Of zombie papers and manuscripts…

I have A LOT of zombie papers and book manuscripts…

You all know those zombie papers and manuscripts: things you wrote, you ALMOST completed, you sent out for peer review and got a revise-and-resubmit that you never converted into published articles, books that were nearly completely written or edited, that perhaps got lost in the peer review because you could not fathom complete the revisions.

Those are zombie papers and manuscripts.

These manuscripts and papers haven’t died a slow death yet, but somehow remain in the imagination of researchers. I asked on BlueSky how do people deal with zombie papers and manuscripts.

A summary of responses here:

• Some people use bits and pieces of the zombie papers to revamp and refine ideas.
• Others were happy to just leave them be and make peace with the fact that these projects will never come to fruition.
• And others said they do come back to their old projects.

What I found extremely useful were the prompting questions about why I am hanging on to zombie projects:

• Dr. Nicole Janz asked “are they sunk cost projects that you really should leave behind, or low hanging fruits that deserve one last polish? Do they push you towards your Future Self and help you set your next 5 years’ agenda?”
• Dr. Nico Trajtenberg asked: “Are they still an intellectual challenge or you just dislike sunk costs?”

Personally, I do not like sunk cost projects. I have already invested a lot of time and energy (and in some cases, research grant money) for those projects to be gone and done with. I also think some of them (or for the most part, ALL OF THEM) are low hanging fruits that I could potentially revamp quite quickly.

I have three full book manuscripts in that zombie stage: I am pretty much done with the writing, with the fieldwork, and I just need to put some effort into getting them in the shape that they can then be submitted to the press. I also have a few journal article manuscripts that I plan to “resuscitate”.

However, I already have given up on a few R&Rs. I decided that it wasn’t worth my energy and all the effort to convert them. Some of them, the reviewers required extra fieldwork or analyses.

I am totally NOT doing that.

I’d be interested to hear from my readers on what you would do with your zombie papers.

• Do you plan to let them sit idle for a while and pick them up again?
• Do you want to just be done with them and not return to them?
• Will you pick up some pieces and bits and use them for newer work?

You can share this blog post on the following social networks by clicking on their icon.