Issues in Publishing Research
Your Timeline
Like most schools, KU has a six year tenure clock.
This means that assistant professors begin to put
together their promotion materials in the summer
before their sixth year.
If you have a six year clock, this means that you
actually have about five years ‘on the job’ to make
your research case. You only have about four years
to submit papers that will be accepted in time.
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Your Timeline
How to get more time?
There are various ways to extend the clock,
depending on the specific university. Not everyone
can (or will want to) take advantage of these.
Here is an approach everyone can use:
Begin your tenure push while in your doctoral
program. I will return to this theme shortly.
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A Numbers Game?
Most schools will want you to have about five
or six publications for promotion. The journal
quality required will depend on the school.
It is difficult to publish in most refereed
journals these days.
Let’s say your goal is to have six papers
accepted for publication by research journals
by the end of your fifth year as an assistant
professor.
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A Numbers Game?
Let’s suppose that the probability you will get a
project accepted by a journal of the quality
you desire is 0.5.
That might be an optimistic scenario since
many journals reject about 90% of papers
submitted.
However, let’s say the 0.5 hit rate reflects
opportunities to resubmit at other journals.
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A Numbers Game?
You want six papers accepted by the end of
five years. Your hit rate is 0.5, and we will
assume that it takes about three years from
initial conception to acceptance.
You could start 12 projects during your first
three years on the job. That would give you a
fighting chance.
Could you actually identify 12 good ideas and
complete 12 projects, almost simultaneously,
over a four year period?
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Your Timeline
It seems unlikely.
Even if you started in your first semester on
the job, it would be very difficult to complete
12 good papers in four years.
(Remember, papers that you complete in your
fifth year are unlikely to be accepted in time
to help your case.)
The best solution I know of for this problem is
to ‘borrow time’ from your doctoral program.
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Your Timeline
Suppose you can begin and even complete
some projects in the last two years of your
PhD program – or even before.
Actually you must do so (i.e. your dissertation).
In my view, the key question regarding the
strategy of ‘borrowing time’ from your PhD
program is: How many high quality projects
can you complete during your program in
addition to your dissertation?
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Your Pipeline
Let’s go back and spread those hypothetical 12
projects over your first four years on the job,
and the last two years of your PhD program.
Now your task is to begin two good projects a
year, each year, for six years, and push them
through to submission.
The plan discussed above implies a minimum
of four projects begun during your PhD
program. This includes your dissertation.
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Recruiting and Your Pipeline
Start four good projects during your PhD program,
including your dissertation – it sounds feasible and
will give you a decent chance for promotion.
In addition it will help make you competitive in the
job market.
KU and other schools now focus on the pipelines of
the people we recruit. We hope to hire people who
have been very good at ‘borrowing time’. What are
we looking for on your CV?
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Recruiting and Your Pipeline
Ideally we would like to see you have a decent
publication. In addition, a couple of papers under
review.
We would like to see another two or three working
papers being prepared for submission.
We would like to see two or three projects in early
stages. These would not be just vague concepts, but
real projects underway.
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Recruiting and Your Pipeline
Let’s summarize the previous slide. We would like:
2 papers under review (or one plus one published).
2 working papers being prepared for submission.
2 projects in early stages.
We are talking about six or more good quality
projects initiated while in your PhD program. That
is half of the goal of 12 for promotion.
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Recruiting and Your Pipeline
That is what a highly competitive CV looks like these
days. It’s scary, right?
If you want to have a couple of papers under review
in the fourth year of your PhD program, and if it
takes a couple of years to complete a project, you
will need to begin two good research projects in
your second year.
Here are some ideas that might help.
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Strategies to Help You Cope
One idea is to leverage your effort by working with
coauthors. Be aggressive. Contact your professors,
your fellow PhD students, assistant professors who
graduated from your PhD program.
Talk to PhD students and professors from other
schools whom you meet at AAA sessions.
If you become a coauthor, always do your share of
the work, or more. Be willing to work on projects
that are outside your primary area of interest.
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Strategies to Help You Cope
Another strategy is to compress the research cycle.
Instead of taking two years from idea to
submission, try to do it in one year.
This only works if you can maintain high quality.
There is no point to completing projects faster if
they will all be rejected.
A side benefit of working faster (but with high
quality) is that it gives you a better chance of not
being pre-empted by another research team.
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Generating Research Ideas
The foregoing ideas for research strategy are based
on a presumption that you will be able to come up
with some publishable topics.
That is one of the most difficult problems you face.
More than 50% of papers rejected at TAR are
rejected because of ‘insufficient contribution’.
Too many researchers, especially novices, invest time
and effort in projects that lack contribution.
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Generating Research Ideas
Here are some thoughts about how to generate
research ideas. My examples relate to one of my
research areas, archival audit research.
I want you to imagine a spreadsheet. The left-most
column is a list of what I will call ‘the usual
suspects’.
These are topics that are frequently addressed in
research. For example:
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The Usual Suspects
Audit signing lag
Auditor dismissals
Going concern opinions
Client discretionary accruals
Audit fees
Industry specialization
Etc.
You can use prior literature to develop an extensive
list of ‘usual suspects’.
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The Usual Suspects
Of course, you need not restrict yourself to topics
that have been investigated previously.
If you can invent, identify or develop a new topic
that is likely to become a ‘usual suspect’ in
subsequent research projects, your chances of
getting a good publication, and lots of cites, are
improved.
Absent that, how can the list of ‘usual suspects’ help?
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New Developments
Now imagine the top row of the spreadsheet. I will
refer to this row as ‘new developments’.
A new development is anything that occurs that
causes you to think about the effect of that event
on auditing.
New developments provide a ready supply of
research ideas. Here are some possible sources of
‘new developments.’
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Sources of New Developments
Changes in regulation or regulatory issues.
(Examples: concerns expressed by the PCAOB, the
SEC, the FASB/IASB. New GAAP or GAAS.)
Changes in the economic climate. (Examples: the
Internet Bubble and the Internet Bust, the financial
crisis of 2007-2009.)
Issues in the business press or audit firms’
publications. (Examples: frauds, M&A issues,
executive compensation.)
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Generating Research Ideas
Now let’s put the columns and the rows together.
For example, consider the issuance of SOX 404(b),
which requires auditors to assess the internal
controls over financial reporting of large clients.
SOX 404(b) is a new development column in the
spreadsheet. Next we consider the effects of SOX
404(b) on the usual suspects. This generates a list of
possible research ideas:
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Generating Research Ideas
What is the likely effect of SOX 404(b) on:
Audit signing lag
Auditor dismissals
Going concern opinions
Client discretionary accruals
Audit fees
Industry specialization
Etc.
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Generating Research Ideas
Of course, not all of the ‘cells’ in the resulting
column will contain good research ideas, or even
sensible ones.
For example, it seems likely that SOX 404(b) would
affect audit fees and auditor signing lags. It seems
less likely that it would have an effect on auditor
industry specialization.
Even one good idea is enough for a project!
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Summary
I have tried to provide some thoughts about the
problems you face in publishing enough to (1) get a
job, and (2) achieve promotion.
I have suggested several ways in which you can
address those problems, including ‘borrowing time’
from your doctoral program and working with coauthors.
I concluded with some ideas about generating
research topics.
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Summary
Others might have different views about what is
desirable or possible to do in a doctoral program,
or how the research, publication, and promotion
processes operate (or should operate).
My observations and ideas are based on almost 30
years of academic experience. I hope that they will
be helpful to you.
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Best Wishes!
Mike Ettredge
University of Kansas
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