Science is often a game of rush, work, rush, work, then wait... Get proposals in, then wait months to hear if you got money to do more science. For deep-sea research, you plan for months, get on a ship, throw instruments in the water and wait... hoping the instruments will be there and have worked when you return to pick them up. If all went well, at the end of all that waiting, you'll have a brilliant data set to write up for an article. Submit the manuscript and then wait... wait to hear from the editor, wait to hear from the reviewers... wait to hear from the reviewers again... Well, part two of the publishing waiting game is over. I got the first round of reviews back. Overall... I'm quite happy. Great reviews - text edits and maybe one minor experiment. As a co-author said, especially "positive in today's era of vicious reviewing."
Side note on vicious reviewing. A couple of articles have popped up recently addressing the state of scientific review. But they're not harping on author misconduct or missing a technical flaw. Instead the articles have a new perspective - a reviewer's job is advance science, not to tear it down, not to write the ms yourself, and not to advance your own career. But it is so much easier to "destroy than to construct."
A quick guide to writing a solid peer review (Co-author is Kimberly A. Nicholas, DISCCRS V) – EOS – July 12, 2011 - http://disccrs.org/files/Nicholas_Gordon_2011_EOS.pdf
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