HOW TO GET YOUR MANUSCRIPT ACCEPTED
Which journal should I publish in? Why has my manuscript been rejected? These and other questions can be daunting to both new and experienced researchers.
Here's some good advice from interpretive (consumer) research on how to get your manuscripts accepted by Eileen Fischer, Ahir Gopaldas and Daiane Scaraboto.
In short
1. Clearly indicate which theoretical conversation your paper is joining. Do so as early as possible in the paper.
2. Join a theoretical conversation that belongs in your target journal. Alternatively, target a journal that cares about the conversation that you are joining.
3. Conclude your review of the theoretical conversation with gaps, problems and ideally specific research questions that your study will address.
4. Collect the data that you need to answer your research questions. Alternatively, only ask research questions that your data can answer.
5. Build your descriptive observations about contexts into theoretical claims about concepts.
6. Explain both how things are and why things are the way that they are.
7. Illustrate your theoretical claims with data and support them with theoretical argumentation.
8. Advance the theoretical conversation in a novel and radical way. In other words, offer readers something "new" and "big".
Reference
Fischer, E., Gopaldas, A., Scaraboto, D. (2017). Why papers are rejected and how to get yours accepted: Advice on the construction of interpretive consumer research articles, Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal 20(1), 60-67.
https://doi.org/10.1108/QMR-06-2016-0051 ☍