From Brain to Print

I was thinking today that it might be good to invite people to share the typical process they go through in developing and publishing papers. I was thinking this might be good to share because of my own experience, and because of what I've read on various blogs. My experience -- and I expect it is not that uncommon -- was that no one ever really told me "how to publish." Indeed, the only real pieces of advice I think I ever got besides,

1. Write good papers (duh!)
2. Write and send out a lot of papers, and 
3. Make sure your paper deals with a single, well-defined problem

came from Thom Brooks' helpful but very broad piece, "Publishing Advice for Graduate Students." As helpful as all of this advice may be (well, except the first one: hard to help with that!), it's not easy to learn how to publish, and publish effectively. So perhaps some sharing could help.

I'll begin by sharing something which I'm utterly no good at, but which I have good reasons to suspect has helped people I know immensely: develop a good support network of people successful in publishing, and get a lot of feedback from them on your work. Again, this may seem obvious (get help from successful people? duh!), but I've come across a lot of people who don't do it due to insecurity. Indeed, I've been rather terrible at it throughout my career. Like too many insecure grad students, I tried to avoid my disseration advisor and other faculty members more than I sought out help from them. Why? It was simple insecurity, no more no less. My suggestion, then, is -- and again, I wish I'd followed it myself! -- is: get past your insecurity, and don't feel guilty or judged for "harrassing" people for help. They may well feel harrassed, but if my experience in the profession is any indication, "harrassing" people for help and feedback only (or at least mostly) helps. 

I guess two other things I think I've learned are:

1. Don't "put all your eggs in one basket" (i.e. focus on a paper or two for really long periods of time because you're "sure" that if you really polish them, they'll get published).
2. Don't think you, or even people who read your papers, are all that good at judging which of your papers are "publishable."  Write and send out a lot of papers precisely because it's hard to judge which of your ideas will be publishable.

Allow me to use a couple of real-life examples to make a case for both points:

• Case 1 (me):  I have a paper that I once regarded as a "sure thing."  Numerous people, including some very successful "name" people in the profession, have told me over the years that the paper should be published, and published somewhere good.  The paper is still unpublished, and has been rejected by more than a dozen journals (often with one reviewer giving a positive review and another reviewer giving a bad review).  I have been assured by people who have read the paper that it is "really bad luck", but that doesn't make it any easier. 
• Case 2 (my supervisor):  a couple of years ago my dissertation supervisor -- a famous name in the profession -- recounted to me a similar story of his own. He had a paper that he felt strongly was one of the best papers he had ever written. It had been rejected by journal after journal for 8 years. It was finally accepted and published in a "B" journal. He still thought it was one of his best papers ever.

The moral of the story(-ies), I think, is this: the publishing process is a rather ridiculous crapshoot. Sometimes you get a very long streak of "bad luck."  The best way to deal with such a ridiculous situation -- a situation where it's hard, if not impossible, for even big-name people to determine which of one's articles/ideas are "publishable" -- is to write and send out a lot of stuff.  You may risk publishing some lesser work, but still, given the vicissitudes of the publishing game, it seems to me a rational way to go. 

Anyway, to get back to my initial question: what is the typical process I go through "from brain to publication"?  I used to go through a very onerous process: spending months on end writing and re-writing papers, seeking out feedback from numerous people, revising some more, etc. Strangely, though, ever since I've actually started publishing, here, basically, is how my process goes:

1. Write lots of papers quickly (usually, no more than several weeks to draft and revise).
2. Send short ones out to conferences more or less immediately/lengthen them if they get a decent reception.
3. Send long papers out to journals more or less immediately (after sitting on them for a few weeks and going back through them to edit with a fresh eye).

I have no idea if this is anything like the process most people go through, but it's the only one that has seemed to work for me.  

Anyway, I'm curious to see what everyone else's process is (particularly people who are more successfully published than I!)...So, please do take the time to share. I'm sure there are many people who might benefit from hearing how different people do things. :)