Published online 11 July 2007
Postdoc journal
(Almost) in press
Peter Jordan
Peter Jordan is a visiting fellow at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland.
Composing a manuscript is a laborious task. Could there be a better way some day?
I am currently writing the first manuscript from my postdoctoral research. We're very close to submitting to a journal, and I must say that I'm looking forward to getting it out the door. The latest edits haven't been about the scientific content of the manuscript so much as reshaping the story we are telling, arranging the data and sculpting the text to make it more compelling.
Preparing a manuscript for publication requires more stamina than I'd expected. My doctoral adviser and I are still trying to publish the last part of my dissertation research: research that was completed months ago. Despite its frustrations, the peer-review process seems to have worked well, as two rejections have made that manuscript much stronger. Those rejections were based not on the science, but on our inability to tell the story clearly. We're hoping that simplified explanations and a slight change of focus will do the trick.
Good science, I think, is as much about lucid communication as about proper pipette technique. In an ideal world, there would be other, simpler ways to disseminate one's findings than laboriously writing journal articles. Maybe one day, self-assembling data will be downloaded directly into interested scientists' brains, bypassing the need to construct an elaborate tale on paper. Until that fiction becomes reality, I'd better keep working on my storytelling skills.
Postdoc Journal Keepers 2007
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Moira SheehanMoira Sheehan is a postdoc in plant breeding and genetics at Cornell University.
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Peter JordanPeter Jordan is a visiting fellow at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland.
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Maria Ocampo-HafallaMaria Thelma Ocampo-Hafalla is a research fellow at Cancer Research UK's London Research Institute.
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Chris RowanChris Rowan is a postdoctoral student in the geology department at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa.
