PhD support group?

misskool

melancholly wrote:

remember to have some kind of a break over christmas!!

I'm taking christmas day and boxing day off!! does that count? :rotfl: :rotfl:

only 40 something days to go before submitting first draft...



Thanks for the input peeps, I will try to avoid the personal pronouns as it annoys me. My internal examiner is quite traditional although my external is a young lecturer.

It's easier to write a paper than a thesis with all these considerations going on.

melancholly

happy new year all!
hope it's going better for you guys than for me..... just got an email rejecting a paper - my favourite point of 'constructive criticism' is the one telling me the paper is poorly written...... but at least that's a better reason than one of the others criticising the method as being weak when we were in fact replicating a method that has been published before with no problems............

i think anonymous peer review has to be the most sadistic way of measuing how good you are............ (not that i'm sulking at all!)

talksalot81

Writing style must be learnt and ther are alot of people in the community who are anot good at it.

We had a recent rejection which in fact had no substance. All the comments were unjustified (the reviewer either made them up or didnt read the paper). Some journals are like an 'old boys club', if you arent a member, it is almost impossible to publish there.

melancholly

it was an american journal and the results go against the theory of a major player over there, so i know it's going to be tough to publish..... i'd just like the criticisms to be fair.... you'd think with 2 professors as co-authors any awful writing style would have been pointed out......... humpf!!

my first couple of publications have been really easy in comparison......... never had comments like this..... guess i'll see what the co-authors make of it tomorrow.

magyar

Totally agree with what talksalot said. These journals are all about who you know, not what you know. I would say that if the worst thing you can say about a paper is "the style of writing isn't very good", then that's not at all bad.

American Journals are notoriously hard to get into.

Don't give up!

melancholly

one of the reviewers suggested that i sent it off without the knowledge or consent of the other authors.... not sure how they could have been any more insulting.... the worst part is that a few flippant comments can make me this upset.......... anyway, chocolate and bed....... half of me wishes i hadn't read it today but then i think crying at my desk at work would have been worse....

misskool

Hey hun,

Good luck! I'm sure it will be fine. :grouphug:

I'm waiting on the edge of my seat to hear when a paper of mine has been rejected. can you sense the confidence here? :rolleyes:

but yes, American journals tend to be very clique-y, it's very much of trying to find a fellow who will help you fast track your paper or inviting them to be a 'co-author'.

And my thesis is mired in quicksand!! Help..... :sick:

studentphil

Good luck with getting published. Surely there are easier ways to make money!

If you want to become a lecturer published history seems important. All the best!

pboae

melancholly wrote:

it was an american journal and the results go against the theory of a major player over there, so i know it's going to be tough to publish.

I had a paper like that too, unfortunately the guy it was contradicting kept reviewing it! (He has a very distinctive style and made no attempt to hide it was him). It got rejected from 3 journals all because of his reviews, and eventually I submitted it to a journal that lets you request your reviewers, and although I didn't get everyone I requested, I didn't get him! It was published then, with no problems.

Whenever I've reviewed papers I've been so careful to be kind and constructive with the review. It costs nothing, and everyone knows how personal it feels when someone is catty with their comments.

I've still got one paper left to publish from my PhD. I keep putting it off because I just can't face going back to the data, but it's excellent proof that my first paper was correct, but with much more traditional methods, and I want it published just to make a point to the guy who kept shooting me down back then!

magyar

misskool wrote:

Hey hun,

Good luck! I'm sure it will be fine. :grouphug:

I'm waiting on the edge of my seat to hear when a paper of mine has been rejected. can you sense the confidence here? :rolleyes:

but yes, American journals tend to be very clique-y, it's very much of trying to find a fellow who will help you fast track your paper or inviting them to be a 'co-author'.

And my thesis is mired in quicksand!! Help..... :sick:

Very good advice.

As a side note, I can tell you from first hand knowledge that if you can get a post-doc in the USA, (and fancy the idea), do it - the research environment is fabulous. One of the reasons they are so cliquey is that that they know just how much better they are than us.... Primarily that's because much less research is published pre-doctorate.

Having said that, I think our tradition of getting PhD students out presenting papers at conferences is a good learning exercise which US students wouldn't get, so the mix of a UK PhD and a USA post-doc is a very good combination.