SUBJECT: Congratulations, housekeeping, and planning for next ACSM
DATE: June 4, 2017.
Hi all,
A bunch of announcements, housekeeping, planning, etc. We'll start here:
Congratulations:
Piping hot congrats to:
Jessica Lopez, Alexis King, Nick Diaz, Francisco Guiao, Jeremy McConnell, Haylee Bettencourt, Ify Agwuenu, Voon Chi Chia, and Angie Wei.
Those nine students (and newly ex-students) just returned from Denver, where they presented their research at the national ACSM conference.
We had 8 posters.
At my old (R1) institution, and in my old lab, my original advisor (not the one I graduated under, but the one I began under) had five or six abstracts accepted. Five or six total students presenting posters. And one that went into the initial publication.
To me, the most successful part of the conference (I'm about to use an exclamation point here... very rare for me) is this: we beat that lab! Again, this: !
We had eight accepted posters with two going into that publication (Jessica's and Alexis's; all of them went into the final MSSE supplement issue, but two made that primary one).
A petty grudge? Sure. But you, too, will have petty grudges at some point in your careers. And someday, I hope you'll have students as bright and capable (and entertaining) as you all are so that they can give you the satisfaction of winning.
(Re: winning. While hanging around Jessica's poster, I saw my original Ph.D. advisor ten feet away, standing -- with her back to me -- at a poster that belonged to one of her students. So I approached her, waited a moment for her to notice me, waited fifty more moments for her to acknowledge me, and then she and I had a conversation. A twenty-minute, surprisingly amicable conversation, where we buried the sharpest part of the hatchet, i.e., I was a very gracious winner. "Here, let me help you dig that hole; I know the dirt can be heavy. Oh, don't hurt your back, let me place the hatchet into the hole. No, no... You don't need to scoop any dirt into the hole. Let me do that part. Why don't you just have a lemonade while I bury most of the hatchet." Kidding. She and I had a nice conversation. Obviously she's still my enemy and I'm still hers, but it's more of a Yankees-Red Sox rivalry now. It's cuter than it is bitter. Also, in her defense -- I'm capable of defending her because my victory is filled with grace -- she's a huge name. And she had no idea this year's ACSM was a competition. It's like hunting: only one party is privy to the rules.)
Anyway, serious (steamy, blistering) congratulations.
For a complete list of our abstracts, go here: Past Publications.
I'm very proud of you all.
Your abstract information will be coming out in Pacific Insider's "Noteworthy" Announcements soon. And we'll have photos from the trip (along with your posters) hung up in Main Gym.
Moving on...
Predatory journal solicitations:
You're all going to get solicitations from counterfeit journals pretending to be "peer reviewed" and "indexed" and whatever.
When I uploaded your abstracts in October, I listed you guys as corresponding authors, assuming the abstracts wouldn't get that much attention. Then I heard from a couple of you that the Journal of Sports Science had already contacted you about publishing your work. This isn't a real journal. The Journal of Sports Sciences -- notice the plural -- is real. This one isn't. It's one of many, many, many (many, many) imposters.
There's an old episode of The Simpsons in which Homer is buying a television. He walks into the Springfield equivalent of a Best Buy and gets excited by the low prices on name brands such as Sorny, Magnetbox, and Panaphonics. (I don't feel a need to elaborate here...)
There's a gigantic lawsuit over these predatory publishers. Federal Trade Commission announcement: ftc.gov.
So just ignore all (every single one) of these solicitations. Anyone who contacts you about publishing is not representing a real journal. Real journals don't contact authors; authors contact real journals. So if you're contacted, it's fake 100% of the time.
When it comes time to do papers for the hospital databases, I will be the corresponding author. You'll be the first (most important) author and I'll be last and corresponding. Unless I do more work than you. Then, I'll put myself first because it's not Halloween candy. It's scholarship. (I know all of you are hard workers... so when we tag-team papers, you'll be first author.)
Anyway, I'm just letting you know that you're gonna get spam (all corresponding authors do). Sometimes they're funny. "Dear Doctor CD Jensen D Jensen Dr. Courtney, congratulations! and consider publishing esteemed in Journal of Rib!"
Bill Herrin recently received an invitation to publish in Journal of Computer. All the invitation was missing was some sort of intro like "Dear William Dr. Herrin WH Bill William" and a paragraph about "groundbreaking summit is extensive with full access complimentary registration for the price of registration" (or whatever).
Here's one I recently got:
Dear Dr. Courtney D Jensen,
Peertechz prays that you prosper in every way and enjoy good health.
Global Journal of Anesthesiology (ISSN: 2455-3476) wishes you success and prosperity throughout the New Year 2017. Raise a toast to yesterday's achievements and tomorrow's brighter future. Happy New Year 2017!
The journal is publishing scholarly manuscripts of eminent authors sited all over the world. We constantly revaluate our peer-review process to sustain the quality of the published contents.
We invite you to join hands with us as "Editorial Board Member" for the Global Journal of Anesthesiology and help us in publishing manuscripts with merit and innovation.
The funny part is not that I'm receiving New Year's wishes in June. That's just sad. The funny part is the gibberish that follows ("sited" all over the world, etc.).
Alexis came up with a clever name for a predatory journal: Journal of Online Journal. (Not much worse than Journal of Computer.)
Read the spam for a joke, but for the love of God, don't respond to them. It'll just be a hassle for you. They'll put you on all sorts of lists, you'll discover your name on editorial boards you've never heard of, the spam will only get worse.
2017 Southwest ACSM:
It's in Long Beach this year. At the Hilton. October 20-21. Registration opens July 1; the abstract submission deadline will probably open in August and close in September. It's not posters; it's real, live presentations. Powerpoints. If we're going, we need to start planning SASAP (super ASAP). For details, see: http://www.swacsm.org/. Also, if we go, we should register an ACSM Jeopardy team. Lariel Mateo would be our team captain/ringer. Who else? If we compete, it's on Friday, October 20th (evening time). For information about Jeopardy, contact Matt Lee at cmlee@sfsu.edu.
2018 National ACSM:
May 29 to June 2 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The least interesting location of all the ACSMs (2019 is in Orlando, 2020 is in San Francisco, and 2021 is in DC).
The abstract deadline will be around Halloween, 2017. I've set a timer, currently ticking away on the home page, for October 30th. That will be our submission deadline. A strict one. I won't submit after that. And Halloween will be our celebration day. (We'll find out who's accepted in February, 2018).
Once students are back on campus (school starts August 28), we'll have two months to have data collected, analyzed, and abstracts fully written. That's not much time.
Here's what I think we should do:
1) Evelyn Delgado et al. Effect of audience on power output.
2) Angela Nuccio, Cali VanV, et al. Kinesio Tape and muscle recruitment.
3) Cupping? Do data already exist? Who would want to do this? PEK group?
4) Lariel Mateo et al. BMI and trauma outcomes.
5) Cynthia Villalobos et al. Exercise and diabetes.
6) Ify/Cali et al. Concussion reporting: athletes vs. parents.
7) Jeremy McConnell et al. Something about trauma outcomes (we'll figure it out).
8) Bri Tracy et al. HIV, physical activity, and health (UBOS data; paper is already half written). We'll do the IRB stuff.
9) Lonnae Hohman. Physical activity and health outcomes (UBOS data). We'll do the IRB stuff.
10) Jessica Lopez et al. Fall risk assessment. Financial outcomes probably.
11) Chronic fatigue syndrome outcomes abstract #1. Who?
12) Chronic fatigue syndrome outcomes abstract #2. Who?
13) Health and its law. Who?
14) ?? Open to ideas for other projects...
15) Cholesterol and psychological wellbeing. We can't do this in time as it requires data collection (which requires money for lipid panels). Otherwise the paper is already 75% written. Funding through PEK research group? We would have to go through the IRB (there'd be blood involved... a tiny bit).
Notes: I'll oversee projects 1-10 and potentially 14 and 15. VanNess will oversee 11 and 12. Ciccolella will oversee 13. Oversee means you'll have to do the bulk of the work yourself. I'll be pretty busy, so I won't be able to write your abstract or poster for you. My role: give you tons of resources and a good amount of guidance (guidance and clarification whenever it's necessary, like assistance in running the stats and understanding the outputs). If you can work together as a group, the process is enjoyable. The presentation process (going to ACSM) is guaranteed to be enjoyable. And worth it. But there's a lot of work that has to go into the project before that happens. And the professors won't do that work for you. We'll give you the tools to do it yourself. Again, while it's a lot of work, it's totally worth it.
More notes: The purpose of these conferences (and subsequent papers) is to make your CV/resume do a lot of growing. Just like growing in the gym, this isn't easy. It takes real time, some sweat, a pulled muscle now and again. But it's necessary if you want to succeed. A serious graduate program is difficult to get into. Once you're out of grad school (depending on your field), life is even harder. Undergrad is -- by far -- the easiest phase of accomplishment. I know it doesn't feel like it, with BIOL51/61 and the chems, but trust me: it only gets more competitive. The next phase is populated with talented, hardworking test-acers. Only the brightest, hardest working people advance. And if you advance, you have to compete with them. You will no longer be competing against mediocrity (what typically happens in an undergraduate program). You're up against serious people. And there are no participation trophies. You have to do better than your competition to earn your seat in those ranks.
GPA is one way of competing. If you apply with a 3.9, you're competitive without any extracurriculars. If you apply with a 3.4 but your GRE is 314, you're competitive. If you apply with a 3.2 and a 302 GRE, but you have several conference presentations and a published manuscript in a real journal (with an impact factor), you're competitive.
When I pressure you to participate in research, I'm trying to make you more competitive. Again: undergraduate education -- where you're the customer -- is relatively easy. Life after graduation -- when you're no longer a customer paying for a service -- is way, way harder. You'll need some really bright highlights on your resume. Your resume readers should have to squint to dim its brightness. We'll get you there. But start now. Like right now. The ACSM deadline is ticking. 145 days, 12 hours, and 54 minutes left. And this isn't something you can bang out in a week.
-Courtney