PROPOSAL AND JOURNAL WRITING EXPERIENCES FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF A GRADUATE STUDENT

PROPOSAL AND JOURNAL
WRITING EXPERIENCES FROM
THE PERSPECTIVE OF A
GRADUATE STUDENT
Outline for Today
 Walk through a 3 year proposal example
 Received funding
 Share experiences in writing journal articles
 Discuss how to properly review journal
articles from my perspective
Proposal Writing – its tedious!
 Process will be long, but worth it
 Typically takes on the order of weeks to a few
months
 Dependent upon the duration of the proposal call you
are after
 Will take several iterations to get things as perfectly
written as possible.
 Know your audience and your limitations
 i.e., balance showing what you know and what would
be common sense to the review board
 Do not try to propose more work than you can handle
Outlining the Proposal
 Dependent upon page limitations
 Should have the following
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Abstract
Introduction to the problem
Related Work
Proposed Work and Technical Approach
Milestones, Deliverables, Responsibilities
Relation to organization proposing toward
Current and Pending
References
Budget Explanation
Letters of support from partners – when necessary
Proposal sent in, what’s next
 Waiting is the hardest part…
 This can take several months to up to a year in
some cases
 Need to be proactive if you have not heard from
the funding organization to touch base and see
how far along your proposal is in the system
 The review
 Constructive criticism will be provided when your
proposal returns
 Be prepared to trim your budget
Experiences Writing Journal
Articles
 Key points when writing a journal
article are:
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Targeting the correct journal
 Audience, budget, turn around period
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Is this research new and contributive to
the science?
 How much content should we provide?
 1 article vs 2?
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What are the authors we should include?
What order?
 What format will you write your article
in? Is there a template?
 e.g., Word, LaTeX, etc.
AMS:
http://www.ametsoc.org/pubs/journals/submi
tmanuscript.html
AGU:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/authors/manuscript_to
ols/journals/manuscript_prep.shtml
NWA:
http://www.nwas.org/digest/instructions.php
Handling Reviews
 Reviewers will be critical
of you work, so what is
the best way to handle
critical reviews?
 How do I go about
responding to reviews?
 What time frame can I
expect the re-reviews to
come back?
Review Examples I have
received/seen…
 This is a great paper, but here are several things
that are still missing.
 After careful consideration I regret to inform you
that your topic does not present a significant
enough advance in geophysics for this journal.
 Did not even get to reviewers in this case
 Two of the reviewers accept work with minor
revisions, but the editor and the third reviewer
give you a major revisions notice
 Editor then sends you a journal article on how to
write good journal articles
Review Examples I have seen…
 Reviewer A and C like
your work, Reviewer B
rejects your work, the
editor brings in two
more reviewers and
Reviewer D accepts as
is and reviewer E
rejects it.
 What do you do here?
Reviewing Articles
 Typically start to
receive reviews once
you’ve published one
journal article
 Multi layered system
 Chief Editor
 Editors
 Associate editors
 Reviewers
 Any type of editor
position is either
appointed or invited
Reviewing Articles
 Read through them at least twice, with some
time period between your reviews. This
allows you to:
 Think about their approach
 Consider suggestions for improving the research
 Consider professional and constructive responses
to the points you might have issues with in their
manuscript
 If you are young in your career you probably
want to remain an anonymous reviewer.