Interlude: Mise En Place, Paying Peer Reviewers, and Communicating at Work
If you’d been around here for a while, then you know I’m a big fan of creating outlines for writing manuscripts and grants. And not just basic, structural outlines, but detailed, line-by-line outlines.
To me, outlines are part of your “mise en place.” If you’re not familiar with this term, it’s a French culinary phrase that means “putting into place.” In other words, you are preparing and organizing your ingredients before cooking. And a similar concept applies to writing.
Here are the 4 parts of mise en place:
Part 1: Check the recipe, or check the author instructions. To know what to expect, chefs need to know what the dish is supposed to be before they start cooking, and you need to know what the journal or funding agency wants before you start writing.
Part 2: Collect your kitchen tools, or collect your writing tools. To keep momentum, chefs keep all the needed cooking tools within reach, and you can keep all the needed writing tools (eg, laptop, notebook, reference materials) within reach.
Part 3: Gather your ingredients, or gather your content. To avoid a last minute scramble, chefs need to ensure they have everything they need for the recipe, and you need to ensure you have everything you need for your content (eg, data, ideas, text snippets).
Part 4: Complete basic prep work, or complete basic prep writing. To streamline the process, chefs need to prepare their ingredients so they are ready to add at the right time in the recipe, and you need to prepare your content (eg, create an outline) so it is ready to add at the right time in the document.
For chefs, this process keeps a kitchen running smoothly so they can work calmly and save time and effort. For you, this process helps keep your writing running smoothly so you can work calmly and save time and effort.
All 4 parts matter. But in my experience, Part 4 is the step that writers skip most often. And that makes some sense—outlining can feel like an extra, time-intensive step when you’re already pressed for time.
But that time investment up front saves you so much time later through a clearer direction for your writing and fewer rounds of revisions.
So the next time you sit down to write, get your mise en place ready. A little extra work up front means a smoother writing process now, and more time and energy as the deadline gets closer.
Now onto this week's round-up...
Round-up
Reading
Why paying peer reviewers works, according to a journal’s editor-in-chief
”Paying reviewers not only led to faster first editorial decisions — an average of 5.5 working days, down from nearly 38 for unpaid reviews (see ‘Paying peer reviewers speeds up editorial decision time) — but review quality, as judged by handling editors on the basis of helpfulness in making an editorial decision, went up…”
Incorporation of the National Institute of Health (NIH) sex as a biological variable policy by R01 grant awardees
“To assess how well this policy is being implemented, 574 NIH-funded publications from 2017–2024 were reviewed. Most studies (61%) included both sexes, particularly those involving humans. However, fewer than half (44%) analyzed results by sex, even when both sexes were included. Sex-based analyses were more common in human studies and in articles with women as first or senior authors. These findings show progress in sex inclusion, but many studies still fail to compare results by sex.“
PRISMA-Children and Adolescents (PRISMA-C) 2026 extension statement and explanation: enhancing the reporting and utility of systematic reviews of interventions in paediatrics
“To enable reporting the essential detail on treatment effects related to age and developmental stages in these systematic reviews, an extension to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guideline was developed: PRISMA-Children and Adolescents (PRISMA-C) 2026. The extension comprises a checklist, explanations, and examples of good reporting for seven main checklist items and four abstract items, and present paediatric examples of good reporting for 10 PRISMA 2020 items to which the ontogeny statement applies.”
Watching
How you communicate at work
This reel is a clip from a TED Talk by leadership expert Melissa Mikus. In this clip, she shares how miscommunication at work may be rooted in different communication styles, and that letting your team know how you work best can lead to better performance.
Quote
“If you do enough planning before you start to write, there's no way you can have writer's block. I do a complete chapter by chapter outline.” –R.L. Stine
Thank you so much for reading.
Warmly,
Crystal
