What to publish and why, what do editors like, and how to reply to referees Craig Primmer Department of Biology, University of Turku craig.primmer@utu.fi Outline • Publishing strategies – – – – one large or several small? impact and impact factors being considered 'productive' increasing your productivity Warning: heavily opinion-laden presentation! • Where to publish? – – – – 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" – – – – 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? – – – – 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 – – – – 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