Research in Engineering Design

Getting your work published: Guidelines

Description: Description: red_image

Motto: A journal is a product; one that requires careful design, design with input from all its stakeholders.

 

Consider yourself invited to take part in the continuous design and improvement of this journal by providing me input, for example, by commenting on this page.

Yoram Reich, PhD 

Professor

Editor-in-Chief

 

These guidelines are based on my own experience writing papers, successful or not, and reviewing many others. They are clearly imperfect and partial. I welcome feedback to improve their value to prospective authors.

Download slide version of these guidelines 

Content:

(1)  Reasons to reject a paper

(2)  What if your paper is a product? Designing your paper

(3)  Checklist: Evaluating your paper before submission

(4)  What should you do when your paper requires revision?

 

 

Reasons to reject a paper

The following is a list of statements reviewers write that could lead to rejecting a paper. In reviewing your paper before submission, try to reflect on whether one of these applies to your paper:

  1. The paper does not fit well within the scope of RED
    1. The paper reports on a design of a particular product – it might contribute to that design but does not teach us about design in general.
    2. The paper deals with seemingly design topics but such that outside the scope, such as, finding the disassembly plan of a product, or identifying part based on their features.
  2. The paper does not review present state of the art, does not explicitly detail the gap between existing knowledge and some need, and consequently, the contribution of the paper is questionable. (See more in the special page on referencing practice.)
  3. The paper is reasonably good but it is not clear whether it will have an impact.
  4. This review paper does not review critically the studies but merely organizes them.
  5. The paper does not have a good and convincing demonstration of the ideas put forward in the paper.
  6.  

 

What if your paper is a product? – Designing your paper

Your paper is a product like any other products. An artifact that is the columniation of a process involving thinking and executing various activities aimed at creating a document that will be published in a journal, read by people, and cited in other papers. We all know that the success rate of a well designed product is much more that one with a sloppy design and that the initial stages of design are most critical to success. Consequently, we need to design our papers the best we can.

This section briefly discusses some issues relevant to the design of papers.

 

Please make sure you read all the way to the section dealing with rejecting papers.

 

1. Who is my audience?

Don’t try to sell your product to the wrong audience. They will simply ignore it.

Find the best audience for your work. They are likely to appreciate it and it would be read by more people. It is true that searching for relevant papers in good databases will lead to most existing papers, but focused, deliberate search in particular journals could be more effective in many cases. Your audience is likely to look for your paper in the appropriate place they expect it to be. Therefore, find the journal that best fits your paper and try to target those considered among the best in the field. If you pick a journal in which you have not published before, be prepared to invest time in understanding the “culture” of the journal including the way they expect papers to be written, the right mix between theory and practice, the language, etc.[1]

 

Examples of specific issues that could help finding good journals

How can you detect that you are looking in the wrong journal?

1.     Your paper does not refer to any reference from that journal

2.     Recent issues of the journal do not contain papers with related topics

 

How can you detect a journal that suites your paper?

1.     There are a number of references in your bibliography from that journal

2.     You are familiar with the work of some editorial board members and it is related to your paper

 

How can you make a suitable journal for your written paper to be even more appropriate?

1.     Scan the journal to find papers relevant to your paper and see whether they could be integrated in your state-of-the-art bibliography survey (see below). This increase the value of your paper to reader of that journal as they see how your work reinterprets previous work and build on it.

2.     Modify your paper to fit well in the scope of the journal including stating how your results support better understanding of issues of interest to the journal audience.

 

 

2. What is my audience looking for?

If you choose a journal in which your peers publish, you have to know what interest the community you belong to. Questions that are important to develop as professionals and related to selecting research topics and writing papers include:

  1. How do research trends impact papers topics and their publications?
  2. How do we detect fundamental, long lasting issues, worth publishing?
  3. How do we discover new promising directions?
  4. How are research breakthroughs created?

 

RED audience expects to find papers that fit the scope of the journal. Therefore, you must first familiarize yourself with the RED’s scope. Some focused topics appear in special issues but they are too few to cover the breadth of topics. Other issues could be found in RED’s editorials. Another source for audience interest are conferences attended by people that For example, RED audience is likely to be interested in ICED conferences and the kind of topics that appear there and their evolution over time is a decent indication of what interest RED’s readers. Obviously, the material published in RED is such indication but given the small number of published papers, conferences might be a better indication.

 

 

3. How do I attract my audience to my paper when they can view many others on the same subject?

I pose this as a question and welcome ideas on this subject.

  1. It is an art
  2. It is just luck
  3. “Lobby” at conferences about your work
  4. Sequence of publications on the subject
  5. Title: Clear, easy to digest important message, provocative title, …
  6. Including a thorough review of the literature in the paper

 

 

4. “What is the sale price”?

More to come

  1. How much material do I put in the paper?
  2. Do I cut a subject or material into several papers to have more publications?
  3. Do I submit the paper in a mediocre journal to get it published?

 

There are authors who do not publish many papers not because they have no material but when they find something of value to the community, they keep improving it under the fear that it is not good enough.  

 

 

5. The paper concept and architecture

More to come

 

Review paper

Research paper, interesting figures to present

 

 

6. The paper detailed design

More to come

 

 

Checklist: Evaluating your paper before submission

This checklist is evolving to reflect issues that are found in many papers submitted to RED and following experience in reviewing many papers to other journals and conferences.

 

#

Item

Description / examples

Content

1  

Is the paper about design? Fit with the scope of RED

This is a critical issue. Papers published in RED are about design. They should have some consequences to understanding design and supporting it. All the subsequent items are meant to make sure that whatever is said about design is done well.

Papers that are not about design are outside the scope of RED. One way to check this is through the reference list. If your reference list does not have items from RED but numerous from X or Y journals, it might mean that X or Y are more suitable for your paper; this easy check might save considerable time.

2  

Does the paper have a claim?

A paper needs to claim something. A claim could be “the paper presents a method for doing X that is better than methods Y, in Z aspects.”

This example shows that the claim is composed of at least 3 parts:

(1) the statement of the claim, e.g., “the paper presents a method for doing X”

(2) the context or state-of-the-art in which the sentence is situated, e.g., “methods Y”

(3) the way to evaluate the sentence, e.g., “better in Z aspects.”

A paper without a worthwhile claim cannot be published.  Consequently, if the Editor-in-Chief or the Area Editor does not find such claim, the paper is rejected immediately.

3  

Is the claim clear?

The paper claim should be very clear to readers, and in particular, to the reviewers. The claim cannot be hidden in the description of the solution, nor in the conclusions; it is the abstract and introduction that should spell the claim clearly.

4  

Does the abstract reflect the content of the paper?

An abstract is not a tease or an advertisement to read a paper; it should be a clear and accurate description of what the paper is about, how does the paper achieves its goals and what are its limitations. Ideally, by reading the introduction and conclusions sections, a reader should have enough information to decide whether to read the paper or not.

5  

Does the introduction reflect the content of the paper?

An introduction is not a tease or an advertisement to read a paper; it should be a clear and accurate description of what the paper is about, how does the paper achieves its goals and what are its limitations. Ideally, by reading the introduction and conclusions sections, a reader should have enough information to decide whether to read the paper or not.

6  

Is state-of-the-art reviewed well?

Are all relevant sources cited and critically analyzed? It is insufficient to provide a “story-like” description of what some previous references include. The review should attempt to put them in a single framework and discuss the limitations of previous approaches to allow claiming the present paper benefits. See more in the special page on referencing practice.

7  

Is the research method described well?

Research method is the method you are using to justify the claims of the paper. It should be described and justified well. For example, if the paper is a survey, the way of selecting the references should be described, or if the paper includes a statistical analysis of an experiment, the details of the statistical test should be justified.

8  

Is the research method consistent with the research claim, in particular, with the stated evaluation method of the claim?

If a statement is made that a method improves practice, the research method cannot be an analytical proof but an empirical study showing improved practice. The precise choice of the research method and it suitability to the subject matter should be defended in the paper.

9  

If the paper focus on a method/approach, is it described in sufficient detail so that readers can implement it?

One of the hallmarks of science is replicability, however, design does not occur in controlled environments and requires a different way of thinking and defining the value of a contribution and its rigor

While it may be impossible to replicate real design situations, it is still possible to describe studies in sufficient details so that a reader can extract valuable information in order to use in his/her own practice/research.

The information that transcends the particular study, and could be used elsewhere becomes the contribution of the paper.

10      

Is the evaluation convincing in allowing accepting the paper claim?

If a paper claims that a method helps design practice, it should demonstrate the method in design practice, not on a small toy problem solved by a student. If the evaluation is on a small problem solved by a student, the claims should be changed accordingly. One small or benchmark example hardly helps readers accept a paper claim. Such evaluation could be a mere chance.

11      

Are the limitations of the approach listed clearly?

We have learned in science that no theory is permanent or true always and no method is best for all problems. Consequently, each approach should be accompanied with its limitation and precise scope to allow using it when appropriate.

12      

Are the conclusions valid?

Conclusions should relate to claimed made in the abstract or the introduction but not merely reiterate them; the conclusions should reflect what was demonstrated through a proper evaluation. If the abstract says that an important design aspect in X and describes research on X, the connection should be made back from X to design. The paper need to show that its report on X have an impact on design. If this is not the case, it should be stated as limitation of this study and analyzed carefully, stating what exactly has been achieved. Such limitation better be mentioned in the introduction to prevent readers of getting the wrong impression when they start reading the paper.

Format

13      

Is the length of the paper appropriate?

Papers could be short or long but their length should reflect their content. Short papers sometimes give the impression that they are proceedings papers submitted for journal publication. Even if this is not the case, writing short papers that address all the issues in this checklist is difficult. This does not mean we are looking for long papers but that we stress the “(paper value)/(paper length)” issue.

14      

Are the figures adding value beyond the text?

Figures are effective way to convey information but expensive for publishing. Therefore, their use must be done properly. A figure must be introduced In the text with reference before it appears in the text. It should be explained well so that it is understood and that its value adds something to a text without it. Examples of ineffective figures are those showing the screen of a program to show that a program was developed or figures whose text is not in English and cannot be comprehended. 

15      

Are all references complete and in the required (or at least, consistent) format?

References should have complete and accurate details. There should be a match between references in the text and the list at the end of the paper. They should all be consistent, e.g., if the year is placed at the end of the reference, it should be such in all references.

Misc.

16      

Has the paper appear in proceedings of a conference?

If the answer is yes, there should be significant change of the submission from the proceedings paper. 

17      

Are quotations done properly?

More to come

18      

Which reference to include?

Quality and availability drive the kind of reference to cite. Cite journal papers before refereed proceedings and English before other languages.

 

 

 

The following checklist needs to accompany any submission (will be part of the process in the near future)

 

  

More to come

#

Item

response

 

yes

no

0

Have you read the description of the checklist on the web?

 

 

Content

 

 

1    

Is the paper about design? Fit with the scope of RED

 

 

2    

Does the paper have a claim?

 

 

3    

Is the claim clear?

 

 

4    

Does the introduction reflect the content of the paper?

 

 

5    

Is state-of-the-art reviewed well?

 

 

6    

Is the research method described well?

 

 

7    

Is the research method consistent with the research claim, in particular, with the stated evaluation method of the claim?

 

 

8    

If the paper focus on a method/approach, is it described in sufficient detail so that readers can implement it?

 

 

9    

Is the evaluation convincing in allowing accepting the paper claim?

 

 

10      

Are the limitations of the approach listed clearly?

 

 

11      

Are the conclusions valid?

 

 

Format

 

 

12      

Is the length of the paper appropriate?

 

 

13      

Are the figures adding value beyond the text?

 

 

14      

Are all references complete and in the required (or at least, consistent) format?

 

 

Misc.

 

 

15      

Has the paper appear in proceedings of a conference? if so, has it been substantially revised?

 

 

16      

Are quotations done properly?

 

 

17      

Which reference to include?

 

 

 

 

What should you do when your paper requires revision?

Hardly any paper passes the initial review and accepted as is. I have yet to encounter one in RED. Otherwise, the paper needs some revision, minor or major, before it is further considered for publication.

The classification to minor or major revision has no influence on the subsequent process. A revised paper might undergo a complete review by 3 reviewers or be examined only by the editor. The particular way in which the revised paper would be handled rests with the editor-in-chief and the area editor.

Notwithstanding this process, the authors have the greatest influence on the outcome of the 2nd review process. They must address each reviewer comment. This requires understanding the comment, deciding whether they agree with it or not, revising the paper and detailing how and where the revision took place or write a rebuttal. The list of responses to reviewers’ comments needs to accompany the revised paper. We require that the revision be made with red font to facilitate easy review.

Authors must not underestimate the precision in which they have to address each reviewer comment. They should remember that reviewers volunteer to spend time reading their paper and providing their best judgment about what is needed to publish the paper. Reviewers like to see their work appreciated and given full attention. Therefore, comments that are not addressed could easily undermine the goal of the authors to publish their paper. 

 

 


Page URL: http://www.eng.tau.ac.il/~yoram/RED/redGuidelines.html 
Last modified: 1/2/2013 5:41:44 PM

 



[1] I trust that my own experience accumulated from publishing in close to 30 different journals and failing in publishing in few others, is similar to others in this respect.