On September 10, 2022, the Young Scholar Paper Seminar of the 2022 Asian Association for Public Administration (AAPA) annual conference was successfully held online. The seminar is co-hosted by the Asian Association for Public Administration, the China Institute for Urban Governance at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the Institute for Sustainable Development Goals at Tsinghua University. It is a pre-conference event of the 2022 Asian Association for Public Administration (AAPA) Annual Conference, designed specifically for young scholars all over Asia as well as the world. The theme of the seminar is “New Governance Challenges towards Sustainable Development Goals in Asia and the World” and its purpose is to build an academic community for early-career scholars and advise them on academic and professional development.

Professor Jiannan Wu, on behalf of AAPA and China Institute for Urban Governance at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, hosted the opening ceremony and welcomed all of the participants. Professor Xufeng Zhu then gave an opening address stating the mission of the Young Scholar Paper Seminar and the challenges towards Sustainable Development Goals representing Tsinghua University. 

The seminar also invited Professor Eduardo Araral from Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at National University of Singapore to deliver a keynote speech on research design and journal publication. Professor Araral shared his 30-year experiences of publications. He then used his personal experience with top journals (e.g., Public Administration Review, Nature Human Behavior) to provide 6 tips on how to write high-quality research articles and prepare for peer-reviews: 1. good research question: OH? AHA? SO WHAT?; 2. good theory/conceptual & operational model; 3. good data/story; 4. Robust analysis; 5. Good storytelling/writing/ABC; and 6. interesting, innovative results.

After the keynote speech, young scholars from China, Japan, Philippines, South Korea, and Zimbabwe have presented their ongoing research projects. Professor Haozhi Pan from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Professor Huanming Wang from Dalian University of Technology, Professor Fanrong Meng from Xi’an Jiao Tong University, and Professor Alfred Wu from National University of Singapore served as the moderators and discussants, giving constructive comments and suggestions to help young scholars improve their research designs.

This seminar has successfully built an academic communication platform for Asian young scholars and provided advice on producing high-quality academic articles for the coming AAPA annual conference as well as future publications.