publish or perish

I've got a paper almost ready to be submitted. The co-authors are taking one last look, I'm making a few minor changes to figures, and I need to do the final formatting of the references. In order to do that last step, though, I need to decide to which journal the paper is going to be submitted. There are two journals which would be appropriate for the paper. Both of them are well respected in the field and their impact factors are nearly identical. Both are run by large private publishing houses, one of which used to be involved in the arms trade. I haven't heard any negative mutterings…
This morning, I loaded Minnow into the car, plugged in the iPod and started singing along to the children's songs as we backed out of the driveway. Twenty minutes later I realized that I had completely bypassed Minnow's daycare and was well on my way to campus. Oops! When I finally made it to my office, I was pleased to find proofs for an article. Something to do during what is sure to be a long faculty meeting this afternoon. I'm dealing with lots of administrivia right now (registration, travel plans, conference organizing) and those sucked up my entire morning. With a solid afternoon of…
Oddly enough, I've just come from my annual review this week, which, in my department, is a little interview one has with the department head to help him determine merit pay. Even though I prodded my academic family members for advice on how to go in to this, I found myself unprepared. So I started this post to let me share some thoughts for other newbies heading in to their review, and solicit advice from the more senior folks on other ways to prepare and strategize. And then ScienceWoman requested this post. :-) So now I had better finish it and share. About two weeks before our…
Out the door - meaning one I just submitted a revised version of a paper. Yay! Too bad that doesn't actually mean anything for my CV. But maybe I'll get an acceptance before I have to turn in my CV update for our annual review. This also means that I'll eventually take down my InaDWriMo badge. I need to decide what to put in its place. Any suggestions? Out the door - meaning two I'm going to be in the field tomorrow, Wednesday, and Friday. I'm excited about getting to see some new sites and get some collaborations going. Minnow is coming along on the first trip, so she adds a lot of hassle,…
Back at the beginning of the month, I boldly announced my intentions to finish all the reviewer comments on a revise-and-resubmit paper. In that post, I calculated that with ~25 comments to address " if I just average one a day, it should be easily manageable." Now look over at the left hand column where the InaDWriMo button is displaying my status. (For the record, as 11/13/2007 it says "1 of 21 completed.") By the count of my ticker, I have hardly made any progress. But I swear I have been working on the revisions. I spent a couple of hours yesterday, and worked on things off and on last…