And that we all look at them as their community. Then we’ll go ahead and get started. Welcome everyone my name is Chris. Mack and I’m going to be talking about a subject that is probably of interest to every PhD student. Every student out there who’s working on an advanced degree and of course even some students who are not getting published how to write a good scientific paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals. I’m the editor-in-chief of an spie. Peer-reviewed journal journal micro nano lithography medicine poems and I am a part-time professor at the University of Texas and a full-time gentleman scientist so I do. Lots of things including writing paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journalss reviewing paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journalss and working as an editor and dealing with science writing quite a bit so. I’d like to share with you some of the lessons that I’ve learned both my career and more recently as a journal editor that I hope might help you understand what it takes to write a good science paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals and what it takes to get that paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals published. I have written quite a bit on this topic. And there’s a number of short articles on a variety of topics related to what. I’m going to discuss today. That can be found here at this website. Eventually all of this is going to get pulled together as a book which. I hope to have finished by the end of this year. That’ll be a book that. SPIE publishes and BMA made available for free on both online and ebook form. So if you’re interested in more details you can find some of the stuff on this website now and other things look for it in the near future all right. I’m gonna begin way back and talk about what science is and look at how publishing fits into the greater concept of science. I think of science is having three things. Three legs of a stool pulling up science first. It’s a communal collection of knowledge. This is both data and theories that explain that data. Then there’s a method that we use to evaluate how good our theories are. This is the scientific method comparing theory to experiment and look for theories that are more and more accurate over time then we have an attitude and the attitudes may be the most important part of all three.
It’s an attitude of skeptical inquiry. There are no sacred cows. There are no trees that are not contingent upon our observations in the world. All knowledge is provisional. And we’re willing to give up anything if the data points to that now one of these three legs is this communal collection of knowledge and Sciences of community activities. Something we do together. The first pillar requires that we have mechanisms for sharing information and preserving that information over time. Science is something that builds over time from past knowledge. Getting better and better and better and there’s lots of ways we do that as students. You see it mostly today in the classroom in textbooks and lectures but also at a conference like this conference in San Diego. This week presentations at conferences and conference proceedings and finally scientific journals the peer-reviewed science journal first came about about 350 years ago and has evolved over time to be this kind of standard form of preserving and disseminating. Now you stay the peer-reviewed science journal. All three of these mechanisms are important. I’m going to focus on that scientific journal piece. The purpose of peer-reviewed science journals is to serve the needs of science and the scientific community. So maybe the question you want to hear most the answer to most is. What is the neighbor looking for. What does it take to get. Your submission accepted when you submit it to a job. Well a science editor editor of a science journal. I use science and engineering in the same way. I’m not making any distinction between science and engineering. It’s all the same when it comes to science publishing peer-reviewed journals there’s four things and you have to hit all four properly to get a paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals published. We’re talking about all four of them in detail. Let me tell you what they are. First scope the content of your paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals must match the scope of the journal.
You submit to perfectly good paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals. That’s on the wrong subject will be rejected. I’d say gonna match the scope. The quality quality is basically two things the quality of your research within the quality of your description of that research as you write it up in submitted. We’re going to spend most of today talking about the quality of the writing third novelty with the exception of review paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journalss and tutorial paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journalss. A few things like that peer-reviewed science journals want to publish something new. If it’s been done before doesn’t matter how good it is and how important it is. That’s done before we won’t publish it. You have to show us what’s new about your work and finally significance. The results must be. You can do fabulous work on something brand new that nobody cares about and I’m not going to publish pick or at least my audience doesn’t care about. I will publish the paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals so there has to be some amount of significance. And hopefully you’ve picked the topic that has some level of importance to some group of people so that you’ll have that piece based on the research that you’ve done so all four of these have to be in place. Let’s look at each of each individually and a little bit more detail. Let’s go first thing you want to do is match the scope of your work with the scope of the journal and every journal will publish at scope said we publish paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journalss on these topics. Do the do the research find out what journals cover the scope that your paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals covers now. Chances are there’s gonna be more than one journal and so your question is where should I publish there’s gonna be to answer to that. One is think about the paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journalss you read right so you’re reading a lot of paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journalss as background for your work. Where were those paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journalss published. Chances are those would be a good place for you to publish as well. What you want to do is find the journal that has the best scope match to your work because that gives you the best audience match and really a lot of the goals in picking the right journal is finding the audience matching the audience to your work.
The people that you want to read it will find it and read it many of us think about prestige or impact factor which journal is more important. I’m not a big fan of the impact factor. It’s a very imperfect measure of how important a journal is to a particular field. It’s hard to make comparisons in different fields. They have different citation habits. And therefore a journal with a higher impact factor is necessarily a more impactful journal for your work however it is what it is maybe your advisor will encourage you to submit it to the highest impact factors or know that you think might get accepted. I think your goal should be to get to the right audience. And then maybe if there’s a tie these journals are equally good at finding the right audience. Pick the one with the higher impact factor there’s also a spectrum of speciality right. We have journals that are completely general science and nature. They cover everything right there. High impact factor. We’d love to publish there. Maybe right but then you have physics journals then you have optics journals then you have a specific branch of optics journals. A greater greater level of specialization. If you were writing a paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals for example on measuring the aberrations of a tool used in lithography for semiconductor manufacturing well that’s science that’s physics that’s optics and it’s lithography and you can find journals in all of those levels of generalization or specialization. Which should you publish it again. It depends on the audience. You’re trying to reach if you really think you’ve got something. That is broadly useful in the world of physics. Well then you might want to go to. Applied Physics Letters or Physical Review or some general physics journal to publish it. But if what you really want to do is reach other lithographer who are in the semiconductor manufacturing industry who might want to use this technique.
Well most of them are not reading. Physical Review they’re reading the specialized lithography drawn so figure out who your target audience is that will help you decide. Where on the generalization spectrum you want to be likewise if you have a technique that is more generally applicable. Even though it’s something to do with lithography but it’s generally applicable to a wide audience if you go to the specialized journal that a whole bunch of people will never find it because only those specialized audience looks in that drum so think about the audience you want to reach. Matt will help you decide which journal to go to. The next thing is novelty. There has to be some novel aspect to what you’ve done what you’ve written in order to get. It published some new theory and method new materials tools data analysis. Something has to be new. How do you know it’s new. You have to do the literature search. You have to find out what’s already been published in this field and find out what’s different about what you did. Don’t do some work hope that it’s new and submit it and see if anybody catches the fact that it’s been published before you do the literature search and it’s a reality. Maybe you’ve already experienced this reality that we often don’t publish at the end of a project. We publish multiple times during a project and we have to be a little bit careful. Some people call it salami publishing where we have a project we slice it up into as many thin pieces as we can so we can up our publication count there’s a balance here trade-off of getting results out quickly and having a paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals that is significant enough which is the next topic my insignificance. But here’s a rule of thumb at least 50% of what you put in. That paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals must be new new results. You can refer back to your previous results as well but at least 50% of the reported material must be new and then and here’s something that many many people fail to do when they write a paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals.
Tell me what’s new you’ll gonna write a cover letter which I’ll talk about the very end and when you write that cover letter to the editor. Tell them what’s new here is exactly what you know. I’ve done the literature search. This has been done before. This has never been done before here. This but also in the introduction of the paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals tell me what’s new. Don’t make me read the entire paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals and try to guess or figure out what’s novel here and finally significance. Now this is this is kind of tricky one because what is significance mean is if one person thinks what you did is. Valuable is that significant. If 10,000 scientists think what you’ve done is valuable. Well that’s a different level of significance and there are journals that cater to a wide range right science and nature. They don’t want to publish it unless someone might think that it’s a possibility of a Nobel Prize or you know. That’s an exaggeration. But it’s gotta be this hugely impactful. Lots and lots of people would be interested in hearing about it kind of result otherwise they don’t want to publish but that’s not what most journals are like. Most journals have catered to a smaller audience. And they’re things that are interesting to them. That would be completely non significant to many other people’s so there are a huge number of peer-reviewed journals out there. How about that number. Twenty eight thousand is significantly higher today than it was in 2012 about two million articles are published every year and most of them are never read. Except for maybe by your mother or something. I know my mom has read the first couple of my paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journalss. Then she gave up the average. The median number of citations of a peer-reviewed journal. Paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals is zero right. That’s the median. Oh my journal. For example. 25 percent of the paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journalss published are never cited. That doesn’t mean they’re not significant at all it just means they’re not significant in that way.
I’ll talk more about these measures of significance in the next slide. But you have to think about significance if you want to get your paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals published but also where to get it published. Is it significant for that audience. One of the things that I’ve seen reading paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journalss over time as this pursuit of significance can often lead to a follow-the-leader approach to research. I’m going to do research in. You know graphene because everyone else is doing researching graphene and that’s the hot topic and you know. Five years ago it was carbon nanotubes for semiconductor devices now. It’s graphene percent reduction devices and you know it’ll move around based on kind of a groupthink which has it’s good points and bad points to only you can judge whether you think your results are significant until you submit it to the journal and then of course. I’ll judge but citation rate is not the only measure. Here’s some analysis. I did paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journalss published in my journal where I looked at the five-year citation total and the five-year download total something I had access to. I know exactly how many people have downloaded paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journalss from the SPID digital library for my journal and so I looked at five years from the publication date and I asked how many downloads were there. How many citations were there. So every every people every data point has the same number of years of being out there and you can see. There’s a correlation right. The most cited paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals had the most downloads. But it’s not a strong correlation but here’s a paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals with $600.00. Is that a significant paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals. Well I would argue. It’s a very significant paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals. It’s just significant to people who are not writing other paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journalss and citing it. It’s significant to people who are using those results to go out and do something build something. Make a product. The more engineering more practical a topic. The less likely that citations will be the best measure of the significance of York. So don’t get hung up on citations. If your advisor gets hung up on patience.
That’s fine but remember that there are other ways of judging significance and sometimes is just as simple as someone else comes up to you at a conference a couple of years later and says wow your paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals really helped me in my work right. That one statement by a real live person face-to-face. It’s probably more valuable than all the citations you’ll get and finally the fourth thing. An editor looks for is the quality of the work both the quality of the research and the quality of the writing alright. I’m not going to talk much about the quality the research. Hopefully your adviser is mentoring you and your ability to look at other work. That’s been done judge for yourself and try to emulate the quality that you see will help you with this. We always try to apply the best known methods on planning and executing our experiments best known methods for making measurements and analyzing our data but there is a limitation time and money right. We’re limited by how much time we have available and how much money we have available. We can’t buy the state-of-the-art equipment every time we like we can’t measure a hundred times we can only measure 20 times or something like that so within the constraints available. We try to do the best that we can. And then we try to publish our results. The kind of things we’re looking for in our publication is to be clear accurate reproducible or verifiable and unbiased in what we publish. We’ll talk about a lot of that as we go and the main topic of today’s lecture is the quality of the writing and this is the way. I like to look at it. You just spent a whole bunch of time and effort doing an experiment collecting data analyzing that data comparing it to theory thinking about it coming up with a new idea. The last thing you want is for a journal editor to reject it because you did lighting it up right. Don’t think of writing it up as just kind of an add-on thing that you do and because your work was so good that everyone’s gonna realize how good it is without having to spend time making the quality of the writing.
Hi fortunately now. I look in the room here today and I know from experience of people that submit paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journalss by drawing not everyone here. How many people here english-as-a-second-language writing a scientific paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals in a language. That’s not my first language. I’m completely incapable of doing that. And so any of you. Who attempt it. I have an utmost respect for the difficult job that you have that said. I’m not gonna cut you any slack. You have to do a good job of writing even though it’s a very difficult task now many of you even if language. English says the second language is not the issue. Many of you chose science and engineering. Because you’re kind of techno geeks and and you’re not not the literary type and oh yeah writing. I guess I have to do that. But that’s not my strength. That’s how many of you made me think about it well. I have something I have some good news to tell you. You don’t have to be a good writer to write a good paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals. That may sound strange. But it’s true you don’t have to be a good writer but you have to be as a careful writer a thoughtful writer and you have to pay attention to how it’s done because in writing in the science world we have a formula. I’m going to help explain that formula to you first before we go on on my website this page. I have written a couple of page articles on all these topics to help you figure out how to do citations. How to structure and organize your paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals. How to write the title in the abstract. It’s in it so go to the website. You can download all these articles and eventually hopefully by the end of the year. They’ll turn into a book that you could also download for free. What I like to do is just touch on one slide or so on and most of these topics just to give you a feel and then the details you can find here but let me begin with the big picture. The big picture is it’s not about you.
It’s not about you. It’s about the leader. Make everything you write reader focused. I love this quote by Charles. Caleb colton the that writer does the most who gives his reader the most knowledge and takes from him the least time. That’s your goal. That should be your goal. How could I give the reader the most and take from him or her the least and in my mind the best way to do that is to be a teacher. You just learned a tremendous about by doing your work writing your code or or performing the experiments or designing a system or whatever. It is that you’ve done. You’ve learned a tremendous amount. Now go teach somebody else what you learn. Think of it like that if you have any other motivation involved if. I’m trying to get a promotion. I’m trying to get tenure. I’m trying to impress people how smart I am. Any of these other goals if they come to the forefront your people will show it and it won’t be a good paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals but if the reader is the real reason you’re writing it to teach that reader what you know that will come through and will make your paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals a better paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals all right. So that’s the attitude once you have that right attitude then you can approach your paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals methodically. And even if you’re not a good writer you can do a good job. Maybe not a beautiful job. Maybe nobody will look your paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals and say this is an example of how beautiful science writing can be. Yeah that’s okay. Nobody’s gonna say that about me but people have told me. I write good paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journalss. Clear easy to understand paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journalss that teach them things. Now that’s a big compliment and one of the ways you can do. That is by following to begin with especially as an early writer. A standard structure a standard formula for how to get your ideas across. There’s a reason why the vast majority of science paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journalss follow a set structure. It’s because it works and it’s easy people could read it. They know where to find things. And the information is communicated. You don’t have to have it. Use this structure about twenty twenty-five percent of the paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journalss in my journal do not use this structure.
But you know seventy-five percent of them do it’s called the mrad structure introduction method results in discussion conclusions. If you organize your paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals like this. It won’t be a bad paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals because of the organization maybe you can think of a different organization. That’s better great. But if nothing if you can’t think of something better than this use this method it is effective at communicating and it allows for opportunistic meetings which. I’ll talk about a little bit more later. So let’s go through very briefly each of these sections first the introduction man scientists and engineers are not good at writing. Good introductions this is this is usually one of the weakest parts of a paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals. That’s one of the most important parts because people will start going through the introduction and if they’re not impressed they stop they stop reading. You’re done. It’s not the first thing they read. What’s the first thing you read. I don’t talk about the title. Next abstract will talk about the abstract next but then the next thing they read is the introduction and they skim the figures they go to the conclusion then they decide to read the whole paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals right opportunistic reading. So if your introduction doesn’t set the stage they’ll look at it and say now this paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals doesn’t have anything and then move on. What do you need to do well. There’s a couple of ways of framing it. One is topic problem solution. Tell me the topic. Tell me the problem yours. You’re trying to solve and tell me the solution. That’s kind of for engineering style problems. That’s how we formulate ER or in a more science oriented. Here’s the topic. Here’s some observation. Made maybe because of an experiment. And here’s my explanation for what. I saw another way to look at it which I I like. The best is this first. Establish the territory within which you’re working right so that’s someone who’s not interested in that territory.
They’ll move on then. Establish a niche. What that means is. There’s a gap a gap in our knowledge. There’s a question that’s unresolved. There’s a problem with a prior publication. Somebody published something. I think they’re wrong right. This is the niche that you’re going to work within and then fill that niche say. I’m going to to answer this question in this way. These are the three things that should be in your abstract and it should be very clear the difference between the background and the niche and how you occupy that niche yes. This is engineering science. It’s it’s about the same about the same either way. Just the nature of the niches is different. This is the same thing as identifying the research. Questions that you’re going to answer in your paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals. It’s the same thing as identifying. What’s going to be new this occupying the niche explains the reader and the editor. What’s new about your work and don’t make it oblique. It be very explicit. This is what I’m doing here. Next comes the method section. There’s actually differences of opinion amongst journals and journal editors as to what should be in the methods section. There has been a trend in the last few years to take methods sections and put them into an appendix or into a supplemental materials. Kind of a thing. I strongly disagree with that approach. It’s not how my journal is done. You need to look at the journal. You’re submitting to to find out how they want to deal with method sections. I think we’ve been in the last 20 years de-emphasizing the method section in some journals. Not mine and some journals and I don’t like that. Here’s my philosophy of the method section. The method section is supposed to describe how the results were generated. It doesn’t talk about why it doesn’t talk about. What the results are. You want to separate the how from the why from the what. Method section describes how they’re generated and it has to have a certain amount of details.
This is the kind of the big question. The hard hard question how much detail and you could write 20 pages on every little detail of your experiment because there’s lots of details right but nobody wants to read 20 pages. Maybe one person does but hardly anybody does. How much detail do you put in it. Well here’s the enough detail so that someone who’s working in your field no not not in the cx2 you on the lab bench but you know someone’s working in your field could reproduce the results sufficiently well to allow your conclusions to be validated. And that’s the key allowed your conclusions to be validated. They don’t actually have to reproduce your results in fact it might be impossible to exactly reproduce your results but they should be able to validate your conclusions if you conclude that this theory is right and that theory is wrong. Well you have to give them enough information. They can go in. Run an experiment and come to the same conclusion. That’s the key. Think about put your head in the mind of another researcher. Who’s gonna read this paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals and decide to to not reproduce exactly what you did but reproduces enough so don’t give them details that don’t matter when it comes to validation of your conclusions but give them all the details that they need in order to validate results and discussions. This is how the heart of your paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals. This is the meat of it so to speak. Sorry if you’re a vegetarian. Uh evidence doesn’t explain itself you can’t just present a graph of data and say wow there. I am wasn’t that great work. No that’s not enough yeah. I like the example from the district attorney in the trial right. The the prosecutor can’t just throw the bloody knife on the table and say. I rest my case. No you got to connect it to the suspect and explain the motive and and title altogether. You have to explain the evidence. The basic flow of your discussion should be summarized the results. That’s usually look at figure seven right now you’re done you’ve summarized your results that that it can be that simple so the results pieces of paragraph the discussion piece can be a lot.
Then you discuss whether the results are expected or unexpected. This is this is real key. If you’ve got an unexpected result man pointed out look at this. I didn’t expect this to happen. It’s different than what’s been published before. Here it is or yes this this fits exactly with our theories of what we would expect to happen. Nobody’s done it before but now that I do it. We can see it matches exactly what we expected. Tell us one or the other compare results to your previous work of previous work done by others and point out any differences that might exist. Finally you interpret not finally penultimately you interpret these results. Explain how they fit or don’t fit the proposed theory. And then what really bumps your paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals up from a good to a great paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals is you say this is how generalizable these results are if I got a bunch of results that are only will work if you use the exact piece of equipment and the exact measurement tool and the exact conditions of in my lab and you did everything exactly the same you get this result. Well it’s only slightly valuable because who has all those exact pieces of equipment and can run things exactly the same as you. But if you can generalize and say well now. I’ve discovered this idea that could be applied in lots of different places. It’s not just my lab with these equipment but in fact is a more generalizable result. That’s valuable that this is where the significance of your work comes into play so spend time to think. How general are these results or how specific don’t don’t overstate don’t claim that you can do something. You can’t but claim everything that you can. Dalit you can justify it and finally comes the conclusion. The conclusion is important for opportunistic reading. Somebody wants to jump to the conclusion. Read what you have to say. It has to be brief. It has to be well-organized.
It has to have a very brief like one paragraph summary of the entire results in discussion section. Don’t repeat don’t just say the same thing you said before summarize it so that an opportunistic reader who jumps straight to that section can get a basic feel for it. Show how you’ve answered the questions you set up. That niche those research questions up at the introduction. Make sure that there’s a one-to-one mapping between what you say the niches that you’re going to occupy and then what you – occupied what the research questions were and what research questions you answer then talk about the implications and their significance and if you want you could present a road back for future work that’s optional. But many people did alright. That’s the basics but there’s a lot of other details that you have to worry about oh. I’m gonna really quickly go through some of these. There’s more details again in those paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journalss. I’ve written but I’ll just touch on a few talks. Authorship how do you decide who belongs as an author. The most graduate students. It’s whoever your advisor says is going to be in order and okay. It’s a power relationship there. There’s not much you can do about it but there still is kind of some rules of the right people to be authors on the paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals. And eventually you’re gonna be the one who decides you’re going to be the lead author. You’re going to decide who gets on this paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals so you need to understand what it takes to be an author almost all paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journalss today have multiple authors. The number of authors on a paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals has been steadily growing over time in the scientific community anyone know the world record for number of authors. Yeah four or five thousand. It’s like yeah we discovered the Higgs boson. Here’s every person that ever worked at sermon and the off of us right they put the. Avant they don’t the other list has never even printed because it’s too long they just say you know go to this website to see all the others right. It’s crazy sometimes but for most of us it’s more like three or five or seven.
All right how do you decide who belongs in there well. I use this three-part test. The first part is the key. Any person that’s made a creative contribution to the work now creative contribution includes writing. It’s creative to figure out the words to use so certainly if you wrote words you’re not that much may seem obvious but also conception design execution interpretation. Anything that’s a creative contribution to those things means you deserve to be an author. What is it to make a creative contribution that means you’ve somehow advanced the novel aspects of the work. Alright the reason you’re publishing it’s got is you’ve got something new. You’ve got something new to say that’s never been said before so anybody that contributed to the novelty of what you’re presenting needs to be an author with that the correlator that is somebody that contributed to the non novel aspects doesn’t belong in the list of authors so someone who operated the metrology equipment and made the measurements in a very routine way. They belong in the acknowledgments not as an author. Now many people disagree with me. They want put everybody who helped in the author list. I’m not going to tell them they’re wrong all right but this is the way I think it needs to be. Here’s the next test and this is a good test for it. Are you including somebody that you really know. Shouldn’t be an author. Has the person and the author list is every person in the also list reviewed and approved the final manuscript before submission. If you’re putting people on the author list that you are never giving an opportunity to read and approve the paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals before it’s submitted then chances are very good that they don’t belong in that north of us because you don’t really believe that their authors if you’re not even giving them a chance to review and approve the submission and finally does everyone in the author list accept responsibility for the work after it’s published.
Someone might come up after the fact and criticize what you’ve done. Say that that your results are wrong. Everyone on the author list should be willing and able to defend the work all the way to the point of admitting they were wrong right. We’re just fine right. That’s okay but if you say okay they just put my name on the list. I don’t know no they shouldn’t put your name on the list. You’ve got to be willing to defend the work and there are problems that happen with authorship. All the time and these problems get to the point of ethical violations and so we have to be careful ghost authors leaving off someone who belongs on them on the list. This is a big problem in the medical field where a company will write a paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals and then get a university professor to author it put his name on it and they won’t even mention that somebody else wrote the whole thing because they want to hide the potential conflict of interest right that’s an ethical violation guest authors. These are people that you add maybe to curry favor or to impress the reviewers because this important person has been added you know. I’m just a graduate student if I don’t have some some famous well-known author as a co-author and they might not accept me right that’s called being a guest author knowingly submitting a paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals with the wrong author list is an ethical violation. That should be taken seriously. Since paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journalss are part of the communal knowledge that holds up science and allows it to progress one of the important responsibilities. You have when you write. Your paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals is the site prior work properly. Citations or references is the way in which we place this new work in the context of the prior work. It’s the it’s the connections in the web of science good citation practice begins with the good literature. Search don’t do the literature search after the paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journalss written. This is a common mistake. I finished writing the paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals. Oh I don’t have any references well.
I better do a literature search. Oh that’s it will always show up as bad when you do that because people will go to those references and say ha does have anything to do with what I just read and yet it’s cited. I don’t understand well. It’s definitely a clue that somebody did a literature search at the end. Do the literature search at the beginning. And you know there’s lots of effective ways of doing literature search and unaffected ways. But you need to understand what’s been written on this topic before then you cite with five goals in mind. Some of these goals are more important than the other but to all realistic real goals that people use when signing first and by the way my philosophy here is my philosophy everywhere you cite for the benefit of the reader. That’s the way that’s the reason you put cites it’s to help. The reader understand your work so first provide sufficient context and give enough background. You don’t have to write every word of background in your field in your own paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals. You can cite other people’s work as a way of establishing the backgrounds so that other people could understand the context and other people could analyze your results in that context you have to give the reader all the sources of background and related materials so that they can understand what you’ve done you also what might want to establish some credibility. Hey look I’ve I’ve read the literature. I’m you know I’m new in this field. I just started publishing it but I actually understand what’s going on. I’ve read the pertinent literature and to prove it. Here are the relevant sites. Also there are certain schools of thought and say you know you should think of it this way. Think of it that way and you can kind of establish. I’m working within this school of thought you can do that with your citations. You should also cite when there are data or results that could be compared to your results. Either compare as in see it matches or compare it. ISM look at. There’s a difference between these two compare and contrast as an important part of citing now.
What did your advisor tell you or somebody else tell you the reason why you cite often. It’s to give credit we cite to give credit to other people. Yes that’s important but that’s not really a reader focused. What reason for doing citations. These are all about the reader making your work the most useful for the reader. This is important we. This is more to keep us honest. We don’t want to claim that this is new. If in fact we borrowed it from somebody else. We don’t want to take credit for somebody else’s ideas so this is not so much about giving credit is making sure the reader understands that you’re not taking credit for something. You didn’t do right so anything. That’s not novel citations. Help the reader understand where all that stuff in. Your paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals came from the kinds of problems we have with citations sprays citations. Are you know things that aren’t really needed. This is where the bad letters of search at the end comes in in the introduction. This paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals is in the field of semiconductor or lithography references 1 through 100. Nobody needs that right. Those are spurious citations. Here’s the here’s the the test. Think about a reader looking up. That citation is that time. Well-spent will that make your paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals more valuable to the reader than if they didn’t look up the citation if that citation doesn’t make your paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals more valuable it’s probably a spurious citation biased. Citations are putting in cites for any reason other than the five reasons. I mentioned before right self cites nothing wrong with self sense citing your own work is perfectly fine unless it’s biased or spurious if you’re only putting a self citation in there to get your citation comes up and it really doesn’t add to the reader whatsoever. Well then that’s that’s bad and then another form of bias is excluding contrary evidence you know about this other university team that’s published and and it looks like they get different results than you and I don’t want the reviewer maybe criticizing me because of that so I just won’t cite them.
Don’t do it. It makes it look like you’re trying to hide something and then you will be in trouble because the reviewer probably knows about that work all right tomorrow afternoon you can get four hours of how to make an effective graph for your presentation your paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals. I’m hoping this sitting on that course to let me give you two minutes. Instead of four hours which is not nearly enough obviously but graphs figures are instruments for reasoning about quantitative information. They’re very good for displaying simple trends cause-and-effect relationships when the data is complex as soon as you get more than a few numbers. A table of numbers doesn’t really show you much but graphics can be very good at communication first to document the data. Chances are the only place that data will ever be in the public. Domain is in the graph right. So this is your way of documenting the data but we use graphs to make comparisons to allow for inferences of cause and effect right. You can’t always tell from the graph whether what is causing what is the fact. But it’s a it’s a start to help us make those inferences and then we use graphs as a part of the story that we want to tell. I know this is what. Jean-luc explains a lot that we have a story that we’re trying to tell a message that we’re trying to get across use a graph. That’s an integral part of that message for matters that over here that’s the Excel default. It sucks if you submit a graph to a journal using the Excel defaults. The only thing you say is. I’m an amateur. Don’t do it. This is not how a graph looks in a scientific journal. This is how it looks. There’s a whole prescription of how to how to make it look more professional. There’s reasons why – it’s not just this graph. I can look at it and extract information much more quickly and easily than this one in one of the short paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journalss on my website I explain the step-by-step process of going from here to here in Excel.
So if you want to know exactly how to make a perfect scientific graph that is the kind that you would expect to see in a journal. It’ll be done but it’s not just cosmetic this really is easier to interpret the data when it’s formatted properly then there’s the question of integrity or even the question of ethics don’t lie with grass don’t use graphs to hide things that you don’t want the reader to see don’t use graphs to pretend there’s something there when there’s not you want the graphic to reveal the truth you want an accurate representation that is carefully documented and avoids some spurious reading when you can format the axis to emphasize. This is what looks like maybe a little curve at the end and then try to say that this is the important trend when Willie’s just a little bit of noise and if you plotted it properly you can see really. It’s it’s linear with maybe a little noise and you wouldn’t get a spurious reading if you graphed it appropriately uncertainty. All beta has uncertainty use the graphics to help explain and visualize the uncertainty not hiding uncertainty is a part of life and the reader needs to interpret your conclusions with uncertainty in mind because approximately half of everything that’s published is wrong. That’s about right except the my paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journalss. Of course a little bit maybe 40 percent what I published is wrong right. But in general when you’re reading you have to understand that about half of what you’re reading is wrong. That’s not bad that’s science. It’s the way it works and over time we settle on the right answers and the wrong ones kind of fall away. It’s a slow iterative process. So showing the uncertainty in your data is an important part of showing the data. All right. The last three things you write in this order are the abstract the title and the cover letter. So don’t start the abstract until the paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals is finished.
What are you trying to do. You have to make sure that what’s in the abstract is consistent you know. It’s it’s terrible if there’s something written in the abstract that’s different than what’s in the conclusions and you think what happened here. Well they probably changed their conclusion and then didn’t change the abstract because they didn’t like the abstract class all the information the abstract must be in the body of the paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals. Don’t say something where the only place you see. It is in the abstract and then also it’s sort of something important in the paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals. Don’t leave it out of the. Amtrak make sure it’s there. How do you ensure that all these things happen well. I like the structured abstract. So here’s what. I do every single time I write a paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals I cut this text and I paste it underneath the title and then I don’t touch it until I’m finished with the paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals when I’m done with the paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals I come back and I start say background. All right let me answer these questions. One to two sentences aim. Let me answer these questions one or two sentences etc. I go through some journals and then especially in the medical community have structured Amtrak’s in other words. These background aim approach results in conclusions titles remain in the abstract as it’s published most journals. Don’t so when you’re done you just simply delete the the words results conclusions approach and background. Get rid of the the line breaks and you have your finished. Abstract penultimate goal a task rather in writing a paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journalss to write the title. I don’t know what you I cannot write a paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals without a title so I put a title right up at the top. It is a working title. I have to have in my mind. That’s the working title when I’m all done especially right after I finished the abstract. I have a great little summary of my paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals now. I’m gonna write a title that reflects that as well as possible. The goal is matchmaker. You want to match the reader with that. Need your paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals with your paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals.
The title is the first way that you do that. You don’t want to promise something in the title that you’re not delivering in the paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals and you don’t want to have a kind of generic you know further advances in topic XYZ. That doesn’t give enough information to match the right reader with your work right. These are conflicting goals though because we want them descriptive but short and the longer the title the more bored someone will get and never finish reading it so it is common art. Some people like to use the newspaper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals headline approach. I completely disagree with that newspaper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals. Headlines say you know the problem of excess resistance is solved in using this material. All right. That’s a newspaper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals headline. I don’t think it’s appropriate as a title for a journal paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals. Not everyone agrees to think that. That’s my approach. Last thing you write is the cover letter. I use a structured cover letter just like I use a structured abstract and I copy and paste this stuff the manuscript. I say manuscript information : and then I put the native dict information and problem being addressed : and I put that in there this an editor who sees a cover letter. That’s formatted just like this will zip through it just like that and say oh yeah. This is perfect. We want a paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals like this in our journal or not right. This is very very helpful to the editor makes puts the editor in a good mood as soon as they get the cover letter. That has all this stuff. It has important things in it like promising that you have a submitted this work to any other journal which you cannot do only one journal at a time. Only if it’s rejected. Can you submit it. Someone else and all authors have read and approved this manuscript before it was submitted. Those statements need to be in the cover letter as well. All right let me conclude. Science writing is an important part of science and for some of us. Writing is not our natural not a natural ability but it’s a skill that we can develop unfortunately as I’ve said you don’t have to be a good writer to write a good paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals but you do have to be methodical and careful your goal should be to make your writing your research transparent so that everyone can see what you did.
Isn’t that what you’re all about. Isn’t that why you’re writing the paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals so that other people can see what you did ceci means to understand and to evaluate alright so that they’re not going to take your word for it. You don’t want people to take your word for it. You want to convince them that you’re right because of the quality of the work that you did so you should focus on the reader and use the paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals to teach them what you learned. Publishing is a part of the scientific enterprise. Once you publish a paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals you have joined the scientific community in a very real way. Furthering the goals of science. I take that responsibility very seriously every time I write a paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals and I hope you do too thank you now even though I’ve gone over because nobody is after me. I get to stay and answer questions if you’d like yes so by a paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals you mean a manuscript so it hasn’t been published it so somebody hands you a manage them. It’s a colleague advisor and they ask you to read it and give them some feedback. All right how do you do that. Well let me even back up and say this is an example of reviewing the paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals and at some point in time. If you haven’t been asked already some point in time you might be asked to review a paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals. One of the articles on my website is how to review a paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals and. I’m not going into that today. But there is kind of a specific format and technique for reviewing the paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals. First you in a review. You the first thing you say is this is what the paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals is about. And this is what’s novel about it. You say that to make sure that everyone knows you understood the paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals right. That’s the person you then say. What’s good about the paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals. There’s something good no matter how bad it is. There’s something good about it. Say it all right that sets the mood then be honest and tell them what’s wrong but if you say what’s good about it first they know that you’re not just getting your kicks by you.
Know kicking somebody when they’re down. That’s not what you’re all about. You’re just trying to give some feedback. One thing you might do is say. Hey the abstract doesn’t contain you know the needed information. Maybe you should go read this little thing on. Chris Mack’s website that says how to write a structure that’s right because I think if you did it that way. It probably would improve your abstract right so maybe point to some some advice on how to do things better as a way of helping them right so another thing you want. Is you. Want your advice to be actionable. This is business. Speak right saying if your criticism is. You’re really not a very good writer. I read this and I don’t understand what you’re saying. All right well. Maybe that’s feedback that they need to hear. Maybe maybe not. But it’s not actionable. They can’t do anything about that other than maybe give up. Go find a different professions. That really what you want. Probably not so. Try to give actionable advice. Criticisms that say well. Here’s what’s wrong and if you did this it would be better. Yes so if you sending towards them yeah. Oh how it. He didn’t say what’s wrong. He didn’t say why. Yeah so um my advice for reviewers is don’t provide to the author judgments like not as paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journalss not good enough for the journal. What good does that do. That’s not actionable advice. It’s not an actionable criticism of the work. They might provide that to the editor because they can communicate to the editor without you being involved right. That’s how the system works and they might say that but ultimately by the way the reviewers don’t decide whether your paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals gets accepted or not. The editors decided they have a hundred percent responsibility for making the decision the reviewers advise them. That’s all now. One of the things the reviewer should do is provide actionable critique that says if you make these changes your paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals will be better still.
It’s the editor who decides it better is good enough so the answer is if you get a review that says this. This paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals is not up to the standards of the drone. There’s nothing you can do. You can ignore that nothing you can do about the editor might not ignore it but but you can and should ignore that when they give you specific points. This figure is not clear you answer it point by the way when you respond to reviews point by point every single point you respond all right well. I’ve attempted to to change the figure to make it more clear and a new figure five is in this revised major your point could be. I disagree with the reviewer. And here’s why that’s perfectly valid too. Ultimately the editor will decide who we think sir she thinks is right. Oh well that’s not exactly right so the question was do you only respond to the editor and not the reviewer. No no you. Responding point by point to the reviewers yes yes you are responding to the reviewers to the editor. The editor has a choice. Editor can look at your responses and say oh. I see the responses. The revived vice manuscript. Meets the concerns well enough. I’m gonna accept it for publication. The editor could decide to send it back to the same reviewers to get their feedback on whether or not the changes are sufficient to meet their concerns. Alright that’s totally up to the editor so the reviewers may or may not ever see your point by point response but they might so keep that in mind don’t don’t say there were viewers full of crap and obviously this person who doesn’t understand what’s going on well. I’ve seen those. All the reviewer just doesn’t understand my paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals but that is well even if it’s true it just means you didn’t write it enough paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals but if you wrote a paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals that a reviewer can’t understand it what about all the readers who are not as expert as the reviewer do not say that the guru didn’t understand my favorite that just says something’s wrong with your paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals fix the paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals all right let me go and now come back to you laughter yeah paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals a cetacean.
I didn’t quite catch your question. Yes so you talked about the topic of plagiarism. So I think that’s what you’re asking asking about copying text from other people. That’s a big topic and in fact. I’m writing my next editorial so all of these paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journalss that are on. My website are all editorials that have published every quarter in my journal and my last editorial is coming out in a couple months. And it’s going to be on the topic of plagiarism. Nobody is my last one which. I then collect them all together. And that becomes the book by the end of the year so. I don’t think I can do justice to your question. But plagiarism is is taking other people’s words or ideas and presenting them as your own that’s plagiarism. And it’s unacceptable. If you’re caught plagiarizing the remedy depends on the scope. If it’s you know a sentence or two we might ask the author to change it and then that’s it we’re done if it’s a paragraph or two we might reject the paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals on it and say. I’m sorry you copied a couple of paragraphs from somebody else. I’m rejecting your paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals. If it’s more extensive reject the paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals and blacklist the author for a period of time usually one to three years. You are not allowed to submit a paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals either to my journal or possibly we’ve even gone enough. Say to any spae peer-reviewed journal you’re not allowed to submit a paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals for the next three years the worst case and we’ve done this we will contact. We will try to find out the supervisor of that person the university usually if they’re at a company we don’t but if the university will try to find that their supervisor department chair and tell them what they did rights that could be a career limiting move. That’s that’s usually when it’s just obvious. I took some of these conference proceedings paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals and I copied it and I’m submitting it to a drone.
Alright so you get into the details and again it to be kind of a complicated on topic. If you are paraphrasing somebody else’s work number one you cite them right citation we have an ethics of citation that says if it’s somebody else’s ideas or words we’re gonna cite them if you’re using their words we can put them in quotes. If we’re using their idea but paraphrasing the words we could do that effectively but then we have to cite. Because they’re not. It’s not my idea. It’s somebody else’s idea so I’m gonna cite them and if you paraphrase insight. You’re perfectly fine if you do. If you do it properly now paraphrase does not change you know from plural to singular in the word and then that other with that. It’s the exact same sentence no you really do have to paraphrase and you can tell the difference between writing the same idea in your own words and taking a sentence and changing a couple of words and say you know if you site prior work then you have a lot more leeway and what you say right because you’re not trying to represent the ideas as if you put a citation then you’re letting people know that these aren’t your ideas. There’s somebody else’s ideas and then you have a lot of leeway as to what you’re right you still don’t want to copy the exact words but you have a lot more leeway if you don’t cite then you’re passing off this what you’re writing as your original both words and ideas. So that’s where you have to be very careful and appeared paraphrasing. And it’s clear that you’re paraphrasing somebody else and you don’t cite it’s still plagiarism. Because you’re stealing somebody else’s idea all right. Let’s go back to you one more question. Then let’s see if anyone else right so the question is if some people write a method section and they leave out important details and they do it on purpose to prevent other people from from engaging in the same kind of work so that you kind of reserve a little niche of science to yourself so you’ll have no competition that is long.
It is against the ethics of science as a community right it is what if I saw that happening and I could judge that the methods section was was incomplete. I would reject the paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals now. Are those kind of paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journalss always rejected enough and there’s plenty there a published. Where if you tried to look at them you say others. I can’t let me produce any of this stuff. There’s not enough information to be able to do it. I think I think a good review and good editor should catch that and not let that paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals be published now on the other hand should I should I report the make and model number of the ellipsometry are used to measure the thickness of the thin film. Most of the time no most of the time you simply report the film thickness because the exact method of measuring the film thickness was not really important. Somebody else using the completely different method could measure the film thickness and get arrive at the same conclusions that you arrive at for your paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals. If that’s the case then don’t bother with all those details they’re not important but if the measurement of the film thickness by the loops ometer was a significant part of arriving at your conclusions and if used profilometer instead of an ellipse ometer and you would have gotten different results because of some optical interaction or whatever it might have been that’s important and therefore you need to explain it so you have to evaluate it with your own judgement whether or not that information is needed for someone not to reproduce your results with the validate your conclusions. Yes maximum number of references. Why do some journals have a maximum number of references. The publishing industry is not the most enlightened forward-thinking industry in the world we have tended to be stuck in old paradigms and old paradigms was every word is expensive right pages the cost of publishing is the number of pages in my journal if I add a page ads cost and so we’re trying to limit the number of pages so we have citations where you only put the initials of the authors or we only put the first three authors and then we do it at all or we don’t use the title of the paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals how could I know whether I should look up this paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals if I don’t even know what the title is.
I want to see the title that. Give me a clue as to whether I should go. Look it up. But we’ve done these kinds of things or limited the number of references that are allowed in order to make the page count last lower cost that is so outdated learning today. Everything’s online. Who cares if it’s an extra page on the PDF doesn’t matter so they just need to change the box so the question is if I if I use a graph from a prior publication and use it in my new publication what do I need to do – to do that first of all the thing about using your old work first of all. Let me back up. A second say self-plagiarism is an oxymoron plagiarism. Is stealing someone’s words or ideas you can’t steal from yourself so there is no such thing as self-plagiarism but there is such a thing as duplicate publication. You can’t polish the same thing twice and give the impression that it’s new right you have to explain what’s new and what’s not in everything you write including graphs so if I reuse a graph I have to cite it I have to say from reference 12 and problem is my paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals that had that graph. Before right you have to do that. You cannot reuse a graph without doing that. That’s unethical but once you’ve done that. Have you done everything you need to do. Most it depends on the copyright agreement that you signed when you first published that paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals most publishers give authors permission to reuse that work without getting permission from the publisher not everyone but most do. I guess the only does so if I published in an SPIE journal or conference proceedings and I want to use that exact same graph in a different paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals. I can do that as long as I recite it and I put it in the bigger caption.
That’s that’s the best thing to do in the finger captured from reference sources if you want to borrow a feeder from somebody else’s paper paper publication in journals, publication of papers in journals that’s a different story. You have to get permission from the author and the copyright holder and you have to get written permission before you do that then of course you still say sorry. Chris I think I said there’s no one after you it. We do have another session at 1:30 but you want to give them a chance for a lunch break. Yes that’s okay yes and I appreciate all of your attention I can keep talking forever.
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