Top 10 tips for publishing CSR research in top journals

Contrary to popular belief, most university faculty don't spend the whole summer lounging on the beach or sitting in the garden. For most of us, summer is the time when we can really focus on our research without the usual distractions of teaching and university administration.

Although many academics do this research because they enjoy it, it is also a critical part of our role. Success in publishing our research is often the number one reason why we get hired or not, or whether we get that promotion or pay rise that we're after. Publish or perish is a mantra that is very real for many of us.

Publication, however, is no easy matter. There is great competition for space in the best scholarly outlets, like high ranked journals and prestigious book publishers. Those of us doing research on corporate responsibility issues, whether CSR, business ethics, business and sustainability, or whatever else sometimes struggle to meet the kinds of standards expected by these outlets. This is not because we're any less smart than other researchers, but we do have a complicated subject that doesn't always lend itself very well to the demands of the top tier journals. There is also just simply lot to learn about the publishing process, especially for PhD students, junior researchers or those relatively new to the demands of publishing their work in premier English-language journals.

As a result of this, we often find ourselves giving advice to other CSR researchers, especially at the many workshops and conferences that crop up over the summer. We tend to tailor this advice to the different audiences we speak to, but we also thought that it might be helpful to give a more general list of top tips that anyone doing work in the area could hopefully learn something from. Our thoughts are particularly relevant to publishing in high ranked management journals, but most of the lessons translate beyond this. Let us know if you find them helpful or if you have your own suggestions, just add them in the comment section below.

1. Make time for research. This is the critical starting place. Good work requires a substantial investment of time and energy and lots of researchers spend a lot of their time on teaching and service. In the CSR space, in particular, many of us are so passionate about our subject that our available research time is easily eaten up by working with our students or lobbying our colleagues to include more CSR content in their courses. Carving out the necessary space and time for research is critical. There are no shortcuts.

2. Find great co-authors … but select them carefully. OK, so maybe there is one shortcut: finding other people to do some of the research with you. But co-authorships go wrong as often as they go well. So choosing carefully is critical. Find people with complementary skills, who understand the subject in different but related ways to you. Remember, CSR issues are complicated, so just as we always advocate partnership by organizations, so too do we need to partner to understand a phenomenon. But if we go too broad, we risk losing the all-essential focus that the top journals aim for. Our no.1 piece of advice for selecting co-authors - find someone you can go for a drink or a coffee with and feel energized afterwards.
 
3. Write for a clearly defined audience, with a carefully targeted paper, that joins a specific conversation. Research doesn't happen in a vacuum. Who do you want to read your work? No, really, who exactly do you have in mind? What have they written about your subject? Answer these questions and join an ongoing conversation rather than trying to start a whole new one. It may seem like CSR issues are new and exciting, but many of the issues, problems or concepts that we find interesting have been addressed by others in other ways. Some scholars live by the maxim that if you think an idea is really new then you probably just haven't read enough. So make sure you do read enough and make sure that your work is crafted for a particular audience. If it helps, think of it like a product that has to fill a clearly defined need.

4. Be clear what the research gap is that you are aiming to fill, and what your contribution is. Probably the number one reason that editors reject corporate responsibility papers is that they don't make a clear enough contribution. Typically, this means, a contribution to academic theory. So nailing down the research gap and deciding for yourself what your unique contribution is will reap rewards. Especially if the contribution is one valued by those other researchers that you're aiming to write for.

5. Try as far as possible to be theory rather than phenomenon driven. This is one that many CSR researchers struggle with. We're doing research in this area because we find the issues themselves fascinating. This means we tend to phenomenon-driven. But the higher ranked journals all typically look for a theoretical contribution and so they expect the research they publish to be theoretically-driven. So if you don't want to take too many risks with that limited amount of research time you have, work out how to make the translation from phenomenon to theory and start as you mean to go on.

6. Different contexts have to be theoretically distinctive (revising/extending theory) not just new applications of existing theory. This is particularly relevant for those doing research on or in particular countries or industries, which is so common in the CSR field just because it has become so ubiquitous. The key thing to remember here is that just because no one has done research on your country or industry before, that doesn't mean it needs to be done now. If you're following the advice we've already laid out, you'll be thinking - what is it about this country or industry that is sufficiently different that it renders existing theories inadequate to explain it. If you can answer this, you have a shot at extending or revising that theory rather than just applying it to a new area. And that's what the reviewers will be looking for.

7. Test out your ideas with working papers, conference presentations, workshops, etc – do not submit too early. Research is a process, and the great thing about that is there are lots of opportunities to get feedback on what you're doing before its too late. Take your time to see if your ideas have the potential for top tier publication before you commit to doing the research. And then as you're doing the research get feedback from the best people you can about your emerging results. Finally, circulate your work and get feedback before you submit to that tier 1 journal that rejects 90% of the papers it receives. You want to be as sure as possible that you're going to be in the rarefied 10%.

8. Beware of avoidable ‘incompetence cues’ . This is one that the former editor of Business Ethics Quarterly, Gary Weaver, always explained very convincingly. If editors and reviewers find sub-standard English, spelling mistakes, poor referencing, formatting that doesn't meet the journal's specification and other minor errors in a paper (especially in the first few pages) you are going to activate the editor's 'incompetence schema'. That is, he or she will already be thinking that you're in some way incompetent before they even get to evaluating your ideas. Don't risk it. Get the basics 100% right, every time, without fail. This will give your work the best chance it can of being judged in the way you want it to be.

9. Remember that reviewers are there to help you improve your work. The community of researchers around CSR and business ethics are a pretty collegiate and supportive group. But it can feel like completely the opposite when you're holding three reviews which all appear to rip your work to shreds ... but are still offering you the chance to resubmit something different (well, actually, better) in the future. But believe us, they do actually want to see your work published, so you just need to work with them, not against them. The most successful researchers spend almost as much time on revising their work as they on the initial preparation. Take criticism on the chin and use it constructively as just another stage in the research process. In the end, you'll appreciate the advice because it almost always improves your research if you're working with a good journal and good reviewers.

10. Get used to criticism and rejection – and don’t forget the bigger picture of why you want to publish in the first place. We all get bucketloads of criticism and we all get our work rejected. Its a part of the job as a researcher. Some people say that if you're not getting rejected from time to time, you're not aiming high enough. So don't take it personally. And remember, the reason you're putting yourself through all this is that you think the issues are important and that you have ways of thinking about it that need to be read. The best journals are regarded a good because they have a higher impact than the others. If you really want your work to be read by other researchers - if you want to leave a mark on the field - you'll need to face the trials and tribulations of aiming for the best journals. So grow a hard skin along with that smart mind and warm heart.

How many CSR experts are just cheats and plagiarists?

CSR experts, people that write about, research, and practice CSR day-in, day-out are a pretty responsible bunch, right? After all, who would listen to anyone talking about responsible business who they didn't think was, well ... responsible?

Uh, wrong. Unfortunately, if our recent experience is anything to go by, there are some decidedly irresponsible CSR experts out there.  Actually, worse than that; not just irresponsible, but flat-out cheats and plagiarists. And we're not just talking about the usual CSR snake-oil salesmen who are simply out to make a quick buck from some dishonest greenwashing. No, we're talking the supposed purveyors of something resembling objective truth - academics and journalists.

How do we know? Simple. In the last couple of months we've run into several glaring examples of so-called experts simply stealing our work and passing it off as their own. Consider this one that has only just come to light. Jaquelina Jimena, a journalist and CSR adviser, wrote a nice article in the Canadian Mining Journal back in 2009 titled "Is Corporate Engagement Possible Through CSR Blogs?" Well, we would say it's nice, because it is almost word-for-word copied from one of our own blog entries "Corporate Engagement through CSR Blogs", published the year before. She changes our use of "we" to "I" of course, but that is about it. The rest is almost entirely plagiarized from our post. Well, except the last paragraph, which we she didn't copy from us. But that's not her work either. It's directly stolen from a post from our fellow blogger Fabian Pattberg.

Jimena has published other pieces in the Canadian Mining Journal about CSR, all of which, as far we can tell, contain substantial portions of text just cut and pasted from other people's articles and websites. Our friends at Ethical Corporation are a particularly popular source, it seems. Of course, she claims on her LinkedIn page, to be a "professional journalist" as well as a CSR adviser and lecturer, with experience among others advising at the Global Reporting Initiative and Anglo-American.

Now, we're not saying that Jimena isn't an expert in CSR,or in her specialist field of stakeholder engagement and communication. But as a potential editor, employer, client, or reader of hers, would you really put your trust in someone who, from time to time, made a living by stealing other people's work?

It's not just journalists though. While plagiarism in academia is usually discussed in relation to students (and we have to say, this continues to be a big problem in the sector), there are no shortage of cheats standing at the front of the classroom too. Again, our own experience is instructive here.

A few months back, it came to our attention that an article published in the journal Management Decision under the title "Sustainability managers or rogue mid-managers? A typology of corporate sustainability managers" and suppposedly written by professors Tang, Robinson and Harvey, was in fact almost entirely plagiarized from a working paper written by Andy and one of our long time friends and collaborators, Wayne Visser. After someone had kindly pointed this out to us, we informed the journal who did some checking and then retracted the offending piece, acknowledging that "a large proportion" of the article had been copied from ours.

We also did a little further digging and discovered that one of the ostensible authors, Kevin Tang, had even plagiarized almost his entire PhD thesis. It took about 5 minutes to find this out given that he'd copied almost word for word Jennifer Lynes' dissertation about environmental commitment in the airline industry which was easily available on-line. So we informed Lynes (who was suitably shocked) and Bond University in Australia, who had awarded Tang's PhD. They've now taken the online version of Tang's PhD down and informed us that a thorough investigation into the allegations is underway. So you can't check now this one yourself, but believe us, it is a cut-and-dried case of plagiarism, even down to the personal acknowledgments page!

We'd love to believe that these are just isolated incidents, but realistically we think it is just the tip of the iceberg. Both of these cases came to light by accident just in the last few weeks and we only noticed them because they were rip-offs of our own work. Who else is blissfully unaware of getting their CSR research stolen by a so-called expert? And how many other CSR experts are out there passing off someone else's work as their own that we haven't discovered yet?

Academia certainly has been getting into all sorts of cheating scandals recently. Earlier in the year we witnessed the forced resignation of the German Secretary of Defence after revelations of his plagiarized PhD thesis. A few weeks ago, an investigation confirmed that  the noted psychologist Diederik Stapel, the former Dean of the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, had falsified data and made up entire experiments over the course of the past decade. Unethical journalism has also been in the news of late, especially around the News International phone hacking scandal. Both professions are clearly in need of clean-up.

At the moment, none of these more high profile scandals have been concerned with CSR experts. Not yet, anyway. But if our experience is anything to go by, it's probably just a matter of time.


Photo by loop_oh (Robert Ganzer). Reproduced under Creative Commons licence

Corporations and political responsibilities

Just today the latest issue of Business Ethics Quarterly has dropped into the mailbox, featuring our latest article on corporate citizenship - well, actually an invited response to someone else's article about whether the label of 'citizens' fitted corporations or not. Oh, the joys of becoming "those two corporate citizenship guys" - available 24/7 to answer all your CC questions ... and more often that not to be roundly disagreed with by just about everyone.

Unusually for us, this time around we actually agreed with most of what our colleagues had written. Anyway, one thing that we particularly liked in this paper, and which we have been talking about in our work for some time, is the idea that once you start to acknowledge some role for corporations in the realm of citizenship, then you are effectively moving towards the idea that corporations have a political role in society.

Now, for various reasons, this whole idea that corporations might have political roles and responsibilities is for many people a fairly controversial one. Obviously none of us are very comfortable with the whole blurring of boundaries between business and government, between the economic and the political. But this is the situation that we find ourselves in at the moment. And, as people interested in nature of business ethics and responsibility, it represents one of the more fascinating, yet challenging aspects of the whole debate.

On the one hand, we applaud corporations that step in where governments have failed, such as in the provision of decent roads, schools, and hospitals, or where they move to protect their workers from HIV/AIDS infection. This is just good citizenship, right? On the other hand, we have many legitimate doubts about the presence of multinationals in delivering the basic entitlements of citizens, or when corporations get involved in lobbying governments to prevent legislation that might curb some of their worse excesses. Bad citizenship, huh?

So the area is something of a minefield, albeit quite a fun one to hop around in ... until you put a foot in the wrong place of course. But over the next few months we'll be commenting quite a bit on some of these political issues as they relate to corporations. There could be a few explosions along the way, but we're ready for it, helmets on, and ... well ... you can finish off the metaphor for yourselves...