Authors of papers that are accepted for presentation at the 2009 SMA Annual Meeting will have the opportunity to apply for the Paper Development Workshop. During this workshop, authors will work with an experienced researcher/journal reviewer to enhance their paper’s publication potential. Each paper accepted for the workshop will be given in advance to an experienced scholar who will serve as a research mentor by providing developmental feedback and meeting one-on-one with authors during the workshop. The goal of the session will be for authors to receive feedback useful for refining their papers for eventual publication in refereed management journals. The workshop will be held during a scheduled program session of the regular meeting.

For your paper to be considered for the Paper Development Workshop, your paper must be accepted for presentation at the conference. In addition, you must complete by August 1, 2009, a short application available on the SMA website. A maximum of 12 papers will be selected for the workshop based on the application as well as reviewer feedback provided during the SMA review process. Authors will be notified of workshop acceptance by September 1, 2009.

Research mentors will focus their feedback on:

• Framing the theoretical contribution
• Crafting propositions or hypotheses
• Addressing issues raised by conference reviewers
• Enhancing the methodological rigor of empirical papers
• Developing the contribution of the paper to be consistent with the targeted journal requirements/standards, and
• Specific issues identified by the paper’s author(s) on the application form.