{"id":580,"date":"2011-01-01T10:55:56","date_gmt":"2011-01-01T10:55:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/?p=580"},"modified":"2012-10-13T19:01:56","modified_gmt":"2012-10-13T19:01:56","slug":"new-years-day-new-years-resolutions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/2011\/01\/01\/new-years-day-new-years-resolutions\/","title":{"rendered":"New Year’s Day, New Year’s Resolutions"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m no fan of New Year\u2019s resolutions; they\u2019re bound to fail.\u00a0 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\u00a0 – though anyone who knows me now will know I did eventually manage it.\u00a0 Nevertheless, reading the comments from \u2018Pete\u2019 on a blogpost<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

In contrast to the blogger\u2019s experience, Pete said<\/p>\n

‘I\u2019ll bet reviewers like to leave documents on their desks to \u201ccure\u201d for a while before they actually get down to it. I suppose good things do take time to complete.’<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

And that got me thinking about the process of refereeing. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever thought I left papers to \u2018cure\u2019 but there is a great art in procrastination which probably has rather the same effect. \u2018Just in time\u2019 refereeing can all too easily become \u2018just-not-in-time\u2019 refereeing, and by the time the nominal deadline has been missed it\u2019s tempting to let it slip further, and further, and\u2026.You get the picture.\u00a0 As an editor of course I deplore such behaviour but, I doubt there is a referee in the land who hasn\u2019t been guilty of it at least occasionally – or perhaps a little oftener.\u00a0 This takes me to<\/p>\n

Resolution Number 1<\/strong><\/p>\n

I will ensure I return all referee reports on papers by the due date in 2011.<\/em><\/p>\n

There are a couple of caveats to this which I might indulge in (equally frustrating for the editor):<\/p>\n

a)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Not accepting the invitation to do the refereeing until near the due date given and then asking for a further 3 weeks;<\/p>\n

b)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 refusing all refereeing tasks completely;<\/p>\n

Linking in to that first resolution is the email mountain, and how to deal with it. If you don\u2019t ever open those emails requesting you referee a paper, then you can\u2019t be held responsible for not doing the refereeing.\u00a0 However, since I have never got as far as deleting the requests without reading them, that doesn\u2019t help to reduce the mountain.\u00a0 I\u2019m not even going to attempt to make a resolution of dealing with all emails in a timely manner.\u00a0 There are the easy ones, which one can gain a reputation for being efficient about, you know the ones to which the answer is \u2018yes\u2019, or even better \u2018no\u2019 and then the original message can be filed\/deleted.\u00a0 And I always feel rather good about deleting a significant number that turn up in the in-tray each morning which begin \u2018Dearly beloved\u2019, or \u2018Your bank account\u2026.\u2019 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<\/p>\n

Resolution Number 2<\/strong><\/p>\n

I will delete unread at least 50% of all emails that arrive overnight (when the worst of my spam seems to appear) \u00a0and 25% of those that come during working hours. <\/em><\/p>\n

That should help reduce the mountain (apologies if it\u2019s one of yours that gets trashed in error\u2026.).<\/p>\n

Finally I need to attend to the paper mountain, by which I mean those papers I have put aside in order to read \u2018when I have a moment\u2019, 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.\u00a0\u00a0 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\u2019t find the first copy (I hope that isn\u2019t breaking any copyright rules).\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Many years ago I learnt the hard way there is a difference between having a copy of a paper in one\u2019s possession and knowing what\u2019s 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\u00a0 – and realised to my horror that I hadn\u2019t actually read<\/span> any of them.\u00a0 That crucial step had somehow got omitted in my preparation.\u00a0 This takes me to<\/p>\n

Resolution Number 3<\/strong><\/p>\n

a) <\/em>I won\u2019t accept any more invitations to write reviews;<\/em><\/p>\n

b) <\/em>I won\u2019t print out a paper without having a clear slot of time immediately thereafter to read it.<\/em><\/p>\n

So, that should make 2011 go with a swing. I wonder how many days till I break all 3 resolutions on the same day\u2026.<\/p>\n

Happy New Year to everyone! May your resolutions fare better than I expect mine to.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 No more frivolity (maybe).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m no fan of New Year\u2019s resolutions; they\u2019re bound to fail.\u00a0 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\u00a0 – … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1],"tags":[182,184,177,183],"class_list":["post-580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-culture","category-uncategorized","tag-email","tag-paper-mountain","tag-refereeing","tag-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}