Writing for publication: Strategies and challenges for academic staff in higher education

Abstract

Publication is a key step for researchers in disseminating research results to the scientific community and the general public. An effective publication strategy can help researchers or academic staff ensure maximum impactful research. The current study succeeded in exploring the strategies of academic staff in writing for publication in reputable international journals. A descriptive qualitative approach using the Focus Group Discussion (FGD) technique has been used in this study to answer the research issue. 20 academic staff of public universities in Indonesia participated in this research. This study found three strategies used by the participants; (1) browsing relevant articles for references, (2) Selecting one relevant article as a model, (3) Matching the quality of the
original article with some articles in targeted journals, (4) Choosing the relevant journal for publication, and (5) preparing a publication-worthy manuscript according to the journal template. Additionally, there were several crucial factors that hindered the improvement of staff in higher education’s publication abilities in international journals. Such consisted of; uneven allocation of
incentive fund distribution, administrative burden, and inconsistent university policy as a facilitator. Suggestions and recommendations were also discussed further in the current study.