The art of writing for premier journals

Premier journals are top-ranked publication outlets whose reputation is established and maintained based on the high level of scrutiny that is paid to the argument (e.g., is it convincing?), contribution (e.g., is it valuable?), conduct (e.g., is it rigorous?), and delivery (e.g., is it well presented?) of articles submitted for potential publication—they are essentially the sentinels of good science (Lim, 2018, 2021).

To support academics who wish to get published in premier journals (i.e., what is the aim?), this article curates a set of actionable guidelines that academics can rely on to craft articles for premier journals (i.e., how the aim is achieved?). These guidelines are shaped based on a triangulation of experience as an author, editor, and reviewer for premier journals (i.e., what is the source of rigor?). Academics who follow these guidelines should improve their chances of getting published in premier journals (i.e., so what if the aim is achieved?).

The anatomy of an article that is commonly found in premier journals consists of well written (i) title, (ii) abstract, (iii) introduction, (iv) theoretical background, (v) methodology, (vi) findings, (vii) discussion, (viii) conclusion, (ix) references, and (x) appendices.

The current issue of Global Business and Organizational Excellence (GBOE) features three highly contemporary studies.

The COVID-19 pandemic is now in an endemic stage, but cases continue to come in cycles and waves globally at the time of writing. Kee et al. (2022) highlighted that COVID-19 has transformed not only education, work, and social life, but also the ongoing digitization of bullying, wherein a rise in cyberbullying on social media was evidenced following the COVID-19 pandemic. This study adds to the existing collection of COVID-19 studies in GBOE (e.g., Al-Abrrow et al., 2021; Bretas & Alon, 2020; Mello & Tomei, 2021; Sahoo et al., 2022; Sutarto et al., 2022), which remain free for download as part of Wiley's commitment to make COVID-19 research freely accessible to the public.

The Ukraine and Russia conflict also remains ongoing at the time of writing. Lim et al. (2022b) adopted a crowdsourcing approach to provide a prospective evaluation of the impact of war for business and society using the Ukraine and Russia conflict as a case. Their study showed that a war can impact both business and society within and outside war-torn countries in various ways. This study is open access, which means that readers can download and enjoy its content for free.

As organizations navigate through disruptive challenges and unprecedented externalities, the need for a new approach to achieve organizational excellence has never been greater. Kopelman (2022) introduced the Cube One Framework as a mechanism that organizations can leverage for achieving organizational excellence. The framework, which is supported by cross-country studies, cases studies of prominent organizations, and stock market valuations, highlights the importance of empirically examining practices aiming to satisfy stakeholders (e.g., customers, employees, and funders), measuring the frequency of enacted practices, and performing empirical-based diagnosis for continuous and timely improvements.

To this end, it is hoped that this article will serve as a useful guide to academics aspiring to publish in GBOE and premier journals at large. It is also hoped that the articles in GBOE’s latest issue will be useful for gaining up-to-date insights on global business trends and mechanisms for organizational excellence.

The author declares no conflict of interest.

Weng Marc Lim is responsible for conceptualization and writing (original draft preparation, review, and editing).