Some people are motivated to write paper because it is required for their graduation. This actually is not a bad motivation to write an article, but, a person who write an article with this motivation will surely lost their motivation as they got graduated. Thus, it is important for someone to know their true motivation to write an article or conducting a research. This was mentioned by Dr. Chor Foon Tang, a Senior Lecturer in Economics, who is also part of Centre for Policy Research and International Studies (CenPRIS), Universiti Sains Malaysia, during a General Lecture, Monday, November 25, 2019, in FEB UNS.

Dr. Tang advises the participants, who are mostly the Postgraduate students in FEB UNS, to publish their article soon and do not need to wait until graduation. This aims to avoid another article with similar topics got published first. “Write different article, you can do this by using different perspective. For example, financial development or poverty, these topics have been discussed for many years and there are many researches on these topics. Can we do a research in this topic again? Of course,” he added. “It can be conducted by adding new findings, adding new variables, or discuss the topics using different point of view.”

During the occasion, the lecturer who also serves as Associate (Regional) Editors in the International Journal of Social Economics, International Journal of Tourism Policy, and Asian Economic and Financial Review, shares his experiences in reviewing a research article until the article is published.

“The first thing I will do, when I got an article submission, is checking whether the article has been published before. Sometimes there was an article that is already published, but it is sent to another publisher with the same content, data, and result, everything discussed in the article is the same with the one published,” he explains.

Dr. Tang obtain his PhD in Economics from the Faculty of Economics and Administration, University of Malaya (UM) and since 2006 he has been participated in academic research and had successfully published his articles in reputable journals in 2007. Aside from sharing his experiences, Dr. Tang also gives tips to start writing an article that is expected to get published in reputable journal. He also shows how to write an article, started from how to get idea or topics, idea execution, up to data analysis to provide a favorable result. Dr. Tang’s experiences in writing and publishing more than 100 journal articles, encourage the participants to write their research articles.