Which Noun Are You Modifying?

Thanks to Google Scholar citation alerts, I see all the published articles that cite OpenSees. Most of the titles make no sense and on the rare occasion that a title looks interesting, I'll click the link and read the abstract. Today's citation alert delivered to my inbox an article whose title stood out, not for … Continue reading Which Noun Are You Modifying? →

Publish Your Age

I recently hit 40 journal articles for my academic career. You can see the list here. Although 40 is a milestone for your real age, it's meaningless for journal articles. Horns can toot at 100 articles, but not 40. Anyway, I wondered if I will ever publish my real age, i.e., will the two lines … Continue reading Publish Your Age →

Chekhov’s Gun

Applied throughout literature, Chekhov's gun states that if you describe a loaded gun, that gun better go off later in the novel. If the gun is never fired, you are unnecessarily distracting the reader. So, edit the gun out. It does not advance the story. Same idea applies to movies. And journal articles. But academics … Continue reading Chekhov’s Gun →

Abstract Thoughts

Abstracts are an important part of scholarly publications. Journal editors select reviewers based on the abstract, conference organizers select presentations and invite full length papers based on an abstract (sometimes an extended abstract), and online databases crawl the abstract when indexing search results. In this post, I will give my two cents on journal abstracts. … Continue reading Abstract Thoughts →