Editors are helpful. The article I published on this blog yesterday, A Few Suggestions for SIOP, sure could’ve used one. It was poorly researched and poorly written.
The Curse of Ignorance
In yesterday’s article, I asked SIOP to provide practitioner-members with access to academic databases. Pretty good idea, right? Well, guess who else thinks it’s a good idea? SIOP! They already do this and they have been for quite a while.
I just signed up. For $50, you get a years’ full text access to Business Source Corporate, Psychology and Behavioral Science Collection, and SocIndex. In addition, you get the SIOP Learning Center, which has recordings from previous years’ SIOP Annual Conferences and Leading Edge Consortia. That’s a great deal. Check it out here. (Thanks to Sy Islam for setting me straight!)
[su_note]An editor would have asked me, “Are you sure SIOP doesn’t already offer this? You should probably check that assumption.”[/su_note]
The Curse of Knowledge
Simply put, the curse of knowledge is when you assume another person has some background knowledge that allows them to understand your message. In my case, I wrote about “publishing,” with the unfounded assumption that my readers would know that I meant “publishing research in peer-reviewed journals.”
[su_note]An editor would have asked me, “Publishing what? Clarify.”[/su_note]