submit my dissertation work for publication

I had one paper submitted and accepted. It was published in this months edition of the journal. The other was rejected. It was in a high impact journal, so maybe I should have expected it and not been so disappointed. I still was though, of course. The only good thing about the rejection was that it wasn’t rejected for any scientific reason, only because the results weren’t “unique” enough and didn’t show anything that was groundbreaking. A slightly different analysis might bring out some of the more noteworthy aspects of the study. I’m in the process of re-writing it for submission to another journal.

Submitted the earthworm/nematode paper!! Well – I submitted it for review by the co-authors. Then it will be reviewed within the department. THEN it will go to the journal.

Next is the microbe paper. Progress has been made. But more must be done. I want to get the microbe paper submitted before classes start on the 20th. It’ll be tough. We’ll see if it is possible.

I’m not making much progress with this. Not as much as I need to, for sure. I don’t know why I’m dawdling with this. I KNOW this has got to get done before the semester starts or I’ll never get this taken care of. I have to get it finished and to the committee for review. I’m taking Wednesday through Friday of this week off, so tomorrow’s my last day to make any progress on this goal for awhile. So tomorrow it is; tomorrow I will get the bulk of the earthworm/nematode article finished up so that I just have to polish it up and send it to the co-authors before school starts. Must push this through.

I sent a 64-page manuscript to the co-authors and they all agreed it should be broken up into 2 articles. Makes sense. And it means 2 pubs instead of 1 if they’re both published. So my goal is to get that article broken up into 2, reviewed by the co-authors, reviewed by the department, then sent for review by the journals, and HOPEFULLY accepted. Then there are still the revisions the journal wants made…ugh. It takes forever. But I’ll never get done if I don’t GET STARTED!!

That’s the deadline I’m setting for myself to make all the edits on that literature review article and resubmit it. This is possible, Street…just make time to make it happen.

I have had my first official rejection letter for a manuscript. Shit. Talk about sucking. Actually, I wasn’t totally rejected. I was “rejected without significant modifications.” Then I read the reviewers comments…they’re not joking. They did mean significant changes. It would take me a month or more to make them all. Double shit. It would almost be better if they’d just say, “your paper was crap, take it elsewhere.” But oh no. They give you that little flicker of light to keep hope alive.

After I calmed down a tad, I re-read their comments. And I pretty much agree with them. Triple shit. I hate being wrong. Not sure what I’m going to do yet. I’ll wait and talk to my advisor and see what he thinks.

Argh. Why can’t things just be easy for once?

step 1: I send it to my former advisor (and a co-author)
step 2: He sends it back to me with revisions

repeat 18 times

step 39: I get an email from Greg (advisor) saying NOW it needs a summary. So I write a summary and send it back.
step 40: wait for Greg to either find out something else that needs to be done (maybe I picked the wrong shade of black for the font)or send it into the journal.

...must not lose patience…things take time…

I ran into my advisor at the conference in Indi and he says the edits for the literature review are minimal. He thinks I can probably even get them all finished in a single night. BUT I gotta get those done and submitted to the journal ASAP if I want it to get counted as a pub for this year. So get it in gear, kid! I can do this. I’m going to sit down and get that thing edited over the weekend.

Gotta get that thing published. It was a beast to produce – so it should amount to something. And not to toot my own horn, but there was some fairly useful data that came out of it. Somebody will publish it, I’m pretty sure. If I play my cards right, I should be able to get 3-4 pubs out of it. This is not optional – I have to do this for tenure. Get those suckers published! Just make it happen – push it through. The worst part is over, now the only tricky part is getting everything re-formatted. I want to have this done (all four of them) by the end of next semester – so by next May – every last pub should at least be submitted to their respective journals.