{"id":694,"date":"2009-01-24T22:18:04","date_gmt":"2009-01-24T22:18:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/2009\/01\/24\/in_which_i_dally_with_both_sides\/"},"modified":"2009-01-24T22:18:04","modified_gmt":"2009-01-24T22:18:04","slug":"in_which_i_dally_with_both_sides","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/2009\/01\/24\/in_which_i_dally_with_both_sides\/","title":{"rendered":"In which I dally with both sides"},"content":{"rendered":"

Writing a paper \u2013 it takes on a whole new meaning if you’ve spent time behind the editorial desk of a peer-reviewed journal or two. It’s now been about a year and a half since I left publishing to return to the bench, and I’m busy finishing up the experiments for my first research paper. But in the meantime, my boss and I (which of course translates to I<\/em>, for the most part) were recently asked to write a review article, and I’m just in the final throes of that.<\/p>\n

\nAnd in taking on this task, I’ve realized that knowledge of what goes on On The Other Side can seriously alleviate publication anxiety. First of all, the London publishing world is extremely small, and its pool of editors, highly mobile. It turns out that the person handling my manuscript is the fellow Assistant Editor I sat next to in my first journals job back in 2003. It is sort of hard to take her formal ‘your article is nearly overdue’ emails seriously when, in the back of my mind I remember the three of us giggling, groaning and rolling our eyes over the various outrageous excuses that some authors would send us for being late. Of course, the knowledge that this editor knows that I know<\/em> means that I can’t use any of those tactics myself. Back in December when I was seeking a much-needed extension of the deadline, I didn’t even try:<\/p>\n

\nDear {censored}<\/span>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nI won’t pawn you off with any of the normal lame authorial excuses like the dog having ate my first draft or some sort of illness or death in the family — I simply haven’t had a chance to do much yet, down to my own lack of organization and time management.<\/span>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nOf course the extension was duly granted, with good grace \u2013 having been an editor has also taught me that if you want something finished by February, then the preceding December is a pretty good place to draw that first line in the sand. (Oops, I haven’t betrayed any deep-dark editorial code by sharing this with you, have I?)<\/p>\n

\nShe’s gone on maternity leave now, and my file has been passed on to someone else. A few days ago I wasn’t sure exactly what tack I should take on a particular issue \u2013 so I rang up her replacement, introduced myself and we had a productive chat. Oh, and I got another few days’ grace on the deadline in the process. When I put the phone down, a few of my colleagues were stunned. It turns out that to most scientists, the thought of actually speaking<\/em> to an editor had never even crossed their minds. Instead, writing a paper seems to be a stylized, us-versus-them battle where the lines of communication are strictly via emails loaded with formalized sentences dripping in ambiguous subtext. An editor, in this environment, is more enemy than ally. <\/p>\n

\nI guess I used to think that too, until I stood in their shoes and realized that producing a great paper is a goal that both authors and editors have in common.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Writing a paper \u2013 it takes on a whole new meaning if you’ve spent time behind the editorial desk of a peer-reviewed journal or two. It’s now been about a year and a half since I left publishing to return … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}