Dear Abbe,
I have been having difficulty getting some of my recent papers accepted in top-tier journals. The editors say that my research is solid but that it is just not very exciting. One even said my work was not “sexy.” Do you have any advice as to how I can jazz up my manuscripts?
Boring in Bozeman
Dear Boring,
It is an irritating fact that today's scientists must resort to marketing themselves to the great unwashed proletariat just to get published. What's next? Will microscopists be reduced to standing on the street corner outside the corporate headquarters of Microscopy and Microanalysis wearing a pair of stained and torn fishnet stockings and bright red 6-inch heels asking passersby if they would “like to have a look at my manuscript? Only $20 for a half-hour peek”? No, I am afraid that, like it or not, we must all become self-promoters, which is why I advise you to adapt to using DASKISP (Dumbass Keywords for Indexing Scientific Papers). By judiciously using the search and replace option of the DASKISP software, “many-colored” becomes “multivariate polychromatic,” “illumination” converts to “photonically enhanced,” and “tube length” is translated to, well, let's just say it is translated to something that one might expect to see in the title of a Ron Jeremy film. No, I am afraid that the halcyon days of doing science for the sheer “joy of it” are long gone.
Herr Doctor Abbe seeks your queries. No issue is too important to escape his analysis. Send your questions to his eager and faithful assistant at jpshield@uga.edu.
