I also considered titling this post: what makes a great paper (but I had already used that title).
David Deming is starting as co-editor of AEJ: Applied and has recently tweeted his thoughts on how he thinks about where a paper should be published. This week, I have spent a good chunk of my time advising students on which of their paper ideas are most promising to pursue as dissertation topics. David's tweets provide excellent guidance on this. The main thing:
"The primary question I have in mind when reading a paper is “what have I learned from reading this that I did not already know?” This is a heuristic that helps me weigh impact/contribution vs. methodological strength. For RCTs and quasi-experiments - if the methodological approach is not convincing, it is hard to feel I’ve learned anything, so the question of impact is moot. However, if the question is uninteresting or has been studied many times before, even airtight identification still leaves me feeling like I have not learned anything So methodological strength and importance of question are strong complements."
Read the entire thread! He also discusses his own very positive experience with a journal editor, and hopes to do the same. For all of you journal editors who help authors transform their "raw" ideas into excellent papers, thank you. On behalf of the entire profession.
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