I’d like just murmuring, and practice my writing. Recently, I peer reviewed two technical articles which are written by two of my juniors in Department of Env. Eng., National Cheng Kung University. One of them is a dissertation (By the way, he had acquired his PhD degree this week, congratulations!), and the other is a journal paper. In the part of result and discussion, I suggested both of them to survey more literatures to support their finding, and eliminate all the contradictions in their studies. I don’t even ask them to do more experiment. However, subsequently, I don’t receive any of their modified versions anymore. Well, actually I am not surprised. Imaging that you are writing your thesis, and perhaps everything is settled down including the date of defense, how can you accept any criticism to point out the logical error in your thesis? If you write a paper for publish and get ready to submit it, how can you respect any suggestion of changing your functional indicators, mathematical formula, or even, wording? Actually, what all they expected is, requiring someone who is capable of writing technical article, proofread their manuscript. It is hard to convince them to accept the other’s comment, especially after their advisor’s guarantee. There was a Guest Professor, Olive Hao, who is the chief editor of Chemosphere, in our department. His task was to offer advice to those PhD students who want to get published. However, it seemed like no one in our department can follow his instruction completely, because he is too picky and even ask student to redo their experiment. Honestly, I’d like also to punch his face at that time, especially due to his unfriendly attitude. But now, since I have enriched my experiences of publish, I started to realize all the requirements from Professor Hao were not too over, instead, they were basic. It is just like an old saying from Zhuangzi: “You cannot talk about a frozen scene with a summer insect.” Once you have been criticized by the strict reviewers, you know what a nice paper looks like, and you won’t compromise anymore. ...to be continued --

※ 發信站: 批踢踢實業坊(ptt.cc) ◆ From: 207.151.231.208