The field of entrepreneurship has seen remarkable growth, increasing the expectations of academic audiences. Articles need to balance novelty with rigorous methodology, theoretical contributions, social implications, and coherent argumentation to succeed in the publication process. However, navigating these varied and sometimes conflicting expectations to achieve optimal distinctiveness in academic narratives is challenging for authors. To explore how authors can achieve optimal distinctiveness amidst these complex expectations, we studied academic narratives and related editorial decisions of two leading entrepreneurship journals, Entrepreneurship: Theory & Practice (ETP, 4,151 papers) and Small Business Economics Journal (SBEJ, 4,043 papers), using computer-aided text analysis. Our study debunks common assumptions about what makes a successful entrepreneurship paper, providing an empirical basis for understanding actual versus perceived publication requisites. Furthermore, we extend optimal distinctiveness theory by demonstrating that high distinctiveness is not uniformly advantageous, meeting numerous expectations is not necessarily beneficial, and clear language is crucial for complex narratives. Our study underscores that crafting narratives is more nuanced than traditionally believed.

创业领域取得了显着的增长，增加了学术界观众的期望。文章需要在新颖性与严谨的方法论、理论贡献、社会影响和连贯的论证之间取得平衡，才能在出版过程中取得成功。然而，对于作者来说，驾驭这些多样化且有时相互冲突的期望以实现学术叙述的最佳独特性是一项挑战。为了探索作者如何在这些复杂的期望中实现最佳的独特性，我们研究了两种领先的创业期刊《创业：理论与实践》（ETP，4,151 篇论文）和《小企业经济学杂志》（SBEJ，4,043 篇论文）的学术叙述和相关编辑决策，使用计算机辅助文本分析。我们的研究讨论了关于成功创业论文的常见假设，为理解实际与感知的出版要求提供了实证基础。此外，我们扩展了最佳独特性理论，证明高独特性并不总是有利的，满足众多期望并不一定有益，清晰的语言对于复杂的叙述至关重要。我们的研究强调，制作叙事比传统认为的更加微妙。