Proposal and Journal Writing Experiences from the perspective of a graduate student

1. Proposal and Journal Writing Experiences from the perspective of a graduate student

2. Outline for Today • Walk through a 3 year proposal example • Received funding • Share experiences in writing journal articles • Discuss how to properly review journal articles from my perspective

3. Proposal Writing – its tedious! • Process will be long, but worth it • Typically takes on the order of weeks to a few months • Dependent upon the duration of the proposal call you are after • Will take several iterations to get things as perfectly written as possible. • Know your audience and your limitations • i.e., balance showing what you know and what would be common sense to the review board • Do not try to propose more work than you can handle

4. Outlining the Proposal • Dependent upon page limitations • Should have the following • Abstract • Introduction to the problem • Related Work • Proposed Work and Technical Approach • Milestones, Deliverables, Responsibilities • Relation to organization proposing toward • Current and Pending • References • Budget Explanation • Letters of support from partners – when necessary

5. Proposal sent in, what’s next • Waiting is the hardest part… • This can take several months to up to a year in some cases • Need to be proactive if you have not heard from the funding organization to touch base and see how far along your proposal is in the system • The review • Constructive criticism will be provided when your proposal returns • Be prepared to trim your budget

6. Experiences Writing Journal Articles • Key points when writing a journal article are: • Targeting the correct journal • Audience, budget, turn around period • Is this research new and contributive to the science? • How much content should we provide? • 1 article vs 2? • What are the authors we should include? What order? • What format will you write your article in? Is there a template? • e.g., Word, LaTeX, etc. AMS: http://www.ametsoc.org/pubs/journals/submitmanuscript.html AGU: http://www.agu.org/pubs/authors/manuscript_tools/journals/manuscript_prep.shtml NWA: http://www.nwas.org/digest/instructions.php

7. Handling Reviews • Reviewers will be critical of you work, so what is the best way to handle critical reviews? • How do I go about responding to reviews? • What time frame can I expect the re-reviews to come back?

8. Review Examples I have received/seen… • This is a great paper, but here are several things that are still missing. • After careful consideration I regret to inform you that your topic does not present a significant enough advance in geophysics for this journal. • Did not even get to reviewers in this case • Two of the reviewers accept work with minor revisions, but the editor and the third reviewer give you a major revisions notice • Editor then sends you a journal article on how to write good journal articles

9. Review Examples I have seen… • Reviewer A and C like your work, Reviewer B rejects your work, the editor brings in two more reviewers and Reviewer D accepts as is and reviewer E rejects it. • What do you do here?

10. Reviewing Articles • Typically start to receive reviews once you’ve published one journal article • Multi layered system • Chief Editor • Editors • Associate editors • Reviewers • Any type of editor position is either appointed or invited

11. Reviewing Articles • Read through them at least twice, with some time period between your reviews. This allows you to: • Think about their approach • Consider suggestions for improving the research • Consider professional and constructive responses to the points you might have issues with in their manuscript • If you are young in your career you probably want to remain an anonymous reviewer.