Job Applications: An Editing Adventure

In grad school, I was EIC for a small journal.  (Before that, I was on the editorial board for a couple years.)  This involved reading hundreds upon hundreds of manuscripts and trying to decide whether and/or how they were salvageable.

These past couple of years (!!!!!; also ACK!) I've been reading Dr. S's job applications.  For you readers so lucky as to never have read one of these fine items, they consist of the following:

1) Cover letter.  A syncophantic recounting of one's virtues, coupled to why they are ideally suited to the college or university in question.  Probably nobody ever reads it, but just to be sure, it has to be perfectly calibrated to the reader's imagined tastes.  Of course, one has no idea if the reader is the department chair, a bored secretary, or an underling.  It must also convey that one passionately wants to teach at College X, when what one wants is, in fact, a job already.  If one has a specific wish to live in the area, that is a red flag (what, you only want to live here because of something else?) and if one does not, the hiring committee fears the applicant will hate the area with the burning passion of ten thousand suns.

2) CV.  Mercifully, this one does not require editing - at least not by me.

3) Teaching philosophy.  A greater collection of drivel I have never read.  (This is not limited to my spouse; every one I have ever read was drivel.)  People hate writing these, and it shows.  

4) Research statement.  The best part to edit, and simultaneously the worst.  It has to be as detailed, plausible, exciting, and feasible as a grant proposal, but in three pages flat.  It has to include specific experimental details, but a random assortment of not-in-your-field scientists are going to read it, so it has to do this in language a physicist could understand.  It has to be flashy and exciting (lasers!  robots!  genomics!  STEM CELLS! BIOINFORMATICS!) but still miraculously within a small college's budget.*  And within all these constraints, it has to not put the hiring committee to sleep.

I usually edit these after we put the children to bed.  It's getting late, I'm tired and crabby, I probably have a glass of wine in my head, and I'm thinking "Words, words, words.... TOO MANY WORDS!  Boooooooring!  I don't know that word and I am too lazy to look it up.  Why do I care about this?"

In other words, I'm a pretty good approximation of a hiring committee, all by myself. 

*Did you know that human stem cell media costs roughly $1 PER ML?  Me neither.  It's like setting $1000 bills on FIRE every single day.

Lab Report

I was reading about Miss MSE's lab-teaching joys and it reminded me of when I was TAing

Bear in mind that Snooty U, as an institution, doesn't care about the science TAs and generally ignores them.  There is no training, there are no standards, and mileage varies widely.  (The grad school has some opportunities for individuals, but it's caveat magister.  Or possibly caveat discipulus.)

So I TA'd for a lab course that was, apparently, organized by monkeys.  We were given the labs, but no syllabus, no guidelines, and no outline of the accompanying lecture.  (Possibly because the lab bore it no resemblance.)  This is going to sound really mean, but I took the opportunity to rigorously enforce Good Science Writing.  I wrote my students a syllabus with the following criteria:

1) Your first lab report will be marked and returned.  I will grade the second version. 
2) After the first lab report, you will lose a point for each spelling or grammatical error.
3) You can write as much as you want (in Times 12 point with one-inch margins), but I will stop reading after five pages. 
4) Plagiarism will get you a failing grade.

After the first batch of lab reports, which were, with two exceptions, truly appalling, I got nice, concise, five-page, well-organized reports.  After the second batch, which lost a lot of points for grammatical errors, they were much better-written.  And after a couple weeks of me writing the most appalling errors up on the board(without attribution; however, in genetics, "compliment" and "complement" are very different)... they started proofreading, too.

Low grades are an amazing motivational tool.

Because They Can?

Rather a while ago, I was speaking with the talented and thoughtful Darcy on publishing. (I still find it hard to believe that humanities presses make YOU pay to publish. But anyways.) It made me think about page charges, because actually... we do pay to publish. Why????

For those of you who have thus far escaped scientific publishing, it generally works like this: an accepted article is subject to charges of $X per printed (proof) page, plus usually a hefty fee for color figures. Page charges that I've seen run from $50 to $250 per page; color-figure charges from $0 to $1500.

This makes sense for a nonprofit journal: figures take extra staff time to lay out, and they want to discourage 14-figure papers. It does actually cost more to print color pictures (though my professional society's journal just went online-only and now it costs them nothing). The logic is that page charges defray the subscription cost, which they wish to keep low so that many people may have access to their scholarly work.

But then there are the Large Expensive journals. They typically charge $10,000 per institutional subscription (or more). Then they charge, say, the Wellcome Trust $5000 per article for its mandatory archiving - sometimes even of the unedited article. And, while I don't know how much ads go for in big journals, I do know they charge an extremely hefty fee just for job fairs.

So how are commercial-journal page charges NOT only for padding profits? No, really. Is there a flip side?

Inadvertently Networked

There's this professor, let's call him C, on the next floor down. He was a co-teacher when I was... er, strongly encouraged... to TA for my advisor . Advisor and C always asked me to read the quizzes and tests that year, me being so conveniently located and all.

Then I wasn't TAing the class any more. And my advisor still brought me tests and quizzes to read. And so did C. For five years. Including three finals from C.

Now, the advisor pays me, I'm right there. That made sense. But I was never sure about C. There were seven TAs; surely one of them was in the building? You know, someone actually working for him? Or one of his students? But no. Was he making nice for the sake of my boss, who is also his boss? Was I just nearby? Easily exploitable? All the same, I figured that I couldn't think of a nice way to say no and maybe it would do me good in the future. So I read all the damn tests.

Yesterday morning I was going up in the elevator with C. 'So what are you going to do with that PhD?' he asked.

'I have no idea,' I said.

'Well,' he said, 'I'm about to become editor of Medium-Sized Journal, and there's always a staff person who keeps everything rolling. Is that the kind of thing you're interested in? There's someone doing it now, but it's part of Evil Empire Press and is often a stepping stone, so it turns over a lot.'

Blink. Blink.

I explained that yes, I was very much interested in that kind of thing, but I was moving to Cold Utopia in two months. Also that I had been EIC for a journal ('Wow!' he said. 'What a feather in your cap for this kind of thing!') and so did have some experience. So maybe I should send him my resume and we'd keep in touch.

Now, probably nothing will come of it. I'm moving. They have staff. But it can't hurt. If I really wanted a job with Evil Empire, I bet C would help me find one. And who knows, maybe he'll hear about something good. The motto here should be "Nepotism: A Snooty U Specialty Since A Really Long Time Ago."

I guess that's why I proofed all those damn tests.

Step Away From The Thesaurus Slowly

Dr. S has a new favorite phrase, from a paper he read recently. They describe their mutation as hegemonic.





(For the non-scientists: They meant dominant. As in, its effect overrides the effect of the native whatever. There's really only one word for it. Really.)

I Do Not Think It Means...

Inspired by this, I bring you another installment of 'Needed a Better Editor':

Recently I saw a blurb on the cover of David Drake's "Other Times Than Peace".

It said "He couldn't write a bad fight scene with a gun to his head."

'Sorry, We're Illiterate'

By the way, although Dr. Jekyll has already mentioned it, this is one of the funniest retractions I've ever read:

In this Article, the messenger RNA that is identified to be a target of microRNA-23 (miR-23) is from the gene termed human 'homolog of ES1' (HES1), accession number Y07572, and not from the gene encoding the transcriptional repressor 'Hairy enhancer of split' HES1 (accession number NM_00524) as stated in our paper.

(Translation: We can't read. Wow, do we feel stupid now.)

Jargon Thesaurus Strikes Again

Although the phrase 'deranged energy metabolism' does appear in the medical literature, I do not think it should.

I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means

Or, Things That Make My Editor's Soul Rejoice

The opposition blames the government and the pro-government Muttonhead Quail Movement (MQM), which runs Karachi, for the violence.

Overflowing of Prepositions In Writing of Grants: or, Why Grant Consulting Is Profitable

This past year, my sister sent me a draft of her advisor's grant.

It was terrible.

Maybe he didn't read the instructions; maybe he was a bad writer. It was disorganized; there were no preliminary results; there were no headings; it repeated itself. Those of you who've seen grants know that these are cardinal sins.

I gave it a complete overhaul and sent it back with strongly worded recommendations on the line of 'do this or you'll never get any money.'

They got the grant. And it occured to me that people get paid for this stuff, and I'm good at it. Ruthless, but good.

Do I happen to have any freelance writers/ grant editors among my readers?

****
A propos of this, some excerpts from my lab's recent Huge Government Grant Renewal #35. They suffer from a great excess of prepositions. Yaaaaargh.

The objective of trying some physical models will be to study how forces produced by girder assembly might contribute to shedding of façade pieces from the exterior and moving foundations away from the original locations.

[What I would say: Physical models will be used to study effects of girder assembly forces on facade shedding and foundation shifting. Yo: brevity, wit, etc.]

Even if a mathematical model can account for the behavior of I-beams in modern structures, a better test of the mechanical effects will be the ability of the model to predict the consequences of altering conditions in high-rises.

We will use voltmeters to measure timecourses of accumulation and degradation of charge in brick walls, as well as movements of current at both room and elevated temperatures.

[Again, aaaaah, the prepositions. 'We will measure timecourses of charge accumulation and degradation in brick walls with voltmeters, as well as current movements at room and elevated temperatures.' Why is this so hard for scientists? I ask you.]

Things That Don't Make Me Want to etc.

-The journal's new website and new open-access publishing both going online the same day.

-The fact that we have content for the next four-and-a-half issues. So one day, we'll catch up to the present.

Things that do:

-We're still a year (ulp) behind in publishing.

-And my co-editor-in-chief? Spent the last month incommunicado somewhere between here and the West Coast.

On the bright side, she's back now.

Professional Frustrations; Also, Why People Pay For Translators

Editing! It has untold joys. Our journal, for a variety of unpleasant reasons, has not yet published the second issue of the year. What year would that be? Why, 2006! Four complete issues with copyrights are waiting in the queue. Backlog? What backlog?

So the other editor in chief and I asked the office which funds us, would it be a possiblity to get money for a freelancer, just for a couple weeks, to catch up to 2007? It now being May. Of 2007. And angry emails from authors accumulating daily.

Instant hysteria on the part of our paid staff members. Furious and condescending emails to the other EIC and myself! How dare we ask a question without asking his permission first! It must never happen again! Bad, bad editors! No biscuit!

Excuse me while I go bang my head against the wall for a while. For insulting, destructive condescension, I have my advisor! Isn't that enough?

***
My sweet adorable spouse, in a fit of industry combined with thesis-writing (oh, the things people will do to avoid writing a thesis), decided a to cook a World Corruption Index dinner every week for Shabbat dinner. He's started at the bottom of this.

Anyhow, the next one is Ivory Coast. I looked up recipes for him last night, since Ivoiriens speak French and all. Without further ado, I present you BabelFish's translation, in the hope it will bring you as much joy as it brought me. Turns out? Not easier than translating it myself.

To prepare chickens: to empty and flame them. To clean meat offals carefully. In a pan, to make cook during 10 hearts minutes and livers with water salted, scented of a sheet of bay-tree and branches thyme. To finely chop the piece of boiled ox, the hearts and the livers then onion. To add the bread soaked in milk and drained, as well as the powder of peanut. To bind egg, to salt, pepper, then to mix well with a spoon out of wooden. To powder of a pinch with grated nutmeg. To fill chickens of the scented mince and to sew them nothing to let escape. In a casserole, oval preferably, to pour oil and make gild chickens on all the faces. To make heat the bubble and sprinkle the gilded poultries with it. To leave simmer. Cooking is finished when the meat became tender. To then serve chickens in a dish that one can furnish with salads or sections of plantains.

P.S. Not really ox. In case you were worrying. Also, no bubbles will be harmed.
P.P.S. And no milk either.

More Unpublished Editorial Comments (The Bad Mood Continues)

Chers Messieurs et Mesdames les auteurs,

Endnote is your very best friend. References in numerical order as they appear. Why? Why is this so hard?

Please note, o native English speakers, that some words sound alike but have different meanings! Transferrin is not the same as transferring, the effect of your grammar is dismay, and it affects my decision to reject your paper. Likewise, while the principal often has principles, cells rarely do.

I am fascinated to hear that when something dissolves it is attenuated. You don't say. I am also thrilled to read that your device was chronically embedded. I hear acute embedding can be fatal.

To the authors who had a friend translate your paper: Don't.

Je reste, très respectueusement et avec toute amitié, la vôtre,

Jeanne F. laChercheuse, l'éditrice.

Unpublished Letters of an Editor

Dear Author,

Dude, thanks for calling our long-suffering staff editor four (4) times from Brazil! According to our lame-o records, you sent us that manuscript two years ago. Are you up for tenure, or perhaps grant renewal? Normal humans would have a) withdrawn the MS long ago; b) called a year ago; or c) assumed the answer was NO. Which it is. Yo, if we're going to publish, we bloody well write.

Actually, why did you bother submitting it? It sucked. We don't care what happens when you label Chemical X and feed it to rats. It goes to the kidneys? YOU DON'T SAY.

In case you're still wondering, the answer is, rejected without review. Cheers!


Sincerely yours,

Annoyed Editor

P.S. We deeply (okay, maybe not so deeply) regret the delay. Our whole staff quit one day last March. We can't even find our subscriber list! You're lucky we remember who you are! Sorry!