The joys of trying to publish a scientific paper…

So, you’ve got some decent results at last and want to let the world know? Then you want to publish a paper.

You write it, submit it to the journal, they send it to 2 or more referees who being conscientious professionals, read it and report back promptly. Corrections are made and the process is repeated until the paper is either accepted or rejected.

Or, you get this:

Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics
Automated status enquiry

Reference number: 1xxxxx Surname: tL

This service enables authors to track the current status and progress of their article. If you have any questions, please contact the Editorial Office at the usual address, jphysd@iop.org.

However please note that the Office is not able to give details of referees’ recommendations until a final decision has been taken.

Non-lithographic method to form ordered arrays of silicon pillars and macropores

Date———————Status
3 Nov 2004————Referee reminded
26 Oct 2004———–Referee reminded
21 Oct 2004———–Referee report received
7 Oct 2004————-Referee did not report
7 Oct 2004————-Article sent to referee
5 Oct 2004————-Article sent to referee
5 Oct 2004————-Article sent to referee
8 Sep 2004————New submission received and acknowledged.

Where the referees don’t even reply to the journal, and you are left wondering what is going on two months after you submitted.

In December we got a list of corrections to make, nothing major. These were accepted and we finally got confirmation that we would be published earlier this month.

w00t!
You cannot have too many papers before your PhD viva.

Get some idea of the stuff I do here: http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0022-3727/38/4/017/
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