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So, welcome. In this next module, we're going to have a
conversation with Dr. Bradley Efron.
Many of you maybe out there, may be familiar with some of his work on the
bootstrap resampling technique, and a lot of you have probably run into that.
Just want to say a few words about his many accomplishments.
I won't hit everything here but he's a member of the National Academy of
Sciences, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences he was a MacArthur
Fellow, he won the National Medal of Science he was the president of the
American Statistic Association at one time.
He in addition to all of his scientific accomplishments, is extremely well-spoken.
I've interviewed him before for journalistic pieces and he is the Founding
Editor and Editor-in-Chief of the Annals of Applied Statistics and so we're really
privileged to have him here today to get to get some advice from the, the editing
and publishing side of things which is [laugh] I'm glad you didn't say the
horse's mouth. That's the usual.
[LAUGH] So I'm just going to start by asking besides good science, which is
obvious we need in our paper. What key elements are journal editors
looking for when you get a paper in? Well, now, with me, you're talking about a
statistics journal. Yes, yes.
Which is a different, The different thing is.
A little bit of a different piece which is why I'm glad to have you here.
Statistics papers have a philosophical side and a technical side, and the people
tend to get overwhelmed with the technical side and forget that they're trying to
make a point about doing statistics at, at some level is going to approach apply to
scientists communicating with statisticians.
Yeah. Or maybe, I should say statisticians
reading the article and communicating with scientists.
So, it's a, it's an essay in communication and if, it's not enough to be published,
you want to be read also. And so, if you want to be read make the
paper pleasant to read so it's, newspaper writers are very good at this.
The, the first paragraph or the first line says what the story's going to be about.
The first paragraph says it again in a somewhat greater extension.
The, the first section then says it all again in ever more detail and the a good
scientific paper should make it clear to the reasonably good reader what, what the,
is going to be said. A paper that's going to be read should
have some element of surprise in it. [LAUGH] That is it shouldn't be that the
time you by the time you say what you're going to do, everybody knows exactly how
this is going to come out. But you, you should make it easier for the
reader to get into, into the subject matter.
In particular, if you have an example that motivated you, put it up front.
Don't hide it in the back after the person has worked his way through a lot of
lambdas and theorems and bad notation. [LAUGH] That's a great job.
So editors and referees have to read the paper.
And making it easier to read the paper vastly increases your chances of having a
success. Oh, great, great.
At every level. That, that's great to hear.
That's a lot of what we've been talking about in this course.
Yeah. And what do you think is the number one
mistake that scientists, mathematicians, statisticians make when submitting a paper
Hm. Great.
for publication? Well, I, I run the Applied Statistics
Journal right now. Yeah.
And I turn down a certain number of the papers the first minute because they
aren't a bad applications, and the people love to write about theory and methodology
because that's an easy thing to do. Applications are harder.
So, for my journal, a mistake is to, is to send it to the wrong journal.
Yeah And if you want to make a, a point about something, choose the right journal
to, to submit to. And, and a journal is a magazine.
And people get the magazine and read it for interest.
So, it should be interesting. And try to avoid heavy notation and things
that slow readers down right at the beginning.
Lots of definitions are bad right at the beginning.
You should clearly say what you're going to do.
And it should be clear, The abstract and the first introduction
are crucial. That's what editors mainly look at usually
is the beginning of the paper. And then, they farm it out to associate
editors and referees. So,
They pay a lot of attention to the very beginning.
And you've said few things already but what other tips can you give to authors to
increase their chances of getting published?
Good graphics helps a lot in our field. Yes.
And an attractive format and I avoid in my own writing, which is far from perfect I
avoid masses of equations, or masses of definitions. I don't mind using bullet
points to set things off quickly, I you, you, you can easily kill yourself by
messing around at the beginning before. Some speakers in talks spend an awful lot
of time at the beginning not getting anywhere and they've lost, the best hook
you have is right at the beginning and so think about that.
Style isn't terribly necessary Einstein said I, I leave style to my tailor.
[laugh] But a pleasant reading style helps a lot.
And clunky English Yeah. every time you, you have a sentence that's sort of hard to
decode, you've hurt the reader and they'll stop pretty soon and the reader might be
the referee. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, and so I think you've hit upon this
a little bit all ready about writing style.
And one of the questions that I frequently comes up in my course, has come up in this
course that I'm teaching now is students saying to me, well, you know, that's not
the way the scientific literature is written.
And you know, it's, it is written in this style and if I don't copy the very verbose
style that's out there, I'm somehow not going to be a member of the club and I'm
Yes. Yes, yes, definitely.
going to be rejected. And I might dumb down my sciences.
And they're very afraid to write in a more clear style.
So, can you help alleviate that fear a little bit?
It's its hard to dumb down more than [laugh] is it?
Most people don't know as much about the thing you're, you're talking about as you
Mm-hm. I, I give special attention to those
do. So, dumbing it down is, is a good thing.
[laugh] That's what you're supposed to do especially at the beginning of the paper.
You're, you're not going to impress anybody with fancy technical material,
everybody's seen that. Or maybe three people in the world will be
impressed. [laugh] But you're not trying to get to those three people usually.
The I, I, I, one advice I'd have is go read the greats people like Neyman in our
field, or Hotelling. Wonderful writers and you can see how good
they are at getting to the point and, and not jumping around it and not trying to be
fancy. So, don't be fancy.
[laugh] Good. Dumbing down's not such a bad idea.
[laugh] And what advice would you have for first time authors?
A lot of the classes are in their first paper submissions.
I, I'm always grateful when I get a submission that says this, this is my
first paper, I'm a graduate student, this is my early try.
papers and I think most referees do. And so, its okay to call it out when
you're submitting the paper in a different [CROSSTALK].
And, and that excuses certain mistakes. You can easily believe that a first time
author might put in too much detail or Yeah.
Or too much stuff that their thesis adviser.
[laugh] Thought was interesting or something like that.
Right, right. Okay.
So I'm definitely easier on first time authors.
We want them, you know, Fresh.
Yeah, Yeah.
The, the trouble with most journals is that they're dull.
[laugh] And we want the fresh point of view.
And you want fresh writing. And you want fresh ideas most of all of
course Yeah. Good.
And do you have any tips for, let's say that the paper comes in and, you reject it
but you give the author the chance to resubmit with major revisions.
Are there some tips at that point in the process that you can give my class?
Well, we have a most journals. I think have a category of we have various
categories. Yeah.
And it's withdrawn. If, if I don't, if I don't think a paper
is impressive appropriate, I'll just withdraw it that very first minute.
Right, right. Then there's rejected flat out, but
rejected with resubmission is a dangerous one.
[laugh] For both the referee and the, author.
And one thing to do is not resubmit, but go someplace else.
But if you do resubmit and you, you, you can, usually, if you press hard enough,
you very often can get published again. Yeah.
And there, there's the usual thing about paying attention to the author, what the
Good, good. You know, the publication process, itself,
suggestions were. [laugh] Right.
And stuff like that. Making the paper shorter is a good, good,
good idea when you resubmit. Yeah.
Shorter and clearer. [laugh] Good.
But choosing another journal was not a bad strategy.
We, I'd say resubmissions get through less often than first submissions.
That is they, they're very often unsuccessful.
Take an awful lot of energy from the authors.
Yeah, yeah. Good, good.
And can you give some words of encouragement for a young scientist who
Yeah. And, of course, there will be a lot more
might have gotten their first paper rejection? [LAUGH] Well my papers still
get rejected. [laugh] And I, I've found over the years
that the papers of mine that get rejected fall into two classes.
Once, where I was much too enthusiastic about the added material.
And the other, my best papers. Interesting.
And my bootstrap paper, my best paper ever, got rejected.
[laugh] And, and there I did persevere. And, and so the, the system is far from
perfect. And, very often fresh ideas arouse the
ire. Mm-hm.
Yes. Of referees who, who are tied to the old
ideas. [LAUGH] It's the editor's job to try and
spot such cases. And persevere. there, there are too many
papers. So, people are always looking for reasons
to reject. Papers.
Sure, sure. And I'm always worried especially if I see
a paper that arouses a lot of hostility in the reviews.
I, that's sometimes a clue what's in my second class of brilliant papers that are
annoying the readers because of fresh ideas.
Mm-hm. [laugh] So anyway, don't take it too
seriously. Papers get rejected all the time.
Yeah. Is less.
Good. And it doesn't mean that you had a bad
idea. Yeah.
is undergoing a lot of changes right now. What kinds of changes do you envision are
going to be happening in the next decade? That's, that's a question I never can
answer. [laugh] And that like everybody says, that
they're not going to be any print journals.
Right. But I think there will be print journals.
[laugh] The same way there's still movies, and the same way there's still radio.
I think the print journals will get more like real magazines, like New Yorker or
something like that. Yeah.
Yeah, That is something, that, where the bundling effect of receiving a, a bunch of
stuff in the mail and having it be labeled as very interesting is important.
electronic publication or maybe the maybe there won't be journals, maybe everybody
will publish themselves. [laugh] Right.
That I, it's, somebody has to do quality checks.
Mm-hm. And, and somebody has to evaluate papers to say this is worth reading and
this isn't. Yeah.
That's what the journals do. I don't know what's going to happen about
electronic versus printing. Mm-hm.
Good. And if, if there was one thing that you
could change about the publication process, what would it be?
I wish people would submit fewer papers. [laugh] I think people write far too many
papers. It, it doesn't help you get promoted to
have a very long list of papers. At lease not at any place decent.
The, what, what, what, what gets you promoted, if that's what the, the worry
is, is, is having an idea that impresses people.
The and it's so fewer and better [laugh] Gauss' motto in land, that which I can't
remember, is few, but ripe. Yeah, yeah.
And, and that, that's a really good motto if you can stick to it.
Now, I understand that when you have to have some papers, say, you're going up for
a tenure you have to have some papers. They have to make an impression on people.
Yeah. Yeah.
And so people who published too much were out their audience in my opinion.
Hm, good. The so that would be one thing.
Yeah. Yeah.
I could change about it. That's good.
[laugh] Less is more. And we're talking a lot about that in
writing right now. And is there anything else that you would
any other advice that you would offer for, for the class?
Yeah, don't take it. Take the writing and thinking part very
seriously. Don't take the submission and acceptance
rejection part too seriously because it's pretty random.
[laugh] Good. Great.
Thank you so much for being with us today, Brad.
Okay, Good.
I enjoyed this. Thank you.
The preceding program is copyrighted by the Board of Trustees of the Leland
Stanford Junior University. Please visit us at med.stanford.edu.