Do: Get writing.
Every paper has a home. Sadly papers do not write
themselves. If you don’t write it, no one else will. This applies at all stages
of your career. The writing process clarifies ideas, identifies gaps and
suggests key experiments. You may be doing the best research in the world, but work
unpublished is effectively work undone. Knowing when to stop, when that one
last experiment is not needed and it’s time to wrap up is critical. Careers
falter on lack of publications and there are many roadblocks to getting your
work published, don’t let one of those roadblocks be you.
Don’t: Aim for
perfection.
Done is better than perfect. Yes the work has to be of a high
standard, but no paper will ever hit perfection: aiming for this impossible goal
will delay publication. I like to use the unlikely analogy of rifle cleaning.
No matter how much you cleaned a rifle, the inspecting officer could always
find hidden dirt: however, if you took it 90% clean, though they still found
fault, but that fault was fixable. Ditto papers, even if ‘perfect’ the
reviewers will always find fault. Better to leave a fixable hole and get
published than get scooped aiming for the moon.
