Last week, I submitted a paper to Phys. Rev. B and also to ArXiv cond-matt. So what's so special about that, considering that many people do this every day? Well, it was a manuscript on work I did about 5 years ago, in which the roughly-finished manuscript has been around for at least 4 years. To understand why it took so long, I have to tell you the situation surrounding it.
In 2002, I was actively seeking a more permanent employment beyond my postdoc work. This work was one of the last manuscript that I was writing while in the middle of going to the various job interviews. A "final" version of the paper was finished just when I accepted a job at Argonne. Even after moving to the new location, a number of the authors on the paper still were discussing various aspect of the manuscript, especially after new results on a family of cobaltates were published showing that they do become superconducting by adding "water" to the compound. While it didn't change that much on the aim of the manuscript, it required that we had to do some minor rewrites. My postdoc supervisor volunteered to continue on with the rewriting since I have essentially left the field of condensed matter with the new job.
Well, during that time, he got married, sold his house, had to work on his tenure, etc.. etc. I was busy with getting "acclimated" with a new field of physics, trying to learn the subject matter, busy trying to get a few publications out in this new field, and learning a lot of new things. The manuscript languished in different forms, being revive now and then each time an author or two started inquiring about its status. Before we knew it, more than 4 years have passed since I completed my version. The manuscript 4 years ago had enough of a novel and new result that it would have been considered for Phys. Rev. Lett. Unfortunately, since then, several other results have been published on the same family of material with varying results. While our manuscript still has new results that haven't been published, especially on analysis of the metal-insulator transition region of the cobaltate family and how they look similar to the high-Tc cuprate superconductor, they are no longer that new and that novel. So PRL is out.
Last week, after a sudden flurry of activity, all the parties involved with the manuscript sent their unanimous agreement that it should be out, and out now. So after minor fiddling with the figures, I finally submitted the paper to Phys. Rev. B, and also uploaded it to ArXiv.
Within 1/2 a day of the paper appearing online, I got an e-mail from the editor of New Journal of Physics inviting me to submit the manuscript to that journal (had to decline since it already was submitted to PRB), and got 2 e-mail asking questions/clarification about certain parts of the manuscript.
The only drawback in all of this is that I can't use this paper, if and when it gets published, as part of my "accomplishement" for my current job. This is because it was done while I was funded by my previous institution. My affiliation on the paper is still my old institution (with an asterisk indicating my current location/position), so this paper will not count towards my professional work currently. It will still count in my list of publication, just not something I can use to enhance my current work.
Oh well. I'm just glad that it is finally out. Now we sit and wait for the referee reports (oh joy!).
Zz.
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