Begone, O Journal Article
The journal article to which I devoted a significant portion of my weekend has now been sent off. Both Cesar and Megan, in separate phone calls, inquired whether it was finally done and out of my hands, to which I replied that it was. This was shortly before it dawned on me that I had neglected to attach the electronic file(s).
I was really not sure why, in 2007, any academic journal needed to be mailed four paper copies plus a diskette or CD. John, who has been doing a good deal of peer-reviewing over the past few years, was incredulous that any journal would want to deal with envelopes full of paper copies and disks when one could simply email the file to the editor. Certainly I was very unhappy at the last minute when I was simultaneously feeding more paper into my parents' printer, writing up the abstract that I had forgotten to do earlier, wondering whether we had any binder clips in the house, digging through the envelope drawer and finding no unused specimens, and creating Word and PDF versions of my document. I kept losing track of where I had laid the four binder-clipped copies. At the same time, I was looking up the address of my future apartment building and hunting for my checkbook to write replacement checks for the application fee and first-month rent that had apparently disappeared in the mail, as these too were going to have to be overnighted.
So perhaps it's not too surprising that I forgot to turn off the laptop and swap in the CD unit (usually I keep the second hard drive in its place) so that I could create a CD (since the laptop has no floppy drive).
The editors, fortunately, were on their toes with the mail and promptly emailed with a request that I send my file as an attachment, so it is all (one hopes) truly done with for the time being.
Of course, if they like the thing at all, they might want revisions, but we can assume that that would occur at least a month from now, when I will be distracted by a different set of problems.
I was really not sure why, in 2007, any academic journal needed to be mailed four paper copies plus a diskette or CD. John, who has been doing a good deal of peer-reviewing over the past few years, was incredulous that any journal would want to deal with envelopes full of paper copies and disks when one could simply email the file to the editor. Certainly I was very unhappy at the last minute when I was simultaneously feeding more paper into my parents' printer, writing up the abstract that I had forgotten to do earlier, wondering whether we had any binder clips in the house, digging through the envelope drawer and finding no unused specimens, and creating Word and PDF versions of my document. I kept losing track of where I had laid the four binder-clipped copies. At the same time, I was looking up the address of my future apartment building and hunting for my checkbook to write replacement checks for the application fee and first-month rent that had apparently disappeared in the mail, as these too were going to have to be overnighted.
So perhaps it's not too surprising that I forgot to turn off the laptop and swap in the CD unit (usually I keep the second hard drive in its place) so that I could create a CD (since the laptop has no floppy drive).
The editors, fortunately, were on their toes with the mail and promptly emailed with a request that I send my file as an attachment, so it is all (one hopes) truly done with for the time being.
Of course, if they like the thing at all, they might want revisions, but we can assume that that would occur at least a month from now, when I will be distracted by a different set of problems.
Labels: California, research, summer
posted by Karla at 1:18 PM
3 Comments:
PHEW!
Well, now -- congrats! Seems an excessive amount of paper to me, too. But, then again, I'm not in the academic journal biz. However, from my time in and around grad school, I did encounter some decidedly old school methods.
That said, must feel good, Karla... Will it be accessible to far-flung lay readers (who might not get it anyway) anytime soon?
The accessibility of the article will depend more on whether it's accepted than on its comprehensibiity, I think. It should be comprehensible to anyone with a college education, and for that matter many people without one.
I'll try to remember to report on what happens. It's not one of my more perfectly written efforts, but Cesar (in his role as layman reader) claimed it was interesting and not too full of noticeable stupidities. I would have preferred to proofread it a bit more, but...
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