SENSE publication plans

A good publication record doesn't happen by chance. It requires careful planning and execution. Given the fact that publishing to a top journal can take as much as three years, you can't afford to send a publication off, and then wait for a reply. At any time you should have a pipeline filled with publications in three stages of progress.

• Publications under development. These may be new contributions or papers that you improve following review comments.
• Publications under review.
• Publications that have been accepted and are (often slowly) moving toward publication.

Keeping all stages of the pipeline full ensures that publishers, reviewers, and yourself are always busy, with no time being lost in idle waiting. Also, try to have in your pipeline a mix of different paper types: conference papers for rapid dissemination of results; journal articles for advancing your academic career. Publication delays being what they are, your first aim in your plan is to keep reviewers and publishers busy. Don't sit on papers that have been accepted with revisions: revise them as soon as possible. If you ever notice that a stage of your pipeline is empty, you're in trouble. Make it your priority to fill it up, or prepare to cry over an empty hole in your CV's publication record.

Plans of individual members

• Publication plan template
• Diomidis Spinellis
• Giorgos Gousios
• Vassilios Karakoidas
• Panos Louridas
• Stephanos Androutsellis
• Kostas Stroggylos
• Dimitris Mitropoulos
• Tushar Sharma

Discussion

Isn't it risky to open-up my publication plan? Somebody might steal my idea.

We are researchers, not the CIA. The risk isn't our ideas leaking into the open, but our ideas not getting disseminated. Also, ideas are cheap, execution is difficult. So publish your plan, and concentrate on getting your results quickly published.