The life of an academic paper

Just before Sam was born, I received the news that a paper I've been working on for a while had finally been published! For an academic, this is exciting news, because your whole life is measured by your publications. The old mantra of "publish or perish" is definitely the way things still work in the ivory tower.

But besides being excited to get the paper published and add a line to my CV, I was also thrilled about the news because it means I'm finally done with that paper. You see, the life of a research project is a long, arduous one. I happen to know the exact date that I started working on this particular paper: 26 November 2007. Yep, you read that right, 2007. And the end product? A whopping 11 pages, including charts, tables, an appendix, and the works cited page. How could it possibly take three authors 3 1/2 years to produce that? The answers lies in the fact that academics are actually really lazy people who take summers off and rarely work a 40-hour week.

Ha ha! Just kidding. You only get to have that lifestyle once you get tenure. :) The real answer is that writing a water-tight research paper is really hard. You see, after you come up with an idea, collect the data, do the analysis, and write a first draft of the paper (which is no small task) you get to start presenting your work at conferences. This paper, for example, was presented in Atlanta, New York, Prague, and Chicago. And at each of these conferences, all of the other attendees view it as their mission to shoot holes in your work. And they're usually pretty good at it, too. It's not that they don't like you (usually), but the idea is that all of the possible flaws need to be ferretted out to make sure what you're arguing is actually true. That means that after each conference you come home with a load of new work to do, and a new draft to produce that reflects these changes. In a worst-case scenario, someone will point out something major flaw that destroys the paper and you're left with nothing. Luckily that didn't happen with this paper.

Once you've gone through this process, it's time to actually submit the paper to a journal. Generally, you pick the best journal that you think you might possibly have a chance of getting in to. The editor of the journal will send your paper to a few "referees" (other academics) who will read your paper anonymously and critique it. They submit a report back to the editor listing all of the things that are wrong with it, as well as a recommendation of whether to accept or reject the paper. Usually, this process takes several months to complete, at which point you get the referee reports from the editor along with his accept/reject decision. If your paper is accepted, you have to address all of the referees' concerns, and submit a new draft for more edits. This then takes another few months. Of course, if it's rejected, you still address all of the referees' issues, and then you find another journal to send it in to, and start the process over again.

It's a frustrating process. By the end, no matter the paper, you really hate your project because you've been working on it for so long, and people have been nit-picking it to death. But, how sweet it is once it's cleared all of the hurdles and is finally off your desk! Hurray!

One last cool note is that this paper got some press in the Huffington Post, Reuters, and (a long time ago) in the Economist's View. It's always nice to know that at least a few normal people are hearing about your work. I'm famous...sort of. :)