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^A litte while ago, I submitted an article to a very learned journal in my speciality. I must confess that I rarely do so, and that I should do it more often. It is not that I do not actually write articles. The problem is that once I have written them, it takes me a lot of effort to overcome my natural tendency to simply archive them in the depth of a lost drawer. Horace recommended, if I remember well, nine months before one should unbury the text from the drawer and restart thinking of it. This is a good recommendation that I try to follow. This is one of the reasons I rarely submit articles for publication.

The second issue arrives when the editors send you back your article for correcting it. There are lots of things to be corrected. Not only the wise recommendations of the anonymous collegues who have had the praiseful patience to read your article (god bless their souls), but also the even wiser commandments made by the Editor-in-Chief in order for you to comply with all the rules set for that particular journal. Humbly, you must actually re-write or re-do entire portions of your text, and adapt the bibliography, and so on, and so forth.

Furthermore, nine more months have flown away ever since, and then you read your own article as if it had actually been written by somebody else. You discuss yourself. You criticize yourself. You wonder why the heck did you write such a long introduction, with all the bibliographical account, for it was obvious that you could have said the same in a couple of paragraphs and a footnote. You think that you did well, because you clearly despise those articles and books -so in fashion lately- in which the authors seem to ignore all the bibliography on a given subject. But still, it was too long: you re-write it, you re-organize your discourse, you correct your style if that can be called a style. All right. Is it ready? I mean, are you ready?

All right, I am. Now I can pack it, and send it. But, what am I saying? I am not done. I actually have to review the bibliographical list and correct all the inconsistencies. Again, I have to comply with the journal rules set. It's like that, and it's all right. Thankfully, boht Pathfinder and EndNote will help me in this task. Hopefully, I will have it done at the end of the weekend. Fingers and toes crossed.