Chip Taylor

Tough love for the junior academic

Mungowitz dishes it out.

UPDATE: This is a repost of a post that was lost in the change of webhosts.

It's all good, but I want to save this part:

Myth 5: Kgrease, you know so much, teach us what to do!

(Notice this is listed as a myth, and is therefore false. Read on at your peril)
Here are my rules:

(a) If you have five papers you have presented at conferences, but have not yet sent to journals, you ought to just abandon pretence and buy an inflatable doll. All you are doing is pleasuring yourself. You ain't working. Finishing is work. Starting a paper and having dinner with friends at conferences is fun, but not work. I specifically look at the ratio of conference papers to published papers on c.v.s I receive for junior people when we have a position. If the ratio is >3/1, I put them in the reject pile. In academics, like in every sport, finishing is what matters, and finishing is what so many people, even smart people, cannot do.

(b) Junior people should have three (3) papers being considered at journals at all times. If one gets rejected, turn it around immediately and get it back out there. A paper on your desk is rotting. A paper on a referee's desk, or editor's desk, is germinating. If a paper gets accepted, you need to send out another new paper immediately. Don't sleep until you do. Spend the time between hearing about papers from journals in writing new papers. Don't spend all your time checking your mail and dreaming of what might be. Nobody cares about the labor pains. They just want to see the freakin' baby.

(c) Every idiot has ideas. Lots of them are good. Not all of them turn into good papers. You can't tell until you work on them a long time. If an idea turns out to be not that great, write it up and send it right away to a second-tier journal. Fairly often, a referee will see something you didn't. Several of my publications in "top" journals started as fairly sucky papers sent to lesser journals, and got TURNED DOWN EVEN THERE, with useful referee reports.

(d) If you are publishing less than two papers a year, you are not working enough. If you are NEVER sending papers to top journals, you are not working deeply enough. And if you are hoping your department will promote you because of your shiny personality, you are in the wrong business. This is a tough business.