Friday, June 22, 2012

But wait there's more!

One thing I find really interesting is when a journal/conference/grant submission system does not restrict the "errata" an author can tack on to the end of their manuscript / proposal. Sometimes this is useful and important information, like budgets and collaboration letters, but often it is far too much information which does not help the authors.

The longer you are in academia, the more critical reading and reviewing you have to do. Not just academic service reviewing, but the work of your students, colleagues, college administrators, etc. Though our brains don't get any bigger to accomodate the additional text - it still takes a long time to critically appraise this stuff. So when I see superfluous errata, the only thing I want to write in my review is "LESS IS MORE. LESS IS MORE. LESS IS MORE"

(Well, ok, maybe just once, since three times kinda makes me a hypocrite.)