Our first paper written in Google Docs
 
Recently I described our paper in a special issue on relationship dissolution. Writing this paper was a completely collaborative experience, and my first time doing it this way, so I thought I’d describe how that process went for us.
 
We read a call for papers for a special issue on romantic relationship dissolution in Emerging Adulthood.  I had three doctoral students at the time, so at our research group meeting we discussed whether we had any data that might fit the special issue. The thing about special issues is that the turnaround time is generally relatively short, certainly shorter than my usual time from paper conceptualization to submission.  It would be challenging to collect data for a special issue in time to write it up, and even challenging (not impossible) to start entirely new analyses on a brand new paper.
 
If you can pull it off, though, there’s value in submitting to a special issue. First, your submission is not a shot in the dark – you know the journal is interested in the topic, so if you submit something of good quality, I believe your likelihood of acceptance is higher. Of course it depends on the submission rate, but the guest editors need a certain number of papers to fill the issue. Second, you are then grouped with similar papers, increasing the likelihood that researchers interested in the topic will stumble upon your paper.
 
In our discussion, we realized we had a conference presentation submitted on long distance dating relationships (LDDRs), and that it wouldn’t be that challenging to subsequently look at breakups in this sub-group to fit the special issue. But, given time constraints, and that all of us were in the middle of multiple other papers, we would need a highly collaborative process among the four of us.
 
I believe the process from start to finish (other than the original analyses for the conference submission, which were only part of the final analyses) was 6 months. 
 
One key feature in making this process work (for us) was that we identified a project leader. Emily had been lead author on the conference submission, and so she agreed to be project leader and first author on the manuscript. She set up timelines and tables, helped distribute tasks, ran the discussions at our group meetings, and kept us on track.
 
We had one google doc that we used for everything related to the project. It started with timelines and outlines and eventually had the fully drafted manuscript. Everyone had full rights on the doc so they could choose to write directly, or to edit/suggest.
 
Emily created timelines to keep us on track. The only one I could quickly find is this one, from the second half of the process:

We started with a lit review, divvying up the literature for different authors to summarize. I really appreciate the note that some of the reviewing is copy and pasted so needs to be reworded. Good reminder and good practice in general.

Then as each author tackled different sections, we could work on it simultaneously. I generally appreciate track changes in editing manuscripts, but one challenge is having two or more people editing simultaneously. Yes, you can merge changes, but I always find it cumbersome to receive three edited versions of the same paper and to try to merge them. In contrast, with everyone working in one google doc, there was no concern about order or turn taking. In addition, if each person was writing a separate section, they could simply write. But if they wanted to edit someone else’s text and wait on approval from the other author, they could use suggest mode.
 
Eventually, when we wanted to finalize formatting and make sure things looked pretty, we switched to a Word version and passed it along in a more traditional way. I appreciated seeing this heading at the top when I opened the original document this week:

Documentation of process is so important for continuity and I really appreciated finding this heading there.
 
Overall, I think all four of us would describe the experience as very positive. I can’t think of any negatives of doing it in google docs, besides having to fix formatting later. I don’t know that I would automatically write a manuscript I first author in google docs, simply because I’m more comfortable with MS Word. But, I wouldn’t hesitate to do it again through google docs as a fully collaborative paper. My life doesn’t always have space for writing a manuscript in 6 months, but for my research group at the time, it worked, and we are pleased with the result. 
 
“Our First Paper Written in Google Docs first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on July 26, 2018.”

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.”

This tip may be something where you read it and think, how did she not know that already? But if you, like me, did not know it already, I hope you find it as pleasing as I did.

I was working on my laptop at home on feedback to a co-author on an R&R. Therefore, I have two different word documents open. I have been annoyed ever since Windows updated to group or stack all open Windows from the same program. It bothers me both at work and at home but more at home where I only have one screen and I frequently go back and forth between two documents or two spreadsheets or two PP files or four SPSS windows. It probably only takes an extra 3-5 seconds every time I want to toggle, but for whatever reason, I find it extremely annoying.

So, after years of dealing with it, I had one of those Aha, maybe I can change it moments. Enter google, and a 2 minute fix and once again, my world feels better.

I found the solution here.

To review:

• Right click on task bar
• Choose Taskbar settings or Properties (depends on version of Word)
• In Taskbar tab, find Taskbar Buttons option
• Where it says "Combine taskbar buttons" Choose "Never"

And now each Word (or excel, or PP...) Window is a separate button on your taskbar, and includes the file name.

Life changing!

“The post MS Word tip: Ungrouping windows first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on March 22, 2018”

For the proposal I recently submitted, I needed to paste a table I made in MS Word back into Word as an image, so that I could play with its size and have text wrap around it. My first attempt was to save it as a PDF, grab it, and paste it into Word, but it was too faded/blurry. My second attempt was to save it as a PDF, save it as a JPEG, and then paste it in, but even worse. Luckily, my husband knew the easier solution:

• Highlight the whole table in Word in a separate document.
• Copy it.
• Go into the document to the point you want to place it, and in Word choose “paste special” and then choose “picture (enhanced metafile)”
• Then you can adjust it as you wish            
  

•               Adjust size: Highlight it and change size physically, or highlight it, right click, choose size & position, and then change height/width under “scale.” I did the latter because I was pasting 3 different tables and I wanted them to be identical in size.
•             Wrap text: Right click, choose “wrap text” and then choose “in line with text” if you want text to wrap around the image (less white space on the page)

This process really helped me with the formatting of the proposal.

“The post MS Word trick #2: Pasting MS Word table into Word as image first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on June 12, 2014.”

Last week we had our grant writing marathon. On the final day, my 3 students each read a 20 page, single spaced (0.5 inch margin!) document to give feedback. The feedback totaled about 900 revisions. One student suggested creating a google doc to work from simultaneously, but I worried about working on sections at the same time, and about loss of formatting in the conversion.

Nervously, I went with merging track changes and comments in Word. It mostly worked, creating one document with everyone’s comments combined. You can find details about how to do it here.

In brief:

·         Choose compare from the Review tab

·         Choose combine revisions from multiple authors

·         Choose an original and a revised version

·         You can choose what you do and do not want to compare/merge, and how to do it

·         Repeat as many times as necessary depending on how many people worked on the document

I ended up with one document that had everyone’s tracked changes, plus everyone’s comments, in one place. Magic.

I would do one thing differently. I didn’t learn until I had everyone’s feedback that Word will not merge formatting edits from multiple documents, so it lost everyone’s formatting edits. It wasn’t a huge deal, because we weren’t doing careful formatting reads this time (e.g., fixing indents, fixing bold vs. underline). However, if I did it again, I would ask all readers not to make any formatting changes, but instead, to make comments as to where they thought formatting changes should be made (e.g., highlight text and write in comment “should be bold.”).

Either way, much better than trying to go through 900 revisions across 3 documents. Thank you everyone!

“The post Word trick #1: Merging tracked changes and comments first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on May 29, 2014.”