About me …• Ph.D. in Communication, Cornell University (2006)• On editorial advisory boards for:

• Public Understanding of Science (5/year impact factor 2.3, 11/76, Communication)

• Science Communication (5/year impact factor 2.8, 16/76, Communication)

• Risk Analysis (5/year impact factor 2.5, 9/99, Math, Interdisciplinary Applications)

• Journal of Risk Research (5/year impact factor 1.4, 31/95, Social Sciences, Interdisciplinary)

• Review 25+ papers for journals per year, as well as conference submissions• Have published 60+ articles and chapters, most articles in SSCI journals

• Most articles I write get published … eventually

Where it starts …• Read journal articles with a focus on style and technique …• How do they set up arguments?• What kind of methods do they use?• How do they report their results?• (You can’t plagiarize content, but you mimic copy style)

If possible …• Attend conferences to get to learn

editors’ and other scholars’ thinking• Sign up to serve as a reviewer

(conferences, journals, grants, etc.)

Questions the editors ask …• Does it fit the journal?• Is the style/formatting appropriate?• Topic? Theory? Methods?• Will anyone care?• (Heuristic cue: Do they cite the journal?)

• Is it readable?• Does it appear to have academic merit?• Methods? • Theory driven research question?

What makes a good research question:• Most social science research is narrow• Seeks to test or explore a specific

applied or theoretical question• Theory/past research used to

determine hypotheses/research questions (literature review)

A topic is not a question …

Student: I want to do a study of social media and science communicationMe: What do you want to know about social media and science communicationStudent: I want to know what scientists are doing on social mediaMe: What do you mean by ‘doing’? What scientists?Student: I guess all scientists and, like, how often the use social media…Me: What do you mean by ‘use’ social media? Student: Like how often do they tweet or use Facebook? Me: To communicate about what? Student: Their research, I guess …Me: Do you only care about how much they use social media?Student: No, I want to do what they say and how they say it …Me: What do you think they’re doing? …Why is that important? … What research is there? … What do we know about what other people similar to scientists are doing? What theories did those studies use, etc.? How does this fit with your research goals?

Note: This is an applied case …

Questions the reviewer asks• Is it novel and interesting?• Do the authors seem to know what they’re doing? • Design …

• Can the reviewer understand the argument?• Enough detail to replicate …• Completeness of evidence …• Writing …