Advisor: Did you publish your findings from your master's research?
Me: No, I never did.
Advisor: Hmm... I see.
I wish I had published my master's research. Unfortunately my master's is from a very non-research orientated school, it's more of a terminal masters, and I'm the first graduate from the program that's gone on to pursue doctoral work. The program isn't too old, I think it started in 2004 and I graduated in 2010. But my old advisor (who also happened to be the department head) was not concerned about publishing anything. I don't think he's published anything since he completed his doctorate in 1991. My advisor, committee members, and the director of the school library all said I should publish it. My problem was that everyone urged me to publish but no one would tell me how to, or offer to review it.
Taking matters into my own hands I took a course titled "Writing and Editing for Publication," a class through the technical communications department. The class was helpful...if I wanted to publish an article in Cosmo or Popular Mechanics. That wasn't really what I was after but I did learn some things that improved my grammar (e.g. proper use of effect and affect) and writing technique during the editing part of the course. Unfortunately this still left me without any idea how to take my 102 page thesis and turn it into a paper I could publish in a peer-reviewed journal. That was all last year.
After my current advisor asked me if I'd published my work two weeks ago I decided to consult the post-doctorate student I work with at work. As part of his post-doc he is required to publish a paper or three and has expressed an interest in having me work with him on said papers (we're in the same department and I've helped with his research). I'm very glad I asked him for advice!
I knew nothing about the process. He'd previously mentioned this journal called Nature, saying it was crème de la crème of peer reviewed journals. I was skeptical until I heard others from a different sphere talking about it too. Turns out every journal has an impact factor, which is apparently a "measure of the frequency with which the 'average article' in a journal has been cited in a given period of time. The higher the number, the better the journal.
Once you find your desired journal look at their author's guide and follow it to a T. If the guide says you need 5,000 words make sure you have 4,999. My co-worker said that most times you'll be accepted conditionally and the journal will only give you a few days to make the required changes. Checking your e-mail often is a must! He also said to try and find out what the turn around time is for each journal; turn around time being the time between when it's accepted and when it will actually appear out in circulation. For me trying to publish my thesis this doesn't matter. It's stored in my alma mater's library, that was good enough to them to give me a diploma.
The last issue that my co-worker talked to me about was authorship. Such as, where my name goes on the paper. For my thesis for example, my name would be the first listed and my "boss" would be the last name listed. Other people who helped me with the research or through consulting would appear as the middle names. That's fine for a typical paper but I think mine is a bit different. All the work I did was pretty much on my own with very little direction. My old advisor knew nothing about my topic until I started working on it. Aside from weekly meetings with my advisor where I gave him a progress report we had little contact. And the contact we did have was nothing like my research relationship that I have with my current advisor. He said that for junior engineers such as ourselves it is better to be the first author on papers and then slowly move into being the second, third, n+1, and finally into being the last author.
We both wound up staying later at work than we'd planned on account of my questioning him (and it was Friday no less!) but I'm very happy he offered advice and helped me out. I'd like to start taking the steps to find a paper and work on getting my thesis into a publishable form soon, and then work on submitting it over the upcoming holiday season.
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