Tolerance for punishment

For a given manuscript, how much patience do you have for getting it into the right journal?

Whether it be IF that you seek, or  the cachet of a specific journal in your field, how many tries before you are willing to submit it to a sure-thing, aka, dump journal?

There were some Tweeps the other day that mentioned 7 tries. Now I don’t know if this included resubmits and ultimate rejections or 7 different journals. but dayyum, people. 7?

I’m good for maybe 2 tries before I just dump it someplace I have high confidence will take it.

 

Perhaps I need a little more patience and/or fortitude?

 

 

 

The manuscript cover letter

There are, to my thinking, two versions of the cover letter you send with a manuscript.

1)  Short ‘n Sweet: Dear Editor, this is  about blah, de and blah which is significant because zippede. I think this will interest your readers, Sincerely, R. E. Squirrel

 

2) The Fluff Job. This is the one that goes on for two pages about how awesome the paper is and why it totally is new and solves cold fusion and shit like that.

 

I have always been a Short and Sweet kind of guy.

 

It has only recently come to my attention that people go ON with their cover letters.

 

WTH?

 

Do any of y’all with Associate Editor or EIC type experience read those long winded letters or do you just go straight to the Abstract?

 

 

Sink or swim

Approximately how much should the PI and postdoc or grad student attend meetings together versus separately?

I think the together part is obvious and should be the majority of the time. The PI is supposed to be introducing the trainee around.

But flying solo can be great for independence.

 

The big shottes *have* to talk to you if the PI isn’t at the meeting. So I’d definitely be okay with a handful of meetings where the trainee is there without the PI.

Making it habitual, however, is MentorMalpractice.

 

Finished story, discussion points or "huh, that's funny.."

Which kind of poster do you prefer to see?

Which kind do you present?

Me, I don’t want to see a finished story. If it is that wrapped up, meh, I can wait for the peer reviewed version to come out. I want to grapple with something new…and preferably *puzzling*.

The best possible outcome of a meeting presentation would be if three interested labs went home, took on an aspect of the puzzle (even if only a replication) and by year’s end there were four new papers in print.

That’s how meeting presentations should work.