Norin Arshed is Programmes Director for Leadership and Organisational Performance suite of MSc programmes in the Department of Business Management at Heriot-Watt University. She is an economist by background with professional experience both in the public and private sectors. Her work concentrates on enterprise policy. In particular, the role and contribution from those closely linked to the formulation process (ministers and civil servants), whilst also examining how enterprise policy is implemented (national, regional and local economic development agencies), and how entrepreneurs/SMEs experience and utilise such policy initiatives. Institutional theory is the theoretical lens used to highlight the dynamics of the enterprise policy process in her work. She is involved with projects and research with numerous stakeholders: the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills; numerous prominent think tanks; Rio de Janeiro University, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (Japan); Industry Canada and many others.

I recently got an acceptance from a journal for my article: “Exploring the disconnect in policy implementation: A case of enterprise policy in England” but only after nearly 3 years of writing, rewriting, editing, and addressing comments from colleagues, reviewers, and the editor. No-one told me that the publication game took so much time, patience and perseverance not to mention pain. The only mantra I heard over and over again was “publish or perish” – this old adage is alive and kicking, and more often than not, keeping me awake at night!

All early career researchers like myself need to understand the time in which it takes not only to write the article – the article must be articulate, highlight the aims and contributions (ideally theoretical contributions) and ‘join the conversation’ of whichever journal the article will be submitted to – but also the time after the writing. After submitting the article, it can take anything from up to 3 months to 9 months to receive a ‘reject’ (the editor thinks it’s not worthy of the journal), or a Revise and Resubmit (where the article has been anonymously reviewed) and can fall under ‘reject’ with comments or a possible acceptance if changes are to be made given the reviewers comments. Once the comments from reviewers are addressed and then sent back to the journal and editor, the wait is back on. Will the editor and the reviewers accept the article now? Luckily, for me, my hard work paid off and the editor sent an email of acceptance four weeks after, giving me an early Christmas present.

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