God and Nature Spring 2021
across the pond |
|
Boring
By Mike Clifford
A recent event has caused my attention to turn again to the peer review process—a topic I shared some thoughts on three years ago (1). With lockdown and travel restrictions continuing to inhibit the opportunity to do new research, many academic journals have seen an increase in submission of articles for publication. This, in turn, has generated more requests to review articles. Unfortunately, I am becoming increasingly familiar with paper rejection emails, but a recent one caused me more than the usual level of disappointment and a little exasperation. I include the review here in full.
Dear Author,
I revised your whole manuscript and found found some mistakes like your description is boring. Please see the latest cited papers in 2019-2020 and update your description section. I found few grammatical and typographical error whole of the manuscript. I will recommend before final submission carefully update by recent papers in description section and also check all the grammatical and typographical error whole of the manuscript. Also follow the journal guideline for referencing, figure, table legend, etc.
Leaving aside the poor grammar and, sadly, not ironic typographical errors, my hackles were raised to new heights by the allegation that the description in the paper was boring. No one likes to be called a bore— Oscar Wilde was entirely correct when he is reported to have said: “A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.” (Although perhaps the quote should be attributed to Nietzsche, who wrote: “I hate who steals my solitude without, in exchange, offering me true company.”) Maybe I should feel sorry for the reviewer, who, no doubt, settled down to read my paper with the anticipation of some amusement or at least a little diversion from the lockdown experience. I expect that, like me, the reviewer will have exhausted the box sets available on their streaming service of choice and thought to themselves that the latest article by Clifford et al. would be just the ticket to a top-class evening’s entertainment. How wrong they were!
The paper in question discussed the association between indoor air pollutants and pneumonia in children in Nigeria, so it had all the elements of a gripping yarn—an exotic location, heart-wrenching life and death medical emergencies, coughing, wide-eyed kids, anxious, tearful parents, and so on. How could I have failed to make the story interesting? After this crushing review, I’m pessimistic that Netflix will apply for the rights to make the movie.
Regular readers will know that I’ve tried to make my lectures engaging, with the inclusion of storytelling, drama, and music (2). I’m grateful to the thoughtful students who have included the valuable advice in their ‘evaluation of teaching’ surveys: “Make it more interesting”. I’ve lost count of the times when these pearls of wisdom have turned me away from the temptation to make lectures less interesting. I’m eternally in their debt.
Perhaps my academic writing could do with some pizzazz. Or not. To be honest, I’ve taught my research students that academic writing shouldn’t be particularly exciting or dramatic or contain any surprises. If a journal published a murder-mystery story, the introduction would review similar solved cases, the methodology section may add a little spice with detailed descriptions of forensic science methods, interview techniques, and so on, but probably with more details than the average reader may require. The results would be presented in a calm, logical way, without any of the usual red herrings or romantic side-plots. Finally, the conclusions would be drawn from the body (pun intended) of the paper and may provide a useful summary for any readers who skipped the odd paragraph. However, right at the top of the page, the abstract would have given the whole game away, making it unlikely that most readers bothered with the thing much at all. (So, perhaps not that unlike many regular journal articles after all!)
One suggestion I give to my students is that the introduction to their reports or journal papers should set the scene for the rest of the article and build a case for their work, whetting the reader’s appetite for what’s to come. I want readers to think to themselves: “There’s been all this great work on ‘x’ and ‘y’, but no one has really taken the next step. Wouldn’t it be great if someone could do ‘z’?” Of course, the paper should then tell the reader that they will find ‘z’ described in the remainder of the paper.
I cite Peter’s splendid address to the crowd at Pentecost in Acts chapter 2 as an example of how to write an introduction. Having discussed the Davidic literature surrounding the Messiah, the crowd eagerly ask Peter, “what shall we do?” to which he probably replied, “I’m glad you asked that…”. But, thinking about it, there were probably a few in the crowd who found the whole thing boring.
References
1. Clifford M. An Alternative View of Peer Review. God and Nature. Summer 2018
2. Clifford M. Using Storytelling and Drama in Engineering Lectures. God and Nature. Winter 2021
Mike Clifford is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Nottingham. His research interests are in combustion, biomass briquetting, cookstove design, and other appropriate technologies. He has published over 80 refereed conference and journal publications and has contributed chapters to books on composites processing and on appropriate and sustainable technologies.
By Mike Clifford
A recent event has caused my attention to turn again to the peer review process—a topic I shared some thoughts on three years ago (1). With lockdown and travel restrictions continuing to inhibit the opportunity to do new research, many academic journals have seen an increase in submission of articles for publication. This, in turn, has generated more requests to review articles. Unfortunately, I am becoming increasingly familiar with paper rejection emails, but a recent one caused me more than the usual level of disappointment and a little exasperation. I include the review here in full.
Dear Author,
I revised your whole manuscript and found found some mistakes like your description is boring. Please see the latest cited papers in 2019-2020 and update your description section. I found few grammatical and typographical error whole of the manuscript. I will recommend before final submission carefully update by recent papers in description section and also check all the grammatical and typographical error whole of the manuscript. Also follow the journal guideline for referencing, figure, table legend, etc.
Leaving aside the poor grammar and, sadly, not ironic typographical errors, my hackles were raised to new heights by the allegation that the description in the paper was boring. No one likes to be called a bore— Oscar Wilde was entirely correct when he is reported to have said: “A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.” (Although perhaps the quote should be attributed to Nietzsche, who wrote: “I hate who steals my solitude without, in exchange, offering me true company.”) Maybe I should feel sorry for the reviewer, who, no doubt, settled down to read my paper with the anticipation of some amusement or at least a little diversion from the lockdown experience. I expect that, like me, the reviewer will have exhausted the box sets available on their streaming service of choice and thought to themselves that the latest article by Clifford et al. would be just the ticket to a top-class evening’s entertainment. How wrong they were!
The paper in question discussed the association between indoor air pollutants and pneumonia in children in Nigeria, so it had all the elements of a gripping yarn—an exotic location, heart-wrenching life and death medical emergencies, coughing, wide-eyed kids, anxious, tearful parents, and so on. How could I have failed to make the story interesting? After this crushing review, I’m pessimistic that Netflix will apply for the rights to make the movie.
Regular readers will know that I’ve tried to make my lectures engaging, with the inclusion of storytelling, drama, and music (2). I’m grateful to the thoughtful students who have included the valuable advice in their ‘evaluation of teaching’ surveys: “Make it more interesting”. I’ve lost count of the times when these pearls of wisdom have turned me away from the temptation to make lectures less interesting. I’m eternally in their debt.
Perhaps my academic writing could do with some pizzazz. Or not. To be honest, I’ve taught my research students that academic writing shouldn’t be particularly exciting or dramatic or contain any surprises. If a journal published a murder-mystery story, the introduction would review similar solved cases, the methodology section may add a little spice with detailed descriptions of forensic science methods, interview techniques, and so on, but probably with more details than the average reader may require. The results would be presented in a calm, logical way, without any of the usual red herrings or romantic side-plots. Finally, the conclusions would be drawn from the body (pun intended) of the paper and may provide a useful summary for any readers who skipped the odd paragraph. However, right at the top of the page, the abstract would have given the whole game away, making it unlikely that most readers bothered with the thing much at all. (So, perhaps not that unlike many regular journal articles after all!)
One suggestion I give to my students is that the introduction to their reports or journal papers should set the scene for the rest of the article and build a case for their work, whetting the reader’s appetite for what’s to come. I want readers to think to themselves: “There’s been all this great work on ‘x’ and ‘y’, but no one has really taken the next step. Wouldn’t it be great if someone could do ‘z’?” Of course, the paper should then tell the reader that they will find ‘z’ described in the remainder of the paper.
I cite Peter’s splendid address to the crowd at Pentecost in Acts chapter 2 as an example of how to write an introduction. Having discussed the Davidic literature surrounding the Messiah, the crowd eagerly ask Peter, “what shall we do?” to which he probably replied, “I’m glad you asked that…”. But, thinking about it, there were probably a few in the crowd who found the whole thing boring.
References
1. Clifford M. An Alternative View of Peer Review. God and Nature. Summer 2018
2. Clifford M. Using Storytelling and Drama in Engineering Lectures. God and Nature. Winter 2021
Mike Clifford is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Nottingham. His research interests are in combustion, biomass briquetting, cookstove design, and other appropriate technologies. He has published over 80 refereed conference and journal publications and has contributed chapters to books on composites processing and on appropriate and sustainable technologies.