There is a lot of variation among journals in this regard. My first papers
in the marine sciences appeared in the Journal of the Fisheries Research
Board of Canada, now called the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic
Sciences, which was for many years a leading journal in the field
(subsequently brought to its knees by the Ottawa mafia). It was a pleasure
to write for and the editor, Cam Stevenson, loved to go to meetings and get
to know his authors. They were flexible, and created new sections (such as
Perspectives) to accomodate useful papers that were not traditional.
I have however found that less distinguished journals are more likely to put
on airs and make pretensions of being "scientific" - I try to avoid these,
but have had some nasty experiences with journals that were asked to publish
conference proceedings, such as the one I referred to a couple of days ago
(cited below) which objected to my using "cute" and "fuzzy" instead of
"charismatic".
An example of the harm this can do is reflected in an incident whre I was
invited to be the opening speaker at a mini-symposium on the ecosystem
effects of marine pollution. I gave an overview of the topic, then there was
a series of case studies, and finally a summation by another invited
speaker. When the papers wre submitted for publication the editor accepted
all the case studies but rejected my talk and the summation on the grounds
that they did not contain any data, and "this journal has standards". The
result was that a coherent program was reduced to a collection of unrelated
research papers.
A subsequent editor of the same journal agreed to publish the proceedings of
a symposium on the ecosystem effects of fishing, but the symposium was so
popular that the number of papers exceeded the publication budget and and
many had to be rejected simply because of lack of space. I suggested that
the overflow be published on the web, but he sniffed that web-based
publications are worthless and he would not stoop to that. (He did however
publish the paper I coauthored, which can be found along with most of my
other papers on the web at http://bill.silvert.org)
I think that this kind of attitude reflects a much more general social
phenomenon. The priests who guard the temple of science are like
mediocrities everywhere, they feel a need to assert their status constantly.
Those who are self-confident can afford to be more flexible.
Bill Silvert
----- Original Message -----
From: "David M. Lawrence" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: segunda-feira, 18 de Janeiro de 2010 21:19
Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] now I've seen it all
I'm well aware of the pressures to write badly -- bad writers who don't
realize how bad they are tend to make bad editors who want everyone else
to sink to their level. A lot of the conflict is the pressure to maintain
the elite priesthood versus one of the alleged purposes of science, i.e.,
to communicate ideas and data. Members of the priesthood do not usually
realize that their efforts generally do more to undermine science than to
promote it.
Look at the often negative treatment given to excellent
scientists/communicators by their scientific colleagues. It's not unusual
for someone who writes a wildly popular (and informative) book, or hosts a
wildly popular (and informative) to get a hostile reaction from purist
colleagues.
Don't get me started about scientists who think it's beneath them to speak
to their public information staff, much less the press as a whole. Sure,
journalists screw up, but they don't screw up all the time and they would
screw up less if they had more cooperation from the source. Besides, given
the source of most of the research funding in many disciplines, scientists
have an obligation to reach out to the people paying the tab -- i.e., THE
PEOPLE.
I offer an anecdote about the discomfort too many in the sciences have
with speaking in terms understandable by the masses. My first book,
"Upheaval from the Abyss: Ocean Floor Mapping and the Earth Science
Revolution," seemed a natural choice for a review in Eos (Transactions of
the American Geophysical Union). The editors declined to review it
because it wasn't "technical enough."
Now, I've been attending scientific meetings off-and-on for three decades
now, and I know what kinds of stories scientists tell each other about
themselves and their colleagues once they've knocked a few back. I have to
say I found the editors' reasoning rather at variance with the facts.
Later,
Dave
On 1/18/2010 4:42 AM, William Silvert wrote:
Perhaps then David has managed to escape some of the pressures put on
scientists to write badly. On several occasions I have been accused of
writing scientific papers in a journalistic style and told that this is
not acceptable. Although my reply is usually along the lines of, "Aren't
journalists the people who are forced to take courses on how to write?",
this never seems to sink in. On one occasion my lab director even
sniffed that a paper I had written read like something that might appear
in Scientific American. I was flattered but forced to change it.
My favourite example was the time I wrote a paper in which I argued that
we have to teach the public that there is more to biodiversity than cute
harp seals and fuzzy pandas, and the reviewer complained that if I knew
how to write a scientific paper I would know that words like "cute" and
"fuzzy" are unacceptable, and I should have referred to "charismatic
megafauna". I even had a T-shirt made up with the message "I brake for
charismatic megafauna". Fortunately a few papers I wrote on applications
of fuzzy set theory to ecology made it into print.
I once wrote a paper presenting a general theory of managing
multi-species fisheries, and was informed (see, passive voice!) that the
journal required that the Latin names of the species had to be included.
Given the generality of the theory, I provided the names Squid pro quo
and Dolus fictus, but was eventually forced to use the generic names
"species A" and "species B".
Bill Silvert
--
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David M. Lawrence | Home: (804) 559-9786
7471 Brook Way Court | Fax: (804) 559-9787
Mechanicsville, VA 23111 | Email: [email protected]
USA | http: http://fuzzo.com
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"All drains lead to the ocean." -- Gill, Finding Nemo
"We have met the enemy and he is us." -- Pogo
"No trespassing
4/17 of a haiku" -- Richard Brautigan
