Publish a paper

My advisor and I have resolved our quibbles with the author list, so we’ll call this done!

Here’s a complicated story for ya.

A year ago, I dropped my own research for 3 months to help my friend R. push a paper out. We submitted it with her as first author, me as second, a dude who had helped her for a while as third, and our advisor as last author. The conference we submitted to ended up being really disorganized, and each paper only got 2 reviews (normal is 3-8). Our paper got one positive review and one negative review, and both were from people who obviously didn’t have the background to understand the work (prob. were farmed off to beginning grad students by their advisors), and the paper didn’t get in. The experience of finishing the paper was really traumatic for both R. and me. She quit and doesn’t want to talk to our advisor again.

Fast forward a year, and our advisor has reshaped the paper and submitted it without telling anyone – and this time it got in. He deleted her name from the author list, so now it’s just me, other guy, and Advisor. He wants me to present it.

Now, this work is 99% R’s. It sounds like Advisor did a fair amount of work reshaping the paper, but the work is still R’s. Add to that the fact that R. is still my friend, and this situation is Not Cool. Not Cool. Which I told him. If we can work something out, I can check off this goal. Otherwise, we’ll have to wait to hear about the papers I’ve submitted the honest way.

Wow! Now my boss is talking about presenting the paper as a work-in-progress at a workshop. Sweet, let’s pad that resume…I mean, get valuable feedback =)

Our industry collaborator (otherwise known as my boss at the Corporate Masters’ office) is a nearly perfect mentor, but he has one habit that’s starting to drive me insane. He gets us super-excited about the paper and how great it is, right up until the last day when all of a sudden it’s “weak” and has a 40% chance of getting in and would have been stronger if we’d done all these experiments he never thought of until today. He doesn’t say any of these things in a mean or even unhappy way, but it’s such a turnaround it gives me whiplash.

Oh well, screw him, the paper is out the door and out of our hands for the moment.

Next up: turning it into a tech report for the Corporate Masters and the university. Not as prestigious as a peer-reviewed paper, but still something for the C.V.

so I don’t know how much I’ll be around 43t for the next week or so.

UPDATE: Evidently a lot. At least for the next few days, I have a lot of free time while babysitting semi-automated experiments.

is that I met a very senior professor in my field from another university at a conference. He was telling me all the ways that my school is perceived as kinda weird, and one thing he said is that we’re known for not publishing very much. I did know that our projects require a lot of infrastructure compared to other universities’, and so we do much more work per publication than many of our peers. But it’s good to hear that from the outside. And it’s definitely true that people from our department get decent jobs with fewer publications than others.

I’d still like one though!! :)

One of my collaborators reports that a paper he submitted to a different conference, which got mediocre reviews, was accepted – which basically means that it’s a trendy topic that people are excited about. Our current paper is on the same basic subject, so that’s good news. It’s too bad academics can be just as blinded by trends as teenagers, but I’m not complaining if it works in my favor this time.

Back into paper deadline mode! We’ve been putting off submitting this paper for longer than I want to admit, but we’re finally in good shape to have something reasonable by the deadline (a month away). Progress on the other goals may slow down for a bit :)

I’ve been second author on 2 (rejected) submissions. Both projects were woefully understaffed, so it’s no wonder that both papers got shot down. Another submission deadline is coming up, and hopefully 3rd time’s the charm.