Deadlines, online forms, permissions, and more, oh my!

This past week was pretty ugly.  As previously mentioned about 700 pages of copy-edited manuscript await my attention, and hardly had TPP begun that the page proofs of a journal article show up and the editor wants it back in 72 hours.  And that wasn't all folks!  No, he wanted a 250 word non-technical summary in English and a copy in French, Spanish, or Portuguese!  The great utility of the internet is that it allowed communication with my co-author in southern India, and she had a friend who speaks Portuguese!  Fantastic!  And then the gummint restarted and the Oct. 18 grant proposal deadline became a reality.  Yikes!  About 50 emails to and from collaborators, a couple of dozen sign-ons  to construct the proposal, and then make all the necessary (?) changes, and emails with campus grant people, and campus accountants, and the rest, and somehow it got done, and then NSF gives us a 5 day deadline extension (including the weekend), but all this still has to go through campus routing of permissions anyways, a process that started on Friday PM so now it's only a mild rush not a hell-bent, ghost-rider on a motorcycle rush.  Of course classes were taught, an exam was written (but it will be carefully checked on Monday just in case), plants were sent to a colleague, and student matters dealt with (You want to study in the Virgin Islands because ...?).  My book editor emailed to ask how it was coming; it wasn't, but now back to that.  It was not a fun week.  Any more of this and TPP will think about retiring.  Oh yes, he is thinking about it. OK, he will think about retiring sooner. 

300 dpi

300 dpi - 300 dots per inch; the minimum resolution limits for a publishable figure according to my publisher.  The problem is that you can find a great many illustrations and images that look just great on a computer screen but are about 75-95 dpi, one-third the required resolution.  To increase the resolution you can reduce the size, and suddenly a decent sized image gets really tiny.  And when you're looking for very particular botanical images it gets much harder.  Not just everyone happens to have an image of a hornwort with sporophytes laying around. And if they do have a good image, one rarely used, why they very reasonably think that it's use can command a pretty good price, which works out very well for both of us except the entire illustration budget for TPP's book is zilch.  That's right, zilch, so without the remarkable generosity of colleagues and people who post great images on the Creative Commons, us publishing paupers would be toast.  Got a good image of Takakia or Tmesipteris, let TPP know.  TPP would mention the program used to generate these images and plates for publication, but it might be mistaken for an endorsement.  While a very amazing program in terms of quality of the results, it is without question the most non-intuitive computer program TPP has ever used, and he's used a lot of them. 

Cover of the Rolling Stone

Only once before has the Phactor gotten the cover picture for a scientific journal where the cover illustration relates or is taken from one of the articles in that volume. But the 2nd cover picture is on its way according to the journal's editor by way of asking for some text describing the image. No question about it, you have to buy five copies for your mother, although these days it'll just be a pdf file. In the grand scheme of things, this counts for very little; it's just kind of fun. Still you have to have at least 5 cover photos before you can even be considered for the centerfold!

Where do you publish and why?

Seeking a large number of illustrations for a book has been a very informative, but frustrating process. The lesson is simple. Not-for-profit journals published by scientific societies have in every single case given permission for use of the images from their publications, and of course, full attribution is given. For-profit journals have in every single case wanted payment for use of an image, even if the authors have given me permission. So the question is simple, do you want your research, your scholarship to be used or not? Of course, there is another tradeoff. Some of the most prestigious of scientific journals are for-profit publishers, and while it may indicate that your work is the latest and most important, and you may receive more notoriety for publishing in such venues, you work isn't going to be used as widely as you may wish. Now of course this is all because the publisher of my book is also an academic publisher and the budget for illustrations is basically nil, and no question about it, both the publisher and author hope the sales will result in some economic gain. So you begin to wonder what is fair usage?

Permission granted to go crazy

The worst part of writing a well-illustrated book is seeking and obtaining permissions to use various figures and images. It's a nightmare of details and paperwork. Scientific colleagues are the most cooperative, although there will be some drinks to buy. For profit scientific journals are the worst. To use one little figure from a paper published in a well known journal would cost me $93.75, which is $93.75 more than my entire illustration budget. There is such a thing as "fair usage" which is a wonderful morass for the ethically challenged. Looking at whole arrays of images accessible on line is such an amazing convenience, although you do get surprised sometime as the Phactor pointed out some time back. Then it was holly; today it was moss. But then you find the perfect image, and can't find the owner to ask their permission. The Wikimedia Creative Commons is proving a life-saver; good thing they aren't asking for drinks. Or you try to track down who owns the rights to something published 50 or more years ago, following the lineage of acquisitions, only to run into a dead end. So the day was spent redoing several figures to use alternative images from authors who provided them for my use. Oh, thank you! Progress is being made, but still many to go, lots of emails sent, awaiting many replies, and most of the remaining problems are more difficult. Need to get this done, but need some time off too. Getting to the point where fewer illustrations is looking better except then everything down stream would have to be renumbered. Ahhhhh! Time for a cocktail hour.

New Publication Record!

The Phactor is not and never has been a prolific publisher; years of data seem to easily distill into a single table or figure, but my publication record now spans 35 years. The Phactor and a most terrific collaborator submitted a manuscript to a major journal in our field on 11 May 2011 and it was accepted pending only trivial revisions on 24 May 2011. Today, 27 May, the revised manscript was resubmitted, and it's final acceptance could come within a week. This is simply amazing, a new record for certain, and it does show how electronic communications have speeded up the process. Everything used to have to be mailed to the editor, and then the review copies mailed to reviewers, after the reviewers were contacted and agreed to read the paper. Even in an efficient operation, this could take 3 weeks, and if you got an acceptance with minor revisions in 2-3 months you figured that wasn't too bad. Of course any changes meant retyping the manuscript. Remember typing? Cutting and pasting? No, of course, not. Who does? The Phactor lets students play with an old electric typewriter every now and again, just for grins, and my first pc is stored in my lab for reasons not altogether clear, but mostly to show people how utterly primitive they were. Turn it on and up comes a blinking cursor. Now what, they ask? Indeed. So in some respects this certainly represents progress.
Now in total honesty, our collaboration was arranged in 2007, and the specimens were collected while doing tropical field work with another collaborator that fall. The field work was published in 2009. But we got about 90% of the project done during my sabbatical visit, and the last 10% then took another 18 months. The manuscript was half done 2 years ago, but one thing and another kept us from finishing things up. So in a total start to finish sense, maybe this wasn't such a record. The field work didn't set any records either because it was based upon two previous seasons of field work dating back 7-8 years. Lastly you only truly appreciate the easy ones because of all the hard ones, the ones you had to battle with editors and reviewers to get published, the ones that took you so long to do the work and so long to prepare. Ah, well, another revision and another submission (June 1 deadline) await. But now off to the field where a project started in 2006 is still underway, and only now are the first results pending publication. So why do we do this? Well, it's actually interesting and intellectually stimulating; we do learn things. And it's our job to teach science students to do science, and mostly that's done by what is still an apprenticeship approach, working with a "master", who must be actively involved in science to provide the environment in which the student can learn. But it's still fun to see your name in print.