What is it really like to publish research?

As Fire & Ice winds down, many of our researchers are sifting through data and writing up manuscripts. To help everyone rally around their writing, EPSCoR is organizing workshops, offering funds for co-authors to travel and gather for writing retreats, and hosting weekly co-working sessions for those working on manuscripts this month. Writing and getting research published is a big task, and it often helps to learn from others. Here’s what fellow EPSCoR researchers at various stages of their careers have shared from their personal experiences on the process of writing, working with collaborators, choosing the right journal, telling a good story with the data, responding to review feedback, and what to do when feeling overwhelmed.

EPSCoR Writing Cohort Sessions   Mondays in October, 9 - 11 am UAF VCR Conference Room (WRRB 210) or Zoom:  Meeting ID: 854 9736 8382  |  Passcode: 322999 Add it to your calendar.   Thursdays in October, 3 - 5 pm UAF VCR Conference Room (WRRB 210) or Zoom:   Meeting ID: 835 5791 1879  |  Passcode: 994998 Add it to your calendar.

 

Getting started

“Have a very clear, well-defined goal and objective for your research question and each of the chapter. The chapter helps to define the scope of the work, whereas a thesis is way bigger. Once you have your question, your committee has approved it, and you’ve done some literature review, then you look to see where you can fill in some knowledge gap or advance existing knowledge or understanding of an event. Once the question is asked, it’s easier to find the solutions.”

 

“Clear expectations and plenty of drafts!”

 

Collaborating

"When you're in grad school, you're working on your thesis mostly by yourself. Now it's so collaborative. It's slower, but things get caught earlier."

 

“Get experience writing collaboratively. I’ve been writing for 20 years, and I’m still learning new things from my co-authors.”

 

Doing research in Alaska

“Being where there just aren’t very many other faculty members could be an obstacle, but it forced me to reach out and establish a network of collaborators from other places. The most obvious people to collaborate with are the ones sitting near you, but if there aren’t that many people near you, you need to reach out to people from other places, like connections from graduate school or people I met at meetings. Alaska really sells itself, it’s easy to get people to come up here and work on research, compared to somewhere like Kansas. Alaska is an exciting place to do research, and there’s no end of questions to work on.”

 

“Especially in Alaska, often the work we’re presenting is new – we’re laying groundwork, so it’s extra important to say, ‘here’s the story, and here’s why it’s important.’”

 

Make sure your methods and data are solid.

“Make sure you are confident in your methods and statistics. It can be helpful to consult with the statistics department. Choose the right model for your data and follow the rules of that method. There are different methods for a reason – choose the best one for what you are doing.”

 

“Checking results is really important. Triple check, do multiple metrics. That way, it makes it easier to stand by your work confidently knowing it was done correctly and it’s good work that should be published.”

 

“Why did you choose that approach for data processing? There must be a justification because there are always multiple data passing options. Write that down when you make that decision. It can be hard to come to that same conclusion later if you don’t write it out while you’re making progress.”

 

The Writing Process

“Writing takes time, it is a process, and the sooner you start the better.”

 

“The process is long, everyone says it’s longer than expected – that’s real.”

 

“Writing is rebellious. Acknowledging that is big. So much will come in front of you when you sit down to write – ‘I need to organize my room. I need to set up that meeting. I have to plan for this or that.’ Distracting parts and tasks will come rushing to the front of your head. That happens to everyone, but you get better at going through the process and being organized with time.”

 

“Writing take a lot of discipline, that’s why it is such a struggle for a lot of people. Without discipline, it is hard to be efficient and successful. Everyone is smart, but not everyone is disciplined. You learn the hard way by making mistakes.”

 

“Writing is harder when you start out. You learn and get better by doing.”

 

“Find a paper that you think reads well and try to bring in the elements of that paper, whether how it’s organized, how they graph the data… Bring what you think is effective into your paper, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. People have written lots of papers like what you are writing. Find effective models to guide your own writing.”

 

“Read about what makes good writing: ‘Writing Science’ by Josh Schimel, ‘Bird by Bird’ by Anne Lamott, ‘On Writing Well’ by William Zinsser.”

 

“Reading fiction gives you ideas about how to tell a story effectively. Analyze what the author is trying to do. Data are characters, methods are characters. How can you tell a good story? Listen to those characters. You have to listen to your data, don’t impose plot on them.”

 

“No project is ever finished, just let it go. Every project has a deadline, and you have finite energy.  You reach a point where holding onto it longer isn’t going to help anyone.”

 

"Any kind of beautiful man-made product - writing, art, engineering - requires vision and discipline. And you know, a lot of people have vision and an idea, everybody is intelligent but only the disciplined people are successful and remain successful."

 

Start with a thorough outline.

“Create an outline. It’s not just writing, it’s also data analysis, figure making, etc. Planning out what you need to do will help, because you’ll sit down to write thinking you have everything, but then realize you can’t because first you need these numbers, or this figure first.”

 

“Make an outline of all the things you want to hit in the manuscript.”

 

“Outline the most detailed outline you can. It feels ridiculous and redundant, but when you’re in the weeds, having an outline that holds your hand is so nice.”

 

“Different sections have different structures.”

 

“Outline the discussion separately once you’re done with everything else.  Look over everything, and say, ‘here’s the story.’ The discussion is like the storytelling part, don’t just write it like you’re just answering your own questions. It can only really be done after the rest of the paper.”

 

“Figure out a workflow and milestones.”

 

“One idea per paragraph.”

 

Write as you go and break it into chunks.

“Chip away a little a time, do things in chunks.”

 

“When you start writing, just take things out of your head and dump them all onto the screen – nothing else, don’t worry about editing, just get it out, anything that comes to your head. Do that for a few sessions until you come to a natural break or you don’t have any new ideas. Then come back after a day or two with a fresh eye and then ask which ideas go together, how do I put them together? Then, work on the structure and flow between sections.”

 

“Write your methods while you’re doing your study - that’s when you’ll remember it. We should all be taking good notes, but it’s not always the case, and sometimes you don’t realize what you don’t have until you go to write.”

 

“Don’t wait until you’re all done to start writing, because then it’s just insurmountable.”

 

“You can write your results as they come, then that way all you have left is your discussion.”

 

"My advisor says she would write everyday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. -- while she also had a newborn!"

 

“Writing is something like a workout. You want to do a little bit every day. You don't go run a marathon without doing any working out for a month. That doesn't work with writing either, and a lot of students still end up running into that issue. Students will say something like, ‘this particular week, I'll do all the writing, or you know, a few weeks.’ But they struggle because writing is something that needs to happen more like a few hours a day. Not more than that, I believe for a student. I wouldn't expect more than two hours. You have to break it down. It's a routine thing, and you don't have to do it all seven days. Maybe you want to do it five days or four days a week and have some gap - that's important. Do it kind of in a more routine way, a little bit at a time. You don't have to do a whole day or writing, because after a few hours nothing will happen - you're just sitting there and you're not productive. You might feel like you’re writing, but you're not really being productive.”

 

Communicate regularly with co-authors and mentors.

“Meeting early with co-authors and setting up a timeline and expectations in the beginning is really key. As the first author, lay out what you’re going to do and what you need from your co-authors, and give them plenty of time for the work you would like them to do.”

 

“It’s helpful to meet often with an advisor or co-author weekly or every other week. Having a weekly goal to achieve a deliverable made it less feeling like being by myself, more like I’m on a team.”

 

“You can’t just say, ‘we’ll talk when things calm down,’ because they never do.”

 

“If you’ve got a method that works for you, that’s great, go with that. But it’s also nice to hear how advisors and peers write, you can steal tactics from one another. (Or not steal, but adopt, incorporate, etc..!)”

 

“I have struggled with taking advice. I'm not sure how to put it, but if somebody advised me about something, I wouldn't just take it, I would counter it. So because of that, I learned a lot of things the hard way by making mistakes.”

 

Tell a good story with your data.

“Can you tell a story that is compelling and makes the editors think this would be broadly interesting to people? The biggest challenge is getting past the editor, getting them to read it and say wow, this is interesting enough to consider.”

 

“You could give two people the same dataset, and one person could tell a really good story with it and get published, and another person might not tell as good of a story and they don’t get published.”

 

“Almost like a salesperson you have to kind of read the room – the journal, the current climate. Be aware of what is going on in your field and how your research fits into that. If there’s some kind of controversy going on, should you address it in your paper? To what extent? You don’t want to be just another rebuttal paper, but you also want to show that you’re aware of what’s going on.”

 

Choose the right journal for your work.

“Pick a journal that is most appropriate for the type of work and the format in which you want to write.”

 

“Your work might be specific to the type of organism or subject you are studying, and therefore your paper might work best in a smaller journal. If you do want to try to aim for a high-impact journal like Nature, the work needs to be presented in a way that it can be understood and appreciated by a broad audience. Only a few things are like that.”

 

“It can be exciting to try to get into a higher-end journal and just see what feedback you get. Sometimes you can be surprised – ‘Wow, that actually went out for review!’ But it’s best to be strategic about that – save your absolute best work that you want to see go to a broad audience.”

 

“The higher impact the research, the broader the journal should be.”

 

“If you want to write something short that you think you have a high impact, Nature, Nature Communications, PNAS. But if your work is more technical and it takes a long time to explain it, it would probably be more suited for your field and a more disciplinary journal.”

 

Reviewer feedback

 

Waiting...!

“You fight so hard and then you sit and wait for a response.”

 

“And then we send it back in and we wait all over again for the next round.”

 

“There’s an unwritten etiquette with following up with people. If you haven’t heard back from a review in a month or two, email the editor. That can feel really scary, but it’s okay and good to follow up. Once, the editor had gotten one reviewer's comments back, but they hadn't gotten the second. They've got a ton of manuscripts; they're not focused on just mine. So I emailed and said, ‘Hey, you know, it's been two months, is there any kind of news?’ And then they say, ‘Oh gosh, give me 10 days, and I'll have an answer for you.’ So it feels awkward and it's not a fun email to send, but it is important. And it can be really helpful and totally acceptable.”

 

“I thought there’d be a moment when we get published and we get to celebrate, but you don’t really, everything just keeps moving and projects overlap.”

 

“Research I did 6 years ago is now in review.”

 

“Sometimes journals take really long, which is difficult for authors to address comments effectively.”

 

“I made a mistake one time. I had a paper that was in review for almost a year, and at the time I was a student and didn’t have the wisdom or confidence to go back and work on that paper. So I just said, ‘OK, rejection. Let's keep quiet. That was a mistake. Scrap it. Move on,’ and I didn’t do anything for a long time. A year later, I actually revised it. It took me that long to look at it again. I put it in another journal because I didn’t want to wait another year. I don't want to blame other people, but probably you know, my mentors also were not very helpful.”

 

Feedback strengthens your work.

“Feedback is always a gift.”

 

“So far, the reviewer comments I’ve had have been constructive, positive, and detailed. It’s been nice to have, no just something vague.”

 

“Some are objectively good comments. The whole process is to build a better paper.”

 

“Try to think of their comments from an objective point of view, not from a subjective point of view. Which, when you are so attached to this thing, can feel next to impossible.”

 

...but sometimes reviewers are just mean.

“Sometimes you get just off-color comments.”

 

“The reviewer process is not flawless. It all depends on who is reviewing your paper. Sometimes they just criticize and shut you down without saying how you can improve. That’s not a mature reviewer, they’re not doing their job. They should be telling you how to bring it up to publication quality to resubmit.”

 

“Because you've worked so hard on it, it’s like your baby, and anything anyone has to say feel like, 'how dare they?!'”

 

“It sticks with you.”

 

“Read through the comments and then don’t look for a day.”

 

“It can be hard to emotionally separate.”

 

“That’s a rejection of your piece of work, not you. That’s a hard distinction to make when you’re young.”

 

“Reviewers have their own agenda. You never know what their motives are.”

 

“Politics and emotions are behind everything.”

 

“That was rude, but I can still learn from the rest of these comments.”

 

“Mentors have to play a key role when a student gets a bad review, students don’t have the wisdom yet.”

 

“We can use those kinds of experiences to, especially as grad students, to not do that when we're reviewers and ensure that our criticism truly is constructive, that's really important.”

 

...and not all feedback is relevant.

“Some comments are not correct.”

 

“Having someone else read through your comments is not a bad idea, someone without any emotional investment in the work. You might find the comments upsetting, but someone else might see that they’re not that bad.”

 

“It’s easier to reject a paper. Sometimes you can tell they didn’t even read the whole paper, you can tell. If somebody has read the whole paper, then their feedback looks much different.”

 

"Somebody is giving their perspective on your work, but not every suggestion they will offer will be necessarily helpful. So you have to come up with your own judgment on what you think will actually help with the story that you have in mind and the journal that you have in mind, and then based on that you make corrections."

 

What do you do if you get overwhelmed?

“Read fiction or history.”

“Exercise.”

“Seek advice from my mentors.”

“Be kind to yourself.”

“Do things that make sense to yourself, what things are in your control. You can’t control others. These things will happen. Find a way to be in peace with yourself.”

“Reading and running.”