Saturday, October 10, 2009

The Paleo Paper Challenge: Roll Call!

The Paleo Paper Challenge, sponsored by Dave Hone of Dave Hone's Archosaur Musings and me, is nearly a month in. At last count, we have 22 23 participants! That's a lot of science going on.

Of course, what's the point of having a challenge without being challenged just a little bit? The whole point of this is to nudge. . .cajole. . .motivate. . .humiliate. . .all of us into finishing up those nagging papers. With less than three months to go, it's time to start kicking things into overdrive.

PPCers: Now it's time to make good on your promises. In the comments below, drop a note to tell us how you're doing! It's upon all of us to make each other finish these papers!

I'll start. I've committed to finishing a paper on a Myledaphus tooth site, as well as finish up revisions on one of my dissertation chapters. Right now, I'm ashamed to say that I haven't done a thing. But, the good news is that the dissertation chapter is on my priority list for the coming week. Readers: if I don't indicate any progress by Friday, you are allowed. . .nay, required. . .to publicly humiliate me. And while you're at it, get to work on your own papers!

That is all.

12 comments:

Penny said...

Hi Andy,

I want to join the PPC too. Finally published a paper that'd been suffering for five years, and want to get the follow-up paper finished by the end of this year. The topic: Bulk isotopic ratios from tooth enamel and general interpretation of environment. Without a deadline, I'll never get it done.

~pH

Andy said...

Excellent! I'll add you to the list. :-)

ReBecca Hunt-Foster said...

I am feeling the pressure already. I too have not written anything yet.

Tor Bertin said...

Working on the necessary preliminary work... I'm still fairly hopeful that I can get it done by the deadline.

I did tighten the scope of the project to encompass strictly spinosaurid phylogeny/paleobiogeography, so at least now there's a sort of conceptual focus that wasn't entirely there before. ;-)

Mike Taylor said...

Less than THREE months to go, you mean. You scared me there!

I've actually broken off from working on the Archbishop paper to check blogs and reply to this post. I'll get right back to it as soon as I've submitted this comment! I'm currently trawling ancient newspaper articles for scraps of relevant information. (Yes, this project is part archaeology!)

Anonymous said...

Well having been on holiday after SVP and only returning to Beijing tomorrow I've not actually made a start yet! I'm well behind.
And the paper I *had* intended for my entry (that which was covered by my SVP poster for those who saw it) has been (temporarily) put on hold until I can see the prep work on the new specimen and i can hardly commit to a paper where the specimen is not prepared!
Have no fear though fellow PPC-ers, I have currently 4 other papers as lead author that I promised myself I would get submitted before Jan, and while the vert paper may be held up, the others are all on the list to go. TO be fair to me, most are in an advanced state of readiness, but still, 4 to go in 3 months, plus at least 2 others with co-authors, 1 already in review and 2 papers with students to get through should see me fully occupied under the general auspices of the PPC.
I'll update next week when I'm back and can see what the prep lab have for me...

Unknown said...

Nothing done here, I must admit! No shame though: I am officially NOT WORKING because I am taking two months of 'parent time'. THat's when the German government pays you 66% of your normal wage (they ensure, however, to calculate that as low as possible) to stay home and look after your kid. Adrian is now one year, and I enjoy this very much, but once that is over I hope to require only two weeks(!) to finish the sauropod rearing paper. Yes, it is far advanced already, I just need to get a better proxy for rearing ability than the one I showed on my poster at SVP.

Anonymous said...

Well I did say I'd update my status and I have got a couple of papaers off since my last comment (go me) and am waiting on my co-authors for a third. My 'official' PPC manuscript will therefore be one I am writing on Microraptor.

Hmmm, we need to do an update on this list... How's is everyone doing?

ReBecca Hunt-Foster said...

I have a paper with a co-author that has been submitted, and another that I am formating tonight that should be submitted very soon. My taphonomy paper is probably not going to make the deadline but I will push ahead regardless.

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Anonymous said...

Nice story you got here. I'd like to read something more about this theme. The only thing I would like to see here is some pictures of any gizmos.
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