Making Your Papers Credible. Your Need for an Advisor or Protector. The Kindness of Strangers.

Recently, a physician-researcher I know  asked me to read over a paper, since it had trouble with the journals. The problems I found are exemplary, and worthy of note and avoiding:

1. Make your claim credible. If you have weak numbers and statistics, but have found something interesting, present it as such. 

So what I did was the following, writing a new first paragraph of the paper:

We provide tantalizing evidence that the long-term consequences of dislocation, here due to disaster, may be very different than the literature might suggest. Namely, those who are displaced and move away permanently do better than those who stay. The data are not strong statistically, the comparison group and the convenience sampling is not so rigorous as one might desire, and there is reason to believe the leavers are better educated than the stayers. No one has been able to ask this question before, with data, so in part we are writing to encourage further inquiry. We should note that the literature in city planning suggests that those who were displaced by urban renewal and the disruption of their close knit community, thrive in their new environment of suburban homes. (Herbert Gans, The Urban Villagers and The Levittowners)

Suddenly, the work is in an entirely different context. And rather than some sort of narrative about the data, I suggested a table of the information and a discussion of where the results were manifestly strong, with a proviso about statistical reliability.

That I have provided a new first paragraph for the paper and a new context is just what I do, and some other scholars might do. I had a friend who would write introductions for his students' papers, putting the work in context.  I suspect I am quite good at this (I listen for the music, and ignore the details, and so see what is going on), but surely not good enough for my own work! 

2.  You need to find an expert in your area of work to get the papers vetted before you send them out. You don't want to get rejected because your paper looks inappropriate or not a fit for the journal. [Recently, I had this happen twice--two different papers. I sent them off, one got reviewed, but the review was essentially What is this doing here? I have done this more often than is prudent, more as a way of getting something off my desk. It's stupid. I've survived, but I do not recommend following in my footsteps.]

3. More generally, your advisor or someone who takes you under their wing is essential to your career. At the beginning, to acculturate you to the particular field, later, to nominate you for prizes and write letters of reference. Some of us might make it without such, barely. But in my experience there is always the kindness of strangers who are supportive. I recently made a list, keeping in mind that my PhD was finished in 1968, that it was in physics, not the field I have published in (all my "physics/mathematics" books are about models we use in social science), etc--and it was a list that made me grateful for those "strangers" who in fact became friends.

Contribution, Numbers, Statistics. Note the Trigger Warning at the end.

You all know what I am saying below...  I am not at all saying that we abandon citation numbers, etc. I've just seen too many manipulations, gaming the system, misleading claims, so that in the end I only ask: what is the contribution?, what is the quality?, did they do the work?  Yes I use Consumer Reports, and I tend to ignore small differences in scores, and go for the higher number even though they tell me that differences of three points or less do not matter--just because it is easy, and the consequences are minor. But here we are talking about something of greater consequence.

Numbers in promotion packets may even be helpful, but in general they are manipulated. I've probably read 1000 dossiers, and so have seen lots of numbers (claimed to be statistics), only some of which are not faked one way or the other. In general, very low or very high numbers are indicative, but they ought be checked against your other evidence, and be treated with suspicion (this is my experience, having been bamboozled at first more than once--if there is a university promotion committee, the best part is that what you miss your colleague will discover). So I have read about 10,000 reference letters, and something like 25%, at best, are really helpful. I know of one distinguished scientist who checks his h-index value each Friday--but he is at the very top of his field, very well recognized and rewarded.

1. In general, what matters in the end is your contribution to scholarship. That is a substantive notion, and letters of reference and your personal statement should indicate that. MIT's economics department, at least in 1980, asked only that question. Numbers of publications, venues, citations, etc are only secondary. I do appreciate the need for numbers and statistics (if they are really statistics rather than numbers misrepresenting themselves as statistics). And playing Moneyball has proved extraordinarily useful, revealing what human judgment misses. Kahneman and Tversky have much to teach us.

    As for numbers and rankings, it would be useful to have the most elementary of measures of uncertainty attached to them. When rankings differ by a tenth of a point, it surely matters for bragging, but not for actual information. See # 5 below. The numbers we get from citation sources are claimed to be complete samples, but in fact they are often polluted with junk. What should be the errors assigned to them?

2. If you are using numbers, and almost all citation "statistics" are just numbers

    a. comparisons with a relevant cohort are useful

    b. be sure they are not stuffed--

        1. do most of the citations come from when someone was a postdoc with a famous scholar--so that you compare your candidate with someone elsewhere with terrific numbers, but in fact the high-number scholar's number come from that postdoc period

        2. is the source of the numbers reliable--Google overcounts, ISI does not count books but is the most studied by the sociologists of science

        3. do they accord with what you know of the contribution?

3. Again I understand the need for these numbers in rankings etc. Just be sure you are getting what you are paying for. Of course, you may be willing to allow the market to use these numbers and rankings to value your goods, but are you so happy when your value goes way down?

4. Universities are fabulous at pumping themselves up--eg. Best in the West, heralding its new rankings in someone's system etc,...  Again, I want a university the football team would be proud of (said by the coach at U. Oklahoma in 1922 to the state legislature to get better support for the University)

5. Trigger warning, PG or R rating: When I was a little boy, the New York Post regularly gave the stats of women, beginning with the size of their brassiere. Bigger was better, and Jayne Mansfield topped them all, as I recall. (Her daughter, ?Marrissa Hargitay, stars in a current TV series.) Currently, men's claims have entered the political realm, and historically, codpieces for men, and in the 1980s socks stuffed in men's briefs, and pornographic movies of the 1970s and 80s featured such claims or visible evidence. I gather from women I know, bigger may not be better, for it is how you use your instrument that matters. In certain cities, a combination of silicone and exercise have a dramatic effect on the numbers and looks of women. In others, plastic surgery plays a large role. And I was told many times, that you marry someone who would be a good mother or father to your children.

    My point here is that attend to what matters, and use the numbers (pretending to be statistics) to check your intuitions. 

Contributions to Scholarship: Books, Deep and Rich Articles, Projects

Recently I received a request for information on publications from Planetizen. We were expected to count publications. What was striking to me was that books and edited volumes were in one category. Scholarly strength is rarely indicated by an edited volume, although the organizational and personal strengths play a substantial role. To write a book is an entirely different enterprise.

Similarly, if we count articles, the venue of appearance matters enormously. And so does the length. If you publish long detailed articles about your research, the amount of work required is likely much greater than if you publish several short articles. Intense detailed work takes a very long time to be done properly. 

Obviously, we will continue to develop rankings and count things in various ways. But I want to encourage colleagues in our field to take on substantial projects, perhaps involving two or three or more years of work. Only then is the contribution likely to be substantial. Yes, there are very influential articles that are brief, or that are think pieces, or controversial. But planning needs the kinds of deep studies that lead, if not to books, to a series of increasingly influential articles. Robert Sampson, of Chicago and now Harvard, provides one such model, for example. I'm sure there are others.

You want to improve practice and understanding, you want to take up intellectual space. 

I realize that if you are in a tenure track job, and your work will be judged about five to seven years down the line, there is a temptation to grind it out. But the moment you have tenure, you ought to consider more demanding projects. Our academic positions are great privileges. Let us take advantage of them. It may be effectively entrepreneurial to organize stuff, edit volumes, publish lots of articles. But if you want to make a contribution that will be recognized over the long run, that may not be the way to go.

I should add that in some fields the norm is the article that reports on a particular study, the contribution being a series of such articles. I have no objection to that. Just be sure that that series adds up.

Binding Your Strongest to Your Institution: Acting Proactively

1.       I was emailing with a friend at another institution, and she wrote me:

I have a long standing policy of not negotiating using outside offers. This is built on the idea that all information is available ex-ante as well as after an external offer is obtained. Good management acts ex-ante. If one  has to act ex-post, then it is better to take the outside offer. 

Over the years, I have seen many an institution not being proactive, that ex-ante move, and wait for an offer from a peer institution. I understand why, given the not-so-rare promise of a dean that someone is “world-class” or whatever.  The institution may well have been burned more than once, and the confidence needed to act proactively may need to come from the Provost’s office I suspect.

The cases I am thinking of are standouts, and the record speaks for itself. The institution would do well to act proactively, and with those standouts make sure they are bound to the institution as far as the institution can provide as long as the colleague is not being overly greedy (greedy is fine).

Who visits the blog?

United States 24566 Ukraine 3030 Russia 2635 Germany 1707 France 1669 China 1210 United Kingdom 826 Poland 777 Turkey 703 Canada 594

It is striking to me that the two main visitors outside the US, Ukraine and Russia, are only slightly less in sum than from all other countries.

Mentors and Mentees and the Rules of the Game

Most scholars, usually somewhere in graduate school, learn how to make their CV be presentable and effective. They are perhaps guided by their advisor, or by following the practices of someone thought to be exemplary. What is crucial is that their CV from then on is standardized enough so that they can be evaluated  without irrelevant considerations.

Once someone receives a very high prize (Nobel, National Humanities Medal,...), they might well have a very short CV, at least for public consumption. But in general, the CV covers the achievements over the years. In some fields, a CV might well be 40+ pages long since every talk, presentation, etc, is listed. However, in general it is much better to have a CV that is scannable--major awards, degrees, positions, scholarly work, and maybe a list of doctoral students supervised, significant service, and some more popular work. The idea is not to dilute the impression by combining less significant achievements with truly important ones. Moreover, once one is a professor of some sort, or has the advanced degree, achievements earlier on are not mentioned.

If there are so many publications, one might well list those of the last decade with a few significant ones that were earlier. If there are so many presentations, again selection may be useful.

If you have received many honorary degrees, so that your basement-office walls are completely covered by framed documents, you will want to figure out a way of listing them that does not go on forever.

And if you have had many collaborators in your work, it's not clear that you ought bold your name in the list of papers' authors. Better just let people find you.

The idea in all cases is to make sure that by page 3 or 4, you've quietly displayed your most significant vitae--the books, the awards, the grants, the positions, the leadership... Ideally, pages one and two give most of it away. If you've published 40 books, and been the major  author on all, then you might well still have only a selection of the books listed.

And if you do not have too many achievements, say because you are just starting out, don't fluff it up.

Public Administration, National Socialism Style

In reading about the Third Reich, one is impressed by its bureaucratic professionalism. As in all bureaucracies, people go around the rules and bosses may well violate them with especial force. But for most public administrators, the bureaucratic processes are normative and not to be broken except in small ways. So in Nazi Germany, if there were to be "arrangements" to exterminate "undesirable" populations, that would be done according to the rules and the bureaucratic processes. Evil can be quite banal. Moreover, there are conflicts among bureaucracies, so that if the Foreign Office thought that Axis allies might be upset by such arrangements for some foreign-nationals (who surely were Jewish, perhaps only of mixed descent), and the cooperation of those allies was needed by the State, those arrangements would not be followed through. So in Berlin, some Jews were "protected" by Sweden, for they were in some sense Swedish, or the Swedes had decided to so treat them--for the Foreign Office prevailed over the efforts to make Berlin "Judenrein." The interests of the State might some of the time conflict with shipping people "East." Since Sweden represented countries such as the Soviet Union, in German, Russian Jews would in fact not be sent East. And if the bureaucracy was too busy with other tasks, or was only partially assiduous, other Jews might well survive since they slipped through the bureaucratic processes.

None of this makes Sweden or bureaucracy wonderful. Rather, that Weberian bureaucracy, a feature of the modern state, can surely do wondrous evil but some of the time its processes become entangled in higher bureaucratic demands.

Mentoring Our Colleagues

I have been asked to mentor some of my colleagues, especially those earlier in their careers. I am not an agent of our dean or the university, rather my focus is on being of use for the person I am talking to.  Here are some discoveries I have made, often surprising to me.

1. Although planning is a profession, and we are seen as a professional school, there is ambivalence about applied vs. theoretical work, or so my colleagues tell me they perceive in the system. I tell them to work on their most important problems and fields, and we can justify its theoretical or applied nature once we have the work in hand. Faculty's major contribution is to choose problems or issues and pursue them vigorously--that is what they can provide to the profession and the university.

2. People who have quite nice publication histories are worried about having enough stuff. Someone told them they should publish, say, two articles a year--but this is in fact rarely done, and often done by those who publish with many co-authors. Of course, you have to have a substantial contribution in terms of pages and appropriate venues. But what you want to focus on is the contribution to scholarship made by your work and your contribution to jointly authored work.  Hence, you want to write two brief statements.
     a. the contribution to advancing scholarship: what are the two or three main contributions that distinguish your work. This should be no more than 200 words.
     b. What you did in joint work. This is not meant to go through each paper, rather to indicate generally your role: pose question, fieldwork, grant getting, writing,...

3. You are not a professor for 5-7 years, but for a career that may well last 30-40 years. So you want to write a statement, again less than 200 words, that is a description of your planned trajectory for the next 5-8 years, and perhaps some long term objective if you might discern one.

4. Often people are so buried in their work, in putting out papers, writing grant applications, whatever, they are not explicitly aware of what it is they are doing. You want to write a statement of what you are up to, what you are trying to do, again 200 words. This is the proverbial elevator speech, albeit such a speech actually is likely 100 words.

All such statements should be understandable by a dean or a provost who is not in your field.

5. Some people are unable to convert drafts and working papers into published work. One needs to take on one or two or three such drafts and for each one devote a day to getting it into shape. No more than a day. Show what you have to a colleague. Take their advice and submit it to an appropriate venue. In other words, take the risk of rejection, but also there is the pleasure of doing work.

6. If you are pursuing a serious line of research, research that might deeply affect your field [no more than ten percent of us are so engaged], make sure you are not diverted by duties other than teaching. There are so few of you, the university and the field need you. Tell your dean or chair or whoever is diverting you that you are engaged in this line of research, and you must get it out while it still might be important.

7. If you are coming up for tenure or promotion, it is a good idea to look around and see if there are other institutions that would be better for you. Your own institution may not value what is has in front of itself, and they only way they wake up is if you are being bid away. No threats to leave, for you don't want them to tell you to go. But deans do not want to lose the faculty they wish they could keep because they did not realize what they needed to do. And if your institution does not rise to the occasion, very very graciously indicate that you are grateful for all the your current institution has invested in you, and now you are moving on to a place that will allow you to make further and deeper contributions. You may be denied tenure, but another institution may value you appropriately. And then go out and do a bang up job, and let your current institution realize the errors of its ways.

8. What's crucial is what others think of your work--especially those most prominent in your field at the strongest institutions.

9. There may well be monsters in your department who are trying to do you in. Consult with your closest colleagues and see what you might do. And of course seek other positions. Again, your colleagues may well be too unwilling to take on the monster, but they ought pay for their lack of courage.

10. If you discover you don't like writing, or don't like teaching, or hate your institution, move as soon as is possible.  Find a role that suits your strengths. It's awful to be an eternal associate professor in the modern university. Somebody up there really wants you--find that somebody. Again, thank your colleagues profusely for bringing you to where you are, and don't look back. If you choose to have a career at a research institution that is not a university, or in a consulting firm, or perhaps in finance or whatever, keep in mind that some of your former colleagues are envying you, and more importantly you are likely making more money and having more fun now. Some of us do not want to take care of other people's teenage and young-adult children, and that is no shame.


There will be more added to this list....

Publicizing Your Work

You disseminate your work through presentations at meetings, through scholarly publications, through invited talks at other institutions. You may write popular articles. You may well have a web page and even a blog. (If you want help in setting these up, please ask me. There are easy cost-free ways of doing this nicely.) And I am sure you send out preprints or offprints or electronic files to colleagues elsewhere, as well as the ssrn network or arXiv. In general, we work much harder at doing our work and writing it up, than in making sure it is appreciated more widely. As you must be aware, publication is only the beginning of having your work become impactful, and often it is the last move, your having given talks about the work at various institutions and received comments from audiences so making the published work much stronger. (We all read the acknowledgements in papers, where the venues are listed, the useful readers mentioned, etc. This is part of an implicit claim thatthis paper is important.)

As I have mentioned before, I have been doing brief podcasts for Academic Minute. They offer me a chance to give an "elevator speech" to a bigger audience, so to speak. Actually, I have no idea of the size of their audience. For me, the value lies in my being forced to say it all in about 1'40", something like 275 words. You might consider this venue. I am sure there are other venues that are better. Think of this a way of focusing your thinking. I have placed below a link to my podcasts.

Just for those of you who think all of this is vulgar self-promotion: I know of no distinguished scholars who do not engage in publicizing their work, often shamelessly so. (It's not the self-promotion that makes them distinguished, it is the work itself. Lots of scholars who are excellent at promotion may not achieve distinction because their work is not so strong.) They are telling the scholarly community of their research, and that community, by definition, should be interested in advances and improvements. There are no quiet geniuses, as far as I know. (Even the scholars who are recluses make sure that the "right people" know of their work, and know that those right people will publicize it. If they don't formally publish, they send out working papers. On the other hand, unpublished articles and books, especially if they are longstanding, are dismissed unless you have a very distinguished list of previous publications.)

MK

Here are some of my podcasts:

https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2016/06/30/academic-minute-sounds-city?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=c3d228de60-DNU20160630&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-c3d228de60-198214817

Making your work stand up to criticism.

Recently, I have been rereading chapters in two or my earlier books, from 1996 and 2003 (2nd edn, 2013), with echos from my 1992 (2nd edn 2012) book. I have been trying to understand why various counting procedures, arithmetically adding up individual interactions in a city--lead to macroscopic accounts that exhibit scaling symmetry (eg. fractals)--things look "the same" at various scales. (In the last twenty years this has been a recurrent theme in empirical research, and actually goes back a hundred years at least, as in Bachelier's work on security prices.) 

There are similar phenomena in mathematics, so that a way of packaging all the prime numbers into a single function--Riemann's zeta function--was shown by Riemann (1850s) to be related to a function that exhibited scaling, the theta function (earlier in the century, Fourier used theta to describe the flows of heat), where the world looks the same at various scales. [You know this from the central limit theorem of statistics, where a sum of gaussians is a gaussian at a larger scale.] Or, somewhat differently, in a spatial model of a city, where interactions among people or institutions is only with your neighbors, we might have remarkable city-wide phenomena such as homogeneous neighborhoods and heterogeneity among neighborhoods. [That this might have been sourced in zoning, red-lining, discrimination, Tiebout sorting, geomorphology, is surely the case. But even without such, you get this heterogeneity of homogeneity.] Yet, if it becomes a bit more difficult to maintain such neighborhood interactions (much as amazon.com has upset neighborhood commerce), one again sees such scaling behavior--with homogeneous neighborhoods adjacent to differently homogeneous neighborhoods, and regions that are comparatively homogeneous next to differently homogeneous other regions (each region itself exhibiting that heterogeneity of homogeneity).

My point is that one wants to write in such a way that if you look at what you wrote 20+ years ago, you want to feel that you did a good job then, even if you have subsequently discovered improvements or errors. You want to tell yourself something to the effect that you are surprised that you had been able to do that then. "I knew that then?" (Surely, in retrospect there will be passages you are embarrassed about, as well. Even whole articles.) 

The secret is to write carefully, to say just what you know to be the case, to separate out speculation, and to make your arguments clear and cogent. For 20 years from now, you will be the audience, the readers of your work (now) who are not you.

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