How Does Research Go From the Lab to a Journal?

This week marks the end of most of the work for the first chapter of my dissertation research. Tomorrow I will head to the laser lab one more time to finish processing the last of my samples, and I will walk out having processed 641 total microparticles. Although the longest stretch of my research is done, I will need to measure the particles to finish collecting the data, and I expect the measurement process to take one or two days. Therefore, I'm throwing myself a mini-celebration for ending 18-months of research. 

Since the first part of my dissertation is nearly finished, I thought I would focus this week's post on how scientists translate their research into a manuscript that they send off for publication. The writing and publication process can be rather lengthy, but I also think its rather misunderstood by the general public, and recently people have gone on social media tangents about how fast science is moving and the science is therefore flawed. So let's talk about the steps to publishing a paper, report, review, etc. in a journal.

Step 1: Writing a manuscript. This step is often rather straight-forward, but a scientist or a team of collaborators decide which journal they would like to try and publish their research in, and then write a manuscript following the journal's guidelines. Guidelines may include word counts, font sizes, margins, sections of the manuscript, and small items regarding formatting. Then (or concurrently) the team writes the manuscript and they may divide parts of the manuscript between different individuals. Some team members may be responsible for figures or statistics, while others may be tracking references throughout the paper. I haven't had the aforementioned experiences, because when Dr. Ingels and I write together, we send each other finished sections of the paper and then we go back and forth with edits and ideas until we come to a decision. Importantly, at least in my opinion, every member of the team who is on the paper should have a voice in the writing process.

Step 2: Submitting a manuscript. After writing the manuscript and checking that it meets the journal guidelines, the corresponding author--the one who will receive emails from curious scientists and will take care of the paperwork aspects--who is often the first author, will complete the online submission process. The submission process itself can be tedious, as the corresponding author completes a lot of steps, answers a lot of questions about the research, and often has to fill out information that is already listed in the paper (such as permits, grants, etc.). Depending on the journal, the corresponding author may also be asked to suggest reviewers who will evaluate the paper for the journal. Although the journal is not required to take your suggestions, it is imperative that the corresponding author picks individuals who will be unbiased in the review process.

Step 3: Manuscript review. Once a journal receives your manuscript, an editor takes over to facilitate the review stage. The editor will often evaluate the paper first to determine if it meets the scope of the journal and to see if the work is worth publishing (this can be a gray area). If the editor is amenable to the work, they will assign the paper to multiple [usually] anonymous reviewers, who will read the paper and write feedback to the authors. The reviewers will also provide a level of support for the paper, which helps determine if the work should be published. This process can be quite long, depending on the number of papers the journal receives and where a scientist's paper is in the queue.

Step 4: Editing the manuscript. Once the corresponding author gets their paper back from the editor and review team, they may be required to make edits or respond to comments and submit a new version of the manuscript. Steps three and four of the process can be cyclical, and a paper may go through reviews and edits multiple times before publication. This is also the phase where the corresponding author learns whether or not the manuscript is publishable in the journal; the editor sends what I call the publication notice, which states if the manuscript will be accepted without edits, accepted with edits, or rejected.

Step 5: Publication. If an author's paper is accepted for publication, there are a number of little steps that occur before publication happens. The manuscript gets sent to a formatting editor who will change the way the manuscript looks so that it is representative of other papers in the journal, and then the author will receive a proof of their paper to check for any incidental errors in the formatting process. This last step is really crossing the t's and dotting the i's of the paper. The journal may create a digital page for the publication before the paper is published, which means that individuals can see that the journal accepted a paper but cannot read the work just yet. I liken this strategy to clickbait, though I do appreciate the buzz it can generate among scientists about new work that is about to emerge.

Altogether, these five steps represent perhaps 4-5 months of time on top of the time the researcher(s) spent conducting the work. And while the process is long, it feels oh so rewarding to see your name on a published manuscript and then to see that someone has cited your work. So here's to the next 4-5 months while Dr. Ingels and I work through this process for the research I just finished.