A journal publication coaching session was held during this year's Air Transport Research Society (ATRS) conference. Here are some tips and insights discussed during the session on how to get paper published, specific to air transport research area.

Ten percent of the papers received by reviewers are actually sent to the wrong journals. This may seem trivial but truly essential: know which journal suits your paper.

Read papers that are published in your target journal. Examine the format. Every journal has a specific style, e.g. one requires a chapter on literature review, while others do not.

Train your academic writing skills. Make an academic blog. Learn how to form an argument.

Shorter is better. If you cannot write it in 20 pages, you simply fail.

Quality over quantity. One paper in Econometrica will bring you to full professorship in two years, while tens of papers in Journal of Air Transport Management will not bring you near one.

State your contributions clearly. Remember that using a different set of data, e.g. country specific data, does not necessarily result in merits. Moreover, when you replicate other people’s results, state clearly the previous works. In the end you may or may not have a contribution; it is up to the reviewers to decide.

Get professional editing service especially if English is not your first language. It is not the reviewers' job to fix your paper.

A PhD thesis is usually equivalent to 3 – 4 journal papers. One in methodology, one in application/empirical results, and another one in policy-related discussion.

Co-authorship may increase your chance in getting published.

Air transport is an application field. Get idea by reading mainline journals, such as journal on Operations Research or Economics. Note that application journal has lower value than mainline journal. Btw, impact factor is still controversial.

Last but not least: design your coping mechanism. Rejection is part of the journey.

Getting your paper published and disseminating your work is what academia comes down to. Related practical guidance is often helpful for beginners like me, to shed some lights on what to do and what not to do.