On Tue, 1 Aug 2000 12:25 AM, Benjamin Cramer <mailto:truempyi@YAHOO.COM> wrote: > >Second off, not that I like it very much but I fear that in my business >we're all going to have to become (amateur) layout artists. This begs >explanation, I know. In science nearly everything is a last minute job. > You want the observable product (whether it's a grant proposal, poster >for a meeting, or a draft of a paper) to be as accurate and up-to-date as >possible... SNIP >So, the >layout gets done in a wordprocessor (almost universally MS Word) at the >same time that the text is being edited and finally the whole thing comes >together at 11:30 PM in time to shove it through the ether before the >midnight deadline. There's no time to send it to another office and get >someone else to figure out how to lay out the final document. That's really about personal priority choices, though, Ben. People work that way; that's fine. I'm deadline driven, too. Some institutions work that way too -- certainly more and more of them in Australia. On the other hand, one university I worked at offered a personal time management seminar to its staff. Anyone who failed to find time for the 4 hour seminar first offered (choice of three different times, morning and afternoon) was instructed to attend two -- the view was that they needed extra help! Fast photocopiers with collaters were also "essential" in departments, until we worked out the cost of having highly paid academics standing next to them, doing $9/hr Administrative Assistant's work, and generally doing it badly. Ho, ho, ho. Withdrawing those was fun! Students ended up with much better manuals, academics ended up having to work a day ahead. >Journals are beginning to go to an electronic format, in many cases to >save costs. I don't know that it will ever happen, but I wouldn't be >surprised if the custom in the future will be to submit a fully formatted >PDF version of text to some quick-turnaround journal which will, after >peer review of the science, "publish" your PDF as is, reducing >publication time from nearly a year for some journals now to under a >month. The delay in journal publication is overwhelmingly due to the peer reviews, Ben, not the layout. Most journals I know could be, and are, laid out in a matter of days in PageMaker or Quark. If complex graphics are involved, it could take a little longer. >Obviously, there will still be a need for high-quality journals >with staff to do the layout and longer publication times, but in the >effort to get new ideas out as quickly as possible a 1 month publication >time would be attractive for alot of people. Perhaps, but you'll never get good peer review happening that quickly. The reviewers need time to mess about in boats, let the ideas swirl around in the old grey matter a bit. That's the necessary delay. cheers, geoff -- Geoffrey Heard -- MarketNOW -- Marketing ideas for today. ----------------------------------------------------- FREE the 100,000 East Timorese held hostage in Indonesia. Campaign for Indonesia to pay reparations. ----------------------------------------------------- Sent by Cyberdog -----------------------------------------------------
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