Knowing When You

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Knowing When Youre Ready to Publish

• Benhur Lee
• UCLA
• ASV 2009

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Common Themes (anecdotal survey of NAS members,
HHMI investigators, Dept Chairs, other enfant
terrible of science )

• Do the data tell a (complete) story?
• Define complete
• Is the story interesting?
• Define interesting
• Are the results convincing?
• Define convincing
• Novelty, Significance and other criteria
  mentioned above are all matters of scientific
  judgment

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Scientific Judgment

• Scientific judgment, like clinical judgment in
  medicine and judicial judgment in law, comes from
  experience--thats why we have mentors
• a sensibility to underlying structures in your
  field (to be aware of, but not be confined by,
  prevailing theories)
• a certain grasp of nuance -a feel for the
  organism
• an ability to see the whole through a maze of
  complexities (biological insight)
• an openness of mind to new or alternative
  possibilities/explanations

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So, when do you know youre ready to publish?

• Every project is different and unique
• Difficult to come up with a consistent set of
  rules or recommendations that can be generalized
• After thinking about this a bit, I would say
  that the best advice for graduate student and
  postdocs is that they are ready to publish when
  their far-more-experienced mentor decides it is
  time to publish. . . Experience means everything
    anonymous HHMI investigator

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What kind of STORY do you want to tell?

• A self-contained chapter that is part of a bigger
  story
• This may go to a less ambitious journal, but
  may be important to get the chapter out
• An entire story with all the essential chapters
• a blockbuster paper that takes several years to
  complete
• A short story that is entirely novel
• Only happens when all the stars align, or when
  serendipity meets the truly prepared mind

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What kind of STORY do you want to tell?

• What standards do you use?
• Depends on the type of story
• Standards for scientific soundness should not
  changed, but
• the degree of detail,
• the comprehensive of your characterization,
• depends on whether you are telling on a story
  that is novel and hot, or filling in details of
  a mechanism

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What kind of STORY do you want to tell?

• Novel Hot
• Establishes a new paradigm
• Resolves conflicting models in a way that propels
  a field forward
• Revolutionary technology that opens up new modes
  of investigation

• Detailed mechanisms or characterization

Whether this chapter is complete is more subject
to interpretation
Pathway to completion is sometimes more clear
formal experiments to justify your claim are
more obvious
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What kind of STORY do you want to tell?

• How to balance your needs and your PIs?
• Productivity is important--are you part of other
  stories coming out from your PIs lab?
• Maintaining a steady stream of publications is
  important, so that you (and your PIs lab) are
  associated with a body of work and a certain set
  of expertise

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Useful Strategies

• Outline manuscript
• Figures and Legends (Plan your flow)
• In Hollywood parlance, this is your storyboard
  that youll pitch to the studio head (journal
  editor)
• What is the logic of each transition?
• Is your plot coherent?
• Do you have a focal point? (making too many
  points often dilute the focus of your paper)
• Every story must have a main protagonist
• When in doubt, start sooner rather than later
• Youll never know if you have a story until you
  outline it first
• Storyboarding your paper gets you started
  quickly, and uses something (your data) that you
  are familiar with

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Useful Strategies

• Start sooner rather than later because the
  process of writing is illuminative
• Actual synthesis of ideas and data may help one
  see the bigger picture and reveal potential holes
• Do you have enough data to support the central
  focus of your paper? (you should)
• Do you have to speculate a lot in your discussion
  to underscore the significance of your results?
  (you shouldnt . . . too much speculation is a
  sign of incompleteness)

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Useful Strategies

• There are many ways to tell a story, but probably
  an optimal way to SELL one
• who is your target audience/journal?
• what is the hook?
• You can always do one more experiment, but is it
  critical to the central focus of your paper?
• Will it markedly change the conclusion of your
  paper?
• Will it help resolve the most speculative parts
  in your discussion, and help underscore the
  significance of your results?
• Will it be the singular cause for rejection?
  (this depends on the type of story you are trying
  to tell and how high impact a journal you are
  striving for)

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Acknowledgements

• Many faculty at UCLA and elsewhere who answered
  my survey
• My post-doc mentor (Bob Doms) who set the first
  example
• The many superlative scientists whose experience
  I have tried to distill