LeBow Professor Ben Lev Presents in Taiwan
Ben Lev, Ph.D., professor of decision sciences at Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business, recently gave a presentation entitled “Help Your Editor Accept Your Paper” at three Taiwanese universities: Chung Yuan Christian University in Chungli City; National Cheng Kung University in Tainan City; and National Taiwan University in Taipei City, which is often recognized as Taiwan’s most prestigious university.
Lev has a lot of experience on which to base his presentation. As the editor-in-chief of OMEGA: The International Journal of Management Science, for the past nine years, Lev sees 600-700 submissions per year, and with an acceptance rate of approximately 10-12 percent, he estimates that he’s rejected some 3,000 papers during that time.
The subject matter of this talk is especially important to doctoral students in Taiwan and several other Asian countries, where doctoral students are required to publish two articles in top-tier journals before being awarded their Ph.D. OMEGA has the second-highest impact factor among management science journals.
The presentations were well attended, with a crowd of approximately 100 people present at each. Lev said he received many questions, but of course the most prevalent was what he looks for in the papers he accepts for publication in OMEGA. Lev says some things the papers he chooses have in common include: good flow and structure, a new idea, a nice set of references, and real-life application -- less to theory -- "because OMEGA is practical, written for practitioners, and I want something [practitioners] can understand and apply what they read," Lev says.
Still, Lev says, it is sometimes hard to put his finger on exactly why he chooses one paper over another. He explains, "When you go to a museum, you look at a painting and you know whether you like it or not, but it's difficult to articulate why. It's the same thing with an article."
While in Taiwan, Lev also attended and served as the program committee chair for the fourth International Conference in Management Science and Engineering Management, which is presented by the International Journal of Management Science and Engineering Management. Lev also serves as a co-editor of this publication.
