Publish or Perish!! — How to be a Good Coauthor: Advice for Ph.D. Students and Junior Faculty

Posted by Chris Skousen - Oct 10, 2018
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Publish or Perish!!  

How to be a Good Coauthor: Advice for Ph.D. Students and Junior Faculty

Often in academia we hear the phrase “Publish or Perish.”  While intended to be comical, this phrase is very indicative of the life of doctoral students and junior faculty members seeking promotion or tenure.  While they will not surely die if they do not publish, they will find it difficult to attain rank advancements and/or research positions in academia.

In response to this expression of the importance for young researchers to publish, we recently published an article entitled “How to be a Good Coauthor: Advice for Ph.D. Students and Junior Faculty” in Issues of Accounting Education.

Success in publishing accounting research has increasingly required partnering with multiple coauthors.  However, coauthoring relationships do not always result in publishable papers…some can end up requiring much more time and effort than the projects may be worth. Given the importance and prevalence of such relationships, we recommend all authors ask the following questions:

  1. Are you interested in the project?  
  2. Is this project consistent with your personal and career objectives?
  3. Do your potential coauthors share your goals and work ethic?
  4. Can you work with your coauthors?
  5. Can you clearly define roles and expectations?

If you can answer “yes” to each of these questions, then the project should be considered.  Of course, there is much more to these questions and many other things to consider, such as communication, meeting deadlines, and activity sharing.

We address each of these areas in our article and provide guidance with regards to potential coauthor relationships and ultimately publication success.

Additional details, recommendations, and advice can be found in the article here:

http://aaajournals.org/doi/pdf/10.2308/iace-52253 (Note:  An American Accounting Association password is required to access.)

Best of luck in publishing success!

Denton Collins

Derek Oler

Chris Skousen

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