Confessions of a rookie researcher

Anyone who knows my professional work, either in project management or in teaching and learning, appreciates that I’m a stickler for detail, i’s dotted, t’s crossed, and everything in between. I consider myself to be organisation personified. For this journal article I’m working on, based on a PhD module paper, I read the instructions for authors, downloaded the manuscript template and followed it diligently (or so I thought). How then did I manage to make a pretty basic mistake when submitting my first ever manuscript to an academic journal? I have to admit I put the email to one side for several days before building up the courage to see what I needed to do. When I did, I found that it wasn’t anything bad, rather it pointed out the nature of my first rookie mistake:

***Please read the author guidelines. Tables and any other figures are to be included as a separate document rather than within the body of the text.***

Oh dear. Memories of school days when teachers pointed out the need to actually read the question posed, not respond to the question we thought it to be or would have liked it to be (I don’t recall this applying to me though!). In my current manuscript I had one table and the instruction about submitting separate files  for tables (which I did) was clear enough:

If you are sending tables in a separate file, insert a note in the text indicating the preferred location for each table, e.g. [t]Table 1 near here[/t]. Tables will normally be placed at the top or bottom of a page in the journal.

I guess the reference to “insert a note in the text indicating the preferred location for each table” should have been the giveaway. I cannot explain how I missed this, but miss it I did, and erroneously inserted the table in the body of the text – oops. Lesson learned and I’ll know better next time.

Looking on the bright side, this provided an opportunity to go through the fine print (in truth, very visible print, a magnifying glass wasn’t necessary) of the instructions for authors. I had noticed that the instructions indicated between 3 and 6 keywords, yet the submission tool accepted only between 3 and 5. With the original submission I just dropped off the sixth keyword but this time I took the opportunity to revisit and determine which might be the best of the selected six to drop. I don’t know if I made the right choice with my keywords selection but I will pay closer attention to future decision-making practices in this area.

My attention to detail also suffered in relation to the referencing style required by the journal – Chicago 16th author-date – that I had not used previously and didn’t check that it wasn’t the APA style that I know and love. So, back to the manuscript to make the necessary updates. It wasn’t as simple as changing the format of the reference list from APA to Chicago in the Word manuscript – pity, that would have been useful. However, since APA uses first initial and Chicago uses first name it’s difficult to see how Microsoft might manage the conversion, but perhaps EndNote could? A quick Google search yielded a number of results, excellent. Importing into EndNote from Word didn’t seem to be an option but exporting to EndNote from Word might be. But wait, I have quite a number of these references already in EndNote but not all in the same folder, pity. At any rate, EndNote worked its magic and I was able to create a Chicago style list with first names – yay! – that copied and pasted to Word. In case I forget for next time I’ve made a couple of screenshots:

Look at the images below – there is a difference, easily spotted, right?

I have quite a few references to locate and convert and then I need to address the in-text citations. I’m getting there, slowly but surely, but my manuscript resubmission may have to wait another day or two. My reference number looks like it’s number 28 for this year and the journal has two issues a year, so this is a long road wherever it ends. If nothing else it’s been a great learning experience.

Finally, a note to self, as the saying goes, “the devil is in the detail” and I’ll chalk this up to a new lifelong learning experience, one that I won’t forget in a hurry. I won’t just skim read the author guidelines going forward, I will swallow them!

Until next time.

Sandra

Featured image courtesy of Pixabay