"Science Careers": Help with Writing and More

When I last wrote to you, a storm—Hurricane Ike—was approaching. We were lucky. Although we had many hours of wind and rain, we did not lose electricity, and our community did not have much damage. Some other communities were not as lucky, and we here are trying to help them.

I hope that your communities—and your careers—do not suffer serious storms. A minor storm that many of us face is the rejection of a paper by a journal. Even the best researchers sometimes have papers rejected. However, after revision, rejected papers commonly are accepted by other journals. Then the sun shines again.

Recently the Web site Science Careers (associated with the journal Science) featured an article on what to do if a paper is rejected. This article provides good advice on revising and resubmitting. It also includes stories of researchers whose papers were rejected but later accepted elsewhere.

Science Careers also includes other articles on writing about and publishing research. In one article, an editor at Science presents tips on getting published. Another article provides advice for non-native speakers of English.

In addition, Science Careers includes other advice that might interest some readers of this blog. For example, there are articles on defending one’s PhD thesis and on other aspects of being a graduate student. There is also an article on how to be a peer reviewer.

I encourage you to look at Science Careers. I hope it will help provide a good climate for your work.