Perishing from Publishing? Let this guide help!

We all know that publishing our best work is key to building a scholarly repuation and in turn, a compelling and successful tenure package. But as junior faculty/grad students/etc. it isn't always clear how to build a publishing strategy. Did you even know you needed a "strategy"? You do. Yikes, right?

Tom Boellstorff, current Editor-in-Chief of the American Anthropologist has recently published a really excellent essay on the subject of building your early career publishing strategy. He focuses on the choice of venue for your work and the peer-review process. His concept of the "Journal Triangle" is new to me but makes a lot of sense: publish in general journals (e.g. American Anthropologist, Current Anthropology), area journals (e.g. geographic area, species-centric journal such as Am J Primatology), and specialist journals (e.g. Placenta, Neuroscience, Bone Biology, etc.). Entirely without planning (alas, I did not have a strategy. Boellstorff, where were you??), I've done this and I'm pleased now to learn of the collateral benefits of doing so.

I have broken some rules here, mainly his edict to refrain from or strictly limit publishing in edited volumes as an untenured professor and I can attest to the wisdom of his advice. I have two chapters in print, one in press, and one in prep. I was blushingly gratified to have been invited to participate as a graduate student in one of the volumes and unwisely prepared some dissertation data for publication. The book took over 5 years  to come out and I couldn't publish those data as a journal article. That was dumb. (Note: the book itself is awesome and I'm very proud of my chapter!) That's why I now advise untenured folks looking to build up their pub list to reserve their original data for publication in journals. You can then later refer to it in a chapter, or even reprint the article in its entirety in a book. But if it's in the book first, it's done for.

The second chapter already in print wasn't too big a deal as I was third author in terms of effort. Sometimes you'll be invited to participate as an author because the other authors are leaning heavily on your work to build a section. If you're invited to do this, make it clear to the other authors what your availability to participate really will be. Be very protective of your effort on these kinds of co-authored projects. It's easy to say Yes! and Sure! I'll throw together a table! and No problem! I'll be happy to track down permission to use that figure! but it can be a real pain in the neck to follow through. Be sure you can really do it so as to protect not only your time but your reputation as a responsible collaborator.

Another tip: Don't underestimate the time a book chapter will take to write, even one that's based on previous work.  If you take even a modicum of pride in your work, it will take a lot longer than you expect and if the book is to be peer-reviewed, you might be surprised to find the review process even more exacting than that of a journal. And know going into it that the schedule will deviate from the best intentions. It just will. The slow turnaround is yet another excellent reason to publish your original data in a journal article.

Boellstorff's one easing of the no-edited-volume edict is being the editor yourself. Testify! I'm doing this now and I am lucky enough to have two smashing lady co-editors in Katie Hinde and Kate Clancy but it is a lot of work and has absorbed effort away from some other projects maybe I "should" be doing. That said, it's worth it because I deeply believe in the project, its potential impact on the field, and its timeliness (i.e. "This topic is so timely the book needs to happen NOW!"). AND I am concurrently working on journal articles and grant proposals. You can't just rest on the edited volume - whether it's just a chapter or the whole damn thing - for tenure (for most departments/schools that emphasize research over teaching, or articles over books. Your miles may vary so get smart about your local tenure culture.) So if you're going to do it, it needs to be for more than just vanity. You need to think about impact on the field, the timeliness of the topic, the quality of the contributors, and the potential pros/cons for your own scholarly reputation. Co-editing is a great idea IF YOU HAVE THE RIGHT EDITORIAL TEAM.

Good luck to you all as you craft your strategy! Please share your tips and questions in the comment section.

Whodunit? Navigating authorship

I'm in the midst of prepping and mapping out several publications that arise from various collaborative projects and I'm trying to figure out authorship order. Ugh. In several cases, I'm doing the bulk (and in some cases, all) of the study design, data analysis, stats, and writing so I'm obviously the first author, right? Weeelll....not so fast. While I'm still building a record of first-authored papers, my mentors are alerting me to the need for some last-authored papers prior to tenure, to demonstrate my position as an independent researcher. Then what do I do with all the various collaborators, students, former mentors, current benefactors, etc. in the middle? Yikes. And it's difficult to see the distinction when the "person who did the bulk of the work" (traditionally first author slot) and "senior person" (traditionally last author slot) are one and the same.

I'm learning that a lot of this is discipline specific and what is conventional in anthropology may be quite a bit different from the norm in the biomedical or health sciences, where several of us publish (and where I make my current institutional home). Adding to the confusion, your local promotion and tenure committee may have an idea about what authorship order signifies that differs from what you and your discipline think. What I'm hearing from my mentors is that disciplinary conventions are fine to follow, but that I should be prepared to defend those decisions, both in my own voice and also in the letters from outside tenure referrees. I think a good start is to write up a "who did what" document for each publication - some journals *require* such a statement - and tuck it away in your tenure file, so you can easily refer to this when the time comes. Best practice is to have a conversation with collaborators at the project's inception regarding authorship rather than wait until you're about to submit and find out there's a dispute.

Maybe this link will help us figure it out. While it is specifically geared toward Nature journals, the advice and the associated links are generic enough to be broadly applicable. See also this, this, and this for additional guidelines.

How to write less badly

I like the premise of this article: as researchers we're not expected to be great writers, just not terrible writers. Aim high, people!

From the article: "Fortunately, the standards of writing in most disciplines are so low that you don't need to write well. What I have tried to produce below are 10 tips on scholarly nonfiction writing that might help people write less badly."

A couple of my favorites:
"5. Everyone's unwritten work is brilliant. And the more unwritten it is, the more brilliant it is. We have all met those glib, intimidating graduate students or faculty members. They are at their most dangerous holding a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other, in some bar or at an office party. They have all the answers. They can tell you just what they will write about, and how great it will be. Years pass, and they still have the same pat, 200-word answer to "What are you working on?" It never changes, because they are not actually working on anything, except that one little act."

"7. Write, then squeeze the other things in. Put your writing ahead of your other work. I happen to be a "morning person," so I write early in the day. Then I spend the rest of my day teaching, having meetings, or doing paperwork. You may be a "night person" or something in between. Just make sure you get in the habit of reserving your most productive time for writing. Don't do it as an afterthought or tell yourself you will write when you get a big block of time. Squeeze the other things in; the writing comes first."

Now, all I have to do is follow some of this advice....

Summer days, driftin' away...

In my endless quest to claim the title of Queen of Procrastination, I inadvertently stumbled upon some fantastic inspiration to get moving on my summer writing projects. Kerry Anne Rockquemore's Support for Summer Writers series in InsideHigherEd is a goldmine of supportive, compassionate advice for those of us (all of us?) who are facing the waning weeks of the summer with increasing trepidation. She explores the concept that Writing IS Thinking in her most recent column, saying that you need to "expand your sense of what "counts" as writing... If the pen is moving on the page (or your fingers on the keyboard), then you’re writing. Drafting a manuscript “counts,” but so does freewriting, generating field-notes, editing and revising, outlining, mind-mapping, describing a new idea, preparing a bibliography, consolidating reviewer comments into a list for revision, etc. In other words, anything that helps move a manuscript out the door “counts” as writing. Expanding your notion of what constitutes writing should help you reduce your resistance by making daily writing feel like a normal part of your every day routine."

I feel more productive already, just being reassured that I have indeed been writing!! (Although I notice blogging doesn't make the list...damn.)

She also suggests it's perfectly acceptable to Lower Your Expectations: "High expectations are tricky. On the one hand, if you're reading this column, you've already experienced tremendous educational success and that is likely tied to having high expectations for yourself. On the other hand, when our expectations about who we should be, how we should feel, what we should achieve, and the impact our work should have in the world are too high, unexamined, inappropriate for our current career stage, or generated from a desperate need to prove ourselves, they become a straitjacket."

I especially like her idea of establishing a 0-100% reviewer list. You subdivide manuscript "doneness" into quartiles: 0-25%, 25-50%, 50-75%, and 75-100%. At each stage, have somebody take a look. Holding onto a manuscript until it is "perfect" can increase your perfectionist anxiety. This sounds like pure genius to me and I plan on implementing it soon, which means that some of my fellow BANDITs may soon be called into service. Kerry also suggests that you "try adjusting how you approach your first drafts from perfectionist judgment to compassion by treating your initial writing with the same loving gentleness you would give to a baby, a puppy, a seedling, or whatever is small and fragile but will grow into something big and strong."

I really like this imagery of our writing as something that is alive, organic, evolving. Appropriate for us, don't you think?

Guide to reviewing manuscripts

Crazy-thanks to Dr. Colleen Nyberg for passing along this very helpful guide to reviewing manuscripts. Although the authors of the article are radiologists, their guidelines are fairly universal. Especially helpful is their comparison of informative and non-informative reviews. Both authors and reviewers should learn something new from this piece.

It's the time for the season of writing...

For most of us, the official school year is over giving way to that holy grail of the academic life, SUMMERS OFF!!(HAHAHAhahahahahahaha...hahahahaha...*gasp*....hahahahahaha..), perhaps better known as "damn, I better write about 50 pages a day or I am screwed." The writing could be finishing up those manuscripts that have been languishing under a pile of exams, grant proposals for summer deadlines, book prospectuses, or even dissertations. For those ABD's starting new positions this fall, the summer can be the final brutal stretch of non-stop writing before having to load up a moving truck. If all of this is overwhelming (and dammit, if it's not, then you are so much of a rock star that I don't think I can be friends with you) please check out Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day: A Guide to Starting, Revising, and Finishing Your Doctoral Thesis, the classic tome by Joan Bolker. There are of course many other excellent guides on this topic as well as productivity more generally, but this is the one I find most helpful, and it extends to writing projects other than dissertations. While geared a little more toward the humanities and the more social of the social sciences (e.g. we really need to incorporate time for labwork and data analysis into our writing process - they go hand in hand), the overall tone is approachable and reasonable.

An important tip for creating time to write that Bolker ignores but that worked wonders for me while writing my dissertation: don't shower, change your clothes, or leave the house for days at a time. Also, Doritos and Diet Coke help. (You're welcome!)