Figuratively and literally, the field notebooks and binders have sat in my office for too long and collected a lot of dust. Back in 2004-2005, I was so excited to collect the data and work with these amazing birds in Chile. I was the first to see these chicks near fledging, something that I thought would be fun to turn into a children's story one day. Now I need to turn all of that excitement and hard work into something worthwhile and get it out there into the public domain. If not for myself, than at least for the birds.
Where does all this new found enthusiasm and motivation come from? Certainly, the recent meeting of PSG helped; great presentations from my peers and colleagues reminded me about my roots in field biology and scientific research. And it was the embarassment I felt during a conversation with a scientist about data sitting on shelves. His quiet opinion about our duty to publish. From a man that has published over 200 papers. The final straw was reading the 2014 Proposed Marbled Murrelet Recovery Strategy this morning, where unpublished data and manuscripts in preparation were being used to supply trends about marbled murrelets in BC. Without this information in the public domain, there was no way for me to validate the statements or trend. Shocking for a species on endangered species lists I thought. Or was it? Cringe. My data. Same sort of thing. Different hemisphere.
So, that was it. The tipping point. I'm going to need support as I work away in my home office so thanks for throwing it my way. 90 days. That's my goal for submitting the first paper.
1 comment:
Yay! 90 days here we go!!! Letting the world know is the first step. Nice work!
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