Writing about writing February 16, 2013
Posted by mareserinitatis in engineering, research, writing.Tags: busy, papers, proposals, waiting, writing
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I won’t apologize for not updating regularly. I will, however, say I miss it.
I’ve been doing a lot of writing again, and I’m finding that it leaves me with very little to say. I can’t really write about what I’m writing about in any sort of entertaining fashion. Well, I suppose I could complain, but who wants to read that?
In the past month, I’ve had to write a short proposal and put together a presentation, significantly edit a previously written long proposal to submit someplace else, and then write a conference paper. I’m hoping I get at least one of these so I can tell you about it, but for now, I’m still waiting. Heck, I’m still waiting on the proposals I wrote last October.
I suppose I could write about how much I hate waiting, but it would be a very short post. Even shorter than this one.
The art of citations August 15, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in engineering, papers, research, science.Tags: art, citations, papers, research
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I had an art class in Governor’s school that really reminds me of how I feel when people look at my research. Governor’s school, in North Dakota, is a six week program where you get to be immersed in a particular area of interest. Usually this involves some in depth, hands-on experience. I ended up spending six weeks doing research in a biology lab. I came out of the experience knowing I loved research but hated biology, and that ultimately got me interested in a career in science.
Aside from all that, we had enrichment activities in the evenings. My enrichment class was drawing. I can’t remember the specific name of the project, but basically we were supposed to draw part of another image. I chose to draw the Madonna’s face from Rafael’s Madonna de Foligno. I was at a place where I didn’t have access to any good art supplies, so I just did the drawing on lined paper. After I’d finished it up, I was terribly disappointed I’d not had any real drawing paper as it was one of the nicest drawings I’ve ever made. I felt like the lines on the notebook paper really disrupted a beautiful image.
My art teacher was a college student, and even though the term hipster hadn’t yet been coined, that’s what immediately pops to mind when I think about him. Rather than being impressed with my uber-awesome drawing skills, he thought the neatest thing about the drawing was that it was on lined paper. I guess he thought it made it look modern or something like that. I was livid. I’d worked so hard to get the image right, and he only cared about how the paper made it look cool (which it didn’t).
This is how I feel when I get citations.
I really like Google Scholar’s profile option. That being said, I’m almost always let down when I get one. I don’t mean to be picky, but I’ve noticed that certain papers get a lot more citations than others. The problem I have with this is that these aren’t my favorite papers: I think I have other papers that are better quality research.
What seems to happen is that one paper will be cited by someone, and once it’s cited, others will start using it as a reference. Some of this obviously has to do with areas where research is more active, which is understandable. I’m sure some of the papers are cited more simply because there’s more related literature coming out. I have to admit, though, that it’s frustrating when a paper you aren’t all that fond of has far more references than the one you really poured yourself into.
It’s kind of like someone admiring your drawing because it’s on lined paper.
Pick something and go July 20, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in engineering, papers, research, work.Tags: overwhelmed, papers, priorities, research
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I wrote up a list of things I need to be dealing with at work. While it was helpful for me to have a list to reference, it was also rather disheartening. I came up with over 10 things, and all but three were fairly sizable goals, like writing a paper.
I was rather overwhelmed, but happened to think about GMPs recent post on writing in a crunch. Her method was to break things down into bite-size chunks until the project was done. But what do you do when you have half a dozen big projects at the same time? I guess I tried to take a similar approach.
The thing is, I’m not in a huge time crunch to get most of this stuff done, but if I try to tackle several of these things at once, I’m fairly certain that none of them will get done, ever. So I picked off the easy things that I can work on here and there or that have definite deadlines (those first three). Of the 7 remaining items, I prioritized the ones that would be easiest to finish as well as providing the least amount of conflict in terms of computational resources with my current projects. I decided to just focus on the first one until I get to a point where I can’t work any more. Once I reach that point, I’ll shift to the second on the list until I can get back to the first or it gets finished.
I KNOW I can’t multitask well (or even passably, for that matter). The problem is that there are still these six other things that are sitting there, and it makes me uneasy to not even touch them. There’s this little voice that says, “If you don’t work on it now, you might NEVER get to it.” It’s really an irritating voice because it fails to recognize that I can only work on one thing at a time, and I’ll be more productive if I can maintain some decent focus. It also fails to recognize that there is a significant reduction in stress every time I can cross one of those things off my list entirely. And even if I start working on three or four of them, there are some that will have to get left behind as well. There is just no way to work on all of them simultaneously.
I wish I knew where that little voice came from and why it doesn’t listen to reason. Somehow I keep feeling like I could convince it that this is the sane approach. Instead, the best I can do for now is to ignore it.
How do you deal with things when they seem overwhelming?
Incomplete instructions May 10, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in papers, research, Uncategorized.Tags: papers, peer review, research
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I know I’ve been talking a lot about reviewing papers, but I figured one more post on the topic couldn’t hurt.
I was very lucky that my MS advisor started us reviewing papers as soon as we took a class from him. In all of his grad level classes, we were usually required to select 2-3 potential published papers for review and then to write up a critical analysis about 4-6 pages in length on one of them. It was a good experience, but I don’t think I would’ve made a very good reviewer my first year or two into grad school.
My real critiquing skills came when I started getting into some of my MS projects and I had to reproduce some of the work already done in papers. The first three I came across, it became very clear that the reviewers hadn’t done the best job: all three were missing critical details that required me to write the authors and ask how they had done certain things. In other words, there wasn’t enough information to replicate the work. That, therefore, became one of the first things that I look at with a paper. It would be nice if, when reviewing, one actually had time to sit down and try to replicate the experiment. Unfortunately, that’s not realistic…although I’ve also had papers with blatant errors that I’ve been trying to reproduce. I hope it’s just an oops that is the result of last minute writing, but I am beginning to think there are a lot of careless authors out there.
I’m not sure why this is the case, other than the fact that maybe people get too far into their experiment and fail to realize that there are many things they do automatically that one cannot take for granted. Even though most of the work I do is in simulations, there are a lot of things that appear superficially minor but can really change your results.
While there are other things one should look at it, I think the quality of most papers I’ve read follows along with the detail presented in laying out the process. If the process is not clearly spelled out, then chances are the other aspects of the paper are going to need some work, too.
So, for those who review papers, do you have things that you really look for in a paper and, if so, why?
Was blind, but now I see… May 6, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in engineering, papers, research.Tags: double blind, papers, peer review, single blind
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I was recently asked to review a paper for a fairly large conference in one of the engineering subfields I’m involved in. This particular conference is one which I’ve not attended, so I had no familiarity with the procedures. As a side note for non-engineers, I discussed before (on my old blog) that many (most?) engineering conferences take full, peer-reviewed papers.
When I received the paper and looked it over, I nearly fell out of my chair. I could see the freakin’ authors!
In most of the conferences where I’ve submitted papers, the peer-review was double blind. One conference in particular was this way because it’s such a small area of research that they wanted to make doubly sure that people are as objective as possible. (In reality, there’s a good chance that you could tell who it was just by what they were doing, but I applaud the effort.) It seems like a very straight-forward thing to do: you submit the paper without any names on it. The session chair knows who it is but picks people to review who will be none the wiser. If the paper is accepted, a revision is submitted with names on it. Easy-peasy.
I have to say that this was very disconcerting for me. I don’t WANT to know whose paper I’m reviewing. I spent the whole time writing this review terrified that knowing who they were, where they were from, how many authors were on the paper, etc. was affecting my perceptions of the paper and destroying my objectivity. I was amazed at all the stupid things I found myself questioning in terms of my reaction. Was I making a mountain out of a molehill? Was I overly impressed by something which shouldn’t have impressed me?
It really isn’t all that hard to keep reviews double-blind when using an automated submission system such as the one used for this conference (and most IEEE conferences), and as a reviewer, I would have been far more comfortable.
I’m curious about other fields, though. Is single-blind review the norm? (When I stumble across these things, I feel like I’ve been living under a rock.)
When copy and paste goes wrong December 30, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in engineering.Tags: editing, papers
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I’ve been waiting to hear about a conference paper I submitted back in October. I finally received word this morning that it had been accepted. The notification letter contained all the standard info until I got to the bottom: the organizers let me know they were looking forward to seeing me at last year’s conference in another country.
He’s not carrying me November 20, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in engineering, family, papers, research, writing.Tags: collaboration, Mike, minion, nepotism, papers
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(Image courtesy of the Wife Carrying World Championships.)
Way back in the dark ages (i.e. this summer before school started), GEARS and I were chatting (because he actually had time to breathe then). The topic of me working with my husband came up, and he made a comment saying I should be careful not to publish too many papers with my husband because people will assume that he’s carrying me. I said that was true, but the people who make that assumption are also likely to be the ones who assume I’m an idiot by virtue of my sex. He conceded that was likely true, and then the conversation moved on to other things.
However, GEARS really does have a point. This is particularly frustrating because of situations like the following:
About the same time that GEARS and I had this conversation, my husband asked me for help on a paper. The paper was one written by The Minion and which Mike was a coauthor. (I, however, am not.) It had been submitted twice to a pretty good journal in engineering, and rejected both times. He asked me to take a look at it.
After reading the paper and the reviewer comments, I suggested some major changes. The problem was that the reviewer kept asking for comparison of The Minion’s widget to some other widgets, as well as a few other things that didn’t seem relevant to what they were doing. I told them that while the paper was supposed to be about this new process The Minion used to improve and old widget to make a new one, the paper was written as though it was showing off a new widget. If they could change things so that the paper was more about the process than the widget, than comparison to the other widgets would seem irrelevant as you already have comparisons between the old widget and the other widgets. They really wanted to compare the old widget to the new widget to show that the process worked.
My husband rewrote the paper in line with my suggestions, checked with The Minion, and resubmitted. I’d like to say the paper got accepted, but it didn’t. On the other hand, the nature of the comments changed from assertions that the paper was useless to specific comments to improve the paper, all of which were easily addressed. Once those changes were made, the paper was resubmitted and accepted.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the kind of thing that other people see. People seem to think that when you’re not married to someone you collaborate as equals, but when you are, someone is pulling more of the weight. I imagine that’s true in some cases, but certainly not all. And in our situation, my husband gets as much help from me as I from him.
If he really wanted to carry me, we could always look at participating in the actual sport of wife carrying. Apparently we’d only have to go to Wisconsin to compete.
Of course, I’m personally more interested in the husband carrying competition:
Waiting for the answer November 15, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in papers, research.Tags: deadlines, papers, waiting
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I hate waiting on paper submissions. Makes me insane. You spend all this time hustling to get the paper out and then *bang!*, things settle down a bit and you wait.
Unless there’s another deadline right behind the first, I can’t necessarily make myself go into hyperfocus on a project. That means I’m waiting while my mind has the ability to wander…and wonder. I ponder what I did right and wrong, what things will the reviewers pick up on that I missed, etc.
I know some people feel better about getting the paper off. Once it’s out of sight, it’s roughly out of mind. I think it’s a much better approach to focus on that which you can control…but I can’t say I’m terribly good at it.
And in the meantime, I still have a week and a half to go.
How about you?
Why I really work with my husband October 31, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in family, grad school, papers, research, work, younger son.Tags: children, family, Mike, papers, research, work
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This past week, I’ve been trying to get a paper ready to submit to a conference. My husband is a co-author on the paper, so we spent a good chunk of the day cranking away at it. I worked on the text while he fixed all the LaTeX issues we encountered. This is my first time submitting a conference paper using this method, and I wasn’t acquainted with all the nuances of the IEEE style. I guess I’ve lucked out because I either used Word (up until I finished my thesis) or let my co-authors deal with the issues that arose from LaTeX. Either way, the paper was submitted at 5:30 p.m., a whole 5 1/2 hours before the deadline.
Then we came home. He took the dog for a walk, and I went for a run. He cooked dinner, I showered. He took younger son trick-or-treating, I handed out candy while trying scarf down my dinner. (Older son held back Gigadog so that she wouldn’t a) try to steal candy out of the dish and b) slobber all over the trick-or-treaters to show them how much she loves them.) And now I can finally get to writing tomorrow’s lecture and grading while he gets the younger boy to bed. Oh yeah…and Mike has work to do, too.
It’s a good thing I work with my spouse or I’d never get to see him.
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Review season May 7, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in engineering, papers, research, younger son.Tags: engineering, engineering research, papers, peer review, research, reviewer comments
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Both Mike and I have been getting requests to review papers, and this has led to a lot of foul language around the house…along with frequent reminders from the younger son that our language is inappropriate.
It’s really hard to restrain yourself, however. As we’re sitting at the dining room table, occasionally one of us will turn our laptop toward the other and ask something like, “What does this look like to you?” or, “What do you think this means?” or, “What the hell were they thinking?”
I have to admit that I appreciate having a second pair of eyes to catch the things that I miss. I’m sure the authors of the papers we’re reviewing probably will not appreciate it. Not only do they have the third reviewer going over their papers, they have two of them. I hope this will result in double the hair pulling and teeth gnashing on their end…because it sure has for us.