EcoGeoFemme made an interesting post about reading journal articles. The comments linked to a post from Dr. Jekyll and Mrs. Hyde.
I'm not going to summarize the post but you can go read them, what I want to point out is, um, let's call it irony. It seems that many scientist don't particularly enjoy the writing process. Some folks love it but I think many see it as a necessary evil. From the posts I've read on writing and now these on reading this is the process of events I see occurring to which I think a revolution needs to occur to change the process.
1. Scientist comes up with great idea* and does field/lab work** and has a lot of fun.
2. Scientist spends grueling hours trying to make an outline and eventually writes a first draft of a manuscript
3. Scientist has to try to incorporate ridiculous comments by co-authors
4. Scientist waits a long time for co-authors to read second draft (repeat steps 3 and 4 as necessary)
5. Scientist submits manuscript and waits a long time for revisions
6. Scientist makes revisions (or submits to new journal) of manuscript
7. Scientist finally gets paper published and feels on top of the world, decides that writing papers is the best part of science.
8. Scientist #2 reads abstract of Scientist's paper and thinks paper is interesting.
9. #2 prints article
10. Article sits on desk, then gets dusty, then gets moved a few places in the office, then gets put in the book bag and taken to coffee shop, then goes back on the desk.
11. #2 decides that there is just no time to read article
12. Enough guilt has ensued that #2 reads article
repeat
So it seems that all this agony and effort is put into a piece of work that no one feels they have the time to read. I find this depressing and think there has to be some way to make journal articles easier to read or the process of writing less labor intensive.
*I understand that one has to read articles to come up with an idea so you can see I don't necessarily start at the beginning
** I know field/lab work isn't always fun but my feeling is that most people enjoy this stage the most
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4 comments:
It is totally ironic that nobody likes to write papers that nobody wants to read.
I will counter, however, that hearing research summarized in talks at meetings is very fun and the source of many ideas. I like to think that papers are the permanant, fully edited record of all the cool science that was communicated at meetings. At least, that makes me feel better about the fact that I too think the lab/field is way more fun than writing or reading -- there is at least some part of the communication process that really excites me.
It often can depend a lot on your PI, coauthors, and choice of journal. The Boss gets revisions back to us very quickly, and I typically don't have more than two other coauthors. Also, in our group we have submitted enough papers to know which editors tend to sit on papers and which ride their reviewers harder...so this sometimes impacts where we submit.
unbalanced- you don't count because you told me you like writing manuscript :) but I guess you like it so much because you get revisions back quickly
eco-I was thinking about this at a conference mon/tue. I thought it would be cool if people could post their powerpoints and a voice file of them giving their talks. But then I hear that not many people give good presentations so it may not be a good record of their work.
I do know people who love both writing and reading papers. But they're weird!!! :-)
Okay, seriously, I'd much rather do experiments than read or write most of the time (some of my experiments are truly tortuous). But I don't actually mind the writing very much (except the thesis--that was awful). And papers are so much less painful than grants that I find myself really appreciating writing papers now.
But I think the experience is less painful when one has nice co-authors and a responsive PI. Fortunately for me, I've been lucky enough to have both of these.
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