Mentorship Programme |
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Mentorship for young authors
Young and or novice authors are often reluctant to submit papers for
consideration re publication in scientific journals. Several reasons
for this reluctance may exist. An important reason is could be the
uncertainty that prospective authors may experience in the absence
of subject-specific or research mentors at the institutions. For
this reason AJoBE has decided to appoint an unofficial mentorship
team that could be of assistance to young and/or novice authors.
Procedure to utilise these mentors’ knowhow is as follows:
- Ensure that the theme/research question of your paper is
clearly formulated
- Structure your paper meaningfully and logically – build a
logical argument throughout
- If it is a research based paper, ensure that the literature
study is focused on the theme, that there is a logical
transition (e.g. specific postulates or hypotheses) between the
literature study and the methodology applied and comprehensively
discussed, and that the results are linked to issues raised in
the literature study
- Answer the proverbial “so what”-question towards the end of
the paper and
- Submit this (good) draft to someone of your choice on the
AJoBE mentorship team – the mentor will then provide you with
broad guidelines as to what could be done to enhance the chances
of acceptance of the paper by reviewers. There is also an
opportunity for prospective authors that have had their
manuscripts rejected (e.g. with a recommendation for either
major changes or a complete review and resummission) to also
engage with a mentor to obtain guidance.
Several useful sources
that could be consulted for guidelines on writing papers and
reporting research results, exist. Please consult these.
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