Introducing new members of the editorial team
As HRDI enters its 21st year, I start this editorial by welcoming new colleagues to our editorial team. Recognizing the need to encourage submissions to the journal from authors located in countries situated outside the northern hemisphere, I am pleased to announce we have appointed Dr. Deborah Blackman as Regional Editor for Asia/South Pacific and Australasia. Deborah has been an HRDI editorial board member for three years, and she is currently based at the University of New South Wales’ School of Business, located in Canberra, Australia. In addition to her scholarly activities, Deborah is currently acting as her School’s Deputy Head for Education. Deborah’s research interests include Public Sector Policy Implementation; Employee Performance Management; Organizational Learning; Soft Knowledge Management; Organizational Effectiveness; Psychological Contract; and Governance. She publishes extensively in international journals such as Public Administration Review, Management Learning, Management Decision and the Journal of Knowledge Management.
Another addition to the editorial team is Dr. Risky Harisa Haslan, who becomes HRDI’s first social media editor. Risky is based at the University of Nottingham’s Malaysia campus in Kuala Lumpur. Risky is an Indonesian national, and is currently an Assistant Professor in Applied Psychology. Risky mainly concentrates on aspects of management psychology and cultural contexts of management in her research. She has already increased the traffic on the journal’s Twitter feed, created a HRDI Facebook page, and will begin to invite selected authors to participate in HRDI’s first Podcasts in 2018. In appointing Risky to this role, our intention is to promote the journal more widely with the purpose of attracting more authors and readers. So, to those of you who follow us on social media, we hope you will promote your own, and others’ work more widely. HRDI’s Twitter handle and Facebook name can be seen at the end of this editorial.
How to avoid a desk reject
In addition to encouraging more researchers and practitioners to read and contribute to HRDI, another purpose in appointing Deborah Blackman to the regional editor role is to work with early career researchers to develop their manuscripts for publication. One aspect of the editorial role, which I admit to being unaware of in the early stages of my academic career, is to seek out potential papers for publication at conferences, seminars and workshops. This is an important aspect of an editor’s job, as it can provide a crucial foundation for scholars at the early stage of their careers who do not have an academic mentoring scheme in their institution. Not all institutions have the development of research as their primary purpose; therefore, not all potential HRDI authors can call on more experienced researchers to guide them to their first publication. By listening to the advice of an experienced researcher, the novice scholar is less likely to be rejected at the first stage, receiving the dreaded ‘desk reject’. There are a number of simple steps that authors can take which make it more likely that their manuscript will not be desk rejected. The first is to pay attention to the scope of the journal. HRDI often receives manuscripts that are more suited to Human Resource Management journals, or to one of HRDI’s sister journals, so it seems that the authors of these manuscripts have not paid attention to the journal’s scope. This takes me onto another common reason why manuscripts are desk rejected; manuscripts are regularly desk rejected because they do not engage with previous HRDI papers and are not situated within current or previous research conversations in the journal. This is not an HRDI quirk. When submitting a manuscript to any journal, authors need to demonstrate to editors and reviewers how the paper contributes to, or extends, previously published research in the journal. To not do so is analogous to inviting yourself to a party and proceeding to ignore all the other guests. A third common reason why manuscripts are desk rejected is when authors are not clear about the paper’s purpose. If the manuscript does not convince the editor that the manuscript reports a study worth reading and relevant to HRDI, then it is less likely it will be sent out to review. A fourth common reason for a desk reject is inadequate articulation of a study’s methodological underpinnings. HRDI publishes studies that take a range of methodological perspectives, and use a variety of methods. However, if an author does not state the rationale for their methodological choice and methods, then the manuscript will immediately come across as less robust than it should be. Finally, another common reason for deciding a manuscript should be desk rejected is due to a poor structure and extensive grammatical errors. If a manuscript is difficult to follow, and contains syntactical and spelling errors on every page, this does not give an editor confidence that the author will be able to turn a manuscript around to make it ready for publication. It is not the editor’s or reviewers’ roles to correct poor grammar, punctuation and spelling. I recommend to any author, no matter their level of experience, that they send draft manuscripts to some critical friends before final submission to HRDI. If you are concerned about your use of grammar, then I recommend also sending the manuscript to a copy editor before submitting your manuscript.
We look forward to receiving your manuscripts, and I wish all HRDI authors, reviewers and readers a successful 2018.