Chapter 10: Initiatives and Committees
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Description
In this Chapter, Mr. Pagel reviews several past and ongoing activities for the Department of Scientific Publications. He first talks about the series of panel discussions he established, covering such topics as “Publishing Strategies,” “Grant Strategies,” and a new panel on “Publishing in High-Impact Journals.” In explaining the latter project, Mr. Pagel explains the prevailing assumption that unless a researcher is publishing in high-impact journals, she/he is not successful. Faculty members approached Scientific Publications to address this issue and point out that it is actually a myth –that publication is actually about the quality of science and the writing. He notes there was faculty hostility to the approach Scientific Publications chose to take: to acknowledge that the importance of high-impact journals is simply a reality and that researchers need to learns the skills required to reach these journals. He mentions several people he has invited to speak on this panel, noting that everyone was very willing to participate.
Mr. Pagel next mentions that he must complete his work on the Cancer Care Series prior to his retirement, then he goes on to talk about his work on a committee formed to change the Research Report into an online publication. He explains the strategy of creating general guidelines then inviting faculty to decide the details of the procedure, and notes how proud he was of the committee’s effectiveness. After noting a habit of MD Anderson’s administration to impose plans from the top-down, he explains how the online report came to be incorporated into a database.
Identifier
PagelW_02_20120810_C10
Publication Date
8-10-2012
Publisher
The Making Cancer History® Voices Oral History Collection, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
Walter Pagel, ELS (D), Oral History Interview, August 10, 2012
Topics Covered
The Interview Subject's Story - The AdministratorBuilding/Transforming the Institution On Research and Researchers The Administrator The Educator Activities Outside Institution Career and Accomplishments Institutional Processes
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Disciplines
History of Science, Technology, and Medicine | Oncology | Oral History
Transcript
Walter Pagel, ELS (D):
I have just about finished setting up a panel discussion with faculty. I have a particular way I do it always which is to call someone and say we’ve got someone who I think has something to say about it so we’ve got our—we’ve got something we think. I’d like to know more about it in order to help people with this in here. What can you tell me? What do you think is relevant in your own success in this area—whatever it is? And I’d talk and talk for fifteen, twenty minutes with this person, and then I’d call another one and do the same thing. I don’t have quite as structured an interview as you do, but generally speaking I’m looking for the same things from every person. I get a set of notes. I look at them. I usually already know who I want to be on the panel by then. Who can people understand? Who speaks clearly enough to be understood? And who has something to say that’s useful? And what I find is that everybody has something to say that’s useful, so it becomes almost like who’s available on this day at noon? But it is interesting that everybody has stories about their own lives, their own careers in relation to a particular problem that is useful to other people who are trying to get a start or trying to succeed in that particular area.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
What is this panel discussion? Is it a series?
Walter Pagel, ELS (D):
No. It’s just now and then we say, “You know—people want to know.”
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
What are some of the topics you’ve explored?
Walter Pagel, ELS (D):
Publishing strategies—that is how to figure out when you have enough information to submit it for publication or when ought you to submit it. Is it entirely related to finishing the experiments or is it related to some other factors that you have under consideration? I’ve told you about the grant one, the session one—grant strategies really. One of the people at that panel talked about how to respond to the review sheets. Another one talked about how to be—how to not spend your time trying to impress people but to try to make it as clear as you can with the simplest sentences you can think of, which is hard for an academician to do. I’ve probably done five panels, but at the moment I don’t remember the others.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
That’s okay. I just—it’s kind of interesting because I heard a new phrase when I was—I can’t remember who I was speaking with actually. It was called target mentoring, and it’s the idea that people are so busy now that the traditional mentoring relationship of coming into somebody’s office at the end of the day and sitting down and having a conversation and then going for a beer and continuing that conversation—that’s gone. So, now people have to have very clear needs. I need help with this, and so I’m going to go and ask specifically for this from a mentor. It’s just a funny phrase, but it’s capturing a very real phenomenon. It’s not exactly what you’re doing but it sounds like there’s a need in the air, and it’s very specific. And so you’re getting people together to have a conversation about this particular educational need.
Walter Pagel, ELS (D):
The one I’m doing now—I didn’t say the one I’m doing now, which is what do people who have succeeded in—what are the—what do people who have published in high-impact journals—and that’s a very specific an objective—objectively determined set of journals—what will they say allows—were the keys to their success? Because the belief now among the faculty—and nobody has contradicted this belief when I mention it—is that unless you’re publishing in high-impact journals you might as well not be publishing according to the thinking of the leaders of the institution who are in charge of promotion and tenure. I have to believe that they would be surprised that they would give—if I said that that’s—is that what you think, they would probably—why am I saying all this? They would probably say that isn’t really what we think. But all the faculty people—what they see is the action. They don’t care what you say. What they see is that the people who get in high-impact—get published in high-impact journals get the praise, the promotions, the glory. The people who publish in even the highest-impact journal in their field—but not objectively speaking by these terms a high-impact journal—they don’t get anything except a notch on their gun. Not a very big notch, just the same notch as all their other notches. So, there was a group of faculty that approached me with this. I wanted to talk to them. They have this sense that how you write it is the determining factor but nobody—I don’t think anybody would say that’s the main thing. It is one of the things, and perhaps the second or third most important aspect of getting published in high-impact journals. People want it to be something you can learn to do separate from your science, but the truth is somewhere else like it’s part and parcel of your science.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah. But it’s interesting that the faculty felt that they could come and make that request of you. It shows there’s a relationship there kind of back-and-forth. They know that that’s an instance in which they know they can come to Scientific Publications and get something that they need satisfied.
Walter Pagel, ELS (D):
Well, actually what happened here is that because they thought it was about writing—that’s why they came to me. And I had to first dissuade them from the notion that it was about writing.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
And what did you tell them?
Walter Pagel, ELS (D):
Well, Greg Pratt and I actually did it, and Greg did a little session on high-impact journals and how to make judgments about various journals and how to find the ones that are high-impact in a certain area—or the highest impact in an area you’re trying to publish in. And I did talk some about what you have to do to write something that already would get in, but there’s science that deserves to be published in high-impact journals but doesn’t get written about well enough to make it, and there’s some that does get written about well enough to make it. I don’t know what I did to—there was a lot of kind of hostility toward the notion that they should be held to this criterion, and there perhaps was a desire for me to say, you’re right. It’s a bad thing. But what they really need to do is figure out how they can do it. One of the people I talked to almost every—all the people I called I prefaced it with this dismay. I didn’t tell them which group of faculty but I told them it was a group of faculty that approached me, and they were—they had come to discover that nobody cared unless they published in high-impact journals, and they wanted some ideas for how to do that. And one of the ones that I called said, “Well, you know I have that same resentment too, and I don’t think it’s right. But it is what it is.” He was one of—of course, I only called people who had published in high-impact journals.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Who were some of the people that you called?
Walter Pagel, ELS (D):
Hmm. Oh, this isn’t something you’re going to publish, right? Well, I’ve—
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Well, it’ll be on—it’ll be online, but—I mean it’s just that they took part in the presentation, I thought. If you’d prefer not to say, that’s fine.
Walter Pagel, ELS (D):
First of all, I have to say that these are not the only successful people. These are the people I called. I called Chen Dong. I called Anil Sood. I called Michelle Barton. I called Sharon Dent.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
And were they pretty enthusiastic about participating and sharing?
Walter Pagel, ELS (D):
As it turns out, yes. [ ]
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
That’s nice that they were willing to give their time to be supportive of other faculty members who are trying to meet that bar.
Walter Pagel, ELS (D):
They’re proud to be able to talk about their success, too. Of course we have to remember that, and I don’t blame them. That’s what I want. I want them to—the main thing I’m going to want them to do is tell the story of the article that got published. I don’t know what I’m going to do with Chen Dong who has four.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Focus. Focus.
Walter Pagel, ELS (D):
I’m sure he’s very focused. I may ask him to pick one of them.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Are there any other kind of ongoing things in Scientific Publications right now that you’re bringing to a close before you retire at the end of the month?
Walter Pagel, ELS (D):
I need to bring what work I’m doing on the Cancer Cure series to a close. That’s going to be—it’s been determined that my successor is going to get that problem.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Anything else?
Walter Pagel, ELS (D):
No, I don’t think so. Clean up this office. Get these files put away someplace where somebody can access them. Clean up my electronic files, put them in some place that somebody can find if they want to. Though my own history and the history of other people would say that none of those will ever be looked at. You hate to go through all that work and not have it be accessible at least.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Right. Were there any other committees that you were a part of? We talked about the Historical Resources Center’s steering committee. Were there any other committees that you sat on during your time here? It kind of goes back to my question—it’s like Scientific Publications being a presence someplace. I know you said you didn’t have a purpose, but the fact that you were there meant that Scientific Publications did affect this—
Walter Pagel, ELS (D):
No, I did have a purpose. I just—purpose. I don’t know what to say. Actually I learned more—the institution wanted the research report to go online. I think it was Margaret Kripke, but it might have been—I think it was when Fred Becker was the VP for research. The assignment came—well, the executive committee for the science faculty made this decision, and somehow Zimmerman may have been the chairman of that group. I don’t know. First of all I should tell you no, I’ve not served on big, important institutional committees, but this is one that sticks in my mind. I was asked to form a committee, and I was asked to include certain people on it and to examine what to do for an online research report. Probably the assumption was I would know, but through the encouragement or whatever—I don’t know. I don’t think encouragement is the word. In discussing how to do this with two people—John Phelps and Melissa Burkett—and my own inclinations, I realized the best way to approach it was to have some pretty vague notions of what to do and then let a group of faculty decide what the thing should do, what kind of capabilities it should have. That was mainly it. What kind of capability should it have? What are the purposes of those capabilities? And then to hand those over to—hand those over to the executives to make a determination of—well, let me step back. Figure out what resources were needed to execute whatever they decided, and then tell the executives what resources were needed if you want this. If you don’t want quite that much, here’s the resources needed. If you don’t want that much here’s the resources you need. What I was proud of is that at least on that day every committee member showed up almost for every meeting, and I was proud to learn how not to do what the habit of MD Anderson administrators is, which is to present a plan and ask its committee to approve it.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
How did the online version of the research report evolve? What form does it take now?
Walter Pagel, ELS (D):
It’s gone.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
It’s gone?
Walter Pagel, ELS (D):
It turns out now—in those days that thing was something—you gathered the information from the faculty. And again, even though it was online it could be done whenever you wanted to but you were supposed to keep it up to date, and we had systems for reminding them and so on. They resented that even, and really it became the case that the information is available everywhere. You just need to have a way to organize it in ways that other people can access it, and there’s something called SciVal Experts, which Dr. Bogler was very deeply involved in, and though we had tried to kill the online report several times because we can—because we weren’t getting exactly the support we needed and it was clear that other people felt it was a waste of time, once he became V.P. he just decided on his own because of the availability of SciVal Experts versus killing it online—SciVal Experts collects information from publishing databases—publication databases and some kind of database here at MD Anderson and merges them and shows what subject areas these people are working in. Because the main purpose of the research report truthfully in this day was to identify people who could be good collaborators in certain areas, and now there are easy ways to do that, but at the time there weren’t. We had—well, that’s enough of that. It’s gone.
Recommended Citation
Pagel, Walter ELS and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 10: Initiatives and Committees" (2012). Interview Chapters. 1279.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1279
Conditions Governing Access
Open
