Abstract:

The most common reason why new researches, including 2nd and/or 3rd cycle students, delay publishing articles are a number of academic activities that keep them busy: graduate coursework, comprehensive exams, conducting research, delivering lectures as well as designing and writing final thesis (Stoilescu & McDougall, 2010). This article provides some insights and views that new researchers might consider in order to assess and improve their success as new scholars. It is argued that doing a research and publishing an academic paper should be headed by inner motivation for becoming a scholar and not by external pressures of social or professional requirements to produce scholarly work (ibid.). This paper aims at presenting the results of the case study related to the investigation of new researchers’ motivation to publish. Moreover, it offers practical recommendations about building and sustaining the initial momentum in publishing. Firstly, the importance of choosing the right topic for one’s investigation as well as practicing academic writing skills as a way to improve one's work as a scholar and modalities to practice it (ibid.) is discussed. Secondly, the results of a survey on new academic researchers’ expectations to produce and publish research papers are reported. This data is compared with the results from the second questionnaire as to how academics expect to use open-access works (including activities, restrictions and conditions). Finally, some important issues related to academic ethics, social collaboration and university policies that should be considered in the process of publication (ibid.) are presented in the article.

Keywords:

New researchers, ethical issues in publication, submission guidelines, publishing in refereed journals, academic writing.