One of the most important things you have to do as an academic is keep track of your projects—and, by extension, your papers. Like many researchers, I get interested in a lot of projects and (dare I say it) I tend to over-commit (*unsurprised gasp*). But keeping track of my projects helps me be realistic about what I can accomplish and what I have on my plate.
The most common way to track your projects is to use a “research pipeline” (also known as a publication pipeline). This metaphor is extremely useful: between when you conceptualize the project to when you publish the paper is a whole mess of steps including (but not limited to): data collection, data analysis, writing the paper, and revisions (and revisions, and revisions, and revisions). By breaking up your project into steps that build on each other, it makes producing research and writing up your results more manageable.
These steps are not always linear. When you receive a revise and resubmit a full paper, reviewers may ask you to redo a part of the analysis. The manuscript itself may even go through several complete rewrites before it is accepted to a journal. And book projects may have entirely different pipelines.
A simplified “rule of thumb” for your publication pipeline is the 2-2-2 (two in development, two in data analysis, and two under review; though I’ve seen variants with different 2’s).
However, as many articles have pointed out, there are lots of intermediary steps that should be recognized. Suggestions range from anywhere between seven and eleven (or more). My pipeline has 9 steps.
In 2019, these were my steps: (1) literature/planning, (2) collect data, (3) compile data, (4) data analysis, (5) draft paper, (6) full paper, (7) conference/under review, (8) R&R, (9) accepted!
In 2020, I modified my steps slightly: (1) idea nursery, (2) data plan/IRB, (3) data collection, (4) data analysis, (5) draft paper, (6) near completion, (7) under review, (8) R&R, (9) accepted!
The main changes are in the first half of the pipeline. I expanded out my “literature/planning” step into two steps: the idea nursery (which I read a lot of literature to understand the question’s domain) and the data planning (where I think about what data layers and analyses I need to answer the research question I’m interested in). The data planning is critical for me: different projects demand different types of data plans. Survey experiments and semi-structured interviews, for example, must go through IRB approval. In projects relying on a large text dataset, I have to think about how I want to construct my corpus.
After this, my steps are fairly consistent: collect the data (i.e., execute the data plan), analyze the data, draft the manuscript, complete the manuscript (“near completion” was a better descriptor for me than “full paper”), submit the paper to a publication (or conference), receive and complete an R&R (if submitting to a publication), and getting the paper accepted. When a paper under review is rejected, I move it back to the “near completion” stage (or earlier if I need to do more).
For projects that I want to shelf, I treat the back of my page as a literal “shelf.” In 2020, I split my shelf into a “short term shelf” (things that I want to pick back up within the year) and a “long term shelf” (things that I want to go back to, but probably not for some time).
How do I keep track of the pipeline?
I’ve used a variety of different strategies to try and keep track of my papers. First, I used to list them all on a sheet of paper and cross out the paper when it had been accepted. This was a good first step, but it didn’t really help me understand the stage my paper was on.
Now, I use a physical pipeline with post-it notes. I got inspiration from this bullet journal spread, which uses a similar strategy (there are 12 steps in this pipeline). The original spread has a color-coded system (green for dissertation, orange for side projects, and yellow for postdocs), but I am more haphazard.
My 2019 Pipeline! Thanks for helping me keep track of this year’s papers!
Moving my post-it’s to my 2020 pipeline!
May of my projects turn into multiple papers. For each project, I have a 2-6 letter key (“SP” or “Debate” or MCRC”). Papers are indicated with an additional word. For example, my paper on Russian IRA disinformation in the news was “SP News”. My paper on cross-platform Russian disinformation was “SP 3media”.
Each paper is indicated with a post-it note. I like to keep track of papers rather than projects because my projects are prone to branching into multiple papers. When I complete a step, I move the post-it for that paper to the next stage. However, I can also go backward: when I have to redo some analysis for a paper, I move my post-it from “Under Review” back into “Data Analysis” (or even “Data Collection”).
When a paper is accepted, I write the paper down in my last box (“Accepted!”) and throw away the post-it note for that paper. I like the permeance of writing the accepted/in-press/published paper down. I’ll also put a little exclamation mark for accepted papers that are single-authored or first-authored.
In conclusion: tracking your research/publication pipeline is really useful for understanding what stage your project is at. I encourage reviewing your pipeline at least once a month and updating the pipeline yearly (especially if you’re still trying to figure out the most optimal steps in your pipeline… which may change as your research interests change).