Scientific Editing: Catherine Goodman

Catherine Goodman, Ph.D.

How did you choose your career? Was this an easy or hard process for you? If you struggled, how did you overcome these struggles?

There were a few points of decision-making. I hated chemistry in high school — I thought it was very boring and not connected to anything. But, when I got to college, I had to take some science distribution classes to fulfill my psychology major (later dropped), and some upperclassmen recommended a particular professor as being fantastic. It turns out that he was so fantastic that I not only decided to study chemistry, but also that I wanted to be a professor like him and hope to inspire more people the way he had inspired me. Towards the end of graduate school, I was working with several younger PhD students and undergraduates, and found it more taxing and frustrating than enjoyable. You can imagine that this somewhat concerned me, as this is a primary function of professors. But, I thought it could be unique to the students in my lab or my institution, and so I went for a postdoc. It turns out, it is true in general. Also, during my postdoc, I spent more time talking to young faculty, and they were all fairly traumatized by the funding situation. So, I really sat down with myself and thought about what kinds of tasks and challenges I like, and the way in which I like to do them. I realized, for example, that I prefer to work with real deadlines, because they are motivating for me. Similarly, I realized that I enjoy working with other people to develop and refine their scientific ideas more than I enjoyed following up on my own ideas. These are important things to know. Once I felt like I had a good idea of how I wanted to spend my time, I took about 6 months checking ~5 job sites every day to look for opportunities that matched with the things I wanted to do. It seemed like the things I found interesting required more qualifications than I had, and vice versa, until I saw the ad for my current job. Lucky me, they agreed. Did I "struggle", or was the process "hard"? Yes, it's hard getting a Ph.D., and it's stressful not having a good idea of what the future holds. I imagine you mean more whether there were barriers I had to overcome, or whether I had to try for twenty years to attain this position, to which the answer is no — the actual mechanics of obtaining the job were fairly easy, perhaps because I was convinced I was the right person for the job and I was a good match with what my future coworkers were looking for.

What kind of training, both formal and informal, did you receive to prepare you for your career?

Informally, I somehow gained a bit of a reputation at my Ph.D. institution that I would do a good job of editing papers prior to submission (both for grammar/general organization + readability and looking for scientific holes); this may have begun because I was willing to do it, but my coworkers and I were both pleasantly surprised to find that I was good at it and that I enjoyed it as well. In my postdoc, this continued somewhat — in particular, I worked closely with two friends who were preparing their proposals for their applications to faculty positions. I really loved talking to them about their ideas, and helping them to shape the resultant application to make it clear, compelling, and realistic. We also had a pretty intense journal club in one of my Ph.D. labs that was excellent exposure to the way that editors need to be able to process and integrate information quickly. Formally, the first six months of the job was at an "assistant editor" level, in which I was expected to absorb quite a bit of information about how publishing works in general, and the specific workings of our journal in particular.

If applicable, how did you select where to attend graduate school?

I was led to the northeast in general by a boy; I chose UMass in particular because I hadn't decided what I wanted to study and there were numerous professors there whose research seemed extremely interesting to me; my visit was also extremely wonderful, which helped me to feel comfortable about the final decision.

How did you choose your postdoc?

I had always found the field of protein design fascinating, and so applied to work with the scientist I saw as leading the field.

How long did it take you to train?

All together: Ph.D. (5 years); postdoc (2.5 years); assistant editor (6 months).

Was it shorter or longer than anticipated?

About as expected.

If you had any setbacks, how did you deal with them?

I don't think I had any setbacks outside the normal experience of people going along this path, or at least I can't think of any major hurdles I had to overcome.

What was the process like to apply for your first job after your training was over? Was it easy or difficult? How did you cope with any difficulties? Did that differ from subsequent jobs you've had?

This is the first job I've had. The process was not short (there are many things that my future coworkers wanted to test me on), but it was not arduous.

What advice would you give to someone interested in following a similar career path?

Read a lot, and think about it carefully. Keep track of who is doing what.

What would you have done differently in preparing for your career?

Followed the advice above more closely.

How much do you like what you do? Why? Is it what you imagined it would be? If not, how have you adapted?

I love it. I get to interact with the most interesting people in the world, and talk about the most exciting topics in the world. I get to help shape what the future of my field looks like, and highlight research and people that I think are especially fantastic. I get to travel to interesting places and learn a lot about the educational and institutional systems in other countries. I would say the advantages far exceed what I expected. The disadvantages are mostly as I imagined them — it's hard rejecting people all the time, and the deadlines can get overwhelming. Ninety-nine days out of a hundred, the advantages win. On that hundredth day, you take a day off. Two somewhat unexpected disadvantages are that I feel less able to take part in friendships with scientists, as there are many ways for this to become complicated in practice or in appearance, and that some scientists can take the point of view that you're not worth talking to because you're not actively doing research in the field. So, it can be a bit lonely sometimes on the conference circuit.

How do you achieve career-life balance? Is this easy or hard to do? How many hours do you typically work per week?

Like other compelling and interesting careers, it is easy to take on too many projects and assignments and spend a lot of time doing work (or get overwhelmed if you do want to be more committed to limiting your hours). However, the job is also extremely flexible, so you can go to an appointment during the day and work a few hours at night, or read papers on the train, etc. The job also varies a lot throughout the production calendar (the things that need to get done to publish a new issue each month), so some weeks I am very busy and others are more relaxed. One thing to consider is that conferences are often over the weekends (or travel to the conference is over a weekend), so it's definitely not a Monday–Friday kind of job. I would say that I work 40–80 hours each week, which obviously tells you there's a lot of variability. One thing that people think about a lot in regards to this type of question is having/maintaining families, and there are many women and men in my office who have children (some brand new parents), and our company provides excellent support for these folks.

What strategies have you figured out over time to help you succeed?

I have better organization skills now than when I started in this job. I am better at finding information that I need than I used to be. Of course I'm also 4 years into the job, so I am just a lot better/faster at doing the normal things I need to do.

How do you see your field changing in the next 5–10 years?

I would like to think that more journals will adopt professional editors, as the number of journals and thus number of referees required to look at a single paper is getting (or is already?) unmanageable. One fairly conservative prediction is that we won't have print journals in 5–10 years; this has already led and will lead to more opportunities to be creative about publishing.

Anything else you would like to share?

That's it! Good luck.