TEN STEPS TOWARDS WRITING AN ACADEMIC PAPER: A GUIDE TO YOUNG AUTHORS

Abstract

When you finish your PhD and start your academic career it is almost certain that the only goal in your mind is publishing papers derived from your dissertation. Publications are important to get you tenure or promotions in the future and they also serve to reassure you that you spend a significant part of your time doing something that is relevant to the profession and valued by your peers. However, many young economists end up finding out the hard way that publishing a paper is no ordinary task. A large number of them will give up the idea of trying to publish a paper after getting rejected a few times. In what follows, you will see a short list of ten steps that should increase the chances of getting your papers accepted. This note is not comprehensive and thoseinterested in more detail are referred to previous work of the same kind such as the guide prepared by Choi (2002), the ten commandments for presenting a conference paper by McAleer and Oxley (2002), the guide for young economists by Thomson (2001), and the guide to professional etiquettein the economics profession by Hamermesh (1992), inter alia.