tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post8180910580609444338..comments2024-03-25T02:33:41.590-05:00Comments on FemaleScienceProfessor: High Impact Risk AssessmentFemale Science Professorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15288567883197987690noreply@blogger.comBlogger34125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-68137656269439403322010-06-05T15:29:53.294-05:002010-06-05T15:29:53.294-05:00Go for the Very Good Journal. With hirsch-indexes,...Go for the Very Good Journal. With hirsch-indexes, estimated potential citations will not matter for much longer. All we hear about in our faculty now are h-indexes.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-46127729369246494532010-06-04T15:21:34.256-05:002010-06-04T15:21:34.256-05:00Just had that happen to me, and boy, was I pissed....Just had that happen to me, and boy, was I pissed. Only one negative reviewer, and I *know* it's they guy I was blasting (as politely as I could). Oh well.<br /><br />I was considering just publishing it to my web site when a low-level conference popped up. I chopped the paper in half (it was for a journal), submitted it, it was "pseudo-reviewed" there, and it was "accepted". This will at least get it published, although I have to travel to give it....<br /><br />Let's dump this all and go for open peer review - let the reviewers comments be backed by their names!EuropeanFemaleScienceProfessornoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-9868560986250329452010-06-02T16:10:56.473-05:002010-06-02T16:10:56.473-05:00Do people think there is a difference between the ...Do people think there is a difference between the different "high impact" single-word titled journals in terms of editorial speed/fairness, need for a very big-name author on the paper, etc.?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-1803528892140533012010-06-02T03:18:29.202-05:002010-06-02T03:18:29.202-05:00Isn't the question whether peers and people de...Isn't the question whether peers and people deciding on promotion and tenure are capable of judging quality independent of where the piece is published? If they are, there's all the more reason to get it out and perhaps avoid Journal in the first place.Dave Backushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11472846910681816429noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-35031754601304542012010-06-01T21:11:33.454-05:002010-06-01T21:11:33.454-05:00That's what they invented arXiv forThat's what they invented arXiv forEliRabetthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07957002964638398767noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-35401604288786992372010-06-01T20:42:19.562-05:002010-06-01T20:42:19.562-05:00Sure, there are good papers in Science and Nature,...Sure, there are good papers in Science and Nature, as in other high-end journals. I just don't see the evidence that papers in Science and Nature are better than others on average - they are just splashier. In many cases I think the splashiness leads to papers being accepted which would actually not have made it through in other journals. <br /><br />In my limited experience I do see some evidence of what FSP describes with biased reviewers. Some reviewers may well become more hostile when reviewing for Science and Nature because they feel more jealous when competitors publish there compared to elsewhere.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-15923526219054500402010-06-01T20:21:36.025-05:002010-06-01T20:21:36.025-05:00Science and Nature papers are accepted by their ed...Science and Nature papers are accepted by their editors because they project high general interest and scientific advance. After a few years, however, merit is generally measured by citation count or simply content, and the journal counts for much less.<br /><br />There seems to be confusion between papers being good because they are published in those journals and good papers being published there. No review process is perfect, and certainly many excellent papers appear elsewhere, but Science and Nature have many excellent papers, and no doubt a few that are flatly wrong or useless. I find their reviewers generally very perceptive and thorough.<br /><br />The value of publishing in Science and Nature has diminished as many universities now have people who distribute press releases about hot research, which used to be the more exclusive domain of the journals. Often results do not even have to be published now to get wide and sensationalist coverage.John Vidalehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09871768524749705799noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-28537037865825963302010-06-01T19:37:29.262-05:002010-06-01T19:37:29.262-05:00In my field I see no evidence whatsoever that pape...In my field I see no evidence whatsoever that papers in Journal actually have higher quality in any sense. They are rather (in someone's opinion) more newsworthy, both literally and figuratively - that is, the popular press looks to them to decide what is important in current research and I think the editors make their decisions with that in mind. I have never published in these journals - I have been a co-author on some manuscripts that were rejected but never submitted anything as first author - and I have received tenure and promotions and even an award or two. Perhaps my field is just less enslaved to Journal than some others.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-5599846297468241612010-06-01T18:08:40.446-05:002010-06-01T18:08:40.446-05:00A couple of years ago I was interested in applying...A couple of years ago I was interested in applying for a generic postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Sydney, so I emailed the HOD of the dept I was interested in working in. I received a really nice email from the HOD that also informed me that without a pub in journal I would be unable to successfully compete. So that's why we keep sending stuff off, with a certain amount of cynicism.<br /><br />OTOH, a common view in my field is also that Journal publishes 'showy' science rather than real advances. So you can have it both ways, and neither is good.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-54953611109204542952010-06-01T13:45:13.478-05:002010-06-01T13:45:13.478-05:00The only time I've ever submitted to Journal (...The only time I've ever submitted to Journal (or the other Journal) was when my boss absolutely insisted that we submit there. And he insisted _after_ the work had already been turned down at a Very Good Journal. I wasn't the lead author, so I let the lead author fight (and lose) that battle. And he got a very quick rejection from Journal. Followed by a very quick rejection from other Journal (at the boss's insistence) and then a very quick rejection from the third Journal (at the boss's insistence) (and since there were 3 Journals you can deduce that this was biomedical-related).<br /><br />At this point, we should have just taken 2 weeks to revise, polish up a few things, maybe do 1 more little experiment and redo a figure, and then send it to a Decent Journal intended for a very different audience. However, the boss insisted on this long string of submissions that had zero chance of happening, and in the end it was accepted at a place that was probably less prestigious than it should have gotten into. I blame the boss for demanding quick-fire submissions to a bunch of different places rather than pausing to rework it.<br /><br />Don't ask me why the boss requested this.Alexnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-34222808626367969052010-06-01T12:56:25.815-05:002010-06-01T12:56:25.815-05:00I've had mixed results at Science and Nature. ...I've had mixed results at Science and Nature. I tend to agree with most of those posting here - it helps at these journals to have a well-known co-author. I have plenty of publications at very good journals that have been cited a lot - so I think they had impact on my field even though they weren't published in Science or Nature. And my biggest impact work was rejected at those venues without review. At least it was done quickly and I could go ahead and publish in my field's letters journal. My NSF program manager routinely shows this work at conferences; maybe that is better than Science and Nature?<br /><br />As for how your academic home views all this, I guess none of you work where I work (engineering college at a large public university). At annual evaluation time I was once chastised for only having two publications. My response: but one was in Nature and the other was in Science. My dean's response: that is still two.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-39088406074529926822010-06-01T12:05:30.410-05:002010-06-01T12:05:30.410-05:00This has happened to me twice, and the second time...This has happened to me twice, and the second time I foolishly sent it to three different JOURNALs and one VERY GOOD JOURNAL, all with the same result. So, two years pass and my best work ever is still unpublished and now in review at A PRETTY OK JOURNAL. At least I already have tenure, but the damage to my faith in peer review is permanent.<br /><br />I just love being rejected by a journal who says may study population isn't appropriate for their broad audience, only to see them publish data from the exact same population by another research group (with a more limited-scope research question) 6 months later...inBetweenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17212548401525577878noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-59351254097257400502010-06-01T11:58:30.297-05:002010-06-01T11:58:30.297-05:00You know, I've had an editor for a CNS journal...You know, I've had an editor for a CNS journal tell me that the impact of the journal really doesn't matter as much as the impact of the paper, which these days is much less correlated with the journal impact than it used to be. So, I lean toward the Very Good Journal route (although always taking this route could lead to selling oneself short). More papers, quicker papers. In fact, this is exactly what I am doing to publish my thesis research; I need rapid publication so I'm submitting to a very good journal that is known for its fast review process; my mentor and I sat down and looked at journals by turnaround time and picked the highest impact for a quicker turnaround. But I think it's a tad more important for students & other trainees to have the quicker review; my views will probably shift when I get my own lab. Ultimately I think its highly dependent on when you <i>need</i> the paper to be published.queenrandomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00128796087827034559noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-15388364710441489032010-06-01T11:25:33.423-05:002010-06-01T11:25:33.423-05:00I think that graduate students and PIs are better ...I think that graduate students and PIs are better off sending their work to "very good journal". which in my fields of biomedical research is often published by a scientific society or a non-profit entity and has academic editors who think about the reviews. At all but the most dis-functional universities, this will weigh in at almost the same weight in the tenure process or postdoc hunt. Where it gets tricky is for postdocs. Sadly single name journals and their progeny have a cachet in the job hunt that does not live up to their quality. However, I was very pleased that one of my current postdocs, who is outstanding and one of whose papers went through exactly the process you are describing, just got offered four very nice positions without a pub in a single name journals and their progeny. Also, one of his pubs in Very Good journal has nearly 60 citations in 2.5 years.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-18942761473532687622010-06-01T10:18:38.686-05:002010-06-01T10:18:38.686-05:00I've had this exact scenario get played out. ...I've had this exact scenario get played out. I'm a postdoc, I had an exciting result, submitted to Journal, got a review that was (in my opinion) unfair and probably from a competitor, and ended up bogged down for about a year. The paper was finally published in Branch of Science Prestigious Journal.<br /><br />At the scientific level, the paper was much much better after going through all the reviews. I'm much happier with the submission+one-year version than the first-submitted version. The basic science was unchanged, but the discussion of the ramifications and such was much better.<br /><br />As for career prospects, I expect that a publication in Journal may have helped me get a job, but I'm much prouder the science of the paper after all the revisions, and I think that shows when I talk about it now. It's rare for people in my field to publish in Journal anyway, so it's definitely not a mark against me. It probably doesn't hurt that I was able to keep other publications going during that year.<br /><br />All in all, I would say that it was a positive experience, but I wasn't looking for faculty positions that year, so there wasn't the urgency that people that are looking or on a tenure clock might feel. I'm much less likely to try it again now, when I'm planning to apply. The return on investment of time and mental energy is just too low, given the probability of getting in the journal, especially without a Big Name Coauthor.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-31820646172378189242010-06-01T09:17:25.752-05:002010-06-01T09:17:25.752-05:00It's a hard choice.
Personally I have soured ...It's a hard choice.<br /><br />Personally I have soured on the two big one-name "Journals". (But, luckily I'm at an institution that does not add a lot of extra weight to publishing in these journals vs. our journals more localized to our field.)<br /><br />Late in graduate school I had a very similar drawn out experience to what you describe. Except, the one negative reviewer was demonstrably wrong. Their entire argument rested on "The authors did process X to their data and therefore the features they're reporting are artifacts and don't exist." Well, the features were visible in the raw data. And, we didn't do "process X" exactly because it can add artifacts and confuse things. And, because "process X" was all the rage in our field at that time, we explicitly stated in the text that process X had not been performed on the data.<br /><br />The paper was rejected at a late stage nearly 9 months after original submission. The rejection was after an additional 2 reviews, one of which explicitly pointed out the fallacy of the one earlier negative review. We appealed, but, the editors at "Journal" stood their ground and wouldn't reconsider.<br /><br />I would have (somewhat) accepted this outcome if the rejection had been based on "this article doesn't fit our criteria at this point" or "we don't have space to publish this article". But, the rejection was explicitly based entirely on that one negative review.<br /><br />I then rewrote and resubmitted the paper to one of our field's more specialized journals that is known for having a very fast turnaround time of typically less than 3 weeks per round of refereeing and then immediate publication upon acceptance. As it turned out the delay allowed a competitor (from a different group than the negative reviewer) to get their paper completed. The two papers (ours and the competitor) came out within a week of each other. Had "Journal" not yanked us around, we would have scooped the competitor by many months.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-60324237151448341972010-06-01T09:06:28.571-05:002010-06-01T09:06:28.571-05:00I think it may depend on your department. For exam...I think it may depend on your department. For example, I am at a PUI and am the only person in my subdiscipline. Many of my colleagues (members of my tenure/promotion committee) may not know that "Very Good Technical Journal" is on par with "Journal" for the discipline, or that it is better than "Decent Technical Journal," but they sure are impressed with "Journal."Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-39877568289208059382010-06-01T09:01:19.884-05:002010-06-01T09:01:19.884-05:00The "very important journal" thing is gr...The "very important journal" thing is greatly overblown. Even Nature and Science publish a lot of crap that needs to be (and isn't always) retracted.<br /><br />Publish good work in good journals, and don't worry about being "impressive".Kevinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14528751349030084532noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-21250574399517936532010-06-01T08:40:18.230-05:002010-06-01T08:40:18.230-05:00Have the reviewing periods for top journals increa...Have the reviewing periods for top journals increased? I doubt it.<br /><br />Also, although of course I'm unfamiliar with the merits of the specific paper to which you refer, I put more weight on the opinion of the multiple reviewers than I do on the author's own opinion of a manuscript. Particularly when there is some back and forth about the merits, as there was.<br /><br />So I think if authors can objectively realize the value of their papers, they should send it to as good a journal as it deserves. Some excellent papers race through Science and Nature. If authors are constantly at war with reviewers, perhaps they should recalibrate.<br /><br />Choosing to stay with a journal after review has made it clear they have serious issues with a paper often is a sign of an author who is miscalibrated about the worth of a paper.John Vidalehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09871768524749705799noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-19975431439408845362010-06-01T08:34:27.751-05:002010-06-01T08:34:27.751-05:00I have had this happen to me at a journal. Fairly...I have had this happen to me at a journal. Fairly positive reviews after a long wait, a painful period of revisions while we tried to make everyone happy and a final rejection in a single line. It delayed a thesis paper untilt hee nd of my post-doctoral traing and I still can't look at that paper in a good light.<br /><br />My view is that the most important thing is to keep resubmiting despite these setbacks. In the absence of a fatal flaw or a concern about substance (i.e. when rejectiosna re on priority) then I tend to revise and resubmit as quickly as possible.<br /><br />But I have made mistakes in all directiosn when submitting papers so I understand the dilemma. I wish I had a better solution to it, too.Josephhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10760453165301871031noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-36648807204947642562010-06-01T08:15:46.160-05:002010-06-01T08:15:46.160-05:00As an early-career social scientist, I've been...As an early-career social scientist, I've been told that I <i>have to</i> publish in the top journal in my discipline to get tenure. So for me, it's more risky <i>not</i> to give it a shot, even if it takes a long time to go through the process.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-4143161586318052772010-06-01T08:15:46.159-05:002010-06-01T08:15:46.159-05:00I have been in almost exactly this situation recen...I have been in almost exactly this situation recently. A few years ago I was lead author on a paper we believed was very important, but also under threat from competing groups. We submitted it to a very prestigious (one-name) journal and got three reviews back: two very positive, one very negative. After three cycles of review, when the negative reviewer remained negative (even throwing in some rather inappropriate personal attacks), the paper was rejected. This took nearly eight months.<br /><br />Ultimately there was a happy ending, because we submitted an appeal, which was accepted and the manuscript was sent to two new reviewers, who ultimately were positive, and the paper was accepted. It took a full year to get into print. HOWEVER in the meantime a very similar paper was submitted by competitors to a still very good but slightly less prestigious journal (a two-name journal). This paper was also accepted, and although the submission date was six months later than ours, the acceptance date was about the name and the publication date was one month earlier. So, although we had the slightly more presitgious paper it wasn't first.<br /><br />Now, a few years later I am leading another paper which we again believe is very good and important, and deserves to be in Prestigious One-name Journal. In this case we would even be slightly more confident of acceptance. BUT again the research area is competitive and timing is critical, and after the experience with this journal the first time we have decided not to risk the possible long delay - even if the paper is not rejected. We have instead after very lengthy discussion decided to send to the much faster still-prestigious two-name journal our competitors published in last time.<br /><br />So yes, in this case timing somewhat outweighs the need for prestige (although the other journal is also quite good). It is not only the possibility of rejection after a very long review process - if review takes too long there is a real chance that other groups could publish first.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-61252715589646055522010-06-01T07:54:20.707-05:002010-06-01T07:54:20.707-05:00I think this emphasis, which is real, on publishin...I think this emphasis, which is real, on publishing in Journal and the like is overblown. I wish everyone would let go of the need for this in terms of 'essential for ones career.' I sense that FSP agrees with this, at least in part. What say you FSP?<br />LDAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-91281475177669209692010-06-01T07:48:05.759-05:002010-06-01T07:48:05.759-05:00I try to maintain a mix of both. I'm in a gove...I try to maintain a mix of both. I'm in a government lab rather than academia, but the expectations for publishing in good peer-reviewed journals is similar. A few things go to top journals that are likely to be slow, others to faster journals. I've had a number of papers in the last few years that spent a year in review, and not all were accepted.<br /><br />My favorite: a big-name Twoword Journal I'd published in before. The most recent time, just before this particular manuscript, had taken a year. But, big-name and completely appropriate for this project. So I sent the paper in. A few months later I got reviews, and made the requested extensive revisions. Waited. Waited. Waited. 13 months from when I'd submitted the original paper I heard back from the editorial office: "We can't find reviewers for your manuscript, so we're going to return it to you. Good luck getting it published."<br /><br />I complained loudly to the EIC about unprofessional behavior on the part of a major journal, and the paper was eventually accepted. Turns out I wasn't the only person to whom this happened, but at least one other was too junior to feel like she could complain. <br /><br />Twoword Journal has long been one of my favorites, but I'm not going to send papers there any more.Phialahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05604909119508288912noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29059245.post-77794040257317652912010-06-01T07:43:31.061-05:002010-06-01T07:43:31.061-05:001 "Journal" publication = $$$
1 "V...1 "Journal" publication = $$$<br /><br />1 "Very Good Journal" publication = not so much<br /><br />Send it to "Journal" every time and put it on the arXiv even if "Journal" does not like it (believe me, they will not reject your paper for doing this)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com