The Many Paths to Success

This year I have the privilege of interviewing successful chemists working in the chemical industry and writing feature profile articles for the American Chemical Society (ACS). I am enjoying the monthly project more than I thought I would.

Each one of my subjects’ stories is unique, but all are inspiring. The profile articles are attracting an increasing number of readers, and some of them have left very encouraging comments such as this one. 

"One of the best stories I've read in a long time. Thank you for putting it up."

I have tried to include most of the recommendations my subjects have offered in the profile articles. Because of the word limit, however, not all the helpful information made it to the published articles.  

In this series of blog articles, I plan to share what I have learned from these world-class professionals (entrepreneurs and corporate employees) with my blog readers and social media followers. My subjects' stories have inspired me and many of my readers, and I hope they will inspire you as well.

Working for Others, or Start Your Own Business? What I have learned from Dr. Driscoll

“I could not find the job that I wanted, so I started my own company,” once said Jack Driscoll, an inventor and a successful serial entrepreneur, whose successes include a device company that has changed the landscape of environmental safety and another company that has grown into the largest privately held in vitro diagnostic company in the world.   

However, starting a business is not for everyone, Driscoll cautions. So before you start, think about what you want to do and ask yourself some hard questions. 

• Do you have a new and unique product that has a market?

• Will it bother you if you don’t know where your next dollar will come from?

• Will you and your family be okay if you have to work long hours every day for a long time? 

• Will you be happy running your own business in the long term?

“Work for someone else if it bothers you to work 60+ hours per week for a long time, and/or it bothers you to own a bank money, and you have to put your assets on the line,” Driscoll advises. 

But, if you do strongly believe in your business idea and you think you have the entrepreneurship spirit. “Go for it,” Driscoll encourages. But here are a few things you may want to do right from the very beginning.  

• Build a team. To grow, you need a team of professionals with different skill sets because no matter how smart you are and how hard you work, you can’t do everything by yourself.
• Sign an agreement. With a team, you’ll need an agreement that spells out each member’s responsibilities, and most importantly the percentage of profits (or debts) they can take later on. An agreement becomes especially important as your business grow and you start to have investors.

To learn more about Dr. Driscoll's inspiring story, read the original profile published by ACS's Industry Voice.

Translating Your Data Into a Compelling Story--Tips on Writing Peer-Reviewed Research/Medical Articles

Most scientists I know enjoy doing research. But writing? Not so much. When it’s time to write a manuscript after having completed a research project, they often dread to get started. Some are even consumed by anxiety. Here are a few tips.

Think Before You Start to Write

If you cannot think clearly, odds are you cannot write clearly. So before you start to write, spend some time reminiscing the whole process of completing the project, step by step chronologically.

Step 1. Initiating the project. In this step, try to recall how you started the project. Was there a critical question you tried to answer, or was there a pressing problem you were so eager to solve? If so, what was it?

Step 2. Choosing the methods. To answer the question, or solve the problem, you identified the methods you needed. Were there available methods from colleagues that you could use, or did you have to design your own methods?

Step 3. Generating the data. After you had chosen a valid method to use, you couldn’t wait to start generating data. Think about how excited you were while you were collecting the precious data day after day.

Step 4. Analyzing the data. As you were diligently generating and collecting data, you couldn’t help but analyze the data along the way. Were you excited, frustrated, or confused? Why? What did the data tell you? And what changes did you have to make?

After many months, or years, you finally generated enough data as you had planned. And you analyzed the whole data set using a pre-chosen method(s). Did the result of the analysis answer your original question? Was your result the same as you expected? If yes, how did you come up with your expectation, based on your previous study, other groups’ studies, or something else? If not, what’s the difference and what’s your explanation for the difference?

Step 5. Finishing the project. Based on the analysis, what conclusion did you get? How would your result impact the basic research and/or the clinical practice in your field?

Start to Write After You Have a Story in Your Head

After you have gone over the above 5 steps, you have already created a full story in your head. Now write down the story. Your written story is not in perfect shape, yet, but it’s an excellent starting point, and it flows. More importantly, you have just overcome your biggest hurdle of writing a manuscript, getting started.

Finish Your Manuscript As Soon As the Project Ends

Start to write your manuscript as soon as you have completed your study, and finish it while your memory is still fresh. The longer you wait, the less interested you are to write up the manuscript. And if you are doing research in a competitive field, chances are there are other groups that are doing similar studies. If you wait too long, they may publish their results ahead of you. If this happens, your results may just have lost the value they deserve. 

Providing Scientific Writing and Editing Services to Chinese Researchers. Part II: Strategies for Fruitful Collaboration

Strategies for Building Fruitful Author-Editor Collaboration

Enhancing education

Education is the best strategy for professional editors to convince Chinese researchers to accept the editors’ regular rates. If you are a professional editor and your service rates are challenged by Chinese researchers, talk to them and let them know what professional writing and editing are about, inform them what you can provide, and stress the value your service can add to the researchers’ career advancement.   

If your potential client truly cannot afford your full service (eg, students) and you are not willing to reduce your rate, consider breaking down your service into smaller pieces (eg, providing overall comments and suggestions, correcting grammar errors, improving the logic, etc) and let the authors choose the service(s) they need and want the most.

Building alternative collaboration channels

• Forming a free exchange forum. In my opinion, it’s the best if the researchers and editors can directly work together — saving time and money for both parties. An online forum where Chinese researchers and western editors can freely seek collaboration opportunities would benefit both parties. 

• Practicing “direct-to-consumer” adverting. As I mentioned earlier, many Chinese researchers do not know where to seek professional writing or editing assistance. So it’s necessary for professional writers and editors to advertise their services directly to Chinese researchers. This is actually an area where AMWA could do some great work. For example, the AMWA’s marketing team could promote AMWA and AMWA’s freelance database at professional meetings attended by Chinese and other ESL researchers.

• Teaching at Chinese universities. Experienced English teachers are needed in almost every single Chinese university. Teaching at Chinese universities can help editors establish their credibility among Chinese students and faculty members, and it’s a great way for the editors to turn the faculty members into longtime clients.

Providing Scientific Writing and Editing Services to Chinese Researchers. Part I: Opportunities and Challenges

Opportunities

In China, publishing research articles in prestigious scientific journals is more than just "publish or perish." To a certain degree, it’s about fame, career advancement, and even survival. 

Chinese researchers have long been encouraged to publish in English journals. Current academic rules value English publications more than Chinese publications. Minimum numbers of publications in journals included in the Science Citation Index (SCI) database are requisites of graduation, employment, and promotion. And a journal’s impact factor is one of the most important factors that Chinese researchers consider when choosing a target journal for manuscript submission. In general, the higher the impact factor of a journal, the more strongly Chinese researchers desire to publish in such a journal. In China, the total number of published journal articles along with the impact factors of the journals where the articles are published is commonly used to judge a researcher’s scientific merit.

However, writing scientific articles in English poses a great challenge to many Chinese researchers, especially those who have never studied or worked in English-speaking countries. Besides language barriers and cultural differences, many Chinese researchers, like many native-English speaking researchers, have difficulty telling logical, coherent, and succinct scientific stories in writing. And many of them have yet to acquire the habit of checking and following their target journals’ Instructions for Authors before or while writing their manuscripts.

Naturally, in China there is a great need for English writing and editing assistance. And English writing and editing assistance provided by professional writers and editors like AMWA members is in high demand.

Challenges

Many professional English writers and editors, including AMWA members, are interested in providing professional writing and editing services to Chinese researchers. However, challenges exist for both Chinese researchers and professional writers and editors. And the two main challenges are: coming up with service rates that are acceptable to both parties and finding a channel through which the two parties can directly work together.

Acceptable rates to both parties. Limited funding and a lack of knowledge on the scientific/medical writing and editing profession are the two main reasons that Chinese researchers are reluctant to pay the rates proposed by professional writers and editors.

In China, those who need publication the most are graduate students and junior level researchers ­— the former needs publications to graduate and the latter needs publications to secure tenure positions. However, these two groups generally have zero or only limited funding and often cannot afford professional writing or editing services. Under the pressure of publishing in English journals, some of these individuals, however, are willing to hire editors to improve their manuscripts, either using their limited research funding or out of their own pockets. Many of them seek professional help only after their manuscripts have been rejected because of poor writing qualities, though.

Limited collaboration channels. A professional organization like AMWA does not exist in China. The vast majority of Chinese researchers don’t know AMWA, and they have no idea where to get professional help to improve writing. Currently, most of the author-editor relations between Chinese researchers and western editors are built through scientific journals or for-profit editing agencies.

Some scientific journals have their own small pools of freelance copyeditors, and the editors of these journals sometimes recommend the copyeditors to authors whose manuscripts need to be polished prior to the peer-review process. But the problem is that only a small number of editors have the privilege of being included in the pools. For-profit editing agencies can serve as bridges between professional editors and researchers, but they — because of their for-profit nature — can also block the communication channel and interfere the collaboration between researchers and editors.