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Christopher D. Green
York University, Toronto, Ontario
ISSN 1492-3173
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Editorial
Fundamental Principles for Preparing
Psychology Journal Articles[1]
Harry F. Harlow (1958)[2]
First published in Journal of Comparative and Physiological
Psychology, 55, 893-896.
Posted
February 2006
As retiring Editor of the Journal of
Comparative and Physiological Psychology, I feel that I have one remaining responsibility to
my psychological colleagues. Having passed judgment on about 2,500 original
manuscripts and almost as many revisions in my 12 years as Editor, I believe I should bequeath to posterity some
principles of scientific reporting that I have formulated only through
countless
hours of moonlighting.
COVERING LETTER
In plotting the
publication of a manuscript the prospective author should think first about the
covering letter. It is an unforgivable error to write, "I am submitting a manuscript for your
consideration...." This evasive method gets you nowhere with editors. Even
if the nondirective technique works with many patients, there are some sick
people who are best approached using positive pressures.
There are a number
of general principles underlying a good covering letter, and they can be illustrated
by example. I offer the following:
DEAR HARRY:
I am submitting the manuscript, "Creative
Thinking by Paramecia," for publication in JCPP. My chairman has assured me that
upon acceptance of this manuscript he will recommend me for promotion to associate
professor. Two recipients of the Distinguished Psychologist Award have reviewed
this paper and recommend it highly.
I am pleased to see
that you are one of the candidates for President of the American Psychological
Association. As you know, I have nominated you for many years and will probably
give you my support in the future.
Because of the
unusual significance of these researches, I would like early publication, which
I will finance from my National Institute of Mental Health grant.
Warm regards,
JOHN HOPEFUL
Assistant Professor
The battle is now half won. You will get a fair
shake.
INTRODUCTION
Almost all
scientific papers include an introduction even though large parts of it are
frequently buried in the sections labeled Method and Results. However, the
total omission of an introduction constitutes a glaring error, and, anyway, it
is fun to write introductions --one is not constrained by facts.
One way to write an
introduction is simply to state what the experiment is all about and make predictions
about the outcome. Since the data will already have been collected and
processed, you will have no difficulty in making insightful predictions. As all famous historians know, one can
predict the past with great precision. However, prediction
is one of the great booby traps into which young and inexperienced
psychologists often fall. All their predictions
are confirmed; older
men know that this never happens. The proper technique is to select the
prediction of minimum import, or
throw in a completely extraneous
one, and have this prediction fail. Honesty is the best policy.
Although some
psychologists write simple, straightforward
introductions, this is commonly
considered to be déclassé. In
the sophisticated or "striptease" technique you keep the problem a
secret from the reader until the very last paragraph. Indeed, some very
sophisticated authors keep the problem a secret forever. Since I am interested
in readers as well as authors, I advise
that readers always approach introduction sections using the
Chinese technique -- begin at the end and read backward.
The function of the
introduction is to impress your colleagues with your scholarship
and erudition -- academic appointments are seldom made on the basis of a results
section. Scholarly one-upmanship is attained with an [p. 894] unending number
of nonspecific references, such as:
"The up-and-down effect was first
discovered by (_____, 1762) and this study led to many fruitful investigations (_____,
1804; _____,1827; _____,1844; _____, 1861; _____, 1874; _____, 1888; _____,1894; ____, 1928; _____, 1937; _____,
1944; and _____, 1952). Beyond these researches the broad implications of this
discovery led to related studies on the in-and-out phenomenon (_____, 1829;
_____, 1855; _____, 1927; and _____, 1950), and the around-and-about law
(_____,1884; _____, 1914; _____, 1933; _____, 1947; _____, 1952; _____, 1952,
and _____, 1960."
Often, but not often enough, young and lazy
authors are frightened away from this technique simply because they are
appalled by the amount of work involved in reading the literature, especially
if part is written in some foreign language. However, there is no excuse for
this attitude; the author should remember that he is not reading the literature
just citing it. Anyway, he can always rely on some scholarly article in Psychological
Bulletin as a secondary
source to provide an impressive reference list with almost no effort.
Occasionally editors
object to overly extended, striptease introductions and to long lists of
nonspecific references. At this point the author should take the bull by the
horns and write the editor a nasty letter accusing him of rigidity, illiteracy,
and lack of scholarly interests. Editors are busy and editors are human. They
can be broken -- don't pamper them.
METHOD
To write a good
Method section, one must be an idealist. If this section is to be understood,
it must be clear, orderly, and systematic.
The best way to achieve this is not to tell what really happened, or if you
must tell, wait as long as is physically possible. Your four groups of Ss
should always add to 20 or 30 each. If 7 Ss in Group 2 died of pneumonia and 19
Ss in Group 3 were suffocated, don't put it in the Method section. The death of
these Ss was not planned but resulted, and the information obviously belongs in
the Results. There is also good reason for putting this information in the
Discussion because you can then mediate on how different the results might have
been had the Ss lived.
A mechanical problem that
often creeps up in Method relates to the spelling and meaning of words such as
"maize," "liman," and "maccaccuss-resus."
Fortunately there is a fundamental rule. Writing manuscripts is a tedious process
and time means money. You must protect your time in every possible manner. If
you cannot spell or do not know the meaning of a word, don't look it up in Webster's
Third New International Dictionary.
If the word isn't in Thorndike and Barnhart, 95% of your psychological
audience won't know the meaning of the word or how to spell it anyway.
Moreover, that's the Editor's responsibility. Let well enough alone.
RESULTS
The Results section comes in a very convenient
place, and one way to start it is to put the procedures which you inadvertently
omitted from the Method section -- which you are too lazy to rewrite -- at the
very beginning the Results.
If the Editor
objects, point out that you are doing this for the sake of continuity. Then
problem can only be resolved by reference to the Procedure. Reread the
Procedure section and find out the order that you said you were going to follow, then, carefully
rearrange the order in the Results. If you write succinctly and clearly, there
is a real danger that reader will only read your manuscript once and every
psychologist worth his salt recognizes the importance of overlearning. Then,
too, if he has to struggle to understand it, he will naturally attribute the
difficulties to abstruseness of the problem.
The most important
items in the Results will probably be the figures. Authors seldom realize the
importance of figures and consequently fail to give them sufficient attention.
It is absolutely imperative that the figures of professional quality. This may
cost a little money, but even with academic salaries what they are, the cost is
cheap compared with the value of the man-hours spent in gathering processing
the data. The ordinate and abscissa should be boldly drawn and the curves
should stand out like sore thumbs, which they frequently really are. [p. 895]
Now we are at the critical point. It is
important to make sure that all legends, all numbers on the ordinate and
abscissa, and all titles are completely unreadable. If you fail to do this,
there is a real danger that editors and readers will compare the information
given in the graph with what is written in the Results and Discussion and call
the discrepancies to your attention. Fortunately your figures can be made
unreadable at a high academic level by following a few simple rules. Draw the
figure on paper 2 ft. sq. and never purchase templates with letters more than 4 in. high. Then when the figures are
reduced in size for Journal publication, the data will remain a personal
secret. You can subsequently let out the data you are not trying to hide by personal
correspondence.
Even authors who
follow this rule -- and the general principle is widely understood --
frequently make a completely unforgivable error by sending glossy prints of
their figures to the Editor. If the Editor has already recognized the fact that
he has presbyopia and has purchased glasses, he may insist that the graphs be
redrawn, and then the jig is up. However, if you send the original drawings and
simply scratch out in pencil the copy for the carbon which some editors
require, you have a high chance of success. A better technique is to send the carbon without figures. Most
editors will relay this carbon to a consulting editor without checking for
figures, and a single favorable review frequently insures publication.
Another good
technique is to supplement the figures by presenting the data for individual
animals in lengthy tables without means, medians, or standard deviations. No
reader, and certainly no editor, will ever take the trouble to make the
necessary computations to check your curves or statements of significance. The
additional advantage is that long, detailed tables carry the implication that
you engaged in an overwhelmingly complicated piece of research.
DISCUSSION
Whereas there are firm rules and morals
concerning the collection and reporting of data which should be placed in the
Results, these rules no longer are in force when one comes to the Discussion.
Anything goes -- shoot the moon -- the sky's the limit! Even though one is
going far afield, the endeavor should not be random, but the deception should
be achieved with skill and grace. The most important fundamental guiding
principle is to repeat the predictions made in the introduction-elaborating
them if possible and then to describe the importance of your work in broad
generic terms and never get down to mundane fact. In Discussion sections one
does not discover things about maze performance, minutes to run down a straight
alley, 48 hr. of food deprivation, or the number of mechanical puzzle devices
opened -- one makes breath-taking
discoveries about learning, drive reduction, motivation, and curiosity. After
all, this is the way psychologists are going to talk when they present and
discuss their work at scientific meetings, and no man attains fluency in the
jargon without practice.
Very occasionally
some psychologist makes the mistake of saying what is worth saying in the
Discussion and then stopping. This is interpreted by other psychologists as
indicating that the person lacks verbal skill and creativity. Anyone can talk effectively about data which
actually exist.
If your experiment
has any merit whatsoever, and little is required, there is the likelihood that
someone else will do it later and do it better. To save face it is important to
engage in the alibi-in-advance ~technique.
Endless Discussion pages can be consumed by describing how you would do
the experiment if you were to do it over, and the joy of this device is that no
data need be collected. You have the fellow who is going to be so cold and
calculating as to check your results, on the run, and if you are smart enough,
no matter what he obtains, it will be a dry run.
Even if you have
only completed a single experiment you can greatly augment your data by several
pages of description of the results which you would have obtained had you done
a long series of related experiments. Furthermore, a clarity is achieved by
describing the experiments that were not done instead of those that were because
the results in the imaginary experiments come out in an integrated, orderly
manner that is seldom achieved in the
laboratory. Remember that data collec-[p. 896]tion is a routine process
and the brilliant scientist will rise above it when he comes to the Discussion.
Nothing is now left
except to find a way to end the Discussion section, which has become so long
and so confused that most readers will have forgotten what the original problem
was about anyway. Discussions should be concluded in a friendly, charitable,
and slightly condescending manner. First, say a few little things about the
difficulties of doing research, particularly research in your chosen area. Then
point out that there are a few little technical problems and research odds and
ends that need to be picked up before your area of choice is completely neat and tidy. Finally,
explain that once the research trail has been broken, less strong bodies can
follow along.
FOOTNOTES
Finally, one comes
to the footnotes. Footnotes are always on a separate page (or pages) and there
is a chance that the Editor will miss them, particularly if the typewritten
material is single-spaced and turned upside down. Thus, here is an opportunity
to introduce a couple of additional pages of complete trivia. If the Editor
should discover them, nothing will be lost, for paper is cheap. Remember that
this is your last chance to get in some padding, and never forget the fact that
promotion is the prerogative of deans and final decisions are frequently
weighed on other scales than those of justice.
Special
attention should be given to one footnote -- the acknowledgment. It is this one
that separates the men from the boys. Since most experiments are not worth
doing and the data: obtained are not worth publishing, great care should be
taken to protect one's reputation when one's name is associated with the
conventional potboiler. This can be achieved by a simple and honest footnote.
"The author (or
authors) had very little to do with this research. The idea was stolen from Dr.
_______, the experimental design was proposed by my (our) statistical
consultant, Dr. _______, the Ss were run by Mr. _______ and Miss _______, the
data were processed by the mathematical computing center, and the paper was
completely rewritten by Editor _______, on the basis of extensive notes and
suggestions made by Consulting Editor _______, whose name was inadvertently
left off the masthead of the Journal of _______."
EDITORIAL POLICY
Faced with a
mounting flood of uninspired researches and watching publication lag
continuously mount despite multiple allotments of additional Journal pages, I came to realize that my
editorial policies, even though rigid and unreasonable, were incomplete or else
in error. For a long time I thought there was no solution, and then I realized
I was wrong. I established a new JCPP policy and formalized it with a rubber stamp, only to realize
that my term as Editor had already expired. But at least I have the rubber
stamp which I planned to use on a large number of manuscripts: "Not read
but rejected."
NOTES
[1]The
publication costs for this report were borne by the American Psychological
Association.
[2] Still at the University of
Wisconsin.