Academic writing for business researchers – peer-led student handbook series, Handbook 1: Writing for academic journals in the business domain: The academic peer review process

Forward
Welcome to the first in a series of peer learning handbooks developed by PhD and MPhil research
students to help assist their peers along the academic writing journey. Many students new to the PhD
journey struggle with academic writing. Not feeling confident about their writing can cause some
students to resist ‘putting pen to paper’ yet this is an essential part of mapping out their thoughts and
ideas. It is also the way that students can show their supervisor how they are thinking about their
work and where possible problems or roadblocks may exist on their PhD journey. Overall, students
need to be able to write down their ideas, but they also need to be able to use writing as a way of
communicating to an audience. This written communication may be their thesis document, or it may
be a conference paper or an academic journal submission created parallel to their PhD work. The best
written papers are those that are simple, clear and easy to read and this takes a lot of time and effort.
It takes multiple drafts and redrafts to achieve writing excellence. To quote Zinsser (2006: 9):
“Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the
first time, or even the third time.”
The first of this series of handbooks deals with academic writing for researchers within the business
domain. Although approaches to clear writing such as scrutinizing every word and sentence for
meaning and purpose and learning to listen to feedback are common features of excellent writing
across all disciplines, there are also differences between writing within different domains. Even within
the business domain there may be differences in writing approaches between economists for example
or busines computing analysts and more qualitative behavioural approaches. It is important therefore
that new researchers recognise that there are guidelines and norms in writing excellence that might
in part be determined by the audience and the field that they are contributing to.
This guideline provides both general advice for new researchers and advice more reflective of the
business domain. The work is divided into five main chapters, firstly recognising the value of the ‘self’
in great academic writing and the importance of academic voice. TU Dublin PhD students Akanksha
Lohmore, Edi Oliveira, Duke Debrah Afrane and Thi Ngoc Dao reflect on this in Chapter 1. It then
addresses challenges that new researchers might face in particular if they are writing in a non-native
language in Chapter 2. Tara Holland and Rawayda Abdou share their insights on these challenges.
Moving onto Chapter 3, Joanna Kossykowska, Elun Hack and Lindsay Harrison focus on the importance
of theoretical positioning and framing academic writing towards theories in the business discipline.
Chapter 4 considers what high impact in academic writing means in particular as a goal for new
academics to aspire towards and recognising some idiosyncrasies across fields even within the
business domain. The final Chapter 5 provides guidance to new academics for writing in target
journals. Intesar Madi, Kevin Corbett, Clodagh O’Reilly and Christina Kenny share their learning on this
aspect of academic writing.
I hope you find this work drawing on the experience of your peers valuable and insightful. It reflects
the early learning along the PhD journey that should help you develop your own competency in
academic writing.
Deirdre McQuillan
Editor