Desperation Rule

[questfortruth]

If the chances of success are almost zero, say one in a million, they will not decrease if reduced by a hundred times because you need a miracle from God. Small odds won't help. For example, you sent an article to a magazine. And the magazine has a good tradition for authors: send at most once. But you found a mistake in the paper after you submitted it. You corrected it, and you are driven to send it again, although they did not ask. There was almost no chance of acceptance, and if you send a remake, the negligible chances will decrease a hundred times. Send! Send because the situation is desperate.

 

[ChristineM]

The lesson is, always double check your work and preferably get a third knowledgeable party to proofread before submitting for publication.

 

[Revoltingest]

The lesson is, always double check your work and preferably get a third knowledgeable party to proofread before submitting for publication.

Also...
Write better papers.

 

[wellwisher]

Part of my responsibilities, in my first professional job, just out of Grad School was as a technical editor. Scientists is not good writers. They are good with technical content and experiments but their writing style is not always easy to read. It can get too round about and confusing.

This part of my job involved me making their papers better in terms of presentation. I also taught scientist students how to write tech papers. I was the last edit before submission to publish, since I could spell check very well at a time before spell check.

All these papers would be published; 100%, since it was connected to research at a National Lab. The deck was sort of stack, for those young scientists in that loop, due to help of editors and benefactors. The research was being funded to be published, so that even if the data was not that good, the results were still reported in a publication. Private submission to publishers are not treated with the same kid gloves, since everyone knows private papers may not be a team effort to assure the protocols for publication.