How to Get Published: Optimal Distinctiveness of Entrepreneurship Articles

Optimal distinctiveness theory highlights that authors need to balance the distinctiveness of a paper and the expectations of audiences, such as of editors and reviewers, to get published (i.e., to achieve publication legitimacy). However, while the literature points to several mechanisms of balancing distinctiveness and audience expectations, current research does not account for situations in which authors face diverse audience expectations, such as theoretical contributions, societal relevance, and conventions of academic writing. Thus, to understand how different forms of expectations, in combination with distinctiveness, may influence publication legitimacy, we use computer-aided text analysis to investigate the last version of paper submissions’ abstracts and their related editorial decisions for two leading entrepreneurship journals, Entrepreneurship: Theory & Practice (ETP, 4,151 papers) and Small Business Economics Journal (SBEJ, 4,043 papers). We find that the positive impact of distinctiveness disappears in competitive journal environments that receive papers from a large variety of topics, methods, and theories. Furthermore, we find that authors cannot meet varying expectations regarding contributions simultaneously - theoretical contribution claims play a role for ETP and empirical ones for SBEJ. Lastly, we show that language use is critical for the comprehensibility and signaling of paper narratives – analytical thinking increases publication legitimacy in both journals, and authenticity increases publication legitimacy in SBEJ.