Journals (pt 2)...

This post is in reference/follow-up to my previous post "Journals".

I heard back from the editor (yes, it took awhile), and he agreed with my assessment of the reviews and has accepted my manuscript!

Interestingly, I have read numerous blogs/articles discussing that men are more likely to argue with editors than females, and that females will more likely accept a rejection and"fade into night". This follows the trend discussed in the book "Women don't ask", in which the authors say that women are less likely to ask for things than men, and as such (in the long run) end up with less. Women essentially expect to be rewarded for good deeds, while men ask to be rewarded. I agree with much of this and have seen it in many of my female colleagues, but I have come to discover that it doesn't really apply to me. I'm not trying to sound arrogant - I actually don't think it applies to most females who went to an all-girls high school.

I think this is because women who attend all-girls high school learn at an early age to accept leadership roles, and they become comfortable in them. It doesn't seem strange for a girl to be the president of a club or of the class, because, by default, it will be a girl. Therefore, when these women go to college, they continue to pursue these leadership roles that they have grown to enjoy. And in these roles, they have to negotiate for things like funding, they have organize events and run meetings. Often undergraduate clubs have annual budgets of 5k or more, and a single event, if it is school wide (like a Mardi Gras party or orientation week), can have a much larger budget.

Then, in graduate school or as a faculty member, the budgets and the responsibilities get larger. Much, much larger. I just evaluated my annual burn rate.

After being responsible for organizing a large event or for orchestrating the construction of a lab, asking an editor to re-evaluate a decision on a paper seems pretty easy. Especially, if the decision was clearly incorrect.