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Volume 1, Issue 1July 2007

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El Faro Staff

Volume 1, Issue 1

Career Diva

Publish or Perish? Publish and Flourish, by J. Bryan Page, Ph.D.

Dear Career Diva,

I recently defended my dissertation and am ready to venture into the strange and scary world of academic publishing, but the way is unclear.  Will I find the road that leads to successful publications, or will I perish along the wayside? A few guideposts to help me get from here to there would be greatly appreciated! 

Afraid to Perish

  

Dear Afraid to Perish,

In what sounds like a stern admonition, scholars of old used the phrase “publish or perish” to exhort their juniors toward successful pursuit of tenure and promotion.  Its message said “do this or you’re toast!”  In the standard academic context where the expectation of performance included assumed teaching and sufficient research to reflect active scholarship, they were right.  Young scholars in assistant professor ranks had at least to convert their dissertations into published books in order to receive consideration for achieving promotion and tenure.

Forget all of that! In the NHSN ethos, we say, “publish and flourish.”  Here’s why:

Importance of publications: they make everything possible

Publications (pubs from here on) put your scientific work in front of the people who will eventually be called upon to judge what you have contributed.  If you have a consistent track record of answering scientific questions with creativity and accuracy, giving the field needed information and insight, those people will be aware of it and will be able to say when asked, “That Perez (no un cualquiera) really does good work in the field of prevention research.”  When encountering new material, they may say, “Let’s see what Perez thinks of this.”  When a related topic comes to the attention of a national funding agency they may say, “Let’s call Perez in for a technical review and see what his or her approach would be.”  The pubs give you stature in your field and cause people to value your opinion and judgment.

On the home front, pubs give your department chair ammunition to agitate for your raises in salary, and they increase your prestige among your colleagues.  At national and international meetings, they cause perfect strangers to approach you for advice about how to conduct their own research, and they increase the attendance at events where you speak. 

What kinds of pubs?

Peer review is the trait that all pubs must share; it gives them weight and status.  In the metrics of pubs, one peer reviewed journal article is greater than the sum of all of the chapters in edited volumes you ever wrote, regardless of the status of the journal in which it appears.   Therefore, write not in chapters of thy friends’ books, for they count little in deciding thy career.  Write for journals and thy career and grant applications shall flourish.  Shouldst thou write in books, assure that they also pass a process of peer review, lest great effort count for naught.  The preceding dicta may sound biblical, but they are true in all cases.

Once you have set your sights appropriately on peer review of publications, you, as a young scholar, should adopt an approach to career management that obeys two basic principles: 1) any pub is better than no pub, and 2) aiming high does not hurt. These principles relate to the quality and quantity of the pubs that you produce.  The second principle comes into play first, because you may think that your latest contribution to the literature is very important, worthy of a top-ranked journal, such as the Journal of the American Medical Association.  If so, look carefully at the journal’s statements about the kinds of articles it accepts, and if after reading it, you still think your article fits their editorial agenda, format your article appropriately for that journal and submit it.  Top journals tend to have rapid response times, because a high percentage of the submitted articles are rejected.  You lose very little time in receiving a rejection from such a journal (sometimes it’s an editorial rejection, which can be very rapid, but even a review based rejection will not take long compared to lesser journals).  If your rejection comes from a top journal, the editor may also, with your permission, pass the article to a journal in its family of journals (JAMA has a dozen or so) for which it might be appropriate.  At minimum, you get some useful feedback about the article’s shortcomings. 

The first principle – that any pub is better than no pub - comes into play after the high level rejection, because it is still important to get your thought into the literature so that your subsequent thoughts can build upon it.  Persistence is the key, post rejection, because if you believe that the results presented in the article are of value to the field, they should be published somewhere.  In the absence of assistance from a family of journals, you may have to do some web crawling and electronic database diving to find the right journal for your piece.  Do not give up. The right journal is out there somewhere, and just about all have peer review processes.

At the end of four years of this kind of activity, it is hard to predict what your portfolio will look like.  It may contain 25 articles in lesser journals and one in a major journal, or it may be fifteen lesser and five major.   Either way, your career is off to a good start.

Et al.s – ethics and etiquette

If you work in a group of researchers with multiple projects and paper ideas, you may have some ideas that will include multiple authors.   If you are the one whose idea spawned the article in the first place, and you do most of the work on it, you should be first author.  The only exception to this basic principle occurs if the main mover among many for the article is the full professor head of the laboratory, who already has 300 articles to his/her credit and cannot possibly need the credit for promotion.  In that case, the person occupying second place in terms of producing the article can claim first authorship.  Otherwise, order of authorship should reflect relative contribution to the article.

Sharing the wealth

If you are in a large working group of investigators, it is to your advantage to seek the participation of colleagues within your group in your publications, because it increases the likelihood of their reciprocating by involving you in their work.  This process helps to build a curriculum vitae rapidly, at the same time extending your experience and knowledge of the field.

The long and winding CV

Whatever your area of interest, the publications that you list need to resemble building blocks of a coherent career in the science of your choosing.  It may seem impressive to have dabbled in a number of different areas, but as promotion reviewers and grant reviewers read the list, they will try to identify you with some body of work.  A curriculum vitae that reflects diverse interests may betray dilettante tendencies, rather than steady work towards advancing a scientific field.  On the other hand, if you feel that you have satisfied the requirement of establishing a central core to your publishing career, write about butterflies or bisque recipes on occasion – whatever keeps you lively and interested.

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