How to keep publishing.

Introduction

The phrase "publish or perish" is frequently used in academic circles. Life in the ivory tower is judged primarily by the work one puts in the form of articles and gets published in peer-reviewed journals. But journal articles are no less important in high-tech industry as they are the most respectable advertisements of your products or services.

High-tech industry is full of former academics, yet not all such companies produce publications on a regular basis. Granted that publishing is not the primary focus of the guys running the show, but it simply does not seem to be there even at the bottom of their TODO list. It seems that companies are not leveraging the academic medium at all to forward their cause.

This article will highlight the importance of publishing from the individual and organizational viewpoints, and suggest a strategy to ensure a consistent flow of publications. I will also argue that publishing should positively impact patenting.

Why publish?

• Publishing is generally to make a point. And making a point effectively is quite an art. First, you need to have a point that is valuable to your audience. Then you need to make your readership realize the value of your ideas in the larger scheme of things, and of course, convey the idea precisely. So in order to publish, you need to do well thought-out focussed work.
  
• Publishing is the best advertisement for a knowledge worker. No need to emphasize the fact that undocumented work is generally forgotten, even by the worker herself. The only way to ensure longetivity of your work (and reputation!) is to put it in a journal or an archive, and make it accessible and searchable.
  
• Peer-review is free! Journals will take care of obtaining reviwers' time to do a critical analysis of your work, so you get free opinions and chances to revise your work. This reduces client criticism and client loss.
  
• Articles add credibility to your offerings. Talks and client pitching is also important, but their impact will multiply with articles. Articles get you respectability, take you to the right audience, lead to talk invitations and get you connected into the right networks.

Strategies to get published

• Hire a technical writer. The role of technical writers is often underrated in organizations full of intellectuals and innovators. Little appreciated by them is the fact that inventions need to be communicated, offerings need to be clearly advertised. A technical writer takes the writing burden off creative minds and lets them do what they are good at, and more importantly, stops them from finishing in hurry what they are not good at.
  
• Appoint a Publications Manager. Someone needs to be officially responsible to initiative in identifying publishable stories and instruct the technical writer on getting in touch with the relevant people to develop them fully. This guy would ideally have worked in editorial capacity in a publishing house. She would have contacts in the publishing world as well broad knowledge of the relevant field and market.
  
• Make working papers part of the process. This is really difficult. Employees are already burdened with meeting targets, busy innovating, delivering services. But it needs to be done. Perhaps ticket-based job assignment, a wiki-page per assigned task and uploading of all relevant documents on the wiki would be priceless for preventing loss of information relevant for publishing. The Pub-Man and TechW can then mine what they need without bothering the employee too much.
  
• Collaborate with academics. This is an easy way to get published if you have projects that permit academic collaborations. Academics will take care of publishing while you take care of all the interesting stuff. Publishing is their job!
  
• Network with editors. Publications Manager should ideally do this, so also the scientific management team that goes to conferences. Editors need articles to fill up their issues and they may not always have enough matter. Well-networked organizations will get invited to contribute a review, an opinion article or an article. A working paper can easily get published when its invited.
  

Publishing and Patenting

Patenting is crucial for not only getting first rights to exploit your invention, but it also gets you noticed when competitors and potential clients mine patent databases. Publications from a company are generally seen by the world only after the relevant patent has been filed. Patents Manager and Publications Manager have a lot of synergy to exploit. Filing a patent requires a belief that you have discovered something valuable that has not been done before. Patent document and publication manuscript are essentially similar in spirit - you are claiming a novel and useful procedure. A workplace process oriented towards doing publishable work will certainly lead to more patentable work.

Conclusions

Publications finally depend upon the organizations quality of work and a spirit of innovation. They indicate organizational willingness to go the extra mile for that additional ounce of value. To conclude, an ambitious high-tech company must have publishing ingrained in the organizational culture, and must find formal mechanisms to keep publishing.