Grabbing pebbles out of my shoes: Thoughts of a grumpy old researcher on publishing research
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MATERIAL MATTERS
Grabbing pebbles out of my shoes: Thoughts of a grumpy old researcher on publishing research By Enrico Traversa
W
hen I started my career in materials research in the late 1980s, publishing a research paper was a completely different experience compared to today. While the manuscript was typed using a word processor on a computer (the manuscript for my thesis was actually typed on a typewriter!), graphs were drawn by hand, photographs were developed in a dark room, and big packages with manuscripts were sent by post to the journals. Submitting a paper involved a great deal of work and took much more time. The journal to publish a paper was selected based on prestige and reputation, not on impact factor (IF). Prestige and IF have diverged over time: what were considered prestigious journals are now considered of lesser importance because they do not have large IFs. After a manuscript was submitted, it was sent directly to referees and was not screened by editors beforehand. The
hard and time-consuming preparation of a manuscript led to better care and quality, resulting in a much-reduced number of submissions. Italy, in the materials field, was very provincial at that time, and my mentors discouraged me from submitting papers to the most prestigious journals. They argued that papers from Italy were usually rejected in an unfair way, while papers from important international professors were easily accepted even when weak. A rejection was a serious issue at that time, both in terms of time lost and for the injured pride. But I was not convinced by this argument, and when I thought I had a very good paper, I was willing to submit it to important journals. It took a lot of time and discussions to convince my professor to submit a paper to the Journal of the American Ceramic Society, but when finally I did, it was accepted and published.1
Citation/ Abstract References
(2017) doi:10.1515/089
On another paper,2 Professor Mario Arpaia, who unfortunately prematurely passed away many years ago, told me that its publication happened only thanks to my “capa tosta” (stubbornness). I submitted another paper to Corrosion against the opinions of my seniors, and six months later, I received a small card with the response: Accept as is!3 I understood that if you had a very good paper, you had an honest chance of having it published, even if you were Italian. The comments from the reviewers that I received were, in general, tough but useful, thoughtful, and constructive; the final result was an improved manuscript. The main task of the editors then was to accept papers, not to reject them; so, there was the possibility of improving the manuscript, and minor mistakes could be addressed with the help of reviewers. This landscape is now significantly altered, probably forever, due to two major reasons: the dramatic increase in the number of submissions and the pressure to publish in journals with a high IF; and one minor reason, rapid publication. The figure on the next page shows the number of papers indexed in t
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