To revise
Do any of you remember the paper I was working on during the fall? I called it my "Svalbard image analysis," and I spent a solid month or two just analyzing data for it. I submitted the paper for publication just before leaving on my Christmas break. Ring any bells?
Well, earlier this week, I heard from the scientific journal where I had submitted the paper. I was actually surprised to hear back so soon. (I've waited up to 5 months for reviews on a paper before, but I suppose every journal is different.) The reviewers made thorough comments on my paper but asked for some revisions before it could be published. Basically, that means the study was well-done overall, but it's just not quite there yet. I still have some work to do.
In case you're interested, I'll outline the scientific publication process. It's a unique system, and it's been the same for decades. When you submit a paper for publication, three things happen:
1) The paper is assigned to an editor, who is responsible for overseeing the review process, serving as a contact person for both the authors and the reviewers (so the two groups of people never talk directly to each other, thus preserving anonymity), and ultimately deciding whether the paper is published or not.
2) The editor sends the paper out to reviewers, who are impartial scientists with no involvement in the project. Reviewers read the submitted manuscript and comment on everything from experimental design to use of the Oxford comma.
3) The reviewers are then responsible for making a recommendation: either (1) the paper should be accepted with only minor changes, (2) the paper should be re-evaluated after major revisions, or (3) the paper should be rejected.
The editor is responsible for communicating the reviewers' comments and recommendations back to the authors, who respond by revising the paper. Make sense? It's a lot of back-and-forth.
I'm telling you all of this to give you some idea of what science is really like. A lot of days, it's just sitting at a desk, crunching numbers or answering e-mails. Publication certainly doesn't happen overnight - it takes lots of people, lots of revisions, and often lots of time. Actually, I suppose I have little right to complain, because I never experienced an age before the internet. Before e-mail, websites, and online submission systems, manuscripts and reviews had to be sent in the mail. Imagine how long that would take!
I'm spending today revising the paper. Once I'm finished, I'll send it out to my co-authors to see if they're ok with the changes I made, and then I'll send the revised version back to the journal. Hopefully, I'll be able to post a link to the published manuscript for you soon.
Well, earlier this week, I heard from the scientific journal where I had submitted the paper. I was actually surprised to hear back so soon. (I've waited up to 5 months for reviews on a paper before, but I suppose every journal is different.) The reviewers made thorough comments on my paper but asked for some revisions before it could be published. Basically, that means the study was well-done overall, but it's just not quite there yet. I still have some work to do.
In case you're interested, I'll outline the scientific publication process. It's a unique system, and it's been the same for decades. When you submit a paper for publication, three things happen:
1) The paper is assigned to an editor, who is responsible for overseeing the review process, serving as a contact person for both the authors and the reviewers (so the two groups of people never talk directly to each other, thus preserving anonymity), and ultimately deciding whether the paper is published or not.
2) The editor sends the paper out to reviewers, who are impartial scientists with no involvement in the project. Reviewers read the submitted manuscript and comment on everything from experimental design to use of the Oxford comma.
3) The reviewers are then responsible for making a recommendation: either (1) the paper should be accepted with only minor changes, (2) the paper should be re-evaluated after major revisions, or (3) the paper should be rejected.
The editor is responsible for communicating the reviewers' comments and recommendations back to the authors, who respond by revising the paper. Make sense? It's a lot of back-and-forth.
I'm telling you all of this to give you some idea of what science is really like. A lot of days, it's just sitting at a desk, crunching numbers or answering e-mails. Publication certainly doesn't happen overnight - it takes lots of people, lots of revisions, and often lots of time. Actually, I suppose I have little right to complain, because I never experienced an age before the internet. Before e-mail, websites, and online submission systems, manuscripts and reviews had to be sent in the mail. Imagine how long that would take!
I'm spending today revising the paper. Once I'm finished, I'll send it out to my co-authors to see if they're ok with the changes I made, and then I'll send the revised version back to the journal. Hopefully, I'll be able to post a link to the published manuscript for you soon.
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