Writing #6--Where to publish your work
This post doesn't exactly fit into the theme of the rest of this blog, but it's something I feel compelled to write anyway. I recently was asked to provide expert opinion about two colleagues for the purposes of an award, in one case, and promotion, in the other. The nominee for the award is very well known in his/her field. Everyone thinks the world of him/her. The award is for outstanding research only. When I got into the CV, I thought, wow, this is going to be easy. The nominee has lots of peer-reviewed publications. When I got further into it, I was surprised that more of them were not in peer-reviewed journals. The rest were in various kinds of publications, no doubt all peer reviewed, but not the most rigorously peer reviewed. Many were in conference or special volumes. Then came the real shock. A person of his/her stature and longevity should have a huge number of citations. In fact, the most highly cited papers were old (from the 70s and 80s), and there