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Example of designing research Cont..

• At the beginning of COVID-19, I thought to work on it.

• Impact in different sectors – tourism, transportation, financial
markets, sports, education, security, environment, business,
supply chain, psychology, home violence, etc.
• Looked the impacts of previous pandemics – SARS, MARS,
H1N1, EVALI, etc.
• I discussed with people who is working in these areas and try
to form a team for each article
• I assigned my students to start working on this issue
• Finally, got 3 projects and published 4 articles (sport, security,
stock market, emission), but some articles are died in the
middle, some are unpublishable due obsolete idea or new data
available, some are under review…
• Now time to look Post-COVID-19 Era 15
 How to select a research topic?
▪ Future job market demand
▪ Availability of scholarship/ project/ fund/ grants
▪ Easy, availability of expertise, and within capacity
▪ Select multidisciplinary, innovative, narrow focus, publishable
topic
▪ Relate to the applied side rather than focusing on the mainstream
discipline
▪ Relate your past study or interested area
▪ Select few alternative topics
▪ Determine the future value of the topic
 What are the direction of future research?
▪ See Elsevier Report on “What will the world of research look
like 10 years from now?”
▪ China is coming in the leading role for funding, university
ranking, research; and already able to attract top researchers
and make a big syndicate among the top journals !
▪ Research and academia is going to more technology
oriented. Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, online
teaching, etc. will be leading and way to disseminate service
▪ Publications are more open source oriented, but Funder are
more from private sources.
▪ So, make future focus by linking/working/collaborating with
China, technology-oriented work, and link with industry and
try to publish in open sources.
Publication is not a level playing field
• Discipline is a big matter for good publications.
• Normally science, medical, engineering has very high impact
factor journals and many journals.
• Social science, business, economics has very few journals and
also very low impact factor journals.
• Some discipline has no indexed journals at all.
• Better to work on multidisciplinary to link with science and
social science to get a chance in high impact factor science
journals.
• But don’t publish completely outside of your discipline !
• Knowledge & publication are different matters.
• Knowledge is long run and publication is short run issue.
• Good contribution in knowledge will give long run benefits
and bring real prestige.
Know the ethics, reality and gray Areas
• Is there any syndicate in the publication process?
• Is there any discrimination among discipline/ topics?
• Does network/ relationship help?
• Are boss, funding, project matters?
• Are corresponding author, corresponding organization matter?
• Student/supervisor author position, project member author,
ghost author has any role in publication?
• Do fees & waivers related to submission/ processing/
publication/ proof editing/ administrative/ open access/
conference linked journal/ special issues have any role in
publication?
Where to start?

Model 1 Model 2

• Setup Target
• Idea 1 Journal
1

• Do Research • Borrow Idea

2 2

• Write Paper • Write Paper

3 3

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How to start?
▪ Select your interested area and key words
▪ Search by using different “key works” to find the relevant
ideas from latest publications (within 5 years)
▪ Find the literatures, especially journals, report, book,
working paper, conference paper, thesis, newspaper, etc.
only from good publishers
▪ Search in many publisher/ repository through library login:
▪ ScienceDirect: http://www.sciencedirect.com/
• SCOPUS :
http://eservice.uum.edu.my/login?url=http://www.info.sciverse.com/scopus/
• Emerald: http://www.emeraldinsight.com.eserv.uum.edu.my/
• Taylor & Francis: http://www.tandfonline.com.eserv.uum.edu.my/
• SAGE Journal: http://journals.sagepub.com.eserv.uum.edu.my/
• Cambridge Journals : https://www.cambridge.org.eserv.uum.edu.my/core/what-we-publish/journals
• Wiley & Sons : http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.eserv.uum.edu.my/ 21
How to start? Cont…
▪ Search in other reputed publishers: Routledge, Springer,
Blackwell, De Gruyter, Brill, Hindawi, Inderscience, RMIT, Project
MUSE, Oxford University Press (OUP), IGI Global, Nature
Publishing Group, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
(IEEE), M.E. Sharpe, etc.
▪ Search in open access repository: Google (filetype:pdf),
Researchgate, Academia, SSRN, EconPapers, RePEc,
GoogleScholar, etc.
▪ When you find articles, but it needs fees, search in google and
other repository for free copy or write the author to give a free
copy or write your friends who has institutional access to download
free or buy if you have project/ fund.
▪ But, if you have no option, you may use sci-hub to download by
providing the link/ DOI. Try your best to avoid it as it is illegal and
unethical or use at your own risk
▪ Generates ideas about different dimensions of any particular issue
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Drafting key points & relationship diagram
▪ Find out the missing idea/ dimension or make a new
designing of research with comprising maximum number of
ideas in your own setup/sample
▪ Conduct a thorough literature search to identify those
important contributions that are related to your topic
▪ Try to summarize the initial ideas into concrete bullets that
will eventually become variables or paragraphs.
▪ Start to organize these bullets into a logical structure and
try to find out if-then or cause-action or dependent-
independent relationship among the variables
▪ Develop them in the form of key sentences/ constructs/
measurable variables
▪ See the rational & theoretical backup for each relationship
▪ If the outline is convincing, then article will be successful 23
Match your ideas with target journal
• Always keep in mind your purpose & target
• Understand the potentiality and match the expectation of your
tentative journals
• Match the tradeoff between quantity and quality of
manuscript
• The greatest ideas are valueless if you keep them to yourself
or let them go
• If you have just idea but no clue how to prove them, just let
your unconscious mind process it. One day suddenly it pop
up!
• Be careful – publish & parish vs publish or parish

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Test every idea in a filtering process
• Here is my idea !
– Is it an interesting problem?
– Is it an unsolved problem?
– Is it in the area of hot topic?
– Is it in the area of my interested topic?
– Is it different comparing to other people’s approaches?
– Is it workable (details, data)?
– How much effort is needed to complete this?
– Is it an emergency topic or can I work slowly ?
– What is the chance of publications?
– Am I ready to work and publish at this point?
• Setup your work priority list for each ideas
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Find out suitable co-author(s)
• A top publication needs 3 things:
– Good manuscript
– Funding for English editing, RA, submission/ publication
fees, informal costs
– Network/ connection
• Find out people who are exper and can help you in the aticle
• Smartly negociate with your coauthors about contribution,
timing, author possion, committment
• Always focus building bondage & long term benefits
• Don’t be mean and calculate as 1:1 equation; it will actully
close many potential doors.
Form a good research team
• Develop a strong competency at least one area such as know
in-depth methodology and software or know the technique of
strong literature review or articulate writing, etc.
• Try to find out other people, who also has strong competency
in other areas.
• The primary author will assign duties, based on the co-author’s
areas of expertise
• The primary author will design the full work and contribute to
the majority parts of the works
• Develop a team and common understanding to work for long
run
• Reliability, sincerity and honesty is very important in the team
• If senior student are involved in the team, it will be an asset for
long-run, and they also learn the process 27
Find coauthors through networking
▪ Maintain a very good relationship with peer groups and know their
research interest and involve them
▪ Join workshop, meeting, academic and social program to increase
academic network
▪ Don’t go conference only for recreation, explore new places, fulfil
job KPI or project KPI, to spend project fund, to become an expert
and famous, but also for the networking and collaboration
▪ Find quality conference, especially organized by universities &
association; see conferences from www.conferencealerts.com;
always seek fund from the organizer and write to reduce the fees and
give travel, accommodation fees as well as seek fund from different
agencies or corporation for CSR
▪ Talk, talk, & talk with people; don’t always stay/ seat with your old
circle only, make new friends; maintain records (excel) of people
you to whom you get introduced from different networks
Find coauthors through networking cont…

▪ Write email, add in social network, know updates, appreciate

others, and keep in touch with old colleague/co-authors/
students/ alumni…
• Apply for fellowship, Summer/winter school, project
collaboration, consultancy, pert-time teaching, provide
training/workshop, membership, association, in touch with old
colleague/ co-authors/ students/ alumni, maintain record,
industry link, etc.
• Willing to help & build good relationship rather than just on
need basis
• Prioritize value, personality, reputation, rather than monitory
gain
• Look for long term benefits rather than short term or instant
focus
Find out other helping hands
• We need many types of help, but everyone cannot be a coauthor
• Engage your students, friends, colleague, others who has
potentiality to contribute to your work by providing time, effort,
quality, experience, network, money, etc.
• Must seek guidance from experienced person
• Ask colleagues/ friends to read paper several times
• Share with editorial board member or in conference
– Must upload the basic work as working paper in open access
repository before consult/share with external bodies
• Find out a good and reasonable Language (English) editor. Better
to check by native speaking professional editor
• Find out a reliable expert in that subject area, especially technical/
statistical/ software knowledge person

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Utilize students
• Develop your idea
• Design the format of your research/article/project proposal
• Segregate the requirements of the article into different small
parts
• Draw a guidelines for each step/part
• Give assignment to student to follow the guideline and
complete a small part of your full work (like survey or data
collection, literature review, data compassion, doing analysis,
find policy recommendation, etc.
• Motivate, monitor and guide student properly & continuously
• Aggregate the full work
• Find the missing parts and avoid repetition
• Improve by yourself or engage same student and give to
another group or next semester to improve the assignment 31
Extract maximum number of articles
▪ Assess your full thesis or students’ assignments for maximum
number of tentative articles
▪ Segregate the unique ideas into different draft articles
▪ Find major and minor ideas & avoid repetition
▪ Find the way to aggregate or segregate ideas
▪ Try to make all draft articles at-a-time and start working one by
one and target different journals
▪ If you have requirement, fulfill that quickly, such as KPI or
promotion requirement or pre-condition for thesis submission,
etc.
▪ Don't publish everything at a time and don't rush for publishing,
and try to make a queue of articles for next few years
Improving the manuscript
• Writing is a process
• Good writing is a habit which doesn’t happen overnight; it
takes time to develop; it requires planning, drafting, rereading,
revising, and editing
• Learning and improvement requires self-review, peer-review,
subject-matter expert feedback, and practice
• Working with experienced person and working with an
efficient team is the key to get quick success
• There is no shortcut; practice makes perfect
• Make your mind setup to continue working with many drafts
to improve the work until get published

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Work & life balance
• Develop your professional resources - collaboration, network,
reputation, contribution
• Proper utilize your resources – Don’t be self concentrated,
selfish. If you share knowledge without expecting return,
considering knowledge as a gift (amanah), you will receive so
much Blessings (barakah) and achievement that you can’t
imagine!!!
• Real success - Maintain a good balance between your work
and life to lead a happy, peaceful and successful life rather
than achieving high success in any particular area & massacre
others
• Watch some videos on “Work & Life Balance” from Youtube:
– https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Work+%26+Life+Balance
Extra Resources
▪ See relevant lectures from my YouTube videos :
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPiIwzVFNAg3RAPe_yTzD
9rNDzQJNla5w

• See relevant materials from my Researchgate links:

▪ Method Section- https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Md-
Mahmudul-Alam-2/publications > click “method”
▪ http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.19333.88803
▪ http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.36111.10409
▪ http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.23947.62247
▪ http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.10709.35047
▪ http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.18075.59687
▪ http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.29819.64809
Thank You