A shout-out to middle authors: Opportunities for achieving clarity in editing.

Abstract

For the May 2021 issue of BJUI Compass, I want to give a shout-out to middle authors of our manuscripts. Obviously, we need first authors to take the lead on collecting data and writing up a project and we need last/senior authors for guidance, design and funding. But we often need strong contributions from middle authors who recruit patients to studies, assist in design/execution of trials/studies, and provide critical editorial work for drafting manuscripts. I was inspired to write this editorial from two different experiences. On the academic front, my research team had a manuscript reviewed by a journal and offered major revisions. They were tough ones—requiring additional analyses and statistical work. One of our strategies for revisions was to invite another urologic oncology fellow to the team to give us a fresh look at the manuscript and help us with the revision steps and getting the paper not only revised but back to word limits. The revised version completed peer review and is now published. Another point of inspiration came from a recent trip I made with my family—yes, a trip during pandemic times! Many of the photographs I’ve published with this editorial series were from pre-pandemic academic trips—I have a large inventory, but in theory could run into slim pickings if this pandemic keeps dragging on. Our family loves to ski at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and rather than sit out another season, we made the journey with a long drive from Houston to Wyoming—a solid full 2 days of driving each way (I’m not quite ready for aeroplanes). In addition to the challenging skiing at Teton Village, another opportunity for winter sports is snowmobiling in Yellowstone national park—famous for its geysers and multiple volcanic activities. The whole park is actually a giant volcanic caldera—last erupted over 630,000 years ago but in theory could blow again. In Figure 1, I will demonstrate a fun photography editorial trick from Adobe's Lightroom photo-editing software. It is called the “dehaze” feature and it does an amazing job of getting rid of hazy appearing backgrounds—especially grey/dull skies, or city smog. Specific to geysers—it's a fun feature to tone down a lot of the steam coming out of these volcanic entities. Figure 2 shows another example from a hydrothermal pool—again with editing of the steam and colours for a more dramatic look. The analogy for our middle authors is that their editing efforts and fresh look at our papers can be effective methods for improving a manuscript. A primary writer can certainly edit and revise a paper, but sometimes another set of eyes can take it to the next level. These collaborative efforts can pay off in peer review. As Prokar Dasgupta, previous editor of the BJUI, used to say at lectures on publishing: “You have one good chance to make a good first impression.”