Crafting scientific papers in business management: a canvas roadmap proposal

Abstract

Purpose: This paper aims to present a tool for helping the mindset organization of graduate students and early career researchers in the process of scientific papers writing. The canvas roadmap is proposed and summarizes the fundamental steps and main features of an academic paper in the business management field. Design/methodology/approach: The adopted methodological procedures followed action research and focus groups precepts. Validation was applied in longitudinal and transversal procedures, with two early career researchers and with three groups of graduate students from different institutions. The validation procedures allowed the identification of 15 main features that were structured in a canvas format. Findings: The conception of the canvas roadmap, influenced by the business model canvas, is a tool for easing researchers’ mindset when preparing a manuscript. Each of 15 features are explored according to main identified components along the paper writing process. Advices for early researchers are addressed, and key characteristics are presented. Further readings in academic writing literature are suggested as along with practical tips for developing the manuscript. Research limitations/implications: Specifically, the canvas roadmap proposal intends to guide Iberoamerican/Latin American scholars to achieve their goals of publishing in top tier journals, relevant to their academic careers, and to improve research outcomes through a structured guidance for crafting scientific papers. Originality/value: As main contribution and novelty, this paper intends to provide a canvas roadmap by identifying the main sections a scientific paper in the Business Management field must follow, and how to address specific features when writing these sections. This tool was conceived due the Business Management field needs a faster-to-address and easy-to-use tool and that summarizes main features of academic papers.