Publishing in AMJ: Topic Choice

Are you looking to make a significant impact with your research in the Academy of Management Journal (AMJ)? Dive into the inaugural part of the insightful “Publishing in AMJ” series: “FROM THE EDITORS: PUBLISHING IN “AMJ”—PART 1: TOPIC CHOICE” by Jason A. Colquitt and Gerard George.

This essential editorial kicks off a seven-part series offering “bumper-to-bumper” guidance for improving the quality of submissions to the Journal. This first installment focuses critically on topic choice, a decision made years before submission that often plants the seeds for either rejection or a coveted revise-and-resubmit

The editors outline five distinct criteria for effective topics that generate crucial momentum right from the start:

• Significance: Taking on “Grand Challenges”
  • An effective topic confronts or contributes to a “grand challenge”—large, unresolved problems within a particular literature or area of inquiry. It requires bold and unconventional approaches that leap beyond existing explanations, potentially engendering new paradigms. While few AMJ submissions will tackle global issues like eradicating poverty, they can address significant problems in their field with rigor and relevance, solving a piece of a larger puzzle.
• Novelty: Changing the Conversation
  • Novelty is key for top journals like AMJ. Your study should change the ongoing scholarly conversation by introducing new ideas, constructs, or insights, rather than merely adding to existing momentum. This often stems from knowledge recombination, building bridges between different literatures or disciplines. Avoid the “familiarity trap,” “maturity trap,” and “nearness trap” by exploring fresh phenomena or perspectives that aren’t just marginal extensions or too redundant.
• Curiosity: Catching and Holding Attention
  • A compelling topic sparks and maintains curiosity, encouraging deeper and more persistent processing of information. It achieves this by challenging readers’ taken-for-granted assumptions or addressing “breakdowns”—surprising findings that existing explanations cannot account for. The best topics present a mystery where the ending, or at least the core results, are not clear and obvious from the outset.
• Scope: Casting a Wider Net
  • Even brilliant ideas can falter if the study’s scope is too narrow. AMJ expects ambitious studies that adequately sample the landscape of a topic, incorporating relevant constructs, mechanisms, and perspectives. The Journal no longer publishes “research notes” and typically expects articles around 40 pages, advocating for “one great paper” over multiple thinly-sliced ones from a single dataset. Comprehensive studies that use multiple theoretical lenses are highly valued.
• Actionability: Insights for Practice
  • Finally, a topic must be actionable, offering valuable insights for managerial or organizational practice. This involves explaining variability in practices that current theory cannot, addressing “white spaces” where existing vocabulary fails, or offering counterintuitive insights. Research is relevant when it generates useful insights for practitioners, especially concerning variables they can control.

Conclusion: An effective topic for AMJ tackles a grand challenge, pursues a novel direction that ignites and sustains curiosity, is ambitious in scope, and uncovers actionable insights. As topic choice is one of the least revisable aspects of any submission, Colquitt and George strongly advise future submitters to seek frank feedback from colleagues familiar with AMJ on their topic choices. This proactive step can provide the crucial momentum needed for success once the manuscript reaches the reviewers.

Why topic choice matters so much

Jason Colquitt and Gerard George opened AMJ‘s seven-part “Publishing in AMJ” series with topic choice because, as they put it, the seeds of many rejections are planted at the very start of a project. A study can be well executed and still fail if its topic does not engage reviewers and readers, while a well-chosen topic gives a manuscript momentum from the outset. They propose five criteria: significance, novelty, curiosity, scope and actionability.

Significance: grand challenges

Borrowing the idea of “grand challenges” from mathematics, engineering and global development, the authors encourage researchers to frame a study as solving part of a large, unresolved problem in their literature. Their example from healthcare is Ferlie and colleagues’ (2005) study of why evidence-based innovations fail to spread, which showed that factors expected to aid diffusion, such as professionalisation, can instead block it.

Novelty: changing the conversation

A novel topic changes the direction of the scholarly conversation rather than adding to existing momentum. Novelty often comes from knowledge recombination across literatures. The authors warn against three traps: the familiarity trap (topics that are too familiar), the maturity trap (topics that are too mature and redundant) and the nearness trap (topics too close to existing work).

Curiosity: catching and holding attention

Good topics challenge taken-for-granted assumptions, in line with Davis’s “index of the interesting”, or start from a mystery or “breakdown” that existing explanations cannot account for, rather than simple gap-spotting. If a reviewer can guess the results from the title, the topic is unlikely to hold attention. A study comparing whether leaders’ displays of happiness or anger improve team performance, and why, is their example of a topic whose ending cannot be guessed.

Scope and actionability

Even a strong idea can be undermined if the study is too small to sample the relevant landscape adequately. Finally, topics should be actionable, offering insights that managers and organisations can use. For health management researchers aiming at top journals, the five criteria provide a useful test before data collection begins.

Reference for this Article:

Colquitt, J. A., & George, G. (2011). From the editors: Publishing in “AMJ”—Part 1: Topic choice. The Academy of Management Journal, 54(3), 432–435.