How to Write a Publishable Paper as a Class Project

This web site shows how to write a publishable article by beginning with the replication of a previously published article. Following the advice here constitutes the main assignment of my class, Advanced Quantitative Research Methodology. After fine tuning these suggestions over 20 years, I published the 2006 version as:
Gary King Publication, Publication, PS: Political Science and Politics, Vol. XXXIX, No. 1 (January, 2006), 119-125 (Abstract: HTML | Article: PDF)
Continuing updates to this article can be found here:
  1. When trying to replicate an article, carefully read all footnotes, appendices, tables, captions, web appendices, etc. Also, check previous or subsequent articles from the same author on the same or related subjects for better documentation.
  2. Before you contact an author, check his or her web site, the Dataverse Network, the ICPSR Publications Related Archive, and the journal's web site to see if replication materials are available. If you need to contact the author of the original article, consolidate your requests into as few emails as possible.
  3. To increase the probability that your paper will eventually be published, its usually better to choose an article from a better journal. The way these things work, if you find something important and do a good job researching and writing your paper, you will have a chance at publication in that journal. If your submission is rejected for whatever reason, odds are you have to go down one level in the hierarchy of journals. Its thus best to start with some of the best journals. Of course, some terrific -- and influential -- articles are not in the most visible journals, so this is a consideration but hardly a rule.
  4. Additional points that may apply just for the project in my class:
    1. Please choose an article to replicate that does not use too massive a data set. (Larger data sets can of course be more informative, but if they overwhelm the computational resources you have available you may need to spend a disproportionate amount of your time overcoming these problems.)
    2. Your paper must use some methods at least as advanced as those we learned in this class; that means that if you choose an article with less advanced methods (such as only linear regression), your paper will only work as a class project if you have a more advanced method that makes sense to use and if it produces sufficiently worthwhile results that justifies itself. Since introducing a new method into a paper when it doesn't make a difference doesn't make for a good paper, you are at somewhat more risk for the class project if you choose an article that uses relatively simple statistical procedures. Its not necessarily the wrong choice, since if the author is using simple procedures and you have better ones, you might be able to extract more information.
    3. After you have your results and before you start to write the paper, prepare an abstract of 150 words or less and email it to the class list. I (and perhaps others) will comment on it and try to help you improve it, and thereby the paper. After you've finished the analysis, you have borne most of the costs of the research project, and so it is at precisely this time when you can sometimes most easily have a big impact on improving the final product. After receiving comments from the list, come by my office (together with your coauthor) and we'll talk through your ideas and results and see if we can make the paper even better.
    4. Prepare the paper double-spaced with at least 1 inch margins all around and in 12 point font. (I realize that you can see it in smaller fonts, but that's not necessarily true for your reviewers. In fact, older reviewers can read papers with smaller fonts, but the experience is more annoying and requires much more attention than it would otherwise. There's no reason to put that roadblock in the way of them understanding your work.) Print on one side of the paper only (the opposite side should be blank). Overall, make the style of the paper look like those professors write. For examples, see my preprints.
    5. Please read the article and this update carefully and check it repeatedly. Please try to avoid us having to refer you back to this material when we give you final comments on your paper.
Suggestions for other instructors who might wish to use this assignment in your classes. The key to remember is that students are rarely good at coming up with a big publishable idea, or sometimes even an answerable question, on their own. They will eventually, but this is essentially their first real effort. To increase the probability that this experience will be a success:
  1. Meet with them collectively or in small groups to help them construct their arguments, decide what avenues to pursue, and construct a winning argument. Its ok for you (or your teaching assistants) to give them the key idea in their paper if they're doing the hard work of replication and analysis.
  2. Keep them focused on satisfying each and every item on the list. Encourage them to read it over multiple times while they are preparing, while they are writing, and before they turn it in.
  3. Use the exchange of abstracts (preferably on an email list so everyone else can see at the same time) as a way to help them with their overall pitch, and organization of their paper and its main point.
  4. You can't emphasize enough how rigorously organized and concise their paper must be. The section headings alone ought to convey the entire message of the paper. Same for the title, for the abstract, and for the introduction.

Also see related research and Class Materials.