BU Research Blog

I feel very fortunate to have reached a significant milestone in publishing; 50 peer reviewed articles. I thought I would stop and reflect as over the years I have learnt a great deal. I don’t remember my first publication…why? Well I was one of a number of authors and didn’t complete the final write up, or submission process. Don’t get me wrong, it was a fantastic time for celebration, but I wasn’t aware of ‘the struggle’. My second I remember clearly. A systematic review as part of my PhD. A horrendously verbose, difficult to read and overall, poorly written article. The science was robust but the writing – fit for insomnia. It was also my introduction to peer reviewers. This paper took 6 submissions before it was fit for publishing (was the science robust?) and really tested resilience and perseverance. How could they not value/understand, or even just ‘get’ the importance of my article! Now some years older and perhaps wiser I have come to understand that this lack of valuing/understanding of the work comes from how I have written it. This realisation has very much changed my ‘approach’ to reading peer reviewed comments. The often personal feelings that are rattled by the comments, I believe should be taken as a lack of clarity in the writing – how can this be made clearer for potential non-experts in the field. This is the essence of my second learning point. When I stated writing for publication, I believed the aim was to try and sound as clever/intellectual as possible (was this imposter syndrome coming through?). This resulted in, again, poorly written articles with complex concepts made more complex, moving them further from the reader’s understanding of the work. Therefore, I believe that the simpler the writing the better, for clarity and understanding by the readers. I try to think how I can explain complex concepts in the simplest way to make the work more accessible to many more readers. The experts will always ‘get’ it. My final thoughts are to celebrate the success of each and every publication and any publication milestones, be it numbers, citations or impact. With that in mind I’m off for a beer. Cheers.