Understanding research ethics
Literature reviews
#EditorObservations 19 Literature reviews (YouTube, 1m 26s)
Literature reviews can be a bit boring to write. And sometimes they are pretty boring to read also. But they play a critically important role in a journal article: they offer the reader a succinct synthesis of the state of play in the specific area to which the study aims to contribute. A lot can go wrong if the literature review has not been conducted thoroughly. In the worst case, someone else has already answered the research question that is being asked, making the submitted article unnecessary. Poor literature reviews are immediately identified by subject matter experts who will, as a result, query whether indeed there is a gap that needs to be filled.
Other literature review “fails” include ignoring all the work that has been published in the target journal on the topic. Authors are well advised to target relevant journals – journals where there has been some previous discussion of the topic under study in the submitted manuscript. Submitting a paper and ignoring all the relevant work published in the target journal is a very poor choice. The editors will be aware of the omissions and will not be impressed. The associate editors will be aware of the omissions and will not be impressed. The reviewers will be aware of the omissions and will not be impressed.
#editorobservation
One of our Annals of Tourism Research Associate Editors had to write this note today, explaining their desk rejection decision.
Is publish-or-perish culture tempting us to cut corners?
Not a sustainable strategy for researchers or for knowledge creation in tourism research.
#editorobservation
And another literature review failure 📚📚📚
Sigh😞
Today I question the meaning of life as a journal editor 😢
#editorobservation
As a PhD, I learned to dedicate A LOT OF TIME to capturing + understanding ALL relevant prior work before starting my study
Some studies I see now appear to have been run first, then enriched with a few citations
Scholarly tunnel vision due to publication pressure?
#editorobservation
Not having a good editor day at Annals of Tourism Research 😢
Publication tip of the week: do your literature review 📚
#editorobservation
Immense publication pressure has many concerning unintended consequences, including an increase in sloppy lit reviews
Being oblivious to existing relevant #research makes collective knowledge development impossible
It means we start at square one every time
#editorobservation
Yes, I know this is a very basic publishing recommendation, but it really does pay off to conduct a thorough literature review.
#editorobservation
No matter how massive the publication pressure we experience, we can never ignore relevant prior work published in the target journal or in the research field more broadly as we develop our own studies and submit them for publication
Knowledge creation does not occur in a vacuum
To make progress, we must build on each other’s work
To act with integrity, we must acknowledge the ideas people had before us
