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The citation counts are an important indicator of scholarly impact. The purpose of this paper is to explore the correlation between citations of scientific articles and writing styles of abstracts in papers and capture the characteristics of highly cited papers' abstracts.

This research selected 10,000 highly cited papers and 10,000 zero-cited papers from the WOS (2008-2017) database. The Coh-Metrix 3.0 textual cohesion analysis tool was used to quantify the 108 language features of highly cited and zero-cited paper abstracts. The differences of the indicators with significant differences were analyzed from four aspects: vocabulary, sentence, syntax and readability.

The abstracts of highly cited papers contain more complex and professional words, more adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions and personal pronouns, but fewer nouns and verbs. The sentences in the abstracts of highly cited papers are more complex and the sentence length is relatively longer. The syntactic structure in abstracts of highly cited papers is relatively more complex and syntactic similarities between sentences are fewer. Highly cited papers' abstracts are less readable than zero-cited papers' abstracts.

This study analyses the differences between the abstracts of highly cited and those of zero-cited papers, reveals the common external and deep semantic features of highly cited papers in abstract writing styles, provide suggestions for researchers on abstract writing. These findings can help increase the scientific impact of articles and improve the review efficiency as well as the researchers' abstract writing skills.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the construction of articles published in three highly ranked interdisciplinary accounting journals.

The analysis is based on articles published during 2010 in Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal (AAAJ), Accounting, Organizations and Society (AOS) and Critical Perspectives on Accounting (CPA). The authors develop a framework and examine characteristics of the published articles, including the prose.

Based on the construction of accounting academic articles in the highly ranked interdisciplinary journals, the authors introduce a simplified concept of the five distinct major parts of an article, make some taken-for-granted aspects of article construction explicit and conclude that alternatives, if used effectively, can add to the quality of an article. Finally, there is a discussion of, and a reflection on, how the taken-for-granted rules of academic publishing can be challenged.

This article is limited by the authors ' own analysis and interpretations of AAAJ, AOS and CPA articles published during 2010.

As far as can be ascertained, the authors are the first to examine the construction of research articles published in high ranking interdisciplinary accounting journals. The paper can assist emerging scholars in the process of planning and writing their own articles. For seasoned researchers, the paper ' s insights may serve to reaffirm or help further develop their approach. The paper also contributes to the ongoing debate around the pressure to publish, the measurement of publications, and the difficulties of getting published.

Increasing pressure to enhance research coupled with a desire for a broadening of academic input, are prompting greater levels of collaboration. Research collaboration can generate notable benefits but can also pose a variety of challenges. The purpose of this paper is to explore the reasons, facilitators, benefits and challenges of academic collaboration. It also provides suggestions to manage identifiable risks and enhance team dynamics.

This is a conceptual paper exploring prior literature in relation to the contentious points of research collaboration, particularly in regard to authorship attribution.

The authors present two checklists that researchers can utilise to ensure the successful completion of collaborative projects. The checklists incorporate the main factors required for effective collaborative work and research, and form a foundation for discussion among team members.

The paper draws upon experiences, observations, academic literature and protocols, and provides strategies and recommendations to enhance collaboration and authorship attribution. The two checklists presented in the paper are value‐adding for team members.

This article aims to focus on areas that can potentially improve a manuscript’s chances of success, i.e. acceptance for publication. In particular, we deal with topic selection, as well as aspects that can improve the manuscript during the writing phase, including the style of prose and citations.

Recommendations are based on a review of the literature and our own experience. To demonstrate the practical application of the issues that need to be dealt with, examples have been provided from research articles published during 2010 in Accounting, Organizations and Society (AOS) and Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal (AAAJ).

There are some common reasons for rejection that can be avoided, but one of the most important issues is to ensure that the research question is novel and that this novelty is made explicit in the introduction to the manuscript. The novelty–rigour curve (or NR curve) is introduced and the relationship between novelty and rigour, as it relates to a manuscript’s likelihood of acceptance for publication, is explained. The assessment of the prose used in published articles reveals that there are no set rules.

This article does not reveal guaranteed recipes for success, except that careful consideration and motivation of the novelty and rigour of the research undertaken are important. The authors suggest research into reviewer behavioural aspects as a possible avenue for future research.

The novelty-rigour curve that depicts and explains the requirements of, and relationship between, these two research attributes is introduced. This article is novel because the prose of research articles published in AOS and AAAJ is critically examine in an attempt to assist both early career researchers to break into the top tier of accounting journals and established academics to enhance their chances of success. As such, the article has practical value for accounting academics and may also stimulate discussion among reviewers, editorial board members and editors, thereby playing a role in developing the field of accounting academic publishing.

Nobody concerned with political economy can neglect the history of economic doctrines. Structural changes in the economy and society influence economic thinking and, conversely, innovative thought structures and attitudes have almost always forced economic institutions and modes of behaviour to adjust. We learn from the history of economic doctrines how a particular theory emerged and whether, and in which environment, it could take root. We can see how a school evolves out of a common methodological perception and similar techniques of analysis, and how it has to establish itself. The interaction between unresolved problems on the one hand, and the search for better solutions or explanations on the other, leads to a change in paradigma and to the formation of new lines of reasoning. As long as the real world is subject to progress and change scientific search for explanation must out of necessity continue.

This paper aims to report a study of researchers' preferences in selecting information from cited papers to include in a literature review, and the kinds of transformations and editing applied to the selected information.

This is a part of a larger project to develop an automatic summarization method that emulates human literature review writing behaviour. Research questions were: how are literature reviews written – where do authors select information from, what types of information do they select and how do they transform it? What is the relationship between styles of literature review (integrative and descriptive) and each of these variables (source sections, types of information and types of transformation)? The authors analysed the literature review sections of 20 articles from the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 2001‐2008, to answer these questions. Referencing sentences were mapped to 279 source papers to determine the source sentences. The type of information selected, the sections of source papers where the information was taken from, and the types of editing changes made to include in the literature review were analyzed.

Integrative literature reviews contain more research result information and critique, and reference more information from the results and conclusion sections of the source papers. Descriptive literature reviews contain more research method information, and reference more information from the abstract and introduction sections. The most common kind of transformation is the high‐level summary, though descriptive literature reviews have more cut‐pasting, especially for information taken from the abstract. The types of editing – substitutions, insertions and deletions – applied to the source sentences are identified.

The results are useful in the teaching of literature review writing, and indicate ways for automatic summarization systems to emulate human literature review writing.

Though there have been several studies of abstracts and abstracting, there are few studies of literature reviews and literature review writing. Little is known about how writers select information from source papers, integrate it and present it in a literature review. This paper fills some of the gaps.

Current research aims to investigate whether it would be possible to identify all information security policy (ISP) writing styles and how these would influence ISP compliance. Almost all businesses use ISPs to establish boundaries and require secure behaviour from their employees. Unfortunately, professional surveys and academic research demonstrate a high level of non-compliance with the ISP. While the justification for the employee’s behaviour has been discussed, very few research papers have investigated whether the ISP writing style impacted the intent to comply with ISP. The research methodology incorporates content analysis and a quantitative descriptive review of published papers on ISP and non-IS policy compliance. The theoretical research allowed the identification of five major ISP writing styles: belonging, deterrence, goal, motivation, and specialist, as well as writing style influencers such as timeliness and readability. To achieve a higher level of compliance with the ISP, it was suggested that the writing styles of belonging, goal, and motivation be used primarily. Deterrence is generally discouraged. The study enabled us to determine when ISP writing styles were mentioned and the type of influence on the intent to comply with ISP. It also allowed for comparison and possible differences in ISPs versus standard workplace policies. There are proposals on which writing styles to put forward, along with recommendations on creating an ISP.

The purpose of the paper is to analyse the structure of a small number of abstracts that have appeared in the CABI database over a number of years, during which time the authorship of the abstracts changed from CABI editorial staff to journal article authors themselves. This paper reports a study of the semantic organisation and thematic structure of 12 abstracts from the field of protozoology in an effort to discover whether these abstracts followed generally agreed abstracting guidelines.

The method adopted was a move analysis of the text of the abstracts. This move analysis revealed a five‐move pattern: move 1 situates the research within the scientific community; move 2 introduces the research by either describing the main features of the research or presenting its purpose; move 3 describes the methodology; move 4 states the results; and move 5 draws conclusions or suggests practical applications.

Thematic analysis shows that scientific abstract authors thematise their subject by referring to the discourse domain or the “real” world. Not all of the abstracts succeeded in following the guideline advice. However, there was general consistency regarding semantic organisation and thematic structure.

The research limitations were the small number of abstracts examined, from just one subject domain.

The practical implications are the need for abstracting services to be clearer and more prescriptive regarding how they want abstracts to be structured as the lack of formal training in abstract writing increases the risk of subjectivity and verbosity and reduces clarity in scientific abstracts. Another implication of the research are that abstracting and indexing services must ensure that they maintain abstract quality if they introduce policies of accepting author abstracts. This is important as there is probably little formal training in abstract writing for science students at present. Recommendations for further research are made.

This paper reports a study of the semantic organisation and thematic structure of 12 abstracts from the field of protozoology.

The article reports on one area of research in an eLib MODELS supporting study which had three investigative areas: an examination of current database producers’ guidelines for their abstract writers, a brief survey of abstracts in some traditional online databases, and a detailed survey of abstracts from three types of electronic database (print‐sourced online databases, Internet subject trees or directories, and Internet gateways). The examination of database producers’ guidelines, reported here, gave a clear view of the intentions behind professionally produced traditional (printed index based) database abstracts and provided a benchmark against which to judge the conclusions of the larger investigations into abstract style, readability and content. The article concludes with a summary of recommendations for abstract writers.