Dr. Mom, My Adventures as a Mommy-Scientist

Discussion of my journey from grad school to postdoc to tenure with two kids, a husband, (and a bit of breast cancer) in tow.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

First High Impact Paper Submitted

Today was a banner day in the Dr. Mom group. I submitted two papers on the same day (yeah I know I'm pushing papers right now) and one of them was our first to a high impact journal. Keep your fingers crossed.

I tried once when I was in grad school and I was rejected. I sent my paper to just a little bit lower impact journal where it was accepted and published. So this is a relatively new experience for me. Also, even if the paper doesn't actually get in high impact factor journal the fact that we have research coming out of our lab that even *could* get into a high impact journal is a huge success. And wait for it...wait for it...we are actually preparing a 2nd paper for submission to a different high impact factor journal that should be ready soon.

Of course all of this is the culmination of three years of hard work and also much failure. It is interesting. In February, my lab was almost out of money, I hadn't had any publications in over a year, and I was contemplating Plan B. Now I have had 3 major grants funded and 2 subawards, we have had 3 research papers published, 3 are in submission, and 2 are in preparation. Just goes to show what six months can do.

5 Comments:

At 7:09 AM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

Congrats Dr. Mom!!!! Sounds like a great day.

 
At 8:16 AM , Blogger Amelie said...

sounds great! It seems that starting a lab is always hard.
Good luck for the papers!

 
At 2:14 PM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

Perhaps publishing in high impact J is not all you should care about. Your goal should be to actually make a huge impact. There could be a correlation between the two but not always. Which is better- you have good work in a medium impact paper that others appreciate a lot and cite well versus your high impact paper which often gets criticized and compared to other high impact papers.

 
At 2:23 PM , Blogger PhD Mom said...

Update: Paper was sent out for review. Given that a large number of papers are triaged. This is great news!

Response to anonymous: I agree. As a counterpoint, we have published 3-4 papers in the last two years and they are all in low to medium impact factor journals. But, when you do get something that works AND has the potential to make a huge impact on the field it makes sense to go for the high impact journal. We are excited that our work has the potential to be appreciated by the wide audience that reads these kinds of journals.

 
At 7:27 AM , Blogger Schlupp said...

"Paper was sent out for review."

Congratulations!

 

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home

Hit Counter by Digits Who links to my website?