What to publish and why, what do editors Craig Primmer

What to publish and why, what do editors
like, and how to reply to referees
Craig Primmer
Department of Biology, University of Turku
[email protected]
Outline
• Publishing strategies
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one large or several small?
impact and impact factors
being considered 'productive'
increasing your productivity
Warning: heavily
opinion-laden
presentation!
• Where to publish?
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specialist journals
open access journals
consider Nature or Science?
review papers
• [What do editors like?]
• How to respond to reviewers' comments
• Rejected! Submitting to another journal
Publish or Perish
• "Publish or perish refers to the pressure to
publish work constantly in order to further or
sustain one's career in academia. The
competition for tenure-track faculty positions in
academia puts increasing pressure on scholars
to publish new work frequently" (Wikipedia)
• Being seen as "productive"
Pressure to Publish
• Advantages- keeps researchers active;
publications are easy count and compare(?)
• Disadvantages- promotes 'sloppy science';
encourages pushing the limits of the MPU
(Minimum Publishable Unit); time away from
developing well planned research agendas
MPU (or LPU)
• The smallest amount of information that can
generate a publication in a peer-reviewed
journal.
– "The term is often used as a joking, ironic, or
sometimes derogatory reference to the strategy of
pursuing the greatest quantity of publications at the
expense of their quality" (Wikipedia)
– "There is no consensus among academics about
whether people should seek to make their
publications least publishable units"
MPU-pros and cons
• At early career stage:
– writing a few small papers provides a way of getting
used to how the system of peer review works
– helps to boost publication count
– Too many MPUs may not to impress peers when
seeking promotion beyond assistant professor (or
equivalent) level.
– MPUs are not an efficient way to pass on knowledge
• break up ideas into small pieces, forcing people to look up
many cross-references.
– On the other hand, a small piece of information is
easily digestible, and the reader may not need more
information than what is in the MPU
Summary/advice
• Sometimes MPUs can be of benefit
– e.g. publishing some preliminary data on a new topic
• help a lot for grant applications
– especially early in post-doc career it is important to
demonstrate you can be productive
• But one cannot live on MPUs alone
– need to find a balance with publications on solid
'complete' studies
Impact- what is it and how to get it
• "scientific impact" can be measured by
– the number of times other people cite your work
– the prestige of the journals you publish in
• Informal forms of "impact"
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having your work used as an example in text books
text books of your own
public prominence
Others?
Impact factor (IF)
• A measure of the citations to journal articles
– journal based measure
– frequently used as a proxy for the importance of a
journal to its field
• No. of times all papers in years x-1 and x-2 are
cited in year x, corrected for paper number
A = the number of times articles published in 2007-8 were cited in
indexed journals during 2009
B = the number of "citable items" (usually articles, reviews,
proceedings or notes; not always editorials and letters-to-theEditor) published in 2007-8
2009 (2010) impact factor = A/B
Annales Zoologici Fennici
Some actual IFs
• Nature: 34.5
• Science: 29.5
• PLoS Biology: 12.9
• Ecology Letters: 10.3
• Molecular Ecology: 5.9
• Evolution: 5.4
• Conservation Biology: 4.7
• Annales Zoologici Fennici: 0.77
Problems with the IF
• Controlled by one company
– other alternatives coming in
• Google scholar
• SCOPUS
• Differences between fields
– 'High impact' human genetics journal IF >8
– 'High impact' ecology journal IF >3
– 'High impact' social science journal IF >1
• Can be manipulated by journals
– publish more review articles
– 'encourage' citation of own journal articles
– Write editorials citing own articles
Problems with the IF
• High IF
high impact
– about 90% of Nature's 2004 impact factor was
based on only ¼ of its publications
• Self citations generally included
– Both journal and researcher
• Used (too much) for position selection
– "Viimeisen 5 vuoden aikana viitatuimmat ovat
olleet..."
• Here to stay….
H-index
(Hirsch, J. E. (2005). "An index to quantify an individual's scientific
research output". PNAS 102 (46): 16569–16572)
• An impact factor for individual scientists
– a scholar with an index of h has published h papers
each of which has been cited by others at least h times
H-index- advantages
• Addresses some of the main disadvantages of
earlier productivity measures
– total number of papers
• MPU
– total citations
• one highly cited methods paper can give a false impression
– ave. citations per paper
• see above
– will not necessarily keep increasing if productivity
drops
• limited by publication number
H-index- disadvantages
• Limited by publication number
– discriminates against younger career stages
• can be taken into consideration though
• Other technical issues too
– generally uses ISI journals only
– may over compensate for single successful
publications
• Lots of variants suggested to correct for these.
– see e.g. http://www.harzing.com/resources.htm#/pop.htm
Where to publish? Specialist journals
• The most common place to publish
• How to choose between them?
– aims and scope of the journal
– target audience
• applied significance?
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impact factor
general prestige
likelihood of getting accepted 'easily'
speed of decision
• time from submission to acceptance can be 'tinkered' by
journals
– speed to publication
– think about your 'publishing profile'!
– ask others for their opinion
Open access publishing
• Pay for publishing, not for reading the articles
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Freely available online for all
PLoS Biology- US 2900 per article
BMC Evolutionary Biology- US1900 per article
Fee waiver options available
Open access publishing
• Advantages
– All institutes can read your work
– Many have a policy of publishing all scientifically
sound research whatever its level of interest
– Online only
• rapid turn-around time
• Rapid 'time to print' (essentially never 'in press')
• Disadvantages
– Institute licenses too expensive for most
• research groups must pay their own publication fees
• Easy (or easier) publication for the rich!
When to try Nature or Science?
• Small chance of success, big job, luck required
– but if you never try, you'll never publish there…..
• Results have to be of very broad interest
– also being of public interest helps
• research on chimpanzees, seals, global warming, sports results
• Style and format is very different
– often can be worth writing up for a 'normal' journal first,
and then converting to Nature format
• Remember also that publishing in a high impact
journal does not guarantee high impact
How much do you need to publish to
be considered 'productive'?
• Right after your PhD, 3-4 first author papers makes
you internationally very competitive
• After that, 1-2 first author papers plus 1-2 coauthored papers per year will put you in good stead
– more weight on high impact journals, review articles,
single author articles, highly cited articles
– short term decreases in productivity are normally
'understandable'
• new field, change of location, initiating large experiments
How much do you need to publish to
be considered 'productive'?
• Have to be careful in your early post doc years
to not let the gap between publications grow
too long
– a good aim is to try and always have at least one
manuscript 'under review'
• write up old work, write a review, write an opinion article,
MPU
How to increase your rate of
publication
• Reduce the time it takes you to write a paper
– read papers to learn the basic 'formula' for a paper
– improve your English
• Collaborate!
– especially multi-disciplinary collaboration may result in
more publications per unit effort
– you don't need to put as much effort into papers where
you are only a co-author, but they still help to 'pad out'
your publication list
• Take on (good) students/guests
– it is challenging to 'pick the good ones' in advance
• but training new researchers is a part of the academic system
Increasing impact- Write a review
article!
• Many specialist journals also publish review articles
– these are an ideal target for young post docs (or even
senior PhD students) to publish a compact, well thought
out, review on your specialist topic
• it has not all been done before
• even if it has, after 3-4 years, it can be done again
• your citation indices will almost surely improve….
Writing review articles: How to go
about it
1. Think of a clearly defined, not too broad, topic
you know well
2. Write either a point form plan or extended
abstract
3. Send it to the target journal suggesting it as a
review article
– also include a time line
– having a more senior co-author can be beneficial
4. If they like it. Stick to the timeline
– don't get stressed about new papers that come out
while you're writing
How to respond to reviewers'
comments
• Make the job as easy as possible for the editor
and reviewers to see what you have done
– Copy and paste the reviewers' comments rather than
reinterpreting their comments in your own words
– Clearly indicate page and line numbers where changes
have been made
– State which change addresses which comment
• Lowers the threshold for an editor to complete the evaluation
• Not following all suggestions is OK if you can
justify it well (within limits)
– remember to be respectful and polite
How to respond to reviewers'
comments
• Always make the editor and reviewers feel like
the time they spent reading your paper is
appreciated
– "this is a very good point"
– "thanks for this constructive comment"
• Little tricks to get away with changing less
– "we feel a detailed discussion on this is beyond the
scope of the manuscript"
– "we have added citations to several papers which
discuss this issue in detail"
Why do reviewers miss things in your
manuscript you thought were obvious?
• Maybe they didn't read the manuscript carefully
enough
• Maybe you were 'too close' to the text/data and
didn't explain it well enough
• Ask yourself: how could I have explained this
to make it so clear that even this idiot could
have followed it???
Some NEVERs
• NEVER indicate in your response you think
you know who the reviewer was
• NEVER speak critically of reviewer comments
you got to others at conferences
– that person may possibly be one of the reviewers…..
• this happened to me once (I was the reviewer)
Rejected! What now?
• Complaint to the journal?
– can succeed, but rarely
• Resubmitting to an alternative journal
– no obligation to modify the manuscript based on
previous reviews, but normally they will improve the
manuscript
• you may get the same reviewer again!
– if scope of journal is different, significant
modifications may be required
– respect the (new) journal's style
• follow the new author guidelines carefully
• Don't give up!
Finally
• Being 'more productive' than all others is not
essential, but, one great publication per 5
years of funding is a very risky strategy
• There is no one right formula. There are very
good young scientists publishing 10+ papers a
year, and others (also very good) publishing 02 per year
– think about what suits you best and what kind of
profile you want to portray to others