GeoVerbiage

If you read "Reading #2--reading the literature ("The Literature"), you probably were wailing something along the lines of "But I just did a Google Scholar search in my own field and there are thousands of papers!  I don't have time to read all those!".  You're right.  You don't. First, the good news:  Most of those papers will not be relevant.   Now, the bad news:  You need to at least scan then to determine their relevancy. Now, the  really  bad news:  Such searches can overlook papers that are more important and relevant, and not just because your search terms weren't adequate. It's enough to make one throw in the towel.  Don't. Before I start on the topic of this blog entry, let me clarify what I mean by "accessing".  I'm not talking about the technical side.  I'm assuming you know that part.  If you don't, go to your library and make them teach you.  However, I can't avoid the old trope ...

As graduate students, we are required to read something called "The Literature".  Until I started this post, I never really cottoned to the fact that how we speak, often reverently, of The Literature actually does require the use of upper case.  It is one of the quirks of science. So, what is The Literature and why is it so important to read it?  Of course, the literature (I will revert now to a more sensible style) consists of all the books and journal papers--sometimes even commentaries--written on the general topic of our chosen subdiscipline within geology.  This is one area where I'm reluctant to use my own career as an example because my work has incorporated elements of just about every topic in geology except, I think, metamorphic rocks and structure, and not a few elements of biology, atmospheric science, and oceanography.  So for the time being, let's assume I've spent my career working on eolian sedimentary rocks and associated deposits (my curren...

This blog covers mostly reviewing papers, and a bit on writing papers.  But a post I saw in Facebook requires a discussion about reading scientific papers.  I covered this a little bit under "reviewing", but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to weigh in a bit more. There is a wonderful column from Science  that is worth linking to:   column here I remember those days. First, not all scientific articles are so bad.  But some surely are.  A lesson to be gained from reading such papers is how not  to write! Second, to my astonishment, almost 30 years after its publication, people still seem to be using my book, Understanding Paleoclimate from the pre-Quaternary Geologic Record  (Columbia University Press).  It is badly out of date.  It was partly out of date the day it appeared.  So why isn't it being completely ignored now?  I think it's because I have never fallen into the temptation of trying to sound erudite.  To...

Bearing in mind that this blog is mostly directed at grad students, postdocs, and earlier-career professionals, I pick up here on some of my thoughts about writing.  Writing a scientific paper is one of those things that we should have been taught systematically, but often were not.  Often it's kind of hit or miss; we pick things up along the way, during thesis revision, etc.  So if you are feeling a bit uncertain about some aspects of writing, this blog will help, I hope. One of the things you have almost certainly been taught, or already picked up on, is that scientific papers are expected to have a certain form of organization.  The basic elements are Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion.  In geology, if the length of the paper makes it easier, we commonly have a section titled "Previous Work" between the Introduction and the Methods.  We also may have a separate section for "Conclusions", which follows the Discussion.   I th...

You've all heard about shingling and what it is.  As a reviewer, you can be very helpful to the editor by pointing out that a paper is a shingle.  Keep in mind that, even in specialty journals, the editors may come from a wide variety of backgrounds and may not be familiar with all aspects of the literature.  At high-load journals, it may be very difficult if not impossible for the editors to do the legwork--which can take a couple of hours or more per paper--to figure out if a paper is a shingle, so they really are dependent on the reviewers. Before I start, though, let me define shingling for those of you who might not be that familiar with the concept.  Shingling is publishing basically the same paper as one you've published before, but with some new data added, resulting in, at best, a mere expansion of already-reached conclusions. Not all papers that have new data added to old data are shingles.  I have seen many papers that add new data to previous wor...

This post is in response to a couple more reader queries.  To paraphrase, the queries were: (1) If I can't understand a paper, how do I know it's the author's fault or my lack of comprehension? (2) How do I tell the difference between things I as a reviewer think the paper should have done, either by necessity or to meet standards (mine, the authors', or the journal's) versus general betterment of the work?  (1)  Aside from the case of poor English, which was addressed in Reviewing #8, there are a couple of reasons this might happen.  One is if you were sent a paper that is so far outside of your expertise you cannot possibly give it a critical review.  It happens, but I do think reviewers sometimes turn down invitations too quickly on this basis.  Most authors want their audience to be larger than the handful of people in their specialty, so having reviewers who aren't in the center of a particular field can be very useful to editors.  But ...

Note:  Since writing the essay below, I've learned that it is considered rude in some quarters to suggest that a paper be read by a native English speaker because it makes the assumption that the author is not a native.  I think this criticism is a bit off base because if you have any sensitivity to how various non-native English speakers speak English, it's pretty easy to pick up on what their native language is--even with seeing their names.  Having said that, the more tactful approach would be to point out that it is not in idiomatic English and ask the author to edit it accordingly.  Then it's up to the author to figure out what to do. If editors were paid, I'd just suggest the editors do the necessary editing, but they usually aren't, so that' a big ask.  Of course, if the English is so poor that a paper cannot be understood, then the reviewer/editor has no choice but to point that out (this goes for native English speakers, too, by the way).  If you a...