Chapter 10 Back to the bottom after a trip to the top
Carlos Navas
Laboratory of Physiological Ecology and Evolutionary Physiology, Department of Physiology, Biosciences Institute, São Paulo University (USP), Brazil
I take advantage of this wonderful opportunity to write not about a recent article, but about the first four papers I published at the onset of my career as an author in science. This happened back in the mid 1990s when I had just finished my PhD at University of Connecticut and was also looking for a job somewhere in the world. I was a Colombian-Italian studying in the US, and for reasons known by many, had an eye on Brazil. Indeed, it was in Brazil that I got my first, and only, academic job in the late 1990s. Naturally, I see myself as a senior scientist now, but something that has not changed is a passion for Andean tropical amphibians and their patterns of adaptation to high altitudes. This story, then, starts when I was about to conclude my PhD, and was very proud of my doctoral study. Field-work had been exhausting, though memorable, and wonderful. Also, the study was among the first to analyse evolutionary convergence in the adaptation of tropical anurans to high-elevations, and incorporated a discussion about phylogenetic comparisons that was, at the time, very new. In addition, early presentations of the project were well-received, and I won a best student-presentation at a Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) meeting.
I opted to talk about these four papers and not about a single one because this early publication experience shaped many of my views and taught me a lot. I also need to explain that the research reported within these four papers was a coherent composition, an integrated whole. However, it could not be reasonably published in a single paper, so I had organized my findings in four related but self-sufficient parts. The first one covered the thermal sensitivity of locomotion and energetic metabolism, with an evolutionary twist based on a comparison between high-elevation and low-elevation counterparts within given lineages (Figure 10.1. Two more papers were about aspects of behaviour and temperature, and those were naturally aimed at a herpetological community. The last one was a detailed study of thermal ecology and was prepared for an ecological journal. These four papers summarized about four years of work that included a year of field observation and project design, and three years of actual data collection. I submitted these four papers over about one semester.
FIGURE 10.1: The study site where most of the research here referred took place. This is Parque Nacional Natural Chingaza in central Colombia, not far from Bogotá. The picture was taken at ~3500 m asl.
10.1 The four thesis papers
I was the sole author on these four papers, and this misleading aspect of the situation is relevant for the tale to come. This story starts with the first paper submitted to Physiological and Biochemical Zoology (known then as Physiological Zoology) entitled Metabolic physiology, locomotor performance, and thermal niche breadth in Neotropical anurans (Navas, 1996c). This was my first submitted paper ever, my very first experience publishing in science. To my surprise and joy, this paper was accepted after the first round of review and came back to me with barely any comments. Not only that, I received the most wonderful letter of acceptance a novice author could expect. The letter was signed by Charlotte Mangum, who was back then Chief Editor of Physiological Zoology. By the way, that was the one and only time I got a paper accepted in such a manner. This type of acceptance does happen sporadically, at least to colleagues of mine, but it never happened to me again.
During the reflection motivated by this chapter it became clear that, back in those early days of my career, my reading of this acceptance episode had been superficial. Retrospectively, I had failed to understand the full scope of the editorial input by my advisor Ted Taigen and the other two members of my Committee, Kurt Schwenk and Kent Wells (among the best editors I ever met). To be clear, I fully acknowledged their help and knew that the papers to be submitted had improved substantially from their editorial skills. But their presence in this first paper was much deeper. It was pervasive in the organisation of the ideas and in a ‘thinking method’ that, I learned later, I had not fully developed yet. I guess I was less independent in my writing that I thought I was. Anyhow, this first publishing experience planted a naïve seed of illusion in which publication was a smooth process. That seed germinated and died. My next submissions buried it.
My next two papers were submitted soon after the acceptance of the Physiological Zoology paper, which had been unusually rapid. I also had editorial help in these two next papers, particularly by Kent Wells, but comparatively less in the sense that editorial feedback came in the shape of comments on my writing more so than from fundamentals of the paper itself. Also, I had one round of input which I interpreted and applied to create the final versions of twin papers sent to Journal of Herpetology. These papers were: The effect of temperature on the vocal activity of tropical anurans: a comparison of high and low-elevation species (Navas, 1996a) and Thermal dependency of field locomotor and vocal performance of high-elevation anurans in the tropical Andes (Navas, 1996b). Obviously, this time I did not get two wonderful letters of acceptance. The first of these two papers came with 14 major points to consider and respond to, and the second with 12. The fact that I remember comments line by line reflects the impact that this feedback had on me. Besides, iconic herpetologist Maureen A. Donnelly signed the more critical review. My first reaction was despair.
The comments involved a reconstruction of important parts of the paper, new data analysis, remaking figures, and deep review of several analytic aspects of the discussion. But the editor had offered me a chance to resubmit, in case I could handle the considerable and fundamental comments. I had to try. The advice I received from my seniors was to analyse the comments carefully and to isolate the main issues. Are those criticisms pertinent? Can they help to improve your paper? I was also told to wait a few days and read the reviews again with a cold head. This was such good advice that I adopted it as common practice and still do the same thing today. About a week later I read the reviews again, and only then I was able to appreciate that a) the criticisms were well-intentioned, clear, and important, and b) the paper would improve notably with that input. After much hard work I was able to address each comment and resubmit the manuscripts. Additional minor subsequent changes were necessary, but finally, after the second round of review, both papers were accepted. To finish, the last paper in this story was: Implications of microhabitat selection and patterns of activity on the thermal ecology of high elevation Neotropical anurans (Navas, 1996d). In brief, the review was challenging, with many significant comments, but a much better paper came out of two rounds of revision.
10.2 Looking back
In retrospect, this first set of papers derived from my doctoral thesis taught me important lessons. One is obvious, that publication of science is not easy. Another is that my colleagues invest good time in revising my work, as I do for theirs, and this investment of time has to be appreciated. Receiving criticisms may not be pleasant, but papers do improve thanks to this peer input. I was lucky to receive well-meant criticisms during those early stages of my career, and as a subsequent dominant trend. Occasionally, I have received terrible reviews, but those were mostly paired with mediocre submissions. Unfair, or just unkind, reviews have been rare, though present in my career. Also, it does happen that sometimes a reviewer misses an important point, but I also have done this when reviewing for my peers. My main advice, then, is unlikely to be surprising. Do take reviews seriously, analyse them with a cold head, and focus first on the ideas. The likelihood that reviews improve your paper is high. And rejection is just part of the process. Persistence is necessary.
There is one final issue, perhaps more ethereal, but one whose understanding meant a lot to me. When comparing first versions I wrote, the main difference between the first paper cited in this chapter and the next three was not in the quality of the data, the merit of analysis, the scientific precision, or the relevance of the research. The main difference was about storytelling, in the sense of narrative quality. It is hard to put this into words, but that first paper had a story to which my senior colleagues contributed substantially. I am proud to have had those people nearby when I was germinating as a science writer, and their example and teachings have been of uttermost value since. My subsequent attempts were more accounts than stories, and my peers, consciously or not, noticed this. Yet, reviewers have helped me to improve my writing ever since, a process that is still ongoing. Even when the result is a rejection.