How to publish your work in the Physical Review or Editors are from Mars, Referees are from Venus, and Authors are from Earth

Date

Aug 11, 2011

Time

4:30 PM - 5:30 PM

Speaker

Thomas Pattard

Affiliation

APS, Ridge, NY

Language

en

Main Topic

Physik

Other Topics

Physik

Host

IMPRS Seminar

Description

When you try to publish your work in a peer-reviewed journal such as the Physical Review, it often appears that authors, referees and editors all speak different languages and pursue different goals (a ``me versus them'' feeling). Indeed, the pressure to ``publish or perish'' in the modern academic world sometimes seems incompatible with the idea of conveying actual and useful information to the reader of a journal, who wants to stay up-to-date with current developments in her/his field of interest. On the other hand, a significant part of this feeling is rooted in miscommunication that could easily be avoided by a better mutual understanding of the needs of authors, referees, editors and readers. In this talk, I will try to give some insight into the publishing process from the perspective of an editor. I will give a short overview of APS publishing, and the workflow associated with the handling of a typical manuscript. This will lead us to the question of what we are looking for in a paper / referee report / cover letter, and how the communication between all involved parties can be improved. Using examples from actual communication we receive, I will try to give a few hints that might actually make you a better author and/or referee. In the last few minutes of the talk, I will briefly discuss various recent APS initiatives to make our journals more attractive to both readers and authors.

Last modified: Aug 11, 2011, 9:35:46 AM