Re: Rush to publish

[aah@nofs.navy.mil]

I disagree with Tom, but that's ok. :-)
>I too have been on big papers.  Five hundred authors.  It is not any 
>fun.  Not only do you not know the content of the paper, but you know only 
>a small fraction of the authors.  Sigh!  That is why I promote individual 
>effort here.

There is a huge difference between 500 authors and, say, 3 authors.
If you have some background in a specific field, then sure,
going it on your own is pretty straightforward.  If this
is a new experience, it often helps tagging along at first.
The main things to me are: that the people who did the work, whether in
taking the data, processing the data, or analyzing the data, are
appropriately acknowledged; and that the content is factually correct.

The old wisdom that the last 5percent of a project takes 50percent
of the time has held true for me numerous times.  I am not advocating
that someone spend years researching a paper, just that sufficient
data is collected and analyzed to justify any conclusions that are drawn.
A good paper _does_ take time to write; note that Tom is talking several
months for his engineering paper.  We've delayed several eclipsing binary
papers in the AAVSO group until a second observing season because
there is a question about certain features of the light curve that
impact on the model of the system.  Other papers just seem naturally to
complete themselves; each must be taken on its own merit.
Arne