Last week I wrote about how I now use a google spreadsheet to keep on top of my editing tasks. Today I thought I would share my strategy for making each editing task easier. I use this method specifically with students’ (or former students’) manuscripts and theses/dissertations, though I also try to practice what I preach and do the same thing when I share manuscripts on which I am first author.
 
I don’t think I ever read a draft of a paper only once. In the “olden days” I would read students’ drafts in hard copy, and make handwritten corrections/comments. When students handed me a new draft, I would ask for the prior version with my handwritten comments and go back and forth.
 
Now that I edit in Word using track changes and comments, I noticed that I was reading new drafts and going back and forth to the old draft to see my earlier comments and whether students replied. It contrasts with when I am a blind reviewer on a journal manuscript, and I receive a response to all of my reviewer points, so I can go through the response letter and see how the author responded to my requests.
 
It felt inefficient, and so I came up with a system that works much better for me. I ask that students follow these guidelines when sending me a previously read draft:

• Turn off track changes
• Go through each suggested edit, and either accept it, or add a comment as to why you didn’t accept it (yes, you can disagree with my suggestions, just explain why)
• Simultaneously you’ll be accepting your edits from the earlier round
• Find any comments that were from an EARLIER round of edits (e.g., I just read it on May 30th, but there are leftover comments from April 27th), and delete those older comments, unless they aren’t resolved (e.g., delete the April 27th comments)
• Turn track changes back on, and go through my comments
• For each comment, either edit the manuscript, or respond to the comment as a new comment (or both)
• Reread the whole paper, and make any additional changes/edits (with track changes still on)
• Send back to me.

 
If we are at a point where I don’t feel that I have to read the whole thing, I will highlight the paragraphs I want to reread, or put in a comment on the title page that says “Eva only has to read first paragraph and whole discussion.” This tracking also helps me immensely. When I was younger and editing fewer things, I likely could remember when someone returned something that I only needed to reread discussion that version. But now, with more years behind me, and more frequent co-authored editing, by the time something returns to me, I’ve lost track of where we left off.  To put it in perspective, not including first-authored papers, I currently have 5 co-authored submitted papers, and 6 co-authored drafted, so I am reading a lot of drafts in any given month.
 
I try to follow a similar process when I’m first author – when I send a new draft around, I have gone through and accepted (or not, with a comment) my earlier changes and suggested changes from co-authors, and then I turn on track changes and make new edits in response to comments. I also respond to comments as needed, e.g., if I don’t make a change, or if co-author had a question about something. Hopefully this annotating helps my co-authors as much as it helps me. 
 
“The post How to Edit Co-authored Papers More Efficiently first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on May 31, 2018.”

In Fall 2016, my family had just moved to a new state, and I was a first time department head in a new department. I was busy. But on top of all that, I had three students at my former institution all trying to complete their dissertations by Summer 2017 so that they could graduate with me as their committee chair.
 
All three students had their dissertation proposal meetings during a 3-day period in November. That October was… intense. There were many nights where I didn’t get to the dissertation drafts until about midnight, and I often stayed up until 2:00 or 3:00 AM editing, sometimes from a standing position so that I didn’t fall asleep. I occasionally took breaks to do down dog, again, so I didn’t fall asleep.
 
[I believe it’s important to interject at this point that I adore all three of these students; they all DID finish by Summer 2017, so 4 years for PhD or 5 years for combined masters/PhD; and they all now have awesome positions as assistant professor or post  doc ]
 
Part of the issue was a problem of perspective. I have a general rule that students can expect a one-week turnaround. To each student, they were sending me drafts at a reasonable rate for my response. But, that rate ignored the two other doctoral students; former students sending me co-authored manuscripts; manuscripts to review for journals; my own writing; and of course, every other aspect of my job, and my life.
 
I know I’m not unique in this situation. Part of being faculty is always having to balance one’s own writing, teaching, and service, with editing students’ and collaborators’ work and reviewing grants and manuscripts for external sources.
 
After we got through the defenses, I decided there had to be a better way. So, my students and I came up with a system to get through Spring semester and their dissertations. And the system worked so well, that I have continued the system and use it for the large category of research that I mentally refer to as “other people’s work” even though, of course, I’m often a co-author. I really think it has revolutionized my ability to get other’ people’s work back to them in a timely manner (I’m human though; I definitely slip up.).
 
What did we do? We created a google spreadsheet to account for my time. Here’s a screenshot that I took this past November, a few months after everyone had graduated:

Yes, I have very productive former students!
 
We created the spreadsheet based on my expectations of how much other people’s work I could handle in a given week. I decided that in any given week I could handle 2 manuscript-length editing projects, and 2 smaller editing projects. Recognizing sometimes I needed to do more, I added the “#3 if desperate” column. And, during that dissertation writing semester, we had to add the “super desperation” column, though fortunately we don’t use it much. I also look a few months ahead and black out cells – Thanksgiving week I cut back on the number of things I would edit by blacking out some cells. Spring break I did the same. I blacked out the whole week of our family August vacation.
 
I also defined for students what category they should use:

• Manuscript: manuscript (co-author or review for journal); chapter of a dissertation or dissertation proposal (if sending multiple chapters, counts as multiple manuscripts); masters or honors thesis; external tenure review letter; dissertation if I’m not the chair
• Lower-level editing task: conference abstracts; conference poster or talk drafts; job talk slides; job talk materials; up to 10 reference letters to write for set of similar jobs (if applying to 2 different types, e.g., faculty & post docs, count as 2 separate ones); looking at/going over analyses before writing up

 
Students all have access to the editing calendar for months ahead, so they can get on my calendar. This system was extremely helpful during the crazy-dissertation writing semester, when everyone had similar deadlines, and we had to figure out a way to make it all fit, so that I wasn’t reading everything in the same week. It also helped students stick to their deadlines, because they knew if they didn’t get something to me as planned, it might be four weeks later when they could get back on my calendar. I think it also provides students with insight as to what it’s like to be a professor, because they get a better sense of the big picture of what my time use is in terms of other people’s work. In addition to students being able to add their own work into the calendar, I will add things myself, such as manuscript reviews for journals, co-authored papers not by students, and external tenure reviews. 
 
I also have other expectations/assumptions, such as:

• Assume I am likely to edit any proposal, thesis, dissertation, or manuscript a minimum of 3 times, often more
• Only use “if desperate” column if truly desperate (e.g., external deadline). Otherwise, use a subsequent week
• I prefer not to read the same thing 2 weeks in a row, so with multiple rounds of edits on same document, make sure there’s a week off between when I receive them.

 
I know this system is unlikely to work for everyone. It doesn’t always work for me. Sometimes, unexpected things come up and I get a couple of weeks behind (a couple of times I’ve cried uncle and moved everything forward a couple of weeks). Other times I am just really tired and get behind because, for instance, everyone in my life is sick and I want to get enough sleep to try to have a halfway decent immune system. Sometimes, a student misses a deadline and she has to get someone else to swap with her. All that said, in my various administrative roles, I’ve talked to students about mentors who take many weeks and even sometimes months to provide feedback on writing, often slowing down students’ progress through the program or marketability for jobs. This system helps me to stay relatively on track with editing other people’s work, but also, not to let it take over my life. I like that when I get asked to review a manuscript I can look at the spreadsheet and see if I have a slot open in the next 4 weeks; if not, I turn it down. I like that on Sunday night I can look at my week ahead and know what my other people’s work tasks are. It works well enough for me that I wanted to share it with you. If you have a system that works well for you, please feel free to share it in the comments.
 
 “The post How I gained control of my editing tasks first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on May 25, 2018.”

If you’re reading this post right now, it’s probably because you are procrastinating from end-of-the-semester grading. I’ve mentioned that grading is one of my least favorite things. Apparently I’m not alone (how much fun does a visit to “grading jail” sound?).

Grading is one of the tasks in academia where we need to provide feedback, and where good feedback can (potentially) affect not only the recipient’s current product, but his future writing. Some of this feedback is to people we know well, like when we edit a manuscript or grant proposal that a colleague or student has written. Sometimes we give feedback to people we do not know well, like when we grade papers or exams. And sometimes we give feedback to someone we don’t know, or we don’t know if we know, like when we review grant proposals or anonymous manuscripts. Today I want to focus on a specific aspect of providing feedback that is harder to keep in mind the deeper you get into a big stack of papers or the further you get into reviewing or editing a long grant proposal or dissertation. Always provide at least some positive feedback, even – especially – when it’s hard to do so.  It takes more time, but it’s important.

You are providing feedback to a real person, who spent (hopefully) many hours on a class paper or a thesis or a manuscript. I know that there are instances where it’s hard to find merits in a particular final product. But keep in mind that the student worked hard to write the final paper, and has feelings too. A low grade is a tiny bit easier to take if the positive aspects are highlighted as well. A rejected manuscript is slightly easier to handle if the reviewer also described the strengths.

If you’re spending time providing feedback, you want the receiver to listen to your feedback (otherwise, why are you writing comments on the paper or reading the draft?). If you only include negative feedback, the author may disregard your feedback, deciding to write you off as angry or clueless about what she wrote. If you include positive feedback as well, the author is more likely to think you understand her paper and to listen to your constructive criticism as well.

I know what you’re thinking. You just read the worst paper ever written, and you can’t think of anything positive to say about it. I’ve literally read thousands of papers in my life, so I hear you. But you can always think of something positive to say.  I’m a bit hesitant to give examples of things I do, in case the next time I give feedback to someone who read this post, s/he thinks, “oh no! Eva wrote about that on her blog, is she just placating me?” But I never give feedback I don’t mean. I always look for the strengths, and provide feedback on those strengths. Here are some things I do when it’s not immediately obvious where to give positive feedback:

On the margin of a paper I’m grading, I may physically mark a passage and write a comment like “good point” or “great!” or “interesting.” Again, only if I think it’s a good point or interesting.

In summary feedback for student papers, I try to give as detailed feedback as possible, such as specifics about the way theory was described well or the clear presentation of potential future directions in a research area. I also may use some of the following more general comments (on both stronger and weaker papers), when they’re true:

• Interesting topic
• Writing style is engaging
• Good introductory/concluding sentence
• Generally well written (even if I don’t like the content)
• The structure follows the assignment structure
• Each paragraph is well organized
• Overall structure of paper is well organized
• Off to a good start!

For a manuscript review, I usually start with strengths. If possible, I comment on other strong sections throughout the review (e.g., theory well summarized; methods clearly described; tables easy to follow). The strengths section is obviously hardest when it’s a weak manuscript. No matter how weak, I don’t think I’ve ever written a review without including some strengths. Some go to’s for weaker papers include:

• Strong sample
• Diverse sample
• Design is strong or unique for this area of work (e.g., longitudinal; qualitative; observational)
• Interesting research topic/research questions
• Important topic
• Topic has important implications (e.g., for intervention or policy)
• Potential to make strong contribution to literature
• Section(s) X is well written

Finally, when you’re giving a co-author feedback, before you jump into suggestions for changes, tell your co-author what you liked about the paper. This part of your feedback doesn’t have to be as extensive as the suggestions for change, but it’s equally important, whether providing feedback to your student, your adviser, or a colleague. That’s right – even your adviser wants to know what you liked about his paper. Your co-author will accept your feedback better if you’ve also highlighted the positive aspects, and more generally, you want to maintain a positive working relationship with him. Presumably you like him, and want him to feel good about his hard work so far. I once worked with a student who, every time she sent me feedback on a paper we were writing together, went right into the negative and never said a positive word about it. I finally gently replied to her feedback with a simple comment like, “did you like anything about the paper?” and explained why giving positive feedback is valuable. Ever since then, whenever we collaborate, she includes in her feedback what she liked about my writing, and it makes me feel much better about my writing and about our work together.  I hope this advice has improved her collaborations with others as well.

Grading good papers (and writing positive manuscript reviews) is so much less work than providing feedback on ones that are poorly written. It’s easy to rush through, write an A, and be done when there is a big stack waiting for you. But take a moment to write something positive as well. Even in the best papers, you may not reach the Gottman 5:1 magic ratio, but you can include some positive. Sometimes my TAs laugh at me when I write smiley faces next to good exam answers – they argue that it’s the grade, not the feedback, that matters. But I still remember what my undergraduate stats professor wrote at the end of my final exam. It was something like “bellissimo. I’m halfway through grading 50 exams and you’re the only one who has gotten it all right. Treat yourself to something nice.” 25 years later and I still remember that. When I’m grading I remind myself of the long-lasting impact of one positive comment, and I take the time to give everyone the same courtesy.

“The post Providing good feedback: Include the positive first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on December 5, 2013.”