The stories of some research projects conducted by us


When Articulating Populist Dichotomies is Paramount: Exploring the Effects of Explicit and Implicit Populist Styles on User Engagement in Turkish Election Tweets

Let us start with one of the recent papers accepted in Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly (D1). This journal, published by SAGE, was established in 1924 and it is the flagship journal of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. This research started during the spring of 2023, was rejected by two journals, and was accepted on 19 August 2024.

The paper analyzes the connections between explicit and implicit populist communication styles and user engagement on X in the 2023 general elections in Türkiye. The three of us conducted this study, namely Utku Bozdag (PhD student at Corvinus University of Budapest), Tamás Tóth, and Márton Demeter. Utku Bozdag was the primary researcher and the first author of the paper, and he is co-supervised by Tamás Tóth and Lilla Szabó Petronella (Corvinus University of Budapest) during his PhD program. Tamás Tóth and Márton Demeter participated in writing and mentoring the paper. Note that the project was not a paid service, thus none of the mentors were paid by any of the highlighted individuals.

We would like to introduce how the manuscript was developed during the review process. You can find the three versions of the paper (first submission, review rounds 1 & 2) via this link. Highlighted segments outline the modifications. Note that the last version of the paper does not contain highlighted sections since we were asked not to implement those in the last review round.

You can also find the timeline of the paper here.

The paper has not been published yet since it is under production.

When career-boosting is on the line: Equity and inequality in grant evaluation, productivity, and the educational backgrounds of Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Individual Fellows in social sciences and humanities  

This research has a long story. Before we introduce the publication process, we would like to emphasize that this paper was accepted in early 2024. The paper was accepted in the Journal of Informetrics (D1), published by Elsevier, a top-tier journal in Library and Information Sciences.

This paper analyzes the prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) individual fellows’ education background (i.e., where they obtained their PhD degrees) and their productivity (i.e., the number of Scopus-indexed articles they wrote alone or with co-authors) four years before and after being funded.

Four co-authors (Tamás Tóth, Márton Demeter, Sándor Csuhai, and Zsolt Balázs Major) worked on this piece tirelessly and two junior researchers (Utku Bozdag, and Viktor Zsolt Horváth) supported the above authors’ struggle to provide a pivotal contribution to the field.

The research paper focused on the MSCA grantees of 2015 and 2016 with research backgrounds in social sciences, arts, and humanities. The paper revealed that Global North countries dominate the grant in terms of (1) sending and (2) hosting grantees without any doubt. During these years, more female scholars were funded than males, while male scholars published significantly more papers than females after being funded. The paper also found that many grantees did not publish any Scopus-indexed articles before and after winning the MSCA scholarship. Finally, the results suggest that future productivity can be predicted on past productivity. The paper also explored that the number of papers published in Q1 and Q2 journals significantly predicts future productivity, while research published in Q3 and Q4 journals does not.

Even though we considered the number of Scopus-indexed articles as the primary metric for productivity, we acknowledge that high-quality books and monographs are essential parts of research excellence. However, MSCA is for early-career researchers, and it is problematic to expect young researchers to publish monographs in that stage of their careers. Therefore, analysis-wise, including monographs in our analysis would have been problematic.

Note that the project was not a paid service, thus none of the participants were paid by any of the the co-authors.

Our journey in the publishing process

When we started to analyze the populist styles in the 2023 general elections in Türkiye during the spring, we believed this paper would suit a journal that primarily focuses on Turkish politics. However, the outcomes were more than promising: explicit populist styles triggered favorites, re-tweets, and comments on X more than any other implicit styles. We felt that this result could be an important contribution to the field. Therefore, we thought we could contribute to one of the major theories in populist studies, and we submitted the paper to a top-tier journal (D1) with a broader scope. Sadly, the editor rejected the paper immediately and we submitted it to another well-known journal (Q1). After a lengthy review process, we received supportive comments from the reviewers but the editor did not give us a green light. So the paper was rejected again. At this point, we thought we should have a last try at the top-tier journals and submitted it to JMCQ.

As the timeline shows, the reviews came back relatively quickly. The reviewers were supportive in general but they suggested a major review. After reflecting on each reviewer’s comments, we re-submitted the paper. Then, we excitedly waited for the decision: one of the reviewers was totally satisfied with the paper and the other asked us to change minor things. 

We went for it, of course, and sent back the latest version of the paper. This version was accepted, and we were thrilled and relieved. We were happy because it is very tough to publish about a hot topic in social sciences as many other scholars compete for academic attention. On the other hand, we were relieved because this paper will be the fundamental part of Utku Bozdag’s (the first author) PhD thesis, which can help him start his academic career with this promising contribution.

 Our journey in the publishing process

A few years ago, Márton submitted his application for the MSCA individual fellowship. Even though he had more than a dozen Scopus-indexed papers, he was rejected. We found this a bit strange because MSCA is about pursuing and supporting research, and Márton’s publications were very promising. Years flew by and Tamás also submitted his application in 2021, at the time when he had 7 Scopus-indexed papers. He was rejected in the spring of 2022. 

Before Tamás got rejected, the co-authors of this paper started wondering the extent of the grantees’ publication performances. Thus, from the fall of 2021, they started collecting data manually/automatically on the scholars funded in 2015 and 2016. The data collection and analysis took 14 months, while preparing the manuscript was a three-month-long process. 

We submitted the manuscript to a D1 journal, which turned us down immediately. Then, we tried to have the manuscript published in a Q1 journal, focusing on research assessment. The reviewers were neither supportive nor dismissive. Eventually, the editor rejected the paper. 

After all, we had the gut feeling that the Journal of Informetrics could be a good match for this paper. We submitted this version of the manuscript. Few months later a major review was requested from the editor. All of us worked very hard to finish the manuscript before Christmas and we submitted a new version of the refined paper (higlighted segments were the new parts). The decision was a minor review, so we modified the paper once again. A couple of days later, the paper was accepted and the research journey that was more than two years long was finished.