Editorial

• Autor(a) principal: Martinez, Antonio Lopo
• Data de Publicação: 2010
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Título da fonte: BBR. Brazilian Business Review (English edition. Online)
• Texto Completo: http://www.bbronline.com.br/index.php/bbr/article/view/363

What is necessary to produce a good article, one that stands up to peer review and is accepted for publication? Common sense would dictate that an article that presents an interesting idea, a well-developed research problem, relevant data and effective observations will generally be accepted. However, this is not always the case. It is surprising how often in the final analysis many articles are rejected because the reviewers simply cannot fully understand the text, or exactly how the conclusions were reached. The statistics of Brazilian Business Review to a certain extent reflect this. In the issues published in 2009 the acceptance rate on the first submission was between 10% and 15%. This rate increased substantially after the authors revised their articles and resubmitted them. In most cases these revisions did not entail any reassessment of the data or new experimentation. The main improvements were better explanations of what was carried out and how the results advance knowledge of the particular subject. Researchers’ ability to write effectively for publication is something generally acquired over time, by trial and error. There are of course various rules and tips on how to communicate effectively through technical writing. The approaches suggested are always based on two key elements: repetition and feedback. Writing academic articles is, like many other endeavors, learned by doing, and by heeding the critiques of reviewers. It is often believed that articles submitted to an academic periodical are reviewed exclusively on their technical aspects, but experience suggests that while technical accuracy is certainly a must, the most important factors that need improvement are often the clarity of the concepts and the coherence of the ideas that are presented. Are there any other practical suggestions? Probably the best way to assure an article’s quality is to have someone else besides the author or coauthors read and comment on it, generally someone who knows the theme or that often writes technical articles – in other words, someone similar to the periodical’s reviewers. If this person has difficulty understanding the manuscript, it is likely an anonymous reviewer will have the same problems. Writing a good article is an elusive goal, one hard to define by predefined standards and rules. But authors should always bear in mind that their mission is twofold: to present accurate technical information or data and to convey their reasoning as clearly and concisely as possible. To sum up, the “presentation” of the article is crucial for its acceptance. This involves, first of all, clear and objective language. The second point is coherence, which is associated with the logical sequence with which the ideas and arguments are laid out. And the third aspect, also crucial, involves the structural documentation, such as observance of the rules on presenting scientific works. In this first issue of 2010 we present six interesting articles to the academic community. The first, by Silvania Neris Nossa, Alexsandro Broedel Lopes and Aridelmo Teixeira, examines whether there is a relation between announcements of share repurchases by companies classified as winners and losers and abnormal future returns. The results indicate there were significant differences when separately considering announcements made before and after the issuance in 1999 of CVM Instruction 299, which enhanced certain protections for minority shareholders. This article was evaluated normally by editors of other periodicals, to assure the independence and impartiality of the assessment process. The next article, by Márcio André Veras Machado, Otávio Ribeiro Medeiros and Willian Eid Júnior, analyzes whether firms’ capital structure is sensitive to measures used to assess leverage. The results provide evidence that over half the cross-sectional heterogeneity of the leverage index is a result of variations in the ratio of non-financial liabilities to total assets. In the third particle this issue, José Valentim Machado Vicente and Tiago de Sousa Guedes address a very interesting theme to investors: the relation between implied and realized volatility. For this purpose, they analyze the market for Petrobras shares and call options in the period from January 2006 to December 2008. The results show that the implied volatility of out-of-the-money options contains more information about future volatility than does historic volatility, while the implied volatilities of in-the-money and at-the-money options have weak explanatory power about future volatility. The fourth article is by Fernando Henrique Câmara Gouveia and Luis Eduardo Afonso. They investigate whether there is a difference in the returns obtained by financial institutions on loans to social security beneficiaries with repayment by automatic deduction from benefits and payroll deduction loans made to salaried workers. The results indicate that for the sample selected, the rate of return is higher on the loans to social security beneficiaries.  Raimundo Nonato Sousa da Silva and Tiago de Amorin Bueno Vieira are the authors of the fifth article. They analyze the implementation of integrated ABC-EVA systems as an engineering tool and show this can identify activities able to create added economic value and thus contribute to shareholder wealth. The impact of the more reliable cost and performance information is another of the points discussed in the article. In the last article in this issue, Esmael Almeida Machado, Lauro Brito de Almeida, Paulo Mello Garcias and Alencar Garcia Bacarji examine whether the operational and financial performance of dairy products companies in Brazil between 1997 and 2006 influenced the levels of concentration in the sector. The results suggest that firms’ performance, as measured by operational and financial indicators, induced changes in the market structure and the position of the firms – measured by the industry concentration ratio. We believe this issue contains timely and enlightening articles and wish you good reading.