Publish or Perish

Publishing scientific journal articles can be treacherous business! I've been working on a set of experiments and the corresponding article manuscript for about 10 months. It's pretty exciting stuff... if you're one of the 12 people in the world who actually care (existential crisis #47 creeping in!). Anyway, it's pertinent, so I've been pushing to submit for publication. In the last month, however, I've received several insider tips that we have competition! The new method, the pertinent results... already circulating in the publication atmosphere! Oh no! I struggled with this a bit last week. Ok, alot. I knew that our competition had submitted to a really prestigious journal. I thought the experiment and results were important enough that I was going to submit to a prestigious journal, also, but I had to reconsider. Submitting to a lower tier journal isn't as prestigious (obvious), but I would be more likely to be successful. High tier journals will often reject a perfectly good manuscript because it's not interesting enough. I decided to aim lower with a greater hope of getting published before my competition.

I submitted last Wednesday. The typical routine is that a researcher submits her article into a journal. The editor picks an action editor from a group of researchers who comprise the editorial board for the journal. The action editor typically is more familiar with the topic than the other action editors (but that's not always the case). The action editor then chooses 2-3 researchers at large to review the manuscript - if the action editor hasn't already vetoed the paper to begin with. After a torturous 2- months, the action editors uses the reviews (which the author gets with the action letter) to make a decision about publishing the paper or not.

The journal that I agonized over choosing (Experimental Brain Research) requires me to name 5 experts in the field who would be qualified to review the manuscript. I always thought it was a shady practice... but I suppose it cuts down on the amount of work the action editor has to do. Anyway, as I started generating names of experts, I couldn't help but speculate: ARE YOU MY COMPETITION?? I mean, there are literally a small handful of people who care, and I feel certain that someone I named is involved. If my competition is asked to review, they will of course have to decline due to a conflict of interest, but then they'll know about me. I suppose I shouldn't complain - right now, I have the upper hand. I know I have competition, I know they've submitted to a high-end journal, and I just got some insider info that they were rejected (and that my paper had a much more elegant rationale and interpretation of the data). Yeah me! Because if we don't publish first, I'll get no credit.

I bet it's one of the Italians. Pratt!