"extreme professionalism"

As a favour to a long-standing collaborator of mine, I recently (over the course of the past 18 months or so) acted as Associate Editor for a special issue of a peer reviewed journal which focussed on one of his projects with which I was not involved. This issue contained only 8 papers, but they involved virtually all active research groups across Europe on one particular research area. It was therefore extremely hard to find reviewers. For one paper, I ended up doing the review myself. The issue has now appeared, and in the editorial/acknowledgements I see the phrase "We would like
to thank Prof. X (me) who acted with extreme professionalism as associate editor for this Special Section".

A colleague mentioned that he was trying to work out whether this was a compliment or not and I confess I am not sure myself what is meant. I was thorough in tracking down reviewers and reading all their comments and making decisions appropriately and justifying these fully (even though this meant that the special issue took longer to appear than it might otherwise have done). I was also thorough in making sure the reviewers had no conflicts of interest. However, I'm not sure how much more professional I was than any others would have been. IN fact, since I am currently a co-editor of a different journal, and going through a heavy phase of reviewing articles, it made me feel slightly odd!

Recently I have seen two excellent guides to writing a peer-review, which made me feel guilty about the quality of peer reviews I have sometimes provided, and frequently seen. One is published by Elsevier.com and available at www.elseview.com/reviewers. Another is an article in the membership newsletter of the American Geophysical Union. The latter suggests 3 readings of the manuscript in total, but that a review can be written after then first one if the material is not publishable or has a major flaw which could be addressed. I wish I had time to read things that many times (although I often skim a manuscript before doing a detailed review). On occasion I have resorted to filling the review with structural and grammatical comments rather than deeply considering the science.

I resolve to treat others manuscripts as I would have someone treat my own in the future. If this means accepting less requests to review in order to do them more thoroughly, this will be ethical.

Conference confidence

In the last post I talked about my difficulties in selecting material for a 15 minute overview talk. Well, I'm back from the conference and can report that I managed to raise enough interesting points for people to ask good questions, and to come and seek me out after my talk for further conversation. And I only over-ran by 1 minute (whilst I realise this is bad manners, in the context of everyone else in the session I was a full 5 minutes relatively well behaved!!!). The interesting thing is that this is the first time I can remember people being so enthusiastic about coming and talking to me. Perhaps it's because I haven't been to an international conference for around 4 years (child-raising issues), or perhaps it's a different group of people at this particular conference now. I didn't advertise my new Professorial title at all in the talk so it's not that directly. I've also had a follow up email from someone I talked with requesting details of any publications we produce on a certain topic, and a request from another (admittedly someone I have collaborated with in the past) for a letter of support for a grant proposal. So why the difference?

I put it down to two things. I do think that I have a certain amount of additional confidence that derives from my recent promotion in the sense that I feel like "I'm a professor so I don't need to prove anything to you" Or, hopefully it could be that I am finally either talking on the right subject, or, since I have been talking about the same theme for several years, people have finally caught on to it.

However, outside of the formal session, I started to fall back into my old ways of self-doubt. I didn't know many people at this conference, and although not shy as such, I am not very good at networking, and have tended to be less than pro-active in the past. This time, I was only there for one evening and had no dinner plans. At the end of the session I was talking to someone I do know, when a colleague of his came up with dinner plans. Originally they didn't involve me, but the invitation was extended to me as I was standing there. I felt a bit like they felt they had to invite me. I contemplated staying in my hotel for room service, but in the end I went to meet them at a bar/restaurant. Of the 5 men there, I knew one reasonably well, one slightly, and didn't know the others at all. We had a good evening, topics covering work, but also funding in our 4 different country bases, politics in all 4 countries, and many other things. I came away glad that I went but concious that I had yet again contributed very little to the work discussions and this only fed my paranoia. Now I just have to figure out how to translate the confidence from the formal session to confidence in less formal, but still professionally focussed interactions.

What can you say in 15 mins

I have just sat down to write the presentation for a talk I have been invited to give at an international conference next week. I am an invited speaker, and was asked to give an overview of my subject area. The conference is a wide-ranging one, although it is likely that most of the people in the session itself will be more familiar with the topic I am discussing. Today I double-checked the programme and found that my talk is scheduled for 15 minutes! 15 minutes! How can I give an overview in 15 minutes (or 12 mins and 3 mins discussion!!!)???

Moral of the story: Ask more questions before agreeing to give an invited talk....