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Aug. 14th, 2001 04:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivkaMisha called a couple of hours ago: "Want to go to the game?" Two of the tickets his company holds suddenly became available at the last minute. So yay, it's a baseball night. Sure, it's only Kansas City, and the clouds are admittedly a bit threatening... but we'll have great seats, and they're free. And at least the heat has broken.
I've spent half the day on all the irritating little tasks that go along with getting a paper out for publication. Checking the references, formatting them properly, looking up missing databits, making sure the style conforms with the journal's requirements, reading it through again and again to check for miswordings and awkward transitions. Lydia's really a very good writer, although has a tendency toward overly elaborate run-on sentences in first drafts. At least she doesn't start sentences with "Importantly" when she wants to highlight that something is important. Given that, I can forgive much else. *grin*
I also set up the figure from hell, and I'm preening myself on that. Lydia's first draft had eighteen separate circles and boxes arrayed in a bulging free-form snarl of arrows and dotted lines and commentary. Mine is eleven sleek boxes, neatly organized in linear fashion, with minimal commentary and only one kind of connecting line. (The simple, the elegant, the pointed black arrow.) I guess that's what she pays me for. *preen* I'll be the first to admit that 90% of the ideas in the figure are hers, but in their original form they were hardly intelligible. I'm proud to be able to figure out a layout that would throw her ideas into sharp relief.
She seems to have disappeared, which is the only thing putting a crimp in my satisfaction. Her office light is still on (she does this on purpose, to give the impression that she's there. When I'm elsewhere, she's careful to turn on the light in my empty office anyway, so everyone will know that the B Med team is present and working hard), but I've been by to knock a half-dozen times. How is she going to be able to praise Figure 1 adequately if she isn't even here?
On the other hand, how is she going to be able to ask me to completely rework it to include some new minor "absolutely essential" thing, in apparent ignorance of just how long it takes to get the balance and formatting right on something like this? She already added 10 references when she knew perfectly well that we were 15 over the limit permitted by the journal. "But these are really important."
It's going to the Lancet. Wow. And I'm the second author. I think it has a sound chance - it's a good topic for a general audience, and we do a nice job of stirring up alarm and then making authoritative recommendations. Besides, they've published Lydia before, and Big Red (our minimalist third author) is probably even recognized as a Big Name in Britain. Oooooh, I'd like to have a Lancet publication on my vita. (Then I could get girls.)
So now I'll just whip through a couple of minor odds and ends to do with the adherence project (revising the form for use in the new clinic, coming up with a data entry/management system for chart review, assuming that we ever hear back from the IRB). And then it'll be Max's at Camden Yards, for the ritual Beer Before The Game.
Ooooh, baseball and Misha, on a cooled-off summer evening.
I've spent half the day on all the irritating little tasks that go along with getting a paper out for publication. Checking the references, formatting them properly, looking up missing databits, making sure the style conforms with the journal's requirements, reading it through again and again to check for miswordings and awkward transitions. Lydia's really a very good writer, although has a tendency toward overly elaborate run-on sentences in first drafts. At least she doesn't start sentences with "Importantly" when she wants to highlight that something is important. Given that, I can forgive much else. *grin*
I also set up the figure from hell, and I'm preening myself on that. Lydia's first draft had eighteen separate circles and boxes arrayed in a bulging free-form snarl of arrows and dotted lines and commentary. Mine is eleven sleek boxes, neatly organized in linear fashion, with minimal commentary and only one kind of connecting line. (The simple, the elegant, the pointed black arrow.) I guess that's what she pays me for. *preen* I'll be the first to admit that 90% of the ideas in the figure are hers, but in their original form they were hardly intelligible. I'm proud to be able to figure out a layout that would throw her ideas into sharp relief.
She seems to have disappeared, which is the only thing putting a crimp in my satisfaction. Her office light is still on (she does this on purpose, to give the impression that she's there. When I'm elsewhere, she's careful to turn on the light in my empty office anyway, so everyone will know that the B Med team is present and working hard), but I've been by to knock a half-dozen times. How is she going to be able to praise Figure 1 adequately if she isn't even here?
On the other hand, how is she going to be able to ask me to completely rework it to include some new minor "absolutely essential" thing, in apparent ignorance of just how long it takes to get the balance and formatting right on something like this? She already added 10 references when she knew perfectly well that we were 15 over the limit permitted by the journal. "But these are really important."
It's going to the Lancet. Wow. And I'm the second author. I think it has a sound chance - it's a good topic for a general audience, and we do a nice job of stirring up alarm and then making authoritative recommendations. Besides, they've published Lydia before, and Big Red (our minimalist third author) is probably even recognized as a Big Name in Britain. Oooooh, I'd like to have a Lancet publication on my vita. (Then I could get girls.)
So now I'll just whip through a couple of minor odds and ends to do with the adherence project (revising the form for use in the new clinic, coming up with a data entry/management system for chart review, assuming that we ever hear back from the IRB). And then it'll be Max's at Camden Yards, for the ritual Beer Before The Game.
Ooooh, baseball and Misha, on a cooled-off summer evening.
