As a part of the 2016 American Academy of Advertising (AAA) Annual Conference, we will hold an all-day Pre-Conference “Everything You’ve Always Wanted to Know about All Aspects of the Academic Publication Process, But Never Asked” on Thursday, March 17, Seattle, WA, USA. This pre-conference is designed to provide a deeper understanding of how to succeed in all aspects of the academic publication process. The pre-conference consists of the following five sessions:

Session 1: Meet the Advertising Editors

This session will provide attendees the opportunity to meet the Editors of the Journal of Advertising, International Journal of Advertising, Journal of Advertising Research, and Journal of Interactive Advertising. Each of the panelists will discuss the mission statement and the guidelines for authors submitting to their journal, while providing their insights into topics such as what distinguishes successful versus unsuccessful manuscript submissions, and common reasons why articles are desk rejected or are unsuccessful in the review process.

Session 2: How to Write a Publishable Paper

This session will invite scholars with excellent publication records who will make practical suggestions as to how to improve the quality of manuscripts and how to avoid the common pitfalls in order to increase the chances of getting our article published. Potential topics may include how to organize/structure a paper; what to include in an introduction and how to substantiate the research contribution of the paper there; how to present an effective literature review, important issues and common mistakes in research design and analysis; how to state the main conclusions and implications; what to include, or not include, in discussion sections; etc.

Session 3: How to Respond to Reviews

Manuscripts are almost never accepted at the initial submission stage. Rather, if promising, the authors are given the opportunity to revise and resubmitted. Thus, to be successful in academic publishing, you must not only prepare a strong initial submission, you also need to know how to best respond to reviewers’ (as well as AE’s and Editors’) comments. Therefore, this session will discuss strategies for responding to reviews; determining when changes need to be made to the manuscript itself and when they might not be; how to deal with common reviewer concerns; and how to craft comments in responses to reviewers.

Session 4: How to be a Great Reviewer

Guidelines and suggestions for what to do and not to do in writing reviews will be discussed. This is perhaps the least discussed topic in graduate education and yet is a critical component to the publication system. Topics may include the relationship of comments to the author and comments to the editor, how much detail to go into about issues, how man issues to cover, length of reviews, common ways to organize reviews, topics to focus on, etc.

Session 5: Publisher’s Role in the Publication Process

Taylor & Frances will make a short presentation regarding the production of the journals and how the publisher can serve to help authors, reviewers, and editors.

The panelists are experienced editors, authors, reviewers and publisher who will provide their insights and advice. Attendees of this pre-conference are encouraged to either come to the sessions with or submit beforehand, specific questions as ample time will be allotted for panelists to respond to audience members’ questions. The registration information can be found at the AAA Web site: http://www.aaasite.org/page-1643056

We look forward to seeing you in Seattle!

AAA Pre-Conference Co-Chairs

Ron Faber
Professor of Advertising & Mass Communication
University of Minnesota, USA

Shintaro Okazaki
Professor of Marketing
King’s College London, UK

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