I’m in the process of publishing my first paper. It’s been interesting.

One thing that’s continually bothered me when reading papers is how general the methods section is. If I’m trying to do the same procedure, not having the details is very unhelpful. Thinking about this while writing mine, I included enough detail to replicate the experiment… only for the editor to ask me to reduce the length of the paper by 30%, and given that the results and conclusions are critical parts of the story, it was the methods section that got cut. So, I’m sorry to all the authors I internally grumbled at while digging around for experimental details. And I’m very disheartened to find that my frustration is actually with the editors.

I also have to wonder why there’s a discrepancy between what the editors want and what I want out of my paper. I want the people in the field, doing similar projects, to know exactly how I did my science- especially if they’re going to try replicating my experiments. But the editor is going to be more concerned with getting more people reading the journal. We have different audiences in mind.

These differences would be easier to deal with if we weren’t in an epoch of separate Supplements which don’t download with the paper. Papers are getting shorter, supplements are getting longer, and I’m tired of having to go back to the paper’s webpage to look for a link to the SI. I’d rather have longer methods sections that I can simply skip over if I’m not interested in how the experiments were done, but would settle for having the supplements attached to the paper.

At any rate, my paper is currently under review, which is good because I need publications to graduate and get a job. And there’s a lot of satisfaction in finally getting several years of work out the door!