 Hi, good morning. I hope you all had a wonderful evening and mixed and mingled and networked and all then you know slept very well and you're all fresh and Bright-eyed and bushy tail for another day Again, it is anything we can do at any point to make your you know workshop easier. Please let us know we've got Folks at the reception desk to talk to you anytime. So thank you all for being here I want to thank our panelists very much for being here. We've got a wonderful Group of panelists set up for talking about insights into the publishing process. So I Want to introduce Becky flowers Chris Davis Jeff Tyndall and Wai Ching hon. Thank you, um, sorry And they are going to be introducing themselves explaining What it is they their experiences about the publishing process? And so if you wouldn't mind just saying a few words about yourselves telling everybody your experiences in writing Publishing and editing if you have experience in that and then we can start and take questions from the audience. Thank you Okay, I'm I'm Becky flowers. So I'm now an associate professor at CU Boulder I'm in the Department of Geological Sciences and so I guess in terms of my Experiences publishing at this point. I guess I'm an author on about 40 papers and am the lead author or have one of my students as lead author is on about 30 of those so I guess my My experiences have sort of evolved Moving from sort of graduate through postdoc work now into being in a faculty position And I think challenges sort of change as you move through time in terms of your time that you have available to write and sort of the different sort of Issues that you face when trying to usher students through the writing process versus writing Papers on your own and then I also spent a brief stint as an associate editor of one of the GSA journals Morning everyone. I'm Chris Davis. I directed meza scale and micro scale meteorology laboratory here at NCAR So I basically spent my whole career here at NCAR So I've collaborated with a lot of different groups and people and different topics over the years and written or co-authored a lot of papers In various forms all the way from students to you know senior researchers I've served as a associate editor for the quarterly journal of the Royal Meteorological Society That's actually a actual editor. They call it associate editor, but be the equivalent of editor of a Mest journal, so I've sort of seen the publication process from that side, which is really interesting And I guess I'll save everything else for what comes next whatever that is Morning everybody, I'm Jeff Timble. I'm a senior scientist at NCAR and spent most of my career here as well And unlike most the people at NCAR actually work in a lab with chemicals and things so a lot of the projects We do a fairly short term and You see them through start to end and so Authored probably over a hundred bit papers of different forms and a lot of them have been with students and postdocs and Collaborations your students come and visit us in the summer for a few months and get some data And we kind of write it up as best we can or they come back the next summer So we get through a lot of data and quite a few papers then for the last six years or 2009 through 15 I've been editor of Geophysical research letters, GRL, which is kind of a fairly high-profile Rapid publication journal of the American Geophysical Union. So I was handling between 250 and 300 papers a year Beginning to end and basically the editor. There's no associate editors. You do everything you get the paper Send it out for you. You read the reviews make decisions send it back through revision. So it's Pretty tense Needless to say but you get to see a lot and you know earn a lot of sympathy for the authors and the reviewers along the way So What's my background? I'm we Qing Han and I'm associate professor at the University of Colorado the Department of Adam's first oceanic sciences and I get a degree in the physical oceanography and I have published Articles from very specialized journal like JPO you might know if you do journal physical oceanography and to the journals like Nature Geoscience and these kind of journal like a broader audience for over 70 of them total and so Editor I have served as associate editor for six years for JGR oceans. I guess Thank you. So I'm going to kick off with a question for me from me and then I guess if if the discussion then Comes from the audience and we can just see how that goes so Evidence shows that people who publish in high-profile journals for the first time are publishing with authors who have published there before What do you recommend to postdocs on how to get published and then finding those collaborators that they can publish with? I think one of the important things as a postdoc and some of you are probably already well on your way to doing this it's an opportunity to Establish your independence from your PhD advisor. There's also the obvious necessity to publish papers Your PhD advisor sometimes that happens in graduate school before you even finish. Sometimes that's still happening But at some point I think it's important to establish those new connections and that how you do that is Really It's an individual experience But but I would say that wherever you happen to be it's it's going to be up to you to seek out individuals who you think are Prominent in the field have a common interest with you and invite them to collaborate. They may come to you But they may not and so I think this is really important and I'm not I mean I think Carolyn's question was about this Specific journal. I think it's just useful to have people you're working with who do have that reputation in the field You know for a while that I think that helps get you get contacts. It helps you it may help get your paper Accepted in some of these high-profile journals, although I'm not so sure about that But this is an important time to make those new connections So just put yourself out there is what I would say And at conferences or in the place where you work and try to talk to people and get them engaged in in your work It's really it's a networking Challenge and opportunity it's both Yeah, I agree go to AGU go to AMS I'll give you talks and your posters and people will come to you We're working on something similar and then you can say oh, how's about doing something together kind of thing But don't stress over the high-profile journals though I think is saying there's a lot of emphasis put on that when it comes to getting tenure, but on the other hand, you know, I See a lot of papers that go into high-profile journals that have been rushed You know, it's a short format often nature Science is just like a three or four page paper and people scramble to get the results out there The results sometimes aren't the best you know, so don't be afraid to publish in a good solid journal like JGR or something like that and Get a good solid reputation before you start swinging for the fence First of all, you said high-profile Profile journals and do you mean the science nature and with broader audience or is it? Could you tell me like is that that kind of journal right? I Wouldn't see just go out to get at this cool like you just for this cool because you're working on specific field and You know, you have to read a lot of papers You know which people right and you must have read the some papers that published in Science of Nature Or this kind of journals if you think that person that can contribute it to your work and Either from your own department or from somewhere else. You can always contact them ask them whether they can They want to all they are interested in work But I don't think I ever intentionally just get somebody who has published this You know, just put put the name there. No, I don't I've never done that Yeah, I guess I would I would Just add that yeah I agree that the probably the most important goal is to just do good science and to publish in the Best journals that you can but the most important thing is to do good science and to establish your reputation in the field and I agree it's important to develop potentially some some high-profile Collaborators but part of the point of doing that is so that you can learn from them and ultimately, you know You should be trying to establish yourself as an independent scientist And you shouldn't I agree not just have them on your papers to have them on the on your papers Because sometimes those high-profile people they cast a really large shadow too And so then it's a little unclear if you did the work or they did the work And so ultimately you really need to separate you want to learn from them But you also need to separate yourself from them So it's not just I don't think the goal is just to have high-profile collaborators Or you have to have a reason for involving those people in the science Wish for the audience. Yeah Hi, I'm Aditi Bhaskar. I'm a met a hydrologist at USGS soon to be at Colorado State. My question was about Working with students who maybe this is their first time Publishing our journal article and how do you You know you tell them right when they're starting the project that that's an expectation that this is going to go to publication How do you work with somebody who? Has never written Journal article before and it's probably easier for you to do it yourself, but you're trying to train someone else to do it That's a good question for advisor and When you get a new student they have never published before and of course you start from like giving them a direction and Ask them to read all the background of materials after they read a lot of materials I'm sure they have a very good sense of regarding the science and let them pay Particular attention to how other people write it. So and then I would always tell them that We do expect so research result being published But I don't push them that you have to publish within a year or no Yeah, I think a good start as well is just giving talks and little presentations because that way you basically Map out what the paper is going to look like you have an introduction You have a little experimental or methods then you have a result So just stunning up and talking about it in front of an audience however small really can help you You have all your figures already there and then all you have to do is put the words around it sounds easy Yeah, I would say it has to start with the research it has to start with results and I think if you're working with a student I don't I wouldn't I mean I have worked with students who haven't written Anything before and I think it's an evolving process. I wouldn't set Any kind of firm expectation about how it's going to end up looking at the end I think it's got to be driven by the science that's done when you get some results Then I think you can proceed from describing the results to growing it into a paper And I think it just becomes logical at that point how to Mentor the students through the rest of the process But they have to have a core of results. They're interested in it can describe before I think it's going to turn into Journal article Yeah, I guess I I always make it pretty clear upfront that I expect the students to write a paper Because especially if you're an assistant professor you need publication So I think it's important if that is your goal to make it clear to them that that should be their goal But I agree it's sort of an evolving process and I think it's important for the students to come in and get their feet Wet right away. I try to get them involved in research right away trying to get some results getting experience in the lab and then also As some of the others said here just trying to get them Presenting information even just like in group meetings and then just have them continuously thinking about the research So it's all moving in the direction of the paper even if they're not writing Immediately, but I also think starting to write early I always try to get even my master's students to start writing in the first year to maybe write up their background Maybe their methods to start writing up their results to create generate some figures So that that stuff is done and then they can actually spend time thinking about the significance of of their data Because I think that's definitely for me has been probably the biggest learning experience coming on and being a faculty member is figuring out How to mentor students effectively and to get papers Ultimately completed and and submitted and every student is different. So So one of the things I found challenging about transitioning from grad school to postdoc was in grad school I was encouraged to kind of work on my research for several years and really Kind of solve everything about that problem and have a very CLEETful understanding and then write papers and publish about it Which is kind of incompatible with the short time frames of a postdoc and the need to get papers out And then I assume as you transition into a Assistant professor position as well. You need to you know be productive. So I was wondering if you could comment on this balance between you know having papers that are very comprehensive and sort of good quality all-encompassing about a problem versus a Higher sort of quantity of publications. I know to some extent quality over quantities important But you also do need a certain amount of publications So if you could come in a sort of how to tell when you have Enough for a paper versus when you should kind of keep going and that kind of balance That is often the ultimate question in publications is when do I stop? When do I say that this is enough? So Long time ago I worked with a fellow named Brian Farrell from Harvard University. I didn't really write papers with him But he had a very very distinct philosophy which is one idea one paper that's it and Well, you know I guess the question is what constitutes an idea, but I think what he was saying he tended to write, you know Papers in the Journal of Atmospheric Sciences that ended up eight pages long They were theoretical so that helped him as opposed to describing detailed Laboratory experiments or numerical models, but nonetheless, I think this idea of one paper one idea one paper is It's a useful guiding principle if you find you're trying to describe two major results Probably have two papers, and I think at that point it's okay to consider it as two papers But if you really have one theme and it just takes or one major idea It just takes a lot of description and background to actually to accurately get that idea out there That's one paper So, you know, there's no As you could guess there's no hard and fast rule about this But I think it's it's useful to try to make your paper on about one thing and and see where that leads you. I Think that's excellent question for for Every poster every poster Who is starting his or her career and want to be a faculty in the future or a scientist? And you are pressed by quality versus quantity or productive Productivity include the quantity, okay? So I strongly suggest you don't sacrifice all the quality just for quantity However, I do understand because I went through that process. I do understand your stress by productivity So from this point of view, I think it makes sense if for some topics and if you think oh, this is good idea and But I won't have the time for a year or two To finish the whole comprehensive process So from that point of view you can write something like oh good idea, but I need more time But if you put it there, you're gonna wait for one or two years No, I would suggest you to publish something like gel geophysical research letters It's only four pages and just publish it and then if you have time you follow on or you move on to other project I would do that. So that's a kind of quantity. Oh, you know point of view, but I Think your whole career reputation as a good scientist is based on quality Okay, it's mainly based on quality for your whole career But in order for you to get to that pass Okay, to be a faculty if you look at your how many people have published also quality From this point, of course, we need to work hard Okay, of course if everything is high quality every single paper that's marvelous But many times as I said you do some very good ones thorough and some ones You don't have time to put your hands on for details and but you have good idea get it published So you get a balance between the two I Also agree that's an excellent. That's an excellent question and I feel like that is another really big challenge when you get to be particularly like an assistant professor and Just fine trying to decide on the boundaries between different publications and what the distinct contribution that each will make and I think sometimes As it's sort of been said here that to think strategically about what is going to be the most you're going to get More immediately like what can you actually complete and make a good contribution with in the short term and Balance that against the long term because particularly once you become an assistant professor You will be much more busy than you are even as a postdoc and you will have much less time And so it'll be important It's been really important for me to be able to work on multiple papers at the same time with different students And so just balancing the time So I think a lot of it is just thinking strategically because it is critical to maintain the quality And you don't want to just shingle papers on the same idea, but you also have to be consistent in publishing So yeah, so you need a balance Hi Julia buck from UC Santa Barbara my question is as an author What can I do to make the job of an editor easier be nice? So yeah, I think you know is going back to the previous question a little bit too if you're thorough and Do good science, but I think also being concise when you're writing papers You know you need to be get as much detail in there as is necessary to explain what's going on in the paper and But you also, you know have to be kind to your reviewers as well and not Analyze every little wiggle in your data and everything like that. You know go for the big overall picture and Just you realize that editors and reviewers are humans, you know, they make mistakes as do authors too and I think it goes both ways You just have to kind of be reasonable. Don't make any enemies and Just kind of work through it in a logical sensible way And I think the inverse applies to if you're reviewing as well Yeah, don't pick a personal battle with somebody, you know, ultimately the quality of the paper realize Reflects on the author So if you have two rounds of reviews on a paper and you still don't like it Just send it back to the editor say if you want to publish it, that's fine But ultimately it's gonna look bad on the author. So Quality over quantity again. I think is the bottom line. I Can add to that a couple of things clarity of exposition clarity of figures a well a spell-checked dramatically Correct paper really helps because there's nothing that's worse for a reviewer to get than something that has Obvious errors and figures are hard to read and you know, there's 67 different contours on a particular plot and Stuff like that. So you can really help that process But I want to also address the review end of things because I think one of the most challenging things for an editor is when Reviewers are trying to be helpful and the author will not let them And there I've encountered this a number of times and it's a balance between defending your point Defending what you have written. This is what I really believe and being at least somewhat accepting of The critique that's coming in the reviews and I think strike Offering to strike a balance there on the part of the author really helps the review process You don't want to compromise your basic principles. You all you do want to stand firm but you don't want to just Reject what the reviewers are saying just for the sake of that. I think that complicates the editor's job Yeah, just to add to that I think yeah, I mean it takes time to review a paper, right? And so and to spend time to read it and try to give constructive criticism And it's very frustrating as a reviewer if later you see that paper and you realize Oh, I spent all this time in this review and they accepted none of my comments They just completely ignored them and you know, you get a reputation for that too So I mean typically when you get a review, I mean again Yeah, you don't have to accept everything that the reviewer says but on the other hand They probably there's probably some wisdom in there and ways that you can improve your paper I often get lots of helpful Comments that definitely improve my paper through the review process and I find it very helpful So I think you you know, that's again a part of developing your reputation as being someone who is open-minded And when you see an opportunity to improve your paper as a consequence of the review process to do that and to express Appreciation to when you write a letter back in response to the rear comments saying thanks This was helpful and here's the changes that we made rather than just saying. Oh, well, I know what I'm doing and you're wrong And just remember that these people are reviewing your papers now But in six or seven years they might be writing letters of recommendation for your tenure Okay, first of all, I just want to add on to what they said what they said. Oh, very great Suggestions so one point I do have a story about it Sometimes you do get a question from the reviewer that it doesn't make sense Okay, it does not make sense because they didn't fully understand the dynamics one story I get it does one time is the reviewer just couldn't understand They're just confused about concept of just trophy a just trophy and a quasi just trophy They're completely completely different concept. So keeps asking is quasi just trophy keep asking a just trophy At first. Oh, that's okay. Oh confused. Okay, just become and you should think that all the real Reviewers they spending time and they're trying they have good intention if they are confused that don't just say I'm mad all right and letter to the editor. No, just try to explain What exactly it is? So I try to explain what is concept a geography? What is the quasi geostrophy and the people admitted right away? Okay, I have a question about publishing strategy during during the term of the postdoc In some cases, but not all cases You have a calibration component that may actually take the full duration and Realistically and then some but at least the full duration if not the first year of the postdoc and then perhaps a paleo component some sort of a reconstruction and You know, so all of a sudden that probably necessitates some Fancy strategizing and maneuvering in order to be able to publish whatever recommended quantity of papers that That should go along with the postdoc. I Don't know if there are any recommendations on on how to deal with that. So obviously you kind of have to force something I think you put a quick paleo paper up front Without any calibration and then Perhaps produce the calibration paper after your postdoc I don't know if you've encountered this No, we see that to instrument development same kind of thing You know have someone come in and work on a instrument take a little while to build it Then you go in the field and then once you get back from the field You have to start analyzing rounds of data and things. So it's not uncommon in several fields and Yeah, I think maybe you know as you suggested an experimental paper Sometimes takes longer than a results paper Then's always a game knowing how much detail to put into the shorter paper and still make it clear So we say you really don't want to lose any of the information that the reviewers might need to be able to review a paper So I think that's the key is making sure you can Really have enough information out there to get people to evaluate the work correctly But it is a problem with postdoc positions If you're building something and developing it, it's gonna take a chunk of your time You really just got to trust your advisor really make sense They're gonna look out for you and try and get you some publications and a reasonable amount of time best advice I Guess one thing I might add to that is that hopefully if you haven't actually published all of your papers from your PhD Then you can keep rolling those out during your postdoc so that then by the time you finish your calibration Study that that will then come out. So hopefully you have some overlap and some continuity there Hi, Falco Jude. I'm an ASP postdoc here in MQ but NCAR. I have a question regarding you submit a manuscript you get back the revisions the reviews and Are you or can you change parts of the manuscript that wasn't that we're incommended on by the reviewers to make them better? So we're all a little bit perfectionist, right? And sometimes I submit a paper get it back and I want to change things But the reviewers were okay with that. I don't think there's a problem with that the one thing you want to be Aware of is that the reviewer might go wait a minute I never saw this before and so you may get Comments on the part you changed But I think I think you should always Look to improve the paper if you see something obvious even if the reviewers didn't see it or didn't notice it didn't comment on it I would go ahead and change it. I think there's no problem with that Yeah, definitely and even I've seen papers come back with different sets of authors even you know They add people or even sometimes the reviewer if it's a kind of friendly review then they'll contact the author or vice versa And then the author will invite them to become an author on the paper the second time around And so you know anything to improve the papers is good. Yeah. Hi. My name is Colin Phillips. I'm at the University of Minnesota I have a question for the editors In particular case, but also just in general So when do you involve the editorial staff when you are responding to reviews? Where it's clear and I mean actually clear that the intent of the review you're responding to has gone from You know like a review where you give them a benefit it out to a personal attack You know, when do you say? This is no longer about the science and I don't really want to you know play a game here I just when do you say the editor? Hey look? This seems to be beyond the pale That's always tricky. I guess one thing I always tried to do is Limit the number of back-and-forth iterations that occur and at some point simply Tell the authors here's what you need to do and if they do it that's it And we just don't keep going back and forth about this because you can end up there Right. There are some people that are never going to agree on Certain points, and I think that's the editor's job is to own that review and make that decision and decide when enough is enough And so I think when editors do that everybody appreciates it because the reviewer is done The author sees a light at the end of the tunnel, you know And it's but that means you have to make a decision about is this should this paper be published first of all Once you've made that decision, and I think that's Then you can guide that process from there as the editor No, I agree totally and Like you know sometimes after you're probably after a second review is probably the time to call the halt and sometimes the authors Will just write and say hey could I have another reviewer look at this or something if they're just too nice for a third reviewer Just to take a look but I mean as Chris says a strong editorial hand is really important You have the editor to understand what's required and draw the line somewhere Um what I would yeah First of all, I think what I would I'll read both of this and all the message carefully because the editor is supposed to be At least know a lot in this field So most likely I can make the decision But if I cannot there's too much details that's out of my background I would get a another reviewer So I'm just wondering if there's ever a situation where you would contact you sort of alluded to this If you have some contribution as a reviewer to make would you contact the authors offline sort of to avoid a? long description of blah blah do this this this this different and then how would you go about that and I guess also You know given that the position that we're all postdocs and how that sort of fits into our careers and You mean in a situation where a reviewer has relinquished their anonymity and so you the author knows who the reviewer is and I Guess I haven't taken it upon myself to initiate offline communication, but I know that in my case as an author if I know the Reviewer I might contact them or as a reviewer if I'm relinquishing my anonymity I might send an email separately to the author saying hey, these are my points. I like your paper, but this really let's talk about this So I guess as an editor I haven't Myself encouraged that I think it usually takes place between the author and the Hope I'm in addressing your question Yeah, I've seen that as an editor Sometimes the reviewer will say a little private note. Hey, you know, is it okay if I contact the authors or something like that? give up their anonymity that way and If I'm reviewing myself, you know 50% of the time I'll weigh the anonymity anyway depending But I I kind of often sign reviews just so the authors know who it is That opens up the possibility for dialogue as well But yeah, sometimes it goes like through the official journal channels But it's mostly up to the reviewer to contact the authors in general I think because the authors don't always know who the reviewers are But I think it's a good thing. Yeah, so and often that will you know result in offer of co-authorship as well Yeah Yeah, I would say that I've also sort of informally as an author of a paper on which I've received reviews just Informally contacted the reviewer of the paper because the further along you get in your career The more you know other people in your field and so you get to know these other folks better and they're kind of They might be reviewing your paper, but you've interacted with them a bunch So it's easy enough just to say hey, thanks for the review. You made some good points Or what did you mean by this and recently I there was a paper in which The one of the reviewers he had a different expertise and one of the suggestions by the editor was to consider adding a person with that Expertise to the paper so we actually went and invited him to become a Co-author on the paper and he ultimately did although he was initially the reviewer of the paper and I think it strengthened the paper greatly so I think those offline Interactions can be very effective Hey, I'm Allison Nygens. I'm a PRF here at NCAR and my question is related to the review process It's two two parts one is how long do you think spending on a review is worth it? I often find that I spend way too long on reviews and I know I shouldn't write it for them But maybe I do and then secondly Sometimes it's obvious minor or reject But often the border between minor and major is really vague and sometimes I don't know what to suggest Do you have some clear guidelines on? When a paper is minor revisions or when a paper is major revisions from the reviewer point of view, so let's see the Difference between major and minor if you're recommending changes I think as you suggest it's kind of it's very gray in a lot of instances I think if you feel that this is going to take the authors a while to figure out They got there's something they actually have to go do to satisfy your comments whether it's conduct another another experiment Reanalyze data in some way. It's not something they're going to pull off in a few days I would say that that is probably a major revision. You could at least suggest This is probably a major revision. Ultimately the editor might see that comment and and say well actually no I know these people they'll probably deal with this pretty fast So they would call it minor. It is tricky though because once There's a temptation on the okay. I want to be careful how I say this On off the a part of authors. I've seen there's a temptation that when they say When they see minor revisions in the recommendation that oh, I don't have to do anything now You know the paper is fine and that's really not the intent. So I think the other one of the motivations for saying major revision is to get people's attention that no This is actually an important thing that you really need to address As to how much time you should spend on a review Not more than a day That would be my recommendation And maybe even it depends, you know, obviously if you got a two-part paper to review That's going to take a while if it's something that's kind of on the edge of your field or really technically complicated paper that's going to take a while but Most of the time I think it's it's basically a day. It shouldn't be more than that Others may disagree. I Would say Chris said no more no more than a day. That's my time now But when I was a post down I spent three days for one paper. That's a very normal sometimes for this why because You don't because you don't know all the references they cited I would go to a lot of those references and read them all because I feel like so far now Don't rush to limit yourself the time one day or something and even it takes you a week you should do a good job and For now, I think I wasn't able to because you accumulate we are much older than you are, you know that So you accumulate all the experience and all the references in your field I guess you can do it faster now But when I was opposed to I did spend typically three days Now reviewing is a wonderful part of the learning process. It's a vitally Important thing that we'll do and I still enjoy it. I remember the first time my professor came down in grad school He was just swamped and said, oh, could you take a look at this button? Maybe review it for you I'll let the journal know you did it. I was so oh, yeah, I can do that It's like a four-page paper and I don't know how long it took me to review but it was just so cool to be part of that process early on and Yeah, I agree you know a Day or two, whatever it takes. I think the important thing is not to rewrite the paper for the authors Do what you have to do to get the things across and These days I actually get a little harsh, you know, if I look at a paper and See it's not gonna make it then my review is very short because Unfortunately, if you kind of say, you know, this paper is probably not suitable for publication Then you give four pages of minor comments The authors will correct the typos and ignore the comment that it's not suitable for publication and you get it back two weeks later so You know be honest be blunt and yeah, don't spend hours and days Working on a paper that you don't think is suitable But but be thorough as well, and it's a great learning process way tuned said and It's good opportunity for you to learn what's going on in the field and how other people think so Give it the time it deserves. I think answer I actually have a question about when you when you agree or decline to review a paper because there have been situations in which I've been asked to review a paper that's on the very periphery of You know of my area of expertise and I probably could have done it It would have taken me quite a long time to just get up to speed on that And I've had other situations in which I've been completely snowed under by other things And I really feel I should because I feel it's my duty to do this But at the same time I know I don't necessarily have time to do a great job So what's that? Where's that line drawn and when when how often can you decline before people get angry with you? So I guess I I would say for me personally when I was a postdoc and just starting to review I pretty much set accepted all the reviews sent my way Just so I could learn and see because I was totally new to the process now You know I get requests for maybe 40 or 50 reviews a year And so I'm very much more selective and so now I accept reviews when I Feel like I am particularly well qualified to review it And I know for example that in my particular field Maybe there's only half dozen other people who have that level of expertise in this particular area Or if it's an area that I'm specifically working in and I'm very interested in the particular problem and The third reason I accept reviews is if it's sort of like that. I know the editor and maybe and let's say I just recently submitted a paper to that journal and And he handled it and then that editor now is asking me to review a paper I'll always say yes because I have to you know return the favor or if like the person just recently like invited me to Give a talk somewhere did me a favor then you know It's sort of you're doing them a favor in return and in those cases I always say yes even if the paper is a little bit out of my field and so that means I don't know I'll review maybe a couple dozen a year now So somewhere someone told me that there's a guideline sitting out there somewhere about Reviewing roughly three times the number of papers you write. I Have no idea if this is a reasonable number or not And it's not necessarily a number I subscribe to but I think it's it is reasonable to try to bound This I think Becky's comment was really good about yeah when you're starting out You kind of want to review everything and when you get to like at this point I don't have time to review much of anything. So I end up saying no a lot I Guess if you stand I would say if you stand a chance to really learn something by reviewing a paper That's a really good reason to do it. That means you must be part have expertise in that field, but also, you know We a want to learn something that's motivating and I think you'll it'll be a much richer experience So it might be another thing to consider Yeah, I mean our reasons for turning down reviews might be different from yours like we said Yeah, ours is probably just lack of time and a lot of times being pulled different directions and too many papers coming our way But you is probably you know three or four a year or something I'd encourage you to do as much as you can but not to take up time away from your work necessarily, but It's a good chance to learn and in our in our case. It's a good time to mentor I think you know if you see a paper with particularly interest of them and think we can contribute to then definitely take take the review but For the postdocs, it's more a case of balancing your time between your research and spending a lot of time doing the reviews But assuming you're not getting too many coming your way, then I'd recommend you do everything you can Leon Joe from University of Michigan. I have a following up questions about the review process I understand what your experience as a postdoc to review a paper But I'm really curious about another review experience of you as a postdoc How long do you think it's reasonable to expand to spend on reviewing your proposal? So, you know proposal sometimes the way I invited as journalist for proposal review, I mean, I'm sorry my panelist for proposal review panel and which means we will be given like a seven to 67 proposals to review in like times to give off a month So I really don't know how much time is fire range of you know hours of days we should as a postdoc spend reviewing one proposal Shall we take it to more serious? Then as a paper, oh, you know, thank you In general, I think I spend less time reviewing proposals and papers just because They don't have to be ready for publication and chance. I only you and the author and maybe the program manager is ever gonna read it So and it doesn't mean yeah, I know you've learned a lot about proposal writing yesterday that doesn't mean a proposal can be Worst prepared and what the correct adverb is that can be worse prepared than a paper It has to be just as thorough as a paper But I think the review process doesn't have to be as thorough as a publication just because you really Often reviewing a concept Whereas with a paper you're reviewing the results and the interpretation for a publication So I'd say less less time in general Especially if you have a whole bunch of them to do but I don't know if you're being asked to be on panel. I'm very impressed excellent better point Just my own Experience the first time I was asked to the ASF panel I spent one week panel. I spent another two weeks reviewing all the proposals But I don't think you need to do it, but If this is your first panel you may feel like you should do a good job and You can do just As much time you think you need but I do agree with you said that Try not to get into so much details because the proposal is different from papers and just get a whole idea and What do you want to do? What's the background? Is then you just look at those criterias and make your judgment? I would say if you're on a panel and you have a bunch of polls proposals to review Maybe a criterion first deciding how much time to spend is if you had to get up and talk two minutes about What that proposal was about? How much would you have how much time would you have to spend to prepare yourself for that because? And to critique the idea and and say what's what's good and what's not so good about this particular proposal because that's kind of What you have to do You don't have to say well that I don't agree with this paragraph and that reference isn't quite right And I mean it's not that little detail But it's being able to see the big picture of this proposal versus another one versus all you know the other ones that You're considering So how much time do you need for that? It's obviously less than a paper and I don't know if there's a firm number you can put on it But that's kind of the idea Hello, I'm Karen McKinnon and then car ASP postdoc and my question is about double-blind peer reviews So some of the nature journals in the last year have switched to double-blind review I was wondering if any of the journals you guys are associated with if there's a move towards that or discussion about it and Generally what you think about the idea of having a double-blind system as opposed to a single-blind system. Thanks So double-blind you mean so the reviewers don't know who the authors are Yeah, I find it untenable in many ways because I know everybody in my field If somebody says I measured this using this instrument, I've got a pretty good idea who it is off the bat So I don't really see how it can fly in many cases certainly an observational science So I'm not a big fan of it. I'm to be honest I don't necessarily see the advantages of it really but I guess some journals are headed that way really because of funding issues and I really fully understand the history, but I guess it's just to avoid I wouldn't say dishonesty but Bias among reviewers and that yeah but I Can't imagine it's a great come so to be honest Yeah, I think the point of it was really to try and avoid the unconscious bias right because a lot at the time Yes, some of the evidence suggests that women are reviewed more harshly than men when it comes to scientific papers And so it is an effort to reduce bias So but I think that just point stands now I think the ones you're establishing the field is very you once you see what people have written There are often so few people writing in each particular subset. It's really hard to not know who wrote that paper So that's a good question. Yeah, do you have a follow-up for that? I think that's a great point And I think what would really be great is if the journals who are doing the double blind system would publish on how that has gone Because that could really then inform how the journals go about that And I would love to see some research on on the papers that go through that system and how that works. Sure Hi, I'm not a dog. I'm a poster girl and and so finding time to write a paper is difficult and I was wondering if you had any advice on how to do it For instance, if you have a routine a writing routine that you're following if you write like every morning or maybe every night or If you actually write you get the whole study done then write it down If you could comment on it I guess I I personally I try to write every day and I try to set aside time for me I'm an early riser. So I get up before my kids do and have an hour and a half or two hours where I just work on stuff Yeah, my students papers are my own stuff and I just steadily keep keep writing You just have to start somewhere and it gets time. Time-wise it gets a lot lot harder Right every day. I agree Yeah, mornings or evenings or whatever is convenient for you and I guess some but you know if it really needs to be done and talk to your advisor and say I need a block of time, maybe he'll say to you you're banned from going in the lab You gotta do this for the next two weeks or whatever Sometimes that situation occurs as well and just like bang it out But you know get into a routine think logically about it and go about it in a nice organized way Yes I would just add one more thing to that because I think You know the further you get along the more external deadlines are imposed on you like Reviews and proposal deadlines and like service things and all this stuff that other people are telling you to do by a certain date Whereas writing nobody else is telling you to do that anymore So you have to like if it's a priority and it has to be you have to set aside time And you have to set aside have the self-discipline to do it and maybe put it above some of those other things or make it equally Important because it's easy because you don't have a specific deadline to let it slide So I think just making deciding this is my time to do this and I have to do this every day Is really important because otherwise it's easy just not to do it So I mean one quick comment before the question on what they were saying is that like maybe you guys are senior scientists No, everyone in the field There's a post-doc who's only been working for a few years probably don't everyone in the field So, you know, maybe the editor can know who it is But as a reviewer anonymity might be quite useful if we're at our level But the question I was gonna have was I've had a I've had quite a few I've done quite a few reviews by authors of English in the second language where I've ended up being probably a lot softer and things like grammar and Structure that I would have done if the ink if it was like in from an English speaking country and then not getting quite frustrated because I've been over it like five six page reviews where I'm just 90% of my comments are just about language and it's like at what point is it acceptable to say look Please get this proof words and send it back to me Just have any comments on that As soon as you feel yourself getting frustrated That's when you say I I'm not doing this and sometimes it's useful to just scan the paper and Just to get a sense for if this is going to be an issue. I mean the editor should be doing this also Even before it gets sent out for review, you know ideal situation But I think it's it's really important for for people to have their papers proofread in the appropriate language of Publishing which for most of what we do is English Yeah, definitely don't get frustrated and I've seen like reviewers get halfway through a paper then just stops I'm not going anymore. There's these detailed comments on the first three pages of the paper and send it back Which doesn't really help anybody and I sort of know the AGU has a proofreading system And often I'll even I've seen papers come in and say, you know, this has the official stamp of such-and-such an agency that reads papers And so the authors have taken the trouble to have the paper read and have this kind of seal of approval What it is that they tell you but Yes, AGU has some service for doing that and Often as an editor I would send papers buying say yeah, please have someone look through this as well Based on the authors reviewer's comments. I'll just my own reading of it. But yeah, it's not your job to do that Just add on to one point Do you know for the foreign people like Chinese Japanese and there are some now It's like there are some professional some people just doing that I'm not sure whether you know that you can recommend as if you are frustrated But you think that there's good science there. You can say why don't you ask the authors to go to a professional? Person who does those and I have friends doing that too So there are some people they charge how many words how much dollars and they charge that but you can suggest them to go With that and it's not just foreign authors, too. I mean I Often you know seen somebody on an author list who I know and respect Did he really read that and so it's not just that you know, you really wonder sometimes if the senior author has even read the paper Hi, Emily Chiu who SP post on I have two different questions The first one is on could you briefly describe how you get become the editor of the top quality journals and besides doing good research and do you have any Suggestion for early career scientists to do to make to make us have a bigger impact in our field another one is I want to ask is could you Briefly come and the Does it necessary to pay extra money to make paper open assess because we always have a very tight budget and I and And our position is we can assess most of the database in our field, but I don't know for the audience other in other field interesting our research and Just that we need to worth to pay that a lot of money to To do that. Thank you. I thought this might come up I think open access is a great thing I think a lot of the journals are moving that way one way or another I It's kind of unfortunate people do have to pay more open access and you know often institutional libraries And that can get the papers obviously, so I always feel bad if If that's you know a burden on the author over and above publication charges But on the other hand traditional publication charges are getting less and less because everything's online There's not the the paper proof setting type setting and everything like that that they used to be so, you know, maybe it kind of goes around a little bit and First question you know start doing reviews Then maybe become an associate editor or something make yourself available if there's a call for Associate editors, then you'll get to handle a few papers see how the process works and then eventually You know you may get asked to be an editor or they may be an open call But yeah, it's something to work towards and it's a very valuable thing and it's you know editors don't have to be old and gray either It's kind of nice to have a young dynamic editor on board who has lots of time to spend lots of energy And so that's certainly the AGU philosophy with this GRL for sure we try to get a fairly young editorial board where people are involved and so yeah, don't be put off Becoming an editor just because you think you're too young or something But start yes start with reviewing and being an associate then work up from there I just add on to one point to your second question It's only my own opinion and such as as you said the climate dynamics if you that's a free journal and If you don't pay it's gonna take a year or sometimes two years from online to real publication. I Regretted I didn't pay Why the reasons are and that people's highly said it but a lot of them cited the online version Web of science. They never counted that you know that affect your age index And also your total retention number I really regret it only two thousand dollars three thousand dollars it's just like a regular journal and at that time I thought okay, it's free and and Now I feel I should have done that. It's just my own personal opinion. So just recently I am running in a session for a meeting this summer and one of my co-organizers Wonderfully got us a special issue in a journal and so now I'm like, what do I do? What have I gotten myself into? How What is the the typical process and how does this differ from a normal journal submission? And I'm mostly wondering are these lightly peer reviewed are they held to a different standard? Good, okay, great. What is my role going to be in all of this? Crazy probably You're gonna get a lot of papers hope probably coming in at the same time usually have it like a window Everyone needs to submit their papers by and then a closing date Where which usually not terribly hard is some flexibility there Probably but you're gonna you'll be kind of hit by a whole bunch of papers coming in Within a short time then you have to find reviewers for them But you definitely should hold them to the same standard as normal Journal papers were there's no reason to think it's a it's a soft review process or anything other than that They're just you know same guidelines as usual, but just to expect chaos Around the closing day to when everybody submits the thing and it can be a little frustrating as well because I've been in a couple of special issues You've been an author in special issues and there's a deadline and then somebody calls the Organize about a month after the deadline. Oh, you know this guy was my PhD supervisor I really like to submit a paper and then you see things sitting on the ASAP tab of the journal for almost a year waiting for the final paper to come in so at least with online submission things do get published in the early publication and So it's not just sitting around on somebody's desk for you waiting for that last paper to come in and As well like with the GRL the kind of all was had You know floating special issues well, they didn't all have to come out on the same day They just be linked online. So it's not that all the papers All had to be published on a certain day There's just a link in there saying this is part of the special issue and Click on here to see the other papers and atmospheric chemistry and physics to the same kind of thing There's usually a window and it could be four years even between the first and the last papers coming in But I think in your case where it's a specific conference then it's going to be a much tighter deadline And everything's going to come in pretty much at once hopefully My name is Angie pender grass. I'm postdoc at Ceres It's you know, but I was just at NCAR until a month ago. So my question is when you're writing a paper How much Strategizing should you do about like making statements that reviewers won't complain about and then thinking about which journal you submit to? So you Get to an editor that you think is knowledgeable about the topic now the context for this is You know, I've published a few papers now And most of them I've just kind of focused on doing good science and putting together something that makes sense But I recently Worked with a co-author who spent like inordinate amounts of effort Like I think if we submit to this journal, we can get this editor And I think you really need to change this sentence because I think it's gonna flag something for the reviewers. So Can you comment on that? It so that these are two different issues. I think sort of the preemptive writing style, which I Certainly don't recommend very much because it will inevitably You know detract from this key message you're trying to get across and You're often mistaken about who you think might get it to review and even if that person got it to review They might not have any problem with whatever the statement is. And so I think that's More or less a non-issue and I wouldn't you know, you want to be thorough You want to be clear you want to write the paper you want to write and But the issue of where it goes is important Because you want the right readership you want Be able to probably have editors that know about this topic, etc. I mean, I think that that is something worth carefully considering And so I'd spend time on that but I wouldn't spend time on the other thing I Agree with thinking carefully about where you're going to submit it also in terms of the audience that will ultimately see it I guess I would say one thing about the the first part I Think it is always important just to make sure you cite everything Appropriately because in some cases you do have a pretty good sense I mean depends on what you're writing for but you're like, okay It's very likely one of at least these three people are gonna get it and just make sure you cite one of their papers I mean it doesn't hurt as long as it's relevant And you know just to think carefully on on that you want to make sure you're citing things Appropriately because reviewers get upset if they're not cited and they think their stuff should be cited Yeah, totally, and as I said, I write at the beginning of the session I'd be really really realistic about where you're sending it and just don't Send everything to major in science off the bat Assuming it's gonna get in there because fully get bounced around a little bit So, you know, it's really gonna change the field send it to a high-profile journal If not spend a bit more time right along the paper Again thoroughness and quality is most important Thank you. So we are out of time. So I would like to say huge huge. Thank you to Becky, Chris, Jeff and Wiching Thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate it. We can just say thanks All right, nobody move because we have a break. However, we're starting out with a group photo So as you exit the group photo, we're gonna be lining up on the far side next to the elevators And then how photographer should be up on the balcony and be able to take a group photo So if you can do that before you go and get any coffee or any any snacks. Thank you all so much