Written by Lina Altenburg, PhD Candidate at the KU Leuven (Belgium);
and Jareef Martuza, Ph.D. Candidate at the NHH (Norway)
First things first
We had the chance to interview Koen Pauwels, the incoming editor-in-chief of IJRM. For those who do not know Koen yet, let’s start with the basics. Most people see Koen as one of those global citizens with connections all around the world. But in fact, he has lived in “only” three countries. He grew up in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, which explains why his name can be challenging for non-Dutch speakers. So, here is how to easily remember the pronunciation of his name: Koen is pronounced as koon (which rhymes with soon). Next to Belgium, he has also lived in Los Angeles (California, US), Hanover (New Hampshire, US), Istanbul (Türkiye, his wife’s home country), and currently he lives with his family in Boston (Massachusetts, US).
Koen after finishing the 2024 Boston Marathon.
Here are our first impressions: Koen is a great storyteller and frequently shares his thoughts about marketing, social science, and world events. Here is a link to one of Koen’s recent talks on marketing science for the business world. He is also a very energetic person, literally; he finished the 2024 Boston Marathon, which passed by his own front yard, in 4:03 hours. Before entering academia, he founded a Belgian company employing physically disabled teleworkers.
Of course, Koen is an influential researcher (17,712 citations; H-index 47) with uncountable papers published in the top marketing journals, including seven papers at IJRM. He has also acted as an area editor at IJRM since 2016, guiding many manuscripts into publications.
On becoming the editor of IJRM
Koen has had a long history with IJRM and the EMAC. He published his first paper in 2013 which he fondly looks back to with a sense of “finally!” because he had been wanting to publish in the IJRM for quite some time (paper link: here). Also, back in 1996, Koen met his PhD advisor-to-be, Dominique (Mike) Hanssens, during the EMAC conference in Budapest.
“IJRM was always fascinating to me because as you know, it is THE best international journal in marketing. I had been trying to publish in it forever and every single one of my papers was rejected until 2013, when I had my first publication there.”
Koen Pauwels
Four years ago, Roland Rust approached Koen for the IJRM editor role. At that time, he declined the offer. It was not the right time and circumstances for him to take up this responsibility. However, he committed to serve as editor after Martin and his team's term.
“Many people told me: never become an editor, because you will just make enemies. But at some point, I thought: You have to give something back to the system. IJRM was the journal where all of the potential problems that come with an editorship are just worth it for me; because the journal has so much quality and reputation and potential in terms of prestige.”
Koen Pauwels
It is not a cost-free decision. To take up his editorship, Koen resigned from a sabbatical position as Principal Research Scientist at Amazon. He also intends to cut back on his own research to give his new role justice. And cheerfully he adds: “I mean at this stage in my career, I just have to admit that other people’s research, especially junior people’s research, is just way better than my own. As reviewers on my own papers keep telling me.”
Koen during the EMAC conference 2024 in Romania. Note the 'I Heart IJRM' tattoo peeping out of his shirt.
Assembling the team
Now that the stars had aligned, Koen sought to build his top-quality editorial team across three diversity dimensions:
Geography: “I wanted co-editors who are currently working in schools in different continents- Europe, Africa, and Asia- not just those who come from different regions and are working in the Americas. Because IJRM is an international journal, I looked for this international spread.”
Methods: With Koen’s expertise being quantitative marketing, he wanted his editorial team to also include specialists in consumer behavior, strategic marketing, and consumer culture theory. “We want people to submit their very best work to IJRM, regardless of whether it is in consumer culture theory, consumer behavior, or strategic marketing.”
Gender: “Unfortunately, a few people that I asked declined for very good reasons. So, I didn’t achieve the 50-50 balance I was aiming for.”
Open, collaborative, and team science
A major challenge in any science domain is the generalizability of results. Do theories only hold in a specific setting or are they also applicable in general? This distinction is key also when advising non-academic stakeholders, who base decisions and study communications on this information.
“Very often, authors claim something as general human behavior without thinking about the conditions under which it applies. I think for social sciences it is important that we think about when our theory or findings hold and when they don’t. I typically, as a reviewer, invite authors to think about this in the discussion.”
Koen Pauwels
In addition to generalizability and practical relevance, there is also an ongoing debate about whether and to what extent (undocumented) choices in data collection and analysis impact the results of academic studies. For his term at IJRM, Koen has two big initiatives planned to advance in open science:
Many researchers, same dataset: Several research teams will be given the same dataset and research question. In their empirical work, they will commit to documenting all their choices (e.g., handling outliers, variable transformations, model development, etc.). This will help create a final paper that shows how robust interpretations and findings are to researchers’ decisions in their analysis: which decisions have significant impacts on conclusions, and which are relatively benign such that similar conclusions are reached albeit taking different paths.
Registered reports: In this format, researchers will be able to submit Stage 1 research proposals (paper before data collection) on questions that are interesting for the field regardless of what the results would be. Here, the importance of the research question and the quality of the methodology will guide the peer review, not the results themselves. This is a relatively new publishing format, increasingly embraced by the top psychology journals. For a general overview, please click here.
Koen’s rule of three
Koen gives us one final piece of advice regarding our research: present your paper at least three times before you submit it to a journal.
“Have you presented a paper at least three times? – I need to present a paper at least three times and incorporate the main feedback before I submit it to a journal.”
Koen Pauwels
Koen gives three reasons for the rule of three. First, presenting the work several times improves the quality of the submission and helps the manuscript stand out among the flood of submissions. Second, Koen argues against worrying about being “scooped” (someone stealing the idea), because if you have something to present, you are already ahead of the competition. Important and timely topics often see several submissions at the same time to the same journal, so it is key to have your paper stand out in research quality, awareness of related work, and incremental contribution. Third, presenting at conferences helps build your brand as a researcher.
In summary, talking to Koen just charges your batteries. After the interview, we both went right back to progressing on our own projects with vigor 😊.
Meet Koen Pauwels
Associate Dean, Distinguished Professor of Marketing at Northeastern University, Boston, and co-director of its Digital, Analytics, Technology and Automation (DATA) Initiative
What would you be if you were not in marketing?
“As a little boy, I always wanted to be an explorer. Right now, I am exploring the depth of the human mind in terms of exchanges. But I would love to either explore the depth of an ocean or the next planet. I just really love finding out new things. I like being surprised even by my own work, which is possible in my quantitative models of interesting data. I like to discover new things that I can learn from. Hopefully, I can then document, scrutinize, and share my findings with other people. So yes, I would be an explorer if I wasn’t doing research in marketing.”
What is the best or worst advice you have received in your career?
“The best advice is to continue working on research that you feel passionate about while being aware of what everyone else is doing in the domain and citing them when appropriate. The worst career advice I received was to not submit my paper to a journal because someone had already submitted a similar paper. I didn’t follow this advice.
My advisor, Mike, encouraged me to continue working on the project I was very passionate about. So, I went back to the drawing board, cited the work that was presumably similar, and explained how my paper was different- and it got published! The moral of the story is to not be discouraged by perceived competition. Journals consider both the quality and presentation of your research. So, it is not just what you say but how you say it that also matters.”
This article was written by
Lina Altenburg
Ph.D. candidate at the KU Leuven (Belgium)
Jareef Bin Martuza
Ph.D. candidate at the Norwegian School of Economics
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