What are some of the difficult experiences you have faced when trying to publish or collaborate on psychology research?

[deleted1115579]

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Hello everyone! What are some of the difficult experiences you have faced when trying to publish or collaborate on psychology research? What did you learn from those experiences? My purpose for writing this is not to complain or be negative, but to heal and learn from these experiences.

Here are several of the experiences I had in the past:
1. When I did not know very much about writing manuscripts I worked with a professor who tried to publish a psychology paper in an area where she lacked expertise. We tried to publish the paper for over 2 years with no success. I learned that it takes a lot of skill to publish in an area where none of the authors have expertise.

2. I joined research teams with other students to work on papers. Unfortunately, for various reasons, they would leave the project and I could not continue because I did not own the data.I learned that I should not sign up for projects when those who own the data are not fully committed.

3. I had a former dissertation chair who treated me poorly.Iit was so bad that I had to switch dissertation chairs. I finished my dissertation now, but I lost access to any projects that I did with the previous chair. I learned that it is better not to collaborate with someone who is extremely difficult to work with.

I continue to work on research, but I realize that I need to heal from these experiences along the way. I look forward to hearing from you all!

 

[MCParent]

Hello everyone! What are some of the difficult experiences you have faced when trying to publish or collaborate on psychology research? What did you learn from those experiences? My purpose for writing this is not to complain or be negative, but to heal and learn from these experiences.

Here are several of the experiences I had in the past:
1. When I did not know very much about writing manuscripts I worked with a professor who tried to publish a psychology paper in an area where she lacked expertise. We tried to publish the paper for over 2 years with no success. I learned that it takes a lot of skill to publish in an area where none of the authors have expertise.

2. I joined research teams with other students to work on papers. Unfortunately, for various reasons, they would leave the project and I could not continue because I did not own the data.I learned that I should not sign up for projects when those who own the data are not fully committed.

3. I had a former dissertation chair who treated me poorly.Iit was so bad that I had to switch dissertation chairs. I finished my dissertation now, but I lost access to any projects that I did with the previous chair. I learned that it is better not to collaborate with someone who is extremely difficult to work with.

I continue to work on research, but I realize that I need to heal from these experiences along the way. I look forward to hearing from you all!

1: If you think 2 years to publish is only for papers in an area you aren’t an expert in…. I have bad news.
2: when you say teams of students, do you mean without a professor? Yes that could be super chaotic. But if a professor is involved they should be managing the work team (unless it’s an instance where the professor just handed students data to process maybe).
3: unless the professor has failed to graduate anyone, you might be better served in your professional development by realizing that there are sometimes communication and interpersonal challenges that either can or cannot be overcome. Assigning all the responsibility for the problem to other party is not a good professional orientation (except maybe for the very rare case in which the professor is actually a very poor manager for every project).

 

[psych.meout]

1: If you think 2 years to publish is only for papers in an area you aren’t an expert in…. I have bad news.
2: when you say teams of students, do you mean without a professor? Yes that could be super chaotic. But if a professor is involved they should be managing the work team (unless it’s an instance where the professor just handed students data to process maybe).
3: unless the professor has failed to graduate anyone, you might be better served in your professional development by realizing that there are sometimes communication and interpersonal challenges that either can or cannot be overcome. Assigning all the responsibility for the problem to other party is not a good professional orientation (except maybe for the very rare case in which the professor is actually a very poor manager for every project).

That and OP phrasing it as "needing to heal from these experiences," as if they were traumatic and/or that they are a victim in these situations, is also not a great perspective to have.

 

[Ollie123]

That and OP phrasing it as "needing to heal from these experiences," as if they were traumatic and/or that they are a victim in these situations, is also not a great perspective to have.

Hah, Mike - didn't our paper together take longer than 2 years to get published? And I guess while not our core area, certainly an issue we were both pretty familiar with.

I kind of agree with the above. I would discourage you from making too big of a deal out of these experiences as they are relatively normative "professional world" issues and honestly with the possible exception of the dissertation chair depending on exactly what went down should just be blips on your radar. The number of papers/projects I've been part of that never went anywhere is astronomical at this point. Its frustrating, but there is really only so much you can do. I'd probably have 20+ more pubs if everyone followed through on everything they said they would do. I'm sure I've been guilty as well at times. Still only published 1 out of the 3-4 papers that could come from my dissertation and I graduated 6 years ago. Still daydream of getting these out even with the data as stale as they are, but tough to find the time. I do think there is a marked difference between things dragging on longer than expected (basically every project ever - has anyone ever had an NIH grant that did NOT go into NCE?) versus those that flat out die. The line can be ambiguous at times though.

I'm not even sure I have anything with an interesting enough narrative to be worth telling. Most were just things we started on but just never prioritized enough to finish. I suppose the most annoying was a basic gift first-authorship to a fellow grad student that started as me helping them out, but turned into me writing the entire methods section, running all the analyses, and even outlining an intro/discussion for them and they still never managed to get it done.

 

[futureapppsy2]

Speaking of MSes that took forever to go anywhere, I had an MS I wrote in 2014-ish for a class. Sat in my virtual file drawer until October 2019, when I was home sick and felt like dusting it off, with slightly updated literature (fortunately, it’s an area that I very much keep my finger on the pulse of). Submitted it to a top journal in my area. Got back an R&R in December 2019, blew it off for a good 8-9 months because I kept looking at it and going “ugh, too much work.” The AE was still willing to consider it as an R&R for some reason, so I went ahead and resubmitted it. Got back a decision of minor revisions in October 2020. Officially accepted in December 2020, published in May 2021.

Edit: Looked through my emails, and I was even worse than I thought... Initial R&R decision received in November 2019, resubmitted October 2020. OTOH, I've had other MSes where I submitted the revisions within a day or two of receiving the request for revisions.... point is, lots of variance under the curve.

 

[MCParent]

Hah, Mike - didn't our paper together take longer than 2 years to get published? And I guess while not our core area, certainly an issue we were both pretty familiar with.

Sounds about right. 2 years is a long but not crazy. I’ve been pushing out one paper that I think is super neat and well done, but very niche, for 1.5 years. One paper was online first for fully 3 years before finally being in an issue. Fastest I’ve ever had was a paper I got accepted last month—1 month data collection and writing 2 months in review, accepted after first revisions. So 3 months and that’s very abnormally (like, miraculous) short.

 

[futureapppsy2]

Sounds about right. 2 years is a long but not crazy. I’ve been pushing out one paper that I think is super neat and well done, but very niche, for 1.5 years. One paper was online first for fully 3 years before finally being in an issue. Fastest I’ve ever had was a paper I got accepted last month—1 month data collection and writing 2 months in review, accepted after first revisions. So 3 months and that’s very abnormally (like, miraculous) short.

The pandemic was a boon for me with quick papers--had one that was ~1 month writing, ~1 under review before acceptance, and another that was ~2 days writing, and a little more than 1.5 months under review, including a cycle of major revisions. OTOH, I had one MS that was 6+ months under review before an R&R decision (currently awaiting second decision after resubmission), and another that was submitted a month ago and is still "with editor" before review. Plus, we've all had a fair share of those that get shopped around and/or put through a million stages of review. One of my first big 1st author pubs came out of an undergrad research internship in 2010 and didn't get accepted until 2014 and published in paginated form until 2015. Definitely a ton of variance, and a not-small amount of luck involved in all of this.

 

[DynamicDidactic]

Collaborating across institutions is annoying b/c of IRBs and Grant offices. Why are you making my life more difficult and not responding to my emails! [rant over :😅}

Research is tough alone or with others. Getting something done really is a Herculean task