Category: opinion

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Email paralysis?

Science can not operate in a vacuum for very long, and substantial scientific progress is only possible when communication between scientists is efficient and effective. This has always been the case – scientists have always communicated in person at conferences and across distances through letters. Recently, of course, the rate of information exchange has increased exponentially compared to our Victorian-era forebears. Years from now when our chapter of scientific history is written, I am positive that historians will attribute the current rate of scientific advance to exceptional communication technologies.

Email, of course, will play no small part in that explanation. Email has changed a great deal since the days of ELM and PINE when fewer people were using it and getting a message in our inbox was sometimes even a novelty. Today inboxes overflow and explode with messages ranging from annoying spam, to trivial updates and newsletters, to urgent messages that need rapid attention. Email is a great technology, but like any technology it’s a double-edged sword. You need to control it, or it will control you.

Over the years I have fought to avoid being controlled by email and I think that I have generally won that battle. I am by no means successful all the time, and what follows is no email panacea. But I thought that I’d share a few of my methods that ensure that lines of communication flow well through my office while keeping me from pulling my hair out and declaring email bankruptcy.

Consolidate – Remember when you had one email address and that was enough? These days many of us have several email addresses ranging from professional to personal to addresses associated with some of our professional or other tasks (e.g. if you’re a journal editor, you may have a journal-specific email address). I have found that by sending all of my email to one location – I use Gmail for this – I reduce time flipping between accounts and I catch important emails sent to my secondary accounts more rapidly.

Control the pace of the game – Email is like tennis or – for Canadians – like hockey. You need to take control of the game and keep it moving at a pace that suits you. If you find that you are being overwhelmed with a torrent of emails, you need to slow the game down. Three tricks that I use (and should use more often) when I start to feel buried are: (1) only looking at my email at set times in the day; (2) using a tool like Inbox Pause that keep you from seeing email until you want to see it; and (3) not necessarily replying immediately to a message if I think that by doing so it will just result in a volley of back-and-forths.

Don’t use your inbox as a to-do list – This is always a major temptation. But in the end it just makes for a huge list of messages and tasks lost in the shuffle. Instead, have an actual to-do list in a notebook on your desk (and then archive the email), or use a system like Baydin’s Boomerang that sends messages away and then returns them when you need to act on them.

Filter – If you get update emails from your organization, or newsletters from various entities, they can quickly clog of your inbox. They are generally not the sort of thing that you need to read immediately. So use your email program to apply a filter to them and get them out of your inbox, and then take a look at that folder every now and then as you see fit.

Destroy spam – Most universities and other organizations catch some spam on the way in. However, their nets are not always stringent enough for me. Gmail is great for ditching spam, catching all sorts of excess stuff. If you find you are getting too much spam in your inbox, talk to the IT folks at your organization and/or look for efficient spam filters that can be added on to your current system.

Unsubscribe – Speaking of filtering and spam, are all of those newsletters and other subscriptions coming into your inbox really necessary? How many of them to you actually read? How many of them did you really consent to in the first place? I have personally gone on major unsubscribe binges in the past, but ultimately things just begin to pile up again. Recently I have found a service called Unroll.Me that will capture mass emails and give you the options of keeping them coming to your inbox, unsubscribing, or putting them into a daily digest. This tool has, over the past few months, helped me to unsubscribe or “roll up” over 450 newsletters (etc.). Who knew that I had that much coming into my inbox? And I suspect that I’m pretty typical.

As scientists and educators we need to communicate with each other, with our students, and with many people and organizations. But the irony is that our tools can lead to a communicative paralysis that brings everything to a grinding halt. As I alluded to above, my suggestions are  no means a road map to utopia. But doing this has helped me to reduce my general email anxiety and has let me get tasks done when they need to be done. My hope is that some of these ideas might help you to continue to develop your own system and to allow for efficient and effective communication.

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What I do when I review

I currently wear a number of hats in terms of academic publishing. I’m an author (and co-author). I am often asked to be a peer reviewer. I am the editor-in-chief of a small, but historical, regional journal. And I am an academic editor – some journals would call a similar position an associate or subject area editor – for PeerJ.

(As an aside, it should be noted that I do not get paid for any of these roles in any way. I, and other scientists, do this type of work because we feel that it is our responsibility to contribute to the process of scientific communication. Without proper and reputable avenues of communication, science would rapidly grind to a lurching halt as we each worked in isolation in our own little realm. The scientific endeavor has always relied on communication, and communication is only accomplished if it is also facilitated.)

Over the next while, in my sporadic blogging fashion, I plan to write down some of my thoughts about each of the roles that I mentioned above. Specially, I would like to write briefly about the mechanics, the philosophy, and perhaps some of the side issues that arise in each role. Today I’m beginning with the role of peer reviewer.

Peer review is the cornerstone of scientific communication. Not all of our communication as scientists is peer reviewed (e.g. most conference presentations or posters are not peer reviewed). But prior to results and analyses being entered into the permanent scientific record in the form of a journal paper, the work is reviewed by two or more independent referees.

The process of peer review has been fairly standard over the years. The reviewers receive the paper (or just the title and abstract) from a journal editor or associate editor. The potential reviewer has a preliminary look at it to see if they are able to review it. If they can and are willing to do the work, they read the manuscript carefully and provide a report back to the editor. Often the report comes with recommendations to accept as is (rare), accept with minor or major revisions, reject with an invitation to resubmit, or to outright reject. The journal editor compares the various reviews from the referees and arbitrates a final decision.

So, what do I do when I receive a request to review a paper? And how do I go about reviewing? Here are some of my thoughts in the form of do’s and don’t’s:

  • Do consider reviewing a paper when a request is sent to you. We are all busy, and sometimes we are so busy that we need to set reviewing tasks aside for awhile. But that cannot and should not be a permanent reality for a practicing scientist. As long as I am submitting papers to journals and am relying on the good graces of volunteer referees, I should be willing to do the work on the other end of the equation as well.
  • Do not review a paper if you are not qualified to do so. If the paper is out of your realm of expertise, don’t pretend that it is. Your review will not be helpful. On the other hand, there might be a reason that the editor asked you to do the review. Perhaps one portion of the paper is highly specialized and in your area. While you might not be qualified to comment on all aspects of the paper, you should be able to comment on that part. The editor should have outlined this to you in their request. But feel free to ask them if you find yourself puzzled by a request.
  • Do not review a paper if you perceive a conflict of interest. Not every editor knows every possible collaborative or collegial arrangement. If you know or suspect that there is a conflict of interest, let the editor know the details and then let them decide on your eligibility to review.
  • Do help the editor, even if you are not going to do the review. If you cannot review a paper for the reasons listed in #2 or #3, provide the editor with some alternate names of colleagues who are qualified to do the work.
  • If you accept the assignment, do be cognizant of the deadline and do your level best to meet it. Nothing is worse from an author’s point-of-view than waiting for months to get the reviews back on their paper. Nothing, that is, except for being an editor having to poke recalcitrant reviewers while also fending off increasingly irate emails from authors.
  • Do follow the journal’s specific reviewing guidelines. Not all journals are the same. All reputable journals expect scientific rigor and appropriate analysis. But there is variation beyond that (e.g., some journals look for “impact” while some do not).
  • Do review as you would wish to be reviewed. In other words, follow the golden rule of reviewing. No author wants to hear the bad news that there are flaws in their analysis or reasoning. But neither does any author want to publish a flawed manuscript. So tell it like it is. Use your expertise. But – and this is an important “but” – be respectful. Whether you are recommending accepting or rejecting the paper, give constructive and useful feedback. Note the positive aspects of the work. Explain what you think could be improved in clear terms. Be as extensive in your comments as you need to be; but never be blunt and brief to the point of being insulting. If you have taken the job on, then do a good job. A good job always entails more than six lines of halfhearted text. Be helpful, be kind, and be honest. In short, be professional.
  • Do be willing to re-review the paper if necessary. If you do end up rejecting the paper or recommending major revisions, let the editor know that you would be willing to have another look at the paper if or when the authors resubmit it. Since you now have some of the best knowledge of the state of the paper, you are among the best placed to assess the recommended changes.
  • Do record your work in your CV. You are not being paid for the work, but it is part of your contribution to the scientific community. Immediately after finishing a reviewing task, record the task (not revealing the authors’ names or other identifying information, of course) in your CV so that you don’t forget about it.
  • Do maintain confidentiality as expected. Most journals still use an anonymous (and sometimes double-blind) review system. That means that you are obliged not to reveal details of your review unless the authors and you both agree at some point. There are a few caveats to this. First, if you wish to sign your review, you can reveal yourself to the authors, but even then, you cannot discuss the details of the review with others. Some journals, such as PeerJ or F1000Research, encourage open peer review. If that’s the case and you choose to abide by that system, then the entire review process will be made public. But, even then, you must maintain confidentiality until the paper and the accompanying reviews are published. Again, be professional.
  • Do look forward to reading the paper in the literature. If you have done a good job of reviewing it, you should take some degree of pride in the outcome because you have had a (hopefully) positive influence on the direction of science.

Peer reviewing takes time and effort, but it is also a rewarding experience. Besides allowing scientists another avenue for participation in the scientific process, it also exposes us to new ideas and cutting-edge thinking. And, above all, it ensures rigor in the scientific record. So enjoy the work, learn from it, and take pride in doing a good job.

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Damn the torpedoes!

My family is probably one of the few that still receives the morning newspaper delivered to the front door. My winter morning ritual consists of braving the cold for a couple of seconds to bring in the paper and then settling down to read it at breakfast with a hot cup of tea. For some reason – likely masochistic tendencies; perhaps also because it gets my brain going – I always first turn to the editorial and letters section.

Yesterday, I was presented with this letter to the editor, and I’ll admit that it got me a bit riled up. The basic premise of the letter seems to be that contemporary conservation efforts are misguided because they seek to manage crises rather than just simply “letting nature take its course.”

Here is a relevant snippet from the letter:

As the numbers of these endangered species increase it will cause a rapid decline in their food supply ending in the long, slow death by starvation. This is also going to happen to the seal populations of the Atlantic as the environmental movement demands the removal of their major predator man [sic].

There have been 90 million species that have inhabited this planet, 99 per cent have become extinct, pushed out of existence by newer more complex, more adaptable species. This process is now seen as being unnatural and declaring every species that nature is pushing into extinction must be labeled endangered and saved even if it requires the destruction of those more complex, more adaptable species for doing what nature intended them to do.

It’s hard to know where to start with this, as there are a number of problems (including a misunderstanding of evolutionary theory and history which I won’t bother to touch on here) even within that small block of text.

Many, if not most, conservation efforts these days revolve around species and ecosystems that are highly impacted by humans. In fact, it is difficult to go anywhere on earth anymore without being able to quickly find evidence of human impact. Some people have begun to call the current geological epoch the Anthropocene in recognition of the fact that human activity is leaving an indelible mark on our planet that will be detectable for eons to come. As such, many, if not most, species in crisis are in that situation due to ongoing and systemic causes such as habitat loss, pollution, or overhunting – not because they are being supplanted by “complex, more adaptable species.” This means that even the most wildly successful conservation programs rarely accomplish a return to previous levels of species numbers, let alone burgeoning population levels that lead to mass starvation. In most cases, conservationists are working within much-reduced species geographical ranges and in degraded habitats. The reduced size of the remaining land base and the deteriorated habitat are not usually capable of sustaining previous population levels.

So, let’s talk seals, since the letter writer brought them up. “Man” is, indeed, currently a major predator. But until recently humans were not capable of killing them in numbers substantial enough to have any real impact on their populations. That has all changed, of course. The fact of the matter is that humans have been the cause of the decline and demise of many, many sea mammals through combinations of hunting, overfishing of prey, or pollution. Our exploitation of these animals needs to be regulated, not simply allowed to continue carte blanche. (Note that I am not opposed to hunting – even seal hunting – but such activity needs careful monitoring.) Since seals, and many other sea mammals, reside near the top of their respective food chains, small perturbations at those levels can cause cascading effects to other levels.

Sea otters are a great example of what can happen if we do not regulate our activities. These cute sea mammals were hunted to near extinction during the fur trade over much of the Pacific coast. Sea otters eat lots of sea urchins. Sea urchins eat lots of kelp. Extremely low numbers of otters mean high numbers of urchins and much reduced levels of kelp. The heavily urchin-grazed areas that result are called urchin barrens and are obviously radically transformed from their normal state.

Thus we humans, novel predators for sea otters in terms of evolutionary time, end up having rapid and dramatic effects that reverberate deep into the ecosystem and end up returning to bite us back. In this case urchin barrens become non-productive zones for fisheries or other activities that humans value. The only way back to some semblance of normalcy (in the absence of the return of healthy populations of sea otters or other urchin predators) would be expensive and labor-intensive work that is not feasible across vast stretches of territory – e.g. removing urchins by hand.

The reality is that conservation programs require a great deal of thought, research, and often back-breaking effort. Beyond that, such programs also require consultation not just regarding the ecology and other biological aspects of the situation, but also in terms an often-tangled complex of cultural, economic, and social parameters. This is because humans are now an integral part of virtually every single ecosystem on earth, and humans are highly invested in the natural world around them, whether they realize that or not.

When we see situations of one species supplanting another, as the letter writer alludes to, there is an off chance that it is a “natural” occurrence. But more often than not it is due to choices that we are making or have made in the past. Many such situations are due, for instance, to species from other geographical regions being transplanted into a new region by humans. Not all exotic species find a foothold, but when they do the consequences can be enormous. Ask anyone in the southern USA about kudzu.

One could argue, as the letter writer seems to be doing, that we should throw up our hands and sit back and let outcomes be the outcomes across our planet. “Damn the torpedoes!”

But, while our impact on nature is massive, we also rely on the natural world to sustain us – from the air we breath to the water we drink to the food we eat.

In the end, it’s hard to fault the public for not fully understanding the intricacy and massive effort behind conservation efforts. When we see letters like this that are obviously wrong on a number of levels, at least part of the fault lies with those of us who should be communicating with the public. But letters or articles like the one that I read with my morning tea yesterday also require responding to errors in a public fashion, which is what I hope that I have at least partially accomplished here.

Feel free to add your thoughts in the comments or elsewhere. There are many other things that I could have said, and I hope that my discussion here has been accurate. I look forward to hearing what others have to say.

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Reprints back then… but what now?

“Back in my day…”

I sort of feel like I’m saying that more and more these days. It must be a symptom of advancing age. Today that geezer sentiment was stimulated by this tweet:

For those of you who haven’t been “in the business” long enough to remember the ritual, it went something like this. I would read a paper of interest and write out various references from it that I needed to get my hands on for deeper understanding of the topic. Then I’d head to the library and do the cart-photocopier shuffle. I’d generally find all of the articles that I was after, but often one or two key papers would be missing. So I’d head back to the department mailroom and would pick up a card that looked something like this. After filling out the card and mailing it, I’d wait a few weeks and would (usually) happily find a copy of the paper in my mailbox sent to me personally from the corresponding author. Sometimes the author would have even taken the time to write a short greeting on the reprint.

Most labs maintained a stock of reprints. When you published a paper, you’d have the option of buying paper reprints in various quantities from the publisher. There was often much discussion to decide about how many you thought you’d need to purchase. If you ran out, you’d photocopy the last one to replenish your pile. Some piles would dwindle quickly. Others would just collect sad no-citation dust.

However I haven’t even thought about reprints for years now, other than occasionally stumbling across my remaining stocks of reprints occupying space in my file cabinet (which I also hardly ever venture into anymore). I haven’t been asked for a reprint in ages. I haven’t asked for a reprint in ages. In fact, I can’t even remember the last time either of those events occurred.

To some extent, this is a good thing. It means:

  • many people these days have good access to most journals, and open access is having a good effect.
  • most journals now maintain good archives of even their oldest material.
  • information is often available immediately and at our fingertips.
  • I no longer need to rely on hoping that my request gets to a corresponding author (who could have left that institution years ago), or that the author takes the time to send me the paper.
  • less paper use and happier forests.

On the other hand, there are still many places in the world, and many institutions, without adequate access to scientific literature. Even today not all journals maintain deep archives. And no library, even those that are otherwise well-stocked, subscribe to all archives of all journals. This latter point is becoming more and more the case as subscription costs rise and budgets dwindle. But we have email, and #IcanhazPDF, and open access venues – all of which should help with these issues.

I was reminded of these “on the other hand” points this week when I set out to get my hands on this paper. Surprisingly to me at least, our library only listed the paper version of this article in their stacks. So…

Once at the library, I located the journal and found that the volume was missing from the shelf. Egads! Back down the circulation desk, where I filled out a form that would send a student assistant scurrying around the library looking for the missing volume. At that point, I’d had about enough fun reliving the 90s, and even though there is a valid debate about the effects of #icanhazPDF, I made my Twitter request. Thanks to Chris MacQuarrie and the magic of the internet, the article was on its way to me in a jiffy. Later on in the day the library notified me that they’d found the truant volume…

So obviously the demise of the old paper reprint/mail system is a good thing, right? Perhaps. For the most part I agree.

However, despite what may be thought of as its shortcomings (shortcomings now due merely to technological advances), a reprint request was much more than a request for a single article. More than simply that, a request used to serve as one more thread in a network between real people. A request represented one more potential conduit to collaborative discussion. It wasn’t the paper in the mail that was important so much as it was the tangible connection to someone else with similar research interests. Thankfully things like Twitter, Google Scholar, and various other up-and-coming services help to reveal linkages and keep the conversation going for those who participate. Participation in the emerging system and getting others to do the same is what is vital. And participation is what we need to be encouraging.

The biggest tragedy of non-participation for all of us is a lack of key influences on the ongoing discussion of our craft. It’s easy to relegate nay-sayers to the dinosaur bin. But their diverse and experienced voices are vital to understand where we’ve been and where we’re going. The sunset of network building via rituals like reprint requests does not represent the end of an era as much as it reveals new and exciting possibilities for even more meaningful connections. The more ideas, data, opinions, and interpretations that we have on board, the better for all of us and the better for the progress of science.

I am fully aware that blog posts like this are the proverbial preaching to the choir. So, how do we convince our colleagues who are still not part of the emerging conversation to join with us? Reprint requests, and many of our previous network building methods, are fading away. We don’t want voices with important knowledge, wisdom, and experience to fade with them.

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#sciencespark? Or #sciencefuel?

Recently my twitter feed has had a number of #sciencespark tweets roll through it – tweets in which people describe the moment(s) in which their love for science first clicked.

Frankly, I have had trouble identifying my own #sciencespark because as far back as I can remember, I’ve always had a fascination for nature. Perhaps one tweet of the many among that hashtag that I can identify most with is this:

 

 

…because, with some variation, that’s a reasonable summary of story as well.

Many of my childhood summer days were spent outside literally and metaphorically turning over rocks to see what was underneath, or trying out the latest gadget that I had cobbled together from Dr. Zed’s instructions in Owl Magazine. At one point I even attempted (unsuccessful) mark-and-recapture experiments with grasshoppers that I caught. Besides the fact that the overall population of grasshoppers during a typical Alberta summer likely overwhelmed my meagre releases, I’m sure that the black permanent felt marker that I used to color their forewings didn’t do my research – or the grasshoppers – any favors either.

I also kept more animals in the house than you can likely imagine. These included mice, rats, hamsters, gerbils, budgies, a cockatiel, canaries, a dove, cats at various times, tropical fish, goldfish, and even a very short stint with Mexican jumping beans. Usually my family’s house was home to several of these species at once. Of course I bred many of these creatures – or, rather, they just did they will do left to their own devices – resulting in lines of cages in our hallway. Gerbils produce a lot of babies when left unchecked, as it turns out.

Mom, if you’re reading this – and really, who else reads this blog anyhow? – thanks for putting up with that!

Throughout my young life there were so many so-called #sciencesparks that I’d be hard-pressed to name only one that sent me along this trajectory. So I think I’d prefer to call this process #sciencefuel, because a spark implies the lighting of something that is not on fire. Fuel implies the maintenance of an existing flame.

My family was one that encouraged curiosity and investigation. Like I said, my mom put up with rodent cage wood shavings all over the floor. My dad would encourage my science fair work and would help me to find materials for my various other projects. They aided and abetted one of my major hobbies – fly fishing – that also required natural history knowledge in the forms of entomology and limnology. And our family spent a lot of time outside in general – on my uncle’s farm; helping (or getting in the way of) my dad with his beekeeping hobby; or camping in some pretty amazing places like the redwood forests of California, Death Valley, Jasper, or the west coast of Vancouver Island.

These activities, and many others, represented ongoing additions of fuel to the innate fire if inquiry that I believe most kids naturally have in them. In other words, I suspect that for most people it takes more than a single moment to drive a passion for anything, including science. In the case of science it takes engaged adults, encouragement and opportunity to read widely, permission to just explore and make a mess, and good resources (e.g. books, magazines, museums, national parks, community programs, etc.). Kids who are provided with this #sciencefuel on a steady and continual basis will develop into inquisitive and broad-minded adults.

Of course, even with regularly dropping another log into the innate fire, not every kid is going to specifically become a scientist. But every kid who grows up in this atmosphere will become someone who is capable of – and who enjoys – making an honest inquiry into the things that truly interest them and into phenomena that they are tuned to observe around them. Ultimately, these are the kind of people that our world needs more of, particularly as we face myriad growing challenges.

So if you have children of your own, or know children, or have opportunities to take your science or other passion to children, make the most of it. Add some #sciencefuel to the fire.