key: cord-026851-cqpj9f1k
authors: Wen, Jun; Wang, Wei; Kozak, Metin
title: Small but mighty: A newfound respect for brief research communications
date: 2020-06-15
journal: Ann Tour Res
DOI: 10.1016/j.annals.2020.102970
sha: 
doc_id: 26851
cord_uid: cqpj9f1k

nan

tourism remain to be seen (Mahara, Zhang, & Wang, 2020) . Under such circumstances, brief papers can bring new findings to the broader community. The authors of this viewpoint and their collaborators are interested in COVID-19's influence on the industry and seek to contribute to rapid information sharing by publishing concise papers. In the authors' experience, their research notes or viewpoints were published in tourism journals after fast-tracked peer review. Comparatively, most of their full papers on COVID-19 are undergoing a typical review process and may not receive decisions for months. While the authors and their colleagues hope their longer papers will be published, the lag between submission and print (while understandable) may date their findings.

Fifth, readers can benefit comparatively quickly from research notes and short communications. In medical studies, including short-form research, time is of the essence: stakeholders cannot necessarily afford to wait for insight. The same urgency applies to the tourism industry, one of the greatest victims of COVID-19. Brief communications can help stakeholders strategise for industry recovery. Might other research formats, such as rapid communications, also prove useful in this scenario? It is time that tourism academics consider how their scholarly community can benefit from concise information updates.

In closing, "brilliant ideas require a huge amount of thinking, but communicating them does not necessarily require many words" (Dolnicar, 2019, p. 290 ). Brevity should not compromise credibility. As full-length and brief research is subjected to the same peer review process, should universities and scholars necessarily distinguish them in quality? Today's researchers should also ponder the crux of knowledge creation. Put simply, what is most important in research: Innovation? Brilliant ideas? Timely information dissemination that can benefit the greater public? Or the length of a study? The answer will not always come easily, and this paper is not meant to discount the merits of full-length work. Yet the authors would encourage academics to review diverse brief communications in journals across disciplines. The knowledge displayed in these works should be readily apparent despite their brevity. In many cases, if an idea cannot be expressed succinctly, then it is simply not brilliant enough (Dolnicar, 2019) . Ultimately, a study's length is not exactly commensurate with its value; tourism scholars could surely engage in richer, more active discourse if journals accepted abridged article formats.

No funding received for this paper.

None.

Publish or perish: The proportion of articles versus additional sections in tourism and hospitality journals

Jun Wen is a lecturer in tourism and hospitality management in the School of Business and Law at Edith Cowan University. His current research interests lie in Chinese outbound tourism marketing, behaviours

Wang is a Professor in public health in the School of Medical and Health Sciences at Edith Cowan University. His current research interests lie in Molecular Epidemiology

His main research interests focus on consumer behavior, benchmarking and competitiveness. He has widely published in top-tier journals. He sits on the editorial board of several journals including Annals of Tourism Research