Although this
post will probably be quite boring to many, I thought it might be
good to show the process by which a scientific paper gets published.
While I cannot speak for all atmospheric and climate scientists, I
can speak for me, and my story (hence "Climate Through
Anecdote"). In my case, it took about two years to learn the
model, run the experiments, and submit (2009 - 2011) and less than
four months to go through the submittal, peer review, revision, and
acceptance process (February 23rd - June 4th, 2011), and finally got
published on September 15th. Overall, the
submittal/revision/publication process went pretty quickly. So here
we go:
0. Read grant or
proposal, decide what you're going to do (2009)
1. Run
experiments / run models / do science (2010)
These can be
described briefly, as parts of them have been written up previously.
After my first year of classes and some work on a biofuels project, I
began to learn how to run the CCSM (Community Climate Systems Model),
work through test runs, make modifications, check the chemistry, and
do a lot of the science part of this project. There was no
experimenting here. No data gathering. No lab equipment. Climate
modeling, for the most part, uses existing models, plus new, creative
modifications, or newer data from observations to simulate the global
climate. I had both.
I (with
tremendous guidance from my advicor) added some artificial tracers
(basically, fake chemicals that had particular properties that would
elucidate aspects of the model, and through that aspects of the real
world) to track the chemistry, transport, and seasonality of Asian
emissions as they moved from Asia, over the Pacific, and into the US.
Once all of that was finished, and the data was produced, the next
step was to...
2. Determine
what is worth focusing on, writing, publishing, and exploring (2010)
3. Write it up
(Intro/Methods/Results/Discussion/Conclusions) (2010-2011)
I spent about
two semesters in this data analysis and write up stage. The two kind
of blurred together, where I would average the emissions for the
spring, summer, winter, and autumn at various layers in the modeled
atmosphere, talk to my adviser, double check my work, document what I
did, go back and change the code, or change the area, etc. All the
while trying to both figure out and show what Asian emissions were
doing over the Pacific. The modeled results showed a large and
looming Asian Pollution Plume extending over the Pacific, and over
North America during certain seasons.
After many
months, I had a set of figures that I thought showed the most
interesting aspects of the Asian Plume, and I started to craft them
into a story. At the same time, I reviewed all of the relevant
literature again, and produced a draft of my paper. Abstract - Intro
- Methods - Results - Discussion/Conclusions - References. I gave
these to my adviser, and thus we began to...
4. Edit, edit,
edit, edit, edit, edit, edit, edit, edit until you and your adviser
are satisfied (2011)
This was a
frustrating process. I had to juggle all the possible figures, the
possible ways of explaining what was happening, the available and
relevant literature, the revisions my adviser handed down to me, the
changes I wanted and did not want to make, as well as classes and my
non-academic life. I usually felt good about a draft I handed in, and
when it came back all splotched with red ink, I would feel a little
hurt and deflated. I would then read the revisions, reformat,
reorder, redo figures, look up new papers and studies, and get
another draft. Each time, the paper got better. The story and message
solidified. Three or four major figures became the centerpiece of my
research. By the time February 2011 came around, I was ready to...
5. Submit
(2/23/2011)
We chose the
Journal of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres
(http://www.agu.org/journals/jd/) to submit to, as this is where a
majority of the papers I had read came from, and is more or less the
predominant atmospheric and earth science journal out there. The
submittal process was tedious. Everything had to be formatted and
pieced together just right. The figures had to follow certain rules.
I had to merge everything into one big pdf file, as well as
individual figures and sections. This took a week or so, and I
managed to submit the day before my 25th birthday. Next, I had to...
6. Wait, and do
other work
At this point, I
had a lot of class assignments to work on, so I more or less forgot
about the paper. It often takes several months before you hear back,
and so I thought it best just to forget it ever happened. I figured
I'd hear back in June or July, and until then I would focus on my
classes and future projects. Instead, I got an email within five
weeks of my submittal, with the words...
7. Accepted with
Substantial Revisions (4/4/2011)
Dear Dr.
Brown-Steiner:
Thank you for
submitting "Asian influence on surface ozone in the United
States: a comparison of regional chemistry, seasonality, and
transport mechanisms" to Journal of Geophysical Research -
Atmospheres. I have now received 3 reviews of your manuscript, which
are attached for your reference, as well as a brief evaluation by an
Associate Editor. Based on the review comments, I find that your
manuscript may be suitable for publication after substantial
revisions.
Wow! Accepted!
So soon? And why do they think I'm a doctor? The editor was brief in
his comments:
Please address
the comments made by the reviewers. Especially address the comments
made by Reviewer #2 as to model validation and verification. Please
submit your revised manuscript by May 18, 2011.
So my new task
was to address every comment made by the three reviewers, in just
over a month. So I began to...
8. Address
Comments and Substantially Revise (April-May 2011)
Some of the
comments were harsh. Others were uplifting. I'll include some of them
here, for flavor.
The first
reviewer:
This manuscript
takes a new and effective approach for quantifying the impact of
Asian emissions on US surface ozone. I especially like the breakdown
of Asian ozone into baseline, seasonal and chemistry components, as
well as the analysis of transport to the surface via the dry
airstreams of mid-latitude cyclones. I think the paper will make an
important contribution to the scientific literature and I expect that
it will eventually be published in JGR. But first the authors need to
conduct a borderline major revision to add further discussion on
mechanisms that bring ozone to the surface, correct many citation
errors and to improve the overall style of the paper.
The third
reviewer:
The authors use
a 5-year simulation from a chemical transport model (CAM-Chem) to
study the influence of Asian emissions on surface ozone over the
United States, with a focus on the western and central United States.
The study design creatively allows for a clean separation of the role
of seasonal changes in transport pathways, seasonal changes in the
Asian pollution source, and seasonal changes in chemical evolution of
Asian plumes transported into the atmosphere over the United States.
The study is suitable for publication inJGR, following the suggested
revisions below, which are mainly points of clarification.
And the second
reviewer (the "Reviewer #2 mentioned by the editor, so I saved
this one for last):
This paper
presents a new analysis using the CCSM-CAM global model. As a
conceptual analysis, this paper succeeds to present a useful
framework for the processes involved in long range transport of
ozone. However as a quantitative analysis, it fails due to its lack
of any serious evaluation of the model results against
observations...While no one expects any model to be perfect, we do
expect a serious evaluation of the results against observations and a
discussion of how these biases impact the results. The authors have
failed to do this. For this reason, the paper should be rejected. The
authors need to go beyond the HTAP evaluation and do a better job at
evaluating their model results. Insight into the cause of any bias
can be examining how the model behaves seasonally, at altitude etc.
Assuming the authors wish to redo this analysis then I offer the
following additional comments for them to consider...
The first and
third reviewer had plenty of minor and moderate comments, specified
by the lines in the manuscript, which looked like this:
L35-39. Quantify
the increases over some time period. The Cooper et al. 2010 study
focused on the free troposphere (not surface) . The HTAP studies,
referenced later, also address this point; see Reidmiller et al.,
ACP, 2009.
L77-78 State
that this refers to Asian component only (also L225, L272)
L 111-115 The
specific definition of anthropogenic xNOx should be included -
biomass burning? Fertilizer? Soil NO? Is there seasonality in the
xNOx emissions or does the "seasonality" tracer introduced
later solely reflect seasonality in venting of the Asian boundary
layer + transport pathways?
L129-133. It's
clear later in the text, but best to explain here why the scaling is
necessary and also what is meant by "seasonality and chemistry
signals".
I was a little
sloppy with my citations, and checking my numbers precisely. I am
thankful, and startled, at the level of detail that these reviews
analyzed and critiqued my paper. The first and third reviewers'
comments were fairly straightforward, and very detailed. The second
reviewer’s comments were more vague, more substantial, and required
a lot more work. Essentially, I created a whole section of
supplementary material, that would be available online and not in the
actual paper, that compared the model results to known and measured
observations all over the US. This included seasonal averages and
variations, day/night cycles, and others. It was tedious, and often
felt a little pointless. I was rushing through this analysis to get
the paper back by the deadline, and others have, and would in the
future, do a much better job of this validation and verification of
the model I was using. However, it was an actual check of my model
output with the real world, so I added the supplemental material,
finished the revisions, added the new figures, and proceeded to...
9. Resubmit and
Wait (5/18/2011)
Once again, now
I tried to forget about the paper. I was thrilled, because it was
accepted. But I was worried that they wouldn't approve of my
revisions, or want more verification. In less than a month, however,
they got back to me, and...
10. Acceptance!
(June 13, 2011)
I am pleased to
accept "Asian influence on surface ozone in the United States: a
comparison of chemistry, seasonality, and transport mechanisms"
for publication in Journal of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres.
I was in! It
would be published! All that was left was copy editing, some final
revisions, color changes, and brief communications with the copy
editor, and I would be published. I began to interact with the
journal throughout the...
11. Copy Edit
I got various
emails with revisions, citation questions, and author queries
throughout the summer, and on August 24, 2011 I received my final
proof to read through in two days, where I would be...
12. Published
(September 15, 2011)!
The wait for
final publication took longer than I expected. But finally, after
three years, I had my name as the primary author on a scientific
publication! You can see the abstract and front material here. And here is a screenshot of it appearing on the "Just Published" tab of the JGR homepage. I
could talk a lot more about the peer review process and the research,
but I’ve gone on for too long already. Thanks for reading!
