9 and a half weeks

[spoonless]

I turned in the forms a few days ago to apply for finally receiving my Ph-Dizzle. My defense is tenatively scheduled for May 26th... yup, that's right. After nearly 6 years of work, I am exactly 9 and a half weeks away from being done. That is, assuming I stay focused and get it all done. Oh yeah, maybe it's a good time to start writing my dissertation soon! Seriously, I initially budgeted myself about 2 weeks for that, but now I'm starting to get paranoid that it may take longer.

Oh yeah, and PhysRev has finally accepted the paper I submitted in December. In February, they sent me a notice saying that they were rejecting it (because the first referee was a dick)... and I had to fight them on it, but fortunately the second referee agreed with me, so it's all good now. I may make a friends-only post with more details on this... I was pretty worried about it for a while, but it feels really good to have been vindicated in the end. Apparently, when you try to publish without someone else famous on the paper, they have a much tougher time believing that you're saying anything interesting. My faith in peer review has been considerably shaken by this whole incident... at the very least, I have realized how subjective the whole thing is.

As ikioi said to me recently, anyone who has come up with anything really important or world-changing has been told at least once that their ideas are completely worthless. So perhaps the best reaction to being told that is just to say "oh good, now I've got that one out of the way." :)

Comments

[spoonless.livejournal.com]

I just realized that I wrote "3 in a row" having no idea how many it was. I think I wrote that because I figured 4 would just be too unbelievable, whereas 2 would not have made you say "every time".

In my case, I thought it just had to do with who I was publishing with... in all 4 papers that I published with someone famous, they just recommended publication "with the following recommended changes". But with the one paper I tried to get through all by myself, they just flat out rejected it... so I figured "oh, nobody famous to back me up, they don't believe I know what I'm talking about." This theory is substantiated by the fact that most of my response to the first referee was just dedicated to quoting famous people who had said my paper was interesting... that seemed to make the difference. Nevertheless, with your papers there must have been something else going on.

[onhava.livejournal.com]

Looking back, it was 3, and I had forgotten that the fourth paper I published was somewhat different. The initial referee report was pretty ridiculous, but we got that one published without having to request a different referee.

Some of the most ridiculous referee reports I've gotten back first complained about the paper, then included a citation request to some obscure paper which I can only guess was by the referee. Those seem particularly weird; if you're going to try to use the refereeing process as a way to get yourself more citations, wouldn't you want the paper to get accepted for publication?

unbelievable

[spoonless.livejournal.com]

You've got to be kidding me... that's the most absurd thing I've heard in a long time!