1st International Conference on Business and Management (ICBM 2017), concluded on September 22, 2017, the two-day of the conference, with a call for becoming global citizens to give one’s best in writing quality papers for publishing in peer reviewed journals so as to be of use to society as a whole.

Addressing a “Meet the Journal Editors” session at the conference organized by BRAC Business School (BBS) of BRAC University (BRACU) at The Westin Dhaka, BRACU Vice Chancellor Prof. Syed Saad Andaleeb, Ph.D. delineated on characteristics of quality papers and journals. On the journal of Bangladesh Studies, of which he is the editor, Prof. Andaleeb said it had a paper rejection rate of 80 per cent for plagiarism, insufficient definitions, improper rational flow, amateurship styles, inadequate designs, irrelevant topics, over-engineering and misaligned conclusions. Writers from this part of the world lack quality in writing and so should make use of close circles of “brutal reviews” and Turnitin software for better results, he said.

Moderating a corresponding question-answer session afterwards, BBS Assoc. Prof. Dr Md Mamun Habib, Editor-in-Chief of Scopus Indexed Journal, emphasized on having patience and not to be disheartened easily, as publishing a quality paper takes time. Therefore, young scholars must think peer-reviewed journal at first and then Scopus indexed journal as it would take about one year.

Prof. Dr Mark GOH of NUS Business School, National University of Singapore said with 1 billion PhDs rolling out every year, there was a “publish or perish” culture, generating tremendous pressure on getting papers published, which ultimately led to bad behavior.

On creating journals, Prof. Dr Pairach Piboonrungroj, Associate Dean, College of Maritime studies and Management, Chiang Mai University, Thailand urged on building brands, setting up special issues on specific topics, nurturing good personal relationships and knowing the audience for promotions.

Prof. Ramayah Thurasamy of USM, Malaysia and Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Applied Structural Equation Modeling, spoke on building tolerance on chances of papers being rejected and on staying alert of self- plagiarism and spam journal mails which hijack original logos.

Dr. Habib, session chair of “Meet-the-editors”, illustrated the basic format of the accepted journal papers and emphasized the contribution of the articles for the academicians, practitioners and finally the society. Ethical issues, including review process, rate of acceptance, similarity index of plagiarism software, namely Turnitin and iThenticate software, were discussed in this session. Finally, few queries were raised from the participants in a lively Q & A session.