That pesky manuscript is off my desk

What a great feeling it is to submit a manuscript! It is out of my hands for a little bit — hopefully the reviewers think it is worthy of publication (or, more correctly, worthy of being revised to ultimately be published).

This particular paper was the last chapter from my Ph.D. research and, although it was perfectly fine for the dissertation, it needed some refining and tweaking to get ready for a journal. The dissertation version was rather long because I was being as comprehensive as I could with the study — presenting all the results, all the data in tables and figures, and so on.

To get it ready for a journal I needed to significantly shorten many of the sections. This particular study involved some analytical work and in the dissertation version I write at length about all the mundane (yet important) sample collection and preparation aspects. But for a paper, unless the point of the paper is to present new and different methods, I can simply refer to previous work.

Those kinds of revisions weren’t that difficult or time-consuming. The revisions that have consumed way more time had to do with the implications of the results and our interpretations of those results. Everybody enjoys (i.e., cites) papers that have interesting insights tucked away in the discussion sections … something to take away and perhaps apply elsewhere or cause you to look at other rocks differently. These sections of a paper are the most difficult to write … it requires you to separate yourself from all the detail. I think we have some interesting aspects for people to consider — we’ll see what the reviewers think.

What is this paper about?

Well … you’ll have to wait with me as my peers comb through the paper. Reviewing papers correctly and diligently requires significant effort and time. In the meantime, here’s the Wordle cloud for what was submitted:

Same rocks as these — but different scale, different methods, different questions. Geology is awesome.

Oh, look what else happened today — what a day!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~