How to look competent when you publish research outside your company

Publishing research externally is one of the best ways to establish authority in your industry. But every public forum has its own standards for how research should be presented. In this post, I discuss the four things to look for when deciding where and how to publish your research.

So you’ve done an awesome research study, and you’ve decided you want to share it with the world. Congratulations! It’s a major milestone when you move from influencing within a company to building authority at an industry level.

Showing up well publicly can have benefits for your individual career, as well as for your team and company.

In a world where most tech workers are bound by non-disclosure agreements, getting company approval to share a project publicly is a rare opportunity to increase your visibility and to showcase great work by you and your team.

And from an organizational standpoint, sharing great work by employees can enhance the company’s reputation. This can make your organization more attractive to potential hires, customers, and even shareholders.

But for all its upside, greater visibility comes with risk. Where there is potential to fly, there is potential to flop. And when it comes to research, that “flop” can come as looking like you don’t know what you’re doing. This can cause all those PR benefits to backfire, resulting in a project that makes your company, your team–and you–appear less than competent.¹

Fortunately, this situation is preventable. In this post, I’ll discuss what you can do to understand the expectations for publishing your research in a third-party forum. By taking these steps, you can reap all of the benefits of thought leadership without taking a hit to your credibility.

Every organization has its own research expectations

When it comes to reporting research, every organization has its own conventions and unstated assumptions.

If you’ve been doing customer research at your company for a while, you probably have certain familiar ways of doing things. This may include the reporting format you use, shorthand descriptions of things your audience is already familiar with, as well as an understanding of what you can safely leave out. (I can say from experience that none of my stakeholders have ever wanted to get into the minutiae of random sampling and fine-grained statistical analyses!)

But when you take research beyond your company, it’s important to realize that those conventions and assumptions aren’t shared. A third-party audience is a blank slate. They have their own different conventions, and they haven’t built up trust in you over time like your internal stakeholders have.

So how do you understand what the expectations are for presenting research to a new external audience?

By targeting specific publications and doing your homework.

Choosing a publication to target

For most people, the decision to publish comes before deciding on a venue. (And sometimes before even deciding on a topic–as a design manager announced to me recently, “I’ve decided I’m at the point in my career where I am ready to speak at a conference!”)

This is all perfectly normal. But before you get too far into your preparations, you should take the time to examine what your options are for publication in your industry. Reviewing those publications will tell you exactly what level of research sophistication you should be targeting.

For the companies I’ve worked with, the most popular research publication venues are industry conferences and trade journals.² Academic venues are an option as well, but first-time researchers may become frustrated by their extensive reporting requirements and protracted publication timelines.³ Which specific conferences or journals make most sense for you will depend on your goals and your industry.

As you consider your options, don’t just look for the most prestigious venue. Look for a place where your results will have value and add to the conversation.⁴ When in doubt, your colleagues can offer a valuable perspective–think of it as your own personal peer review.

How to evaluate an industry publication’s research expectations

Once you’ve found potential places to publish your research, you still need to understand what their audiences expect.

While some publications (usually the more academically oriented ones) will have submission guidelines that outline exactly what they’re looking for, most trade journals won’t mention anything about research specifically.

In this case, you’ll need to start by searching their archives for other research they’ve published. The closer it is to yours, the better. If you want to publish a survey, look for survey reports. If you want to publish a case study, look for case studies. Try to find at least a few different examples from over the past 2-3 years if possible (otherwise, keep it as recent as you can!).

Once you’ve found your examples, look for four things:

Participants – How many were there? What do they report about who the participants were? Does it say how they were recruited?
Procedure – What kind of study was it? What tools or materials did they use, and are they shared in the report? How was the study administered?
Results – What happened during the study? Do they report any statistics? Do they discuss any study or statistical limitations?
Figures – What kinds of figures do they use? How are they labeled? Do they include any statistical notation, such as confidence intervals or significance asterisks?

Different industry publications vary widely in what and how much information they report in each of these four categories. But in general, the more academic the publication, the more information will be expected. There will also be a higher bar for research rigor (typically reflected in things like the number of participants, how scientifically the study is designed, and what statistical tests are included). So if statistics isn’t your strong suit, you may not want to start off by submitting to an academic conference.

On the other hand, many trade journals are much more informal with their research reporting. You may find that the style and presentation of results is less consistent from article to article. In these forums, then, you can focus less on statistics and more on telling a good story, knowing that you’re not violating your audience’s expectations.

Example from the real estate industry

I recently reviewed survey publication standards for three professional organizations in the real estate industry. These included:

The Title Report, a title insurance publication produced by a market research company
American Land Title Association (ALTA), a national trade association for title insurance professionals
National Association of Realtors (NAR), a larger organization for real estate agents (and the organization that owns the REALTOR registered trademark)

In the sample articles I reviewed,⁵ there was a dramatic difference in the research reporting standards for the two smaller organizations (The Title Report and ALTA) versus those of the larger NAR organization. The table below summarizes what I observed.

This is an example of the kind of analysis someone could conduct to evaluate each of these organizations as a potential research publication venue. Based on the observations in the table above, they might come to the following conclusions:

By looking at the information reported about survey participants across the different publications, they could determine whether the number of participants in their own survey is on par with other surveys being published. For instance, if they had only 500 participants in their survey, that’s probably too low to publish in an NAR forum, since a typical NAR survey includes 2,000 participants.
By looking at how rigorously study procedures and results are reported, they can gauge how “academic” their research reporting needs to be. If they want to publish in NAR, they’ll probably need to include more sophisticated statistical tests and adhere to a more rigid style of reporting. However, if they favor a more casual, narrative approach, the smaller title organizations are probably a better fit.
By looking at what types of figures are commonly used across publications, they can understand what graphs and charts are most familiar to each publication’s audience, as well as what type of labeling is expected.

Research recognition without the risks

When you take the major step of taking your research public, the last thing you want to worry about is whether you’re doing it “right.” By targeting publications wisely and taking the time upfront to understand what their audience expects, you can free yourself up to focus on what really matters: getting recognition for good work by you and your team, and making your industry a little better.

👋 I’m Dr. Llewyn Paine, and I love helping people who are building new research programs gain a wider audience for their work. If you have a research visibility problem, you can grab 30 minutes to chat with me here.

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Footnotes:

For anyone who thinks externally published research doesn’t get challenged, witness the vigorous back-and-forth of economist Ian Ayres and behavioral scientist Matt Wallaert concerning the results of the 2012 “Bing It On” challenge.
You are probably already familiar with many of your industry’s conferences and journals, but there may be others you’re not aware of. To compile a more complete list, seek out professional organizations (many of which have their own publications and events), and ask around with colleagues.
If you do want to attempt to publish in an academic journal or conference, you can usually understand their requirements by referring to publication manuals, such as the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA), or to the submission guidelines of the journal or conference you’re submitting to.
Other factors to consider: Does the audience for this publication match the audience you want to target? What kind of reach does it have? What is the acceptance and publishing process? Is there a fee? What benefits do they offer to authors/speakers? And so on.
You can find representative examples from The Title Report here, ALTA here, and NAR here.