The Research and Publication Unit of the Faculty of Management Studies, Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka, recently concluded the ‘Writing Impactful Research’ programme with great success. ‘Writing Impactful Research’ is a four-month research programme offered by the faculty of Management Studies in collaboration with the Emerald Publishing and College of Healthcare Management and Economics, Gulf Medical University, Ajman, UAE. The program’s principal objective is to develop impactful researchers by enhancing the scholars’ research and publication competencies in the region. There is no course fee associated with the program, and it is delivered free of charge as a CSR program. Academics and researchers interested in scholarly publications were identified as the target group of the programme and 750+ researchers worldwide participated in the programme every week. The programme commenced on 22nd April 2021 and concluded on 5th August 2021 through the secure online meeting platform, GoToWebinar.
The program focused on the rationale and complexities in research publishing, how relevant is the innovative approach in research for targeting high impact journals, philosophy of research, generating research questions through problematization, identifying research gaps, selecting and studying literature, the rationale for methodology selection, how to select the suitable journal for publication, structuring the manuscript, understanding the publishing process, and how to identify fake/predatory/cloned journals in academics. Moreover, there were special sessions from Emerald Publishing, Clarivate Analytics (Web of Science), and Elsevier (Science Direct) on how to improve article acceptance rate and publish quicker, how to take your research to the next level, and tools facilitating research writing.
The entire success of the programme is due to the remarkable contribution made by the international resource panel of the programme. The guest speakers, Prof. Kashif Saeed (GIFT University and Brand Ambassador – UAE, Emerald Publishing), Prof. Vikas Arya (International University of Rabat, Rabat Business School, Morocco), Prof. Arosha Adhikaram (University of Colombo), Prof. Tharusha Goonerathne (University of Colombo), Prof. Abhishek Behl (O P Jindal Global University, India), Prof. Satyanarayana Parayitam (University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, USA), Prof. Jayantha N. Dewasiri (Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka), Prof. Amila Jayarathne (University of Sri Jayewardenepura), Prof. Moon Moon Haque (Associate Dean, College of Healthcare Management and Economics, Gulf Medical University), Prof. Sudhir Rana (College of Healthcare Management and Economics, Gulf Medical University), Prof. Umesh Bamel (International Management Institute New Delhi), Prof. Zubin Sethna (Regent’s University London), Prof. Rosalind Jones (Liverpool Business School, Liverpool John Moores University), Dr. Subhasree Nag (Clarivate Analytics/Web of Science), Mr. Vishav Sharma (Clarivate Analytics/Web of Science), Dr. Shubhra Dutta (Science Direct / Elsevier), Prof. Shanthi Gopalakrishnan (Martin Tuchman School of Management, USA), Ms. Sangeeta Menon (Emerald Publishing), Dr. Nakul Parameswar (Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad), and Dr. Sumit Narula (Amity University, India) gave their time to further the cause of free researcher education by sharing their expertise and experience in the topics they presented.
A big part of the credit for the success of this program goes to our academic partners, Emerald Publishing and Gulf Medical University, who supported us through every aspect of planning and conducting the program. Further, we highly appreciate the tremendous support of the Vice-Chancellor of the Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka, Prof. Udaya Rathnayake in conducting the programme.
From Emerald Publishing, we would like to thank in particular, Mr. Sundar Radhakrishnan (Vice-President, Emerald Publishing – South Asia) and Ms. Sangeeta Menon (Publishing Relationship Manager, Emerald Publishing) us lent us their resources, technical expertise and connected us to the guest speakers who contributed to the programme. Further, we would like to acknowledge Ms. Disha Lakhanpal (Regional Marketing Manager, Emerald Publishing), who coordinated the technical and marketing-related activities of the entire programme to bring the kind of visibility the program needed to include researchers from across the globe who were searching for similar programs to further their understanding of writing impactful articles.
As a partner, Gulf Medical University rendered a significant contribution in developing and conducting the programme. We appreciate the contribution made by Prof. Hossam Hamdy (Chancellor, Gulf Medical University), Prof. Moon Moon Haque (Associate Dean, College of Healthcare Management and Economics, Gulf Medical University), and Prof. Sudhir Rana (College of Healthcare Management and Economics, Gulf Medical University, UAE), in conducting this programme.
Commenting on the completion of the programme, Prof. Athula Gnanapala (Dean, Faculty of Management Studies stated that “we are delighted to be a part of the successful collaboration in developing the research and publication competencies of the scholars worldwide. I believe that this programme has helped you in enhancing your research skills. As academic institutions, it is our primary responsibility to develop our academics and students’ research and publication competencies, which will pave the way towards creating a knowledge economy in the long run. This program was a part of that extensive goal, and we are keen on developing different programs to strengthen the research and innovation in and out of the South Asian region.”
Professor MSM Aslam, Chairman of the Research and Publication Unit (FMS, Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka), stated that “we can see that most of the academic institutions in the region have deviated from its mandate, it is required to develop research and innovation skills of the scholars to boost up any economy. Most of the time, we intend to emphasize that it is a responsibility of the government, but I see that as a responsibility of academic/professional institutions. Accordingly, we delivered this program with the support of Emerald Publishing, Gulf Medical University, GIFT University, and few other institutions to address the same.”
Mr. Sundar Radhakrishnan, Vice President, Emerald Publishing – South Asia, said, “We are delighted to have been associated with this initiative by Sabaragamuva University. It is heartening to see the kind of keenness and readiness Sri Lanka is exhibiting towards high-quality research publishing and how Sabaragamuva is pioneering with events like these. I learn from my team that the response for the series was very good and thousands of people registered and benefited from all over the world, which makes our association with the event even more satisfying. I would like to personally thank all those great minds that have worked together in putting this together and making this webinar series and hugely successful one. We look forward to working closely with more such initiatives from Sabaragamuva and Sri Lanka at large.”
Dr. Moon Moon Haque, Dean College of Healthcare Management & Economics, said, “these kinds of events and collaborations are needed. Academic institutions from different regions and allied partners of academia should work together to achieve the common objective of conducting and publishing impactful research. I am thankful to FMS, Sabaragamuwa University and Emerald Publishing for sharing this vision with us and supporting this joint venture.”
The coordinators of program Prof. Jayantha N Dewasiri, Prof. Sudhir Rana, Ms. Sangeeta Menon, and Prof. Kashif Saeed are excited about the competition of program and are of opinion that this program marks the beginning of achieving the overarching objective of supporting and building the researcher community in such a big scale. We are extremely thankful to our institutions and participants for their warm response and continued association.
As an extension of the Writing Impactful Research (WIR) Programme and as a post-conference engagement of ICMR 2021, Faculty of Management Studies introduced the Research Mentoring Programme (RMP) in collaboration with Emerald Publishing and Gulf Medical University. Accordingly, the papers presented at the conference will be eligible for a two-month post- mentoring program on how to write and publish impactful manuscripts. There are several benefits of the Research mentoring Programme. The RMP committee will assign highly recognized researchers as mentors of your research and will arrange individual sessions with the mentor to improve your manuscript. Further, the committee has introduced an interactive workshop series to enhance the quality of your manuscript. Accordingly, 08 workshops will be conducted in two months. There are ample publication opportunities in reputed journals and assigned best paper awards for each track in this conference. This is the first time that a research conference is associated with a post-mentoring programme to enhance the research and publication skills of the presenters of a conference in Sri Lanka.
By Prof. Jayantha N. Dewasiri
Professor, Department of Accountancy and Fianance, Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka
Brand Ambassodor- South Asia: Emerald Publsihing
Miss Sangeeta Menon
Publishing Relationship Manager
Emerald Publishing, India.
Prof. Sudhir Rana
Assistant Professor
Gulf Medical University, UAE.
– Sunday Observer Sri Lanka
, Business, impactful,initiative,programme,research,writing,