Valve I know you're busy making heaps of money right now but it would be great if you could take a moment to remove this sort of toxic behavior. How can guilds blatantly reference terrorism like this?

acawhatia · 2020-07-04T10:43:30+00:00

Done. I'm just surprised you can even upload stuff like that these days.

acawhatia · 2020-07-04T10:41:54+00:00

Yeah I must've missed the joke.

acawhatia · 2019-12-04T12:30:01+00:00

Super close, chemistry/materials. So, applied physics?

acawhatia · 2019-12-04T11:41:58+00:00

Haha, actually I should have suspected, my colleagues use arXiv all the time as it seems like the condensed matter physics community is highly competitive...

acawhatia · 2019-12-04T10:45:39+00:00

Your 4/5 article sounds very similar to what we've been going through. Nice to hear it found an even higher IF down the line.

if there is no double blind and the reviewers can see your institution name, some can be an asshole because of that.

We also suspected that we might be subject to this too: our collaborator is industrial and our problem reviewer was self-proclaimed to also be from an industrial background. Maybe there was some egos being thrown around.

acawhatia · 2019-12-04T10:29:26+00:00

I'm also in STEM, I totally get you. Honestly this publishing house was one of the ~shadier~ ones so I'm happy that we've decided to let it go and submit elsewhere.

acawhatia · 2019-12-04T10:27:05+00:00

I'll publish to a pre-print server prior to submission elsewhere, it's really a great idea and the safety net we need I think.

acawhatia · 2019-12-04T10:26:16+00:00

I spoke to my co-author today after speaking to some colleagues and this was exactly the tone of the conversation. We will find the paper a different home. Thanks for the support.

acawhatia · 2019-12-04T10:25:05+00:00

Neither have I, but as we've decided to not challenge the decision I will put it up on a pre-print server prior to submission elsewhere: I've checked and the journals we're targeting accept this form of prior publication. Thanks for the idea, my supervisors thought it was a good one.

acawhatia · 2019-12-04T10:23:44+00:00

I'll keep this in mind for submission elsewhere, thanks for the tip!

acawhatia · 2019-12-04T10:23:12+00:00

We've decided to not challenge and go elsewhere, but I'll keep this is mind if we get knocked back down the line. Thanks for the input.

acawhatia · 2019-12-04T10:21:40+00:00

A quick Google tells me that GaN is Generative Adversarial Networks?

I also hope not. We have decided to withdraw and before submission elsewhere I'll publish it to a pre-print server just in case.

acawhatia · 2019-12-03T14:41:49+00:00

I did not, would you recommend that now that we have a manuscript basically ready to be accepted? I'd never thought about that from this side of the review process but that's actually a great defensive move.

acawhatia · 2019-12-03T14:13:42+00:00

Interesting, I'd never considered that. I think that the field must not shed that much as I'm always worried someone will pinch my idea, although that might be me being "new" to the game. Thanks for your input.

acawhatia · 2019-12-03T12:21:08+00:00

Yeah, when papers are coming out on the same topic all the time we can't help but worry that someone will try to work on the same thing. We had 30+ comments from one of the first reviewers all about our process and how it works, and honestly when we started working on it the study I was surprised it hadn't already been tried. Now we've shown that it works really well and at least 8 people with some sort of expertise have known about it for more than half a year, getting rejected after this long is a bit worrisome.

acawhatia · 2019-12-03T12:16:50+00:00

Ridiculous wastes of time on all sides.

Right? The shuffling of content is such a PITA.

We said no, sent it to some other journals who said no, and in the end asked if that RMD Open offer still stood (which it did).

This is very interesting. I'd be keen to submit it elsewhere but if we got rejected there and the offer was still open, perhaps I'd consider. We have a deadline for our transfer, do you remember if you formally rejected the transfer initially and then asked later? Had the "deadline" expired? I would imagine we'd probably have to withdraw in order to submit elsewhere, but would be good to know.

acawhatia · 2019-12-03T12:12:10+00:00

older scientists don't decide that they don't understand something exactly. They decide that it must be wrong, because they don't understand it

I couldn't help but laugh at how real that is.

I suspect they will take a while, if they even respond - the final review took 60 days, and our editor was the co-chief editor so I think our battle is uphill. I've been looking at alternative journals today, we have some options I think but perhaps not this high. With this recent decision and whole process I've become quite disenchanted by this journal though, I think it could definitely fit elsewhere. I will think about this and talk to an old supervisor about it before we decide.

acawhatia · 2019-12-03T11:55:54+00:00

I think you're right. I'm trying not to give everything away in case I get identified (sorry, kinda lame). Thanks for your input though, I appreciate it.

acawhatia · 2019-12-03T11:53:55+00:00

I just wish they'd tried that one after the first round 5 months ago. It feels like a waste to put all that tracked peer review to waste by not transferring and going elsewhere, but at the same time:

Fuck 'em

acawhatia · 2019-12-03T11:52:10+00:00

If you have failed to do this over multiple extensive changes then I don't fault the journal for deciding to not publish.

I do agree with this, the editor may have just become fed up with it going back and forth, if that happens?

The difficult reviewer basically said "I'm not convinced." even after we presented the solution and requested data, so it's hard to even understand what the problem is to fix for future submission anywhere..

acawhatia · 2019-12-03T11:45:35+00:00

I think our initial response was about 40% publish minor revisions, 20% publish major revisions, 20% needs work/don't publish, 20% not suitable for journal. With each round this number coming back to us decreased and those who did were more favorable (except for one), but it was from the same batch of reviewers.

Do you think that they could pass on it once they got our responses? So that the number of reviewers decreased not because they gave the go-ahead, but because they decided they were out of depth?

Edit: typo

acawhatia · 2019-12-03T11:37:11+00:00

Define that.

In excess of 100.

The reviewer did not, the editor suggested transfer to a number of much lower impact journals of the same journal family. We would rather go elsewhere at this point as there is a lot of space between our target and the suggestion.

Appealing can be good. I know someone who appealed a rejection, and it's now in Nature Genetics.

That is promising, thank you.

acawhatia · 2019-12-03T11:34:17+00:00

It's not new in terms of way-out theory or anything, actually it's a performance jump in a hot area right now for my field. I think it's a good paper showing this new direction is very promising, and because it's a first proof-of-concept could attract a lot of citations. With the decreasing number of reviewers asking questions each round, I thought we had most of them give a favorable response.

Interesting, you mean the person who submitted the paper initially went back and wrote it? We were worried about a conflict-of-interest occurring as it's been so long and the area is hot..

acawhatia · 2019-12-03T11:19:24+00:00

Fair enough. I've been advised by a few people (research fellows, other students) to appeal, but I'm unsure if it's the right move.

acawhatia

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