3. Speak to a bigger audience than fellow experts

Not all of the FT50 care about cultivating a broader audience. But they do all prioritize important research—and it’s hard for research to be considered “important” if it affects approximately six people and is understood by three of them. 

This is why the most successful, widely read academic contributions use plain, direct language. Consider a world where Simone de Beauvoir wrote Ontological Subalternity and the Dialectics of Gendered Otherness: The Sociohistorical Construction of Femininity… instead of The Second Sex. What are the odds that the first title would become one of the most influential and widely read academic texts of the 20th century? Very slim. You can see the same principle in action in other works with staying power like On the Origin of Species, A Brief History of Time, and many more. These authors knew (or were advised by their editors!) that in order to have recognized value, expertise must be packaged into clear, digestible sentences and paragraphs. 

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In practical terms:

Leveraging accessible language doesn’t mean you should cast off every trace of “Academese” in your FT50 submission. After all, the FT50 are (barring a few outliers like HBR) academic journals for largely academic audiences; the concepts they discuss and publish typically require highly technical language. But at some stage of your draft—usually pretty close to submission but before your final proofreading—you’ll want to take a pass through your paper with the express purpose of translating it for a slightly wider audience than just your fellow experts, using these steps:

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• Define or explain key or obscure terms the first time they appear, then use them consistently. If a word or phrase is important to your paper, it must be defined the very first time you use it (e.g., “... the research on brokering, or the act of connecting otherwise disconnected others in social networks.”). Likewise, if a word or phrase is not being used according to its standard dictionary definition (e.g., blue/red ocean, unicorn, “sticky” prices, signaling, etc.)—you guessed it—it must be defined the very first time you use it. It’s far better to have a reviewer tell you to cut a definition as unnecessary than it is to alienate readers who lack the mental bandwidth to figure out what you’re saying. You can find more on this principle and how to apply it here.
   

• Avoid jargon and obscure lingo where you can. While some technical lingo is necessary in most academic writing, this is all the more reason to streamline and simplify wherever it’s not necessary. When I’m editing with the main goal of simplifying, I’m continually asking myself one question to obliterate confusion: Who’s doing what here? You can read more about how this approach works here. Another tactic is to get a non-academic friend or family member to read your paper and highlight the exact spots where they get lost. 
   

• Increase readability by mastering flow. Flow happens when what you’re reading is so engrossing and easy to follow, you’re barely aware of the cognitive effort required to read it. Far more than a stylistic improvement, flow is invaluable because it helps draw readers into your argument, making connections and answering questions for them so they keep nodding along until (ideally) they decide to move your paper into review. This is a very specific writing skill that isn’t widely taught but can dramatically increase your chances of acceptance at FT50 journals, all of which value elegant, skillful writing; you can learn more and access my free guide on exactly how to create flow here.

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• Stay well within word limits if at all possible. With attention spans shrinking, the more concise your work is, the more it will be read. Find our resource on trimming your word count here.
   

• Highlight the practical relevance of your work in concrete terms. Unless there’s a sound reason not to (i.e., because the target journal truly doesn’t value practical relevance at all), it’s always a good idea to at least touch on the practical implications of your research. All business and management journals, including the FT50, have long been under fire for their perceived irrelevance to actual business. The message is clear: real-life benefits strengthen the value of most business papers; answering the questions that this guide poses (above) to tell the story of your research will help draw these out.

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There’s a well known maxim on expertise that if you can’t explain it to a child, you’re not actually an expert on it. And while it’s true that none of the FT50 are being picked up by your average child for some bedtime reading, that doesn’t mean you should write your submission strictly for other experts.

Doing so significantly limits your audience and impact before your paper’s even finished. Conversely, translating your work for a wider potential audience will increase your odds of publishing in the FT50 in two key ways: (1) your research will require less cognitive labor to navigate and understand, increasing its appeal for every reader, including journal editors and reviewers; and (2) by streamlining and simplifying, you’ll spot holes and problems you may not have noticed otherwise (weak conceptual links get exposed very quickly without complex wording to hide them). Writing for diverse readers therefore produces much stronger submissions than those that assume what the reader already knows.