Slave to science

I've found myself in a somewhat unusual situation in that I am "racing" to get a paper published. We have some really interesting observations regarding calving of large icebergs and how the glacier, fjord, and earth respond to those calving events. Interesting enough that we're going to try to submit the paper to Nature (one of the two big science journals). The problem is that our observations are only slightly more unique than some other researchers, so if we don't hurry up and get this paper published then we may have missed our opportunity to get it accepted into Nature. If it doesn't get published in Nature we can always submit it elsewhere, but of course we want the fame and the money that comes with fame...

My colleagues are letting me write the paper, which could be really good for me. Its not very common for a graduate student to be a first author on a Nature paper - though it does happen. I stress the word "letting" because I haven't really contributed any more to the ideas in the paper than anybody else. I've done more of the work (writing is a lot of work), but otherwise its been a group effort. It's too bad that somebody's name has to be first.

Actually this whole process has been quite strange for me. There are probably five or six groups around the world working on the same problem, and there is a lot of discussion between groups, and so the ideas are really being developed by many people. But then, because of the pressure to publish (and to be the first to publish your results), people are being a little bit secretive about their observations. In my mind, that's not the way things should work. It says something about the problems with science funding and with scientists (we're just as greedy for fame as everybody else).

Anyway, getting a paper accepted in Nature seems to be a somewhat random process. Some papers that do get accepted wouldn't be accepted in lesser journals. And having a paper in Nature doesn't mean that you do better work than people that haven't published there, it just means that you were in the right place at the right time. Of course, being in the right place at the right time does require some skill.

Basically, this means that I haven't had much of a life for the past month. It also means that I'm almost finished with the first chapter of my thesis (I have to write three papers). I'm also hoping to write a paper for a conference proceedings for a conference that I'll attend in August. Maybe this means that I'll finish my Ph.D. faster than planned, sometime in 2009? And then?