I've been working on
responding to reviews of the last paper submitted from my postdoc work.
This process is never fun, and this one is especially tough because I haven't
thought much about this project since I submitted the paper a couple of months
ago. I'd much rather be working on this blog, and I have a long list of
cool sciency parenting topics that I can't wait to tackle, but I'm trying to
find the discipline to spend a few hours a day revising this paper. And a
few hours a day is all I have at the moment. It is a pain, but I need to
get it done and get it done well.
On the other hand, I'm
trying to appreciate that this peer review process serves a vital purpose, and
my paper will be better for it by the time it is published. It isn't a
perfect system, but it certainly goes a long way towards ensuring that
scientific data are published with integrity. If you aren't familiar with
this process, here it is in a nutshell: I and my co-authors submit a
paper, which we've probably spent months writing and rewriting, to a scientific
journal. The journal sends the paper out to a few other scientists in the
field and asks them to evaluate the quality and relevance of the work. In
an ideal world, the reviewers are unbiased evaluators of our work, though
everyone knows that everyone has some biases and judging something like the
"relevance of the work" can be very subjective. The reviewers
either send the paper back saying it isn't fit to publish and it is too
hopeless to even try (I've had that reply a few times) or this paper is OK, but
it has substantial problems that you need to fix. Apparently it is
possible to get reviews that say this is an excellent paper and we should
publish it right away, but neither I nor anyone I know has ever had this
experience, so I think it could be a myth. I'm at the "fixing"
stage now. Some of the reviewers' issues are easy to deal with, others
not so much. I will make some changes to the manuscript and write lots of
polite justification to the reviewers, resubmit, and hope that they deem my
work fit to publish. And oh yeah, if they do, I will then pay them to publish it. But then
my work will be out in the world, for everyone (or everyone with access) to
see.
As a consumer of
science, I have to appreciate the peer review process. I have been in the
business of reading, evaluating, and interpreting science for more than a
decade now, and all along, it has been nice to know that the paper I am reading
had to pass through a panel of "experts" before it got to me. I
think this matters to me more than ever now that I am a mom. I turn to
science to answer my parenting questions, which I care deeply about. I am
delving into research both inside and outside my field. I don't have a
scientific background in child psychology or sleep science, and though my
research background gives me lots of tools to evaluate any scientific article,
I'm glad that the peer review process means that the articles I read have been
given a passing grade by other scientists in that specific field.
Still, blogging is a lot
more fun. It is freeing (but a little scary) to hit "publish"
on a blog post that I sat down to write maybe just a few minutes before and
then let the peer review happen in public via comments, Twitter, and page
views. It is a different kind of writing for me for sure, and I like it.
I'd better get back to revising the paper, but stay tuned for more posts once I
get this thing done.
