I’m no fan of New Year’s resolutions; they’re bound to fail. I probably discovered this at the tender age of about 7 when I set myself to lose my lisp. It took a lot longer than I had expected – though anyone who knows me now will know I did eventually manage it. Nevertheless, reading the comments from ‘Pete’ on a blogpost elsewhere about a paper on the LHC which had been accepted on the very day of submission made me wonder about some resolutions we could probably all usefully attend to.
In contrast to the blogger’s experience, Pete said
‘I’ll bet reviewers like to leave documents on their desks to “cure” for a while before they actually get down to it. I suppose good things do take time to complete.’
And that got me thinking about the process of refereeing. I don’t think I’ve ever thought I left papers to ‘cure’ but there is a great art in procrastination which probably has rather the same effect. ‘Just in time’ refereeing can all too easily become ‘just-not-in-time’ refereeing, and by the time the nominal deadline has been missed it’s tempting to let it slip further, and further, and….You get the picture. As an editor of course I deplore such behaviour but, I doubt there is a referee in the land who hasn’t been guilty of it at least occasionally – or perhaps a little oftener. This takes me to
Resolution Number 1
I will ensure I return all referee reports on papers by the due date in 2011.
There are a couple of caveats to this which I might indulge in (equally frustrating for the editor):
a) Not accepting the invitation to do the refereeing until near the due date given and then asking for a further 3 weeks;
b) refusing all refereeing tasks completely;
Linking in to that first resolution is the email mountain, and how to deal with it. If you don’t ever open those emails requesting you referee a paper, then you can’t be held responsible for not doing the refereeing. However, since I have never got as far as deleting the requests without reading them, that doesn’t help to reduce the mountain. I’m not even going to attempt to make a resolution of dealing with all emails in a timely manner. There are the easy ones, which one can gain a reputation for being efficient about, you know the ones to which the answer is ‘yes’, or even better ‘no’ and then the original message can be filed/deleted. And I always feel rather good about deleting a significant number that turn up in the in-tray each morning which begin ‘Dearly beloved’, or ‘Your bank account….’ Or even offering me a cheap degree, inviting me to submit a paper to a conference in a completely irrelevant field or join some unheard of journal editorial board. So, rather than set a timescale for replies, maybe a safer resolution around emails would be
Resolution Number 2
I will delete unread at least 50% of all emails that arrive overnight (when the worst of my spam seems to appear) and 25% of those that come during working hours.
That should help reduce the mountain (apologies if it’s one of yours that gets trashed in error….).
Finally I need to attend to the paper mountain, by which I mean those papers I have put aside in order to read ‘when I have a moment’, but which may have been languishing for some time (for which read years in some cases, so they are no longer topical or even relevant to what my current research interests are) in a dusty pile. There are various problems with my filing system and I doubt I am unique in my weaknesses in this direction. Firstly, I am of the generation that still prefers to read paper copies, so I tend to print out a bunch of papers in a fit of enthusiasm on a Friday afternoon, and then run out of time to read them. I may bring them home to read over the weekend, and put them in a neat pile on the attic floor and then forget them. So my second problem is that the next time I think about the paper I have to print it out again because I can’t find the first copy (I hope that isn’t breaking any copyright rules). Having read it, I put it in a neat pile while I think what I should file it under, and proceed to lose it again. In which case, at some later date maybe I need to make another copy….and so it goes on.
Many years ago I learnt the hard way there is a difference between having a copy of a paper in one’s possession and knowing what’s in it. Sounds obvious, but I was caught out when writing a review for Current Opinion in Colloid and Interface Science, for which the nice editorial office offered to xerox/obtain copies of the articles I wanted to cite. Great, I thought, and sent them a list. In due course the papers appeared and, naturally, I neatly filed them. Some time later (needless to say rather close to the due date) I sat down to write the review – and realised to my horror that I hadn’t actually read any of them. That crucial step had somehow got omitted in my preparation. This takes me to
Resolution Number 3
a) I won’t accept any more invitations to write reviews;
b) I won’t print out a paper without having a clear slot of time immediately thereafter to read it.
So, that should make 2011 go with a swing. I wonder how many days till I break all 3 resolutions on the same day….
Happy New Year to everyone! May your resolutions fare better than I expect mine to. It’s been an interesting experience dipping my toe into the blogosphere these past few months, – thanks to all who’ve commented, or just read this stuff.
OK, the festive season is now over, I’ll soon be back in the office and my future blogs will return to their pre-holiday level of seriousness. No more frivolity (maybe).
your resolutions are strikingly similar to mine – the paper/digital admin mountain has to go to make space for some real reading and writing! Happy New Year, Athene, hope it’s a good one for you.
Good luck with those Athene. Maybe it’s time to go digital with your paper collections. If you’re into Macs, I can recommended Papers (perhaps in conjunction with an iPad?) or, if not, try Mendeley?
I think it must be my generation – I don’t really like reading long papers on a screen (and I’m not a Mac user, though I know they’re great on the paper libraries). When I did the RAE in 2008, no way was I going to print out whatever massive number of papers I had to read (mercifully I have amnesia about the whole exercise, and can’t remember just how grotesque my workload was), so I did train myself to read them on screen. But I didn’t enjoy the experience. I prefer being able to scrawl on papers (what rubbish, NO! that sort thing) or at least stick post-its on them to remind me which papers are worth keeping in mind. Hence the dusty piles. I just should be more moderate in my ambitions of how many different topics I want to keep on top of, and then do it thoroughly.
I know what you mean – I like to scrawl on paper too but, like you, I have increasing difficulty in keeping track of my printed papers and have made a determined effort to make a shift to electronic versions (which can be shared between computers). They’re still not as pleasant to read as on the printed page but you can still add notes and I am at least better organised. Plus it’s a boon to have your whole collection available on laptop or iPad.
The deeper problem is thinking that “future me” will actually read the papers that “present me” thinks she should read. I regularly crash my browser from having too many tabs of too many papers that I’m not reading!
Athene,
Maybe I should try submitting papers to physics journals this year and request you as a reviewer or editor–that way perhaps I can get reviews within a reasonable time!
Seriously, while I am as guilty as you about leaving a “paper trail” all over my office, and I do try to empathize with the vast majority of scientists (and those in every other profession) who frequently procrastinate–there is a small minority of us who actually have the “reverse problem”.
Yes, believe it or not, I am “too efficient”. I have been this way ever since I can remember, and indeed although I can imagine that it sounds enticing, it is indeed a problem. The reason is that this is probably very much like an obsessive-compulsive disorder, where one is not comfortable until that task has been completed. As a student and even postdoc, these attributes were very useful and helped me to always be ready well in advance. In my current position, while this can serve me well, there are also problems that crop up.
For example, when I began to be asked to review papers, given a 3-week deadline, my submitted reviews averaged 2-3 days. Editors began to take note, and within a short span I was reviewing far too many manuscripts–and still compelled to get them sent in as fast as they were coming at me. It took me quite a time to learn how to pace myself–that is, to read and review the paper quickly, but force myself to wait a week or 10 days before submitting my reviews. And this despite pressure from within to send it out. Now, as a monitoring editor, I have an easier time, because there is nothing I can do until my chosen reviewers submit their critiques.
An additional example is the absolute necessity of being on time for every meeting. While this may not sound unusual, allow me one more example–which is actually described by the hero of my novel, Dr. Steve Miller, in “Matter Over Mind” (http://www.stevecaplan.net/2.html). Despite coming to a 2 p.m. staff meeting for a microbiology lab course for several months and seeing that the meeting would never begin until 2:15, and that the professor in charge would never arrive until after 2:10, the hero simply cannot make himself show up late. He stops for a drink of water, restroom, walks slowly, circles around the building, and still arrives at 2:03 p.m. and ends up waiting 15 minutes for the meeting to start. So, my point is that a little procrastination is healthy! Don’t overdo it with the resolutions….
Happy New Year.
Steve
I do sympathise, as I used to be much more diligent but have ‘allowed’ myself to get less efficient over the years. In part I attribute this simply to the sheer volume of stuff that turns up in my various in trays, and crisis-management starts to take over. But I think I have also learnt to pace myself a bit, as you say.
When setting out and first invited to referee papers etc, the implied flattery means many of us try really hard to get on with the task. But, unfortunately as time progresses the flattery factor wears thin and there may be other tasks which are harder to procrastinate whereas too often the refereeing feels like it can be put off and off.
As for turning up on time to meetings, yes I identify with that too. Many years ago I co-authored a book. My co-author was always late, no doubt for good reasons (he was the senior author and so was no doubt following the crisis management strategy by that point in his career). So, over the rather long period which ran to several years, I tried to turn up later and later for meetings. Nevertheless by the time the book was published I had never yet managed to be later than him; I just couldn’t do it. Subsequently, a decade or so later, we produced a second edition bringing in a new third author. This time I suspect I was not always the first to turn up, although not infrequently the new co-author (who came from outside Cambridge) and I used to have time for a good natter before the third person arrived, and somehow the meetings were always in his office. We got to know the stairwell well!
Having semi-retired from research I don’t quite have these problems so much any more, but I certainly sympathise with the liking for paper/scribbles.
In my Faculty we have now moved to using a system called “Grademark” – slideshow here – for marking all extended work online (the basic set-up is that you add “post-it” type comments to the document online). The first time I did it I printed out the report, annotated it in the usual scribbles way and then transferred the annotations to the online version, but when I had eight dissertations to second mark at once I found that it was quicker to do the whole thing directly on the computer. Still don’t entirely like it, though.
I find my preferred spot for an actual extended think about something I am reading is away from my desk, preferably in a comfy armchair by a window, with a cup of coffee or glass of beer to hand and with a view of some trees and actual sky outside. I guess a laptop &/or wireless provides a potential reconciliation of this with “direct-on-PC working”, but I still really prefer to read things on paper. As you say, probably generational.
Happy New Year.
I like your number 3b – I am one of those guilty of accumulating piles of papers “to read”. When the pile gets too big… I start a new pile. Awful behaviour which would be well served by me adopting your resolution. So thanks for that (yeah, we’ll see…).
And a wise friend of mine might add another caveat to your first one – returning referee reports on time can have the effect of encouraging journals to send you more. Returning them horribly late might reduce the number you get. This probably varies by journal and editor though.
I’m with Stephen here – an iPad’s the way forward, with Papers to organise and read papers, iAnnotate to mark up PDFs, and Dropbox with daily folders for meeting papers and all the other stuff you have to read. It’s surprising how much better an iPad is for reading stuff on than a laptop. Still can’t read them in the bath, though.
I did look into Dropbox a little while ago, and my computer officer said he wasn’t convinced about its security for confidential meeting documents. Do you have concerns about this?
It’s a quaint conceit of University computing services that they are more secure than cloud providers! But, in any case, recent events should remind us that it’s not a bad principle to assume that pretty much anything we read or write could find itself in the public domain one way or another.