JAP论文接收，分享我的投稿经历－酸甜苦辣

今天收到邮件，我的一篇Journal of Applied Physics 论文已被接收，心情当时还是有点激动。虽然这个杂志的影响因子不是很高，大概2.2左右吧，这也不是我的第一篇SCI论文，但回想这一年发文章的坎坎坷坷，以及亲身经历的四川大地震，心里还是有很多的感触。
这篇论文是我在2008年二月份完成的最初稿，于二月九号投到Physics Letters A上，在经历了Technical check，with editor，under review后，于三月二十号收到编辑的决定信，当时就傻了－拒稿！受打击了。下面是编辑的信以及审稿意见，我想把它贴出来与虫友们分享，一方面我认为，通过看审稿人的意见，可以帮助大家更好地写作，提高自己的科研水平和能力，另一方面也是答谢小木虫上很多无私的虫友们，是他们将自己的投稿经历贴在网上，与大家分享，我想我没有理由不拿出来哈！同时，也希望小木虫的虫子们能继续发扬这种精神，大家同舟共济，共同提高！好了，废话说了一大堆，不说了，下面是Physics Letters A 的审稿意见：
Ms. Ref. No.: ××××××
Title: ×××××
Physics Letters A

Dear professor ××,

Reviewers' comments on your work have now been received.  You will see that they are advising against publication of your work.  Therefore I must reject it.

For your guidance, I append the reviewers' comments below.

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to consider your work.

Yours sincerely,

×××（编辑名）
Editor
Physics Letters A

Reviewers' comments:
The authors present results of the 3D electron potential of
a gated quantum point contact in a AlGaAs/GaAs heterostructure.
In contrast to earlier studies, it is now possible to derive the
potential landshape without any adjustable parameter. The results
still agree with earlier investigations using simpler phenomenological
models. Since the used nextnano3 program is available since a
couple of years, I wonder why this has not been done earlier.

The authors emphasize an application of their results. Having
the complete potential landshape might help, in the future,
to better understand the quantized acoustoelectric current in
SETSAW devices and to improve their performance.

However, the authors do not show or even discuss how this can
be achieved. Therefore I believe that in the present form the paper
is not suitable for publication.
The authors should consider the following suggestions, questions,
and remarks.

1) Page 1, first paragraph
'... due to the negatively applied gate voltage ...'. It is the SAW
that drives the electrons through the contact, not the gate voltage.
Maybe replace this sentence by '..., depending on the applied gate
voltage'.

2) Page 3, paragraph starting with 'Generally, the quantized ...'
'... with fixed x = 1050 nm and ...'. Skip the '.0'. One could add
that this is exactly at the center of the device.

3) At the end of the same paragraph is '... once the bias is below ...'
Should this not be the gate instead of the bias voltage?

4) Page 4, paragraph starting with 'As we know, in the ...'
'... To be different from previous calculations ...' replace by
'... In contrast to previous calculations ...'.

5) The strongly different behaviour above and below the pinch-off
voltage is not obvious for the non-experts. All curves look more
or less the same. One could, for example, add another figure, or
insert, to show the potential height versus gate voltage.

6) How do these theoretical results of potential height versus gate
voltage compare with experiments? There exists at least one
report to determine the potential height of quantum-point contacts
below pinch-off as function of gate voltage (Gloos et al., Phys.
Rev. B 73, 125326 (2006)). Possibly, one could also compare the
present data with 3D simulations of quantum dots (Vasileska et al.,
Semicond. Sci. Technol. 13, A37 (1998)).

7) Figure 1，It would be better to mark the distance between the two metal gates
as the relevant parameter, and not the size of one gate.

8) Figure 3
The numbering of the two density axes looks rather odd. Could it not
be done with integers, like 3 instead of 3.2 or 3.0?

9) Figure 5 (b)
Should there not be an anomaly or kink in the potential near the Fermi
level?
在仔细读了审稿人的意见后，我觉得审稿人提出的5）和6)意见非常好，后来自己想想，决定把文章来个彻底的修改。
1.        改动文章的英语，审稿人提出了几个英语的语法。这个很容易改。
2.        改动文章的结构。换了很多图。因为我们做的是实验和理论计算的结合。首先，我加了实验。把我们实验当中照的有关样品的结构补充到了文章当中，比如分裂栅的结构，叉指的结构等等。
3.        把我们理论计算得到的在二维电子气中的势垒高度和我们的实验做了对比，遗憾的是我们的实验当时只做了三条曲线，后面的审稿意见就提出来了，这点后面再说。也就是满足了审稿意见6）。然后把计算的势垒高度画成与分裂栅电压的关系，满足了审稿意见5）
4.        加了理论计算声电电流。这个在PLA稿中没有，我们的计算所用到的势场是我们自己计算得到的，而不是用简单的解析表达式的形式。
这个修改可是个相当漫长的过程，期间我们经历了人生一辈子都不会忘记的5.12四川汶川大地震。受地震的影响，文章的修改拖了三四个月。改完之后，由于自我感觉良好，所以胆子也大起来了，于是就投到了Physical Review B中的Rapid Communications板块，很快编辑就回信了，客气地说我的文章太长了，然后建议我修改后作为regular paper 投Physical Review B。这里我还是把编辑的信贴出来与大家分享。
Dear Dr. ×××,

We acknowledge the receipt of the above manuscript submitted to
the Rapid Communications section of Physical Review B.

We have examined your manuscript and it appears to be quite focused
on application and material science. Therefore, a more detailed
letter as to what new and significant physics is presented in your
manuscript and why Physical Review B is the most appropriate journal
for your manuscript would be very helpful.

Please note that in doing a preliminary character count, we have
found that your manuscript is too long for the short paper sections
of our journal. In view of this and the above, we feel that it
will be more productive if we consider this as a regular article
when we receive a persuasive response to the above concern. You may
also wish to revise your manuscript so that the new and significant
physics is better highlighted.  In addition, please expand it into
a regular article format (e.g. by adding section headings) and we
encourage you to add any material our readership may benefit from
since no length limit applies.

We will hold your manuscript in our office until we receive your
response.

Yours sincerely,

当时觉得编辑这么说了，感觉还是挺有希望的，于是快马加鞭修改，之后就投出去了。大概历时三个月收到审稿意见。判决结果－拒！有一次败了！当时心情十分沮丧。审稿意见如下：

Dear Dr. ×××,

The above manuscript has been reviewed by two of our referees.
Comments from the reports are enclosed.

We regret that in view of these comments we cannot accept the paper
for publication in the Physical Review.


Yours sincerely,

××××
Assistant Editor
Physical Review B
Email: prb@ridge.aps.org
Fax: 631-591-4141
http://prb.aps.org/

Physics - spotlighting exceptional research: http://physics.aps.org/
PRL Celebrates 50 Years: http://prl.aps.org/50years/
PRB Editors' Suggestions: http://prb.aps.org/#suggestions


----------------------------------------------------------------------
Report of the First Referee ×××/×××
----------------------------------------------------------------------

The paper aims at the numerical solution of the set of Schroedinger
and Poisson equations for a split-gate structure and subsequent
application of the results to calculation of quantized
acoustoelectric current.

The paper is sound and well written. However, in my view, it does not
contain enough new physics to warrant its publication in the Physical
Review. Since the work seems to be useful to people involved in
optimizing standards of electrical current I recommend to resubmit the
paper to a journal more specialized on applications, such as the
Journal of Applied Physics.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Report of the Second Referee -- ×××/×××
----------------------------------------------------------------------

The subject of the paper is an interesting one, although the focus of
the community has shifted away from it in the meantime. Nevertheless
the paper would be worth publishing if it gave better evidence in the
interesting electron transport mechanism prevailing in this effect.

Specifically the authors present numerical results for the potential
in a SAW driven split-gate induced small channel. They claim
in the abstract that "the potential barrier heights calculated
in the closed-channel-regime agree well with the experiment we
performed." To my understanding they (implicitly) claim that their
numerical method provides better understanding of the SETSAW effect
and that it should allow for a better design of such devices.

However, they do not give any experimental result to support their
claim. The quantitative results of the numerical calculations
could prove their superiority by comparison with experimental
result obtained from correspondingly tailored devices, but the
authors only repeat general statements like "...agrees very well
with experiment.", without presenting experiments. Without specific
comparisons the reader (if he knows the literature well) just learns
that there is a kind of qualitative agreement. But such qualitative,
and even semi-quantitative, agreement has been obtained before with
simpler phenomenological 'ansatz' like potential distributions. The
present paper reaches similar conclusions as previous work but never
demonstrates where the numerical calculations are more precise or
provide better understanding of the physics.

The style of the paper is not appropriate and should be revised by
a native English speaker. I recommend to reject the paper.

不过沮丧归沮丧，生活还得继续，继续改投吧，好在第一个审稿人给我指明了一条生路，那就是改投Journal of Applied Physics，于是，本人按照审稿人的意见又改了一些。由于一月份父亲的身体出了点问题，提前回老家了，家离四川有点远，所以修改又拖了一段时间，最终三月份投到了Journal of Applied Physics。这次运气还真不错，编辑部处理稿件的速度还真快，审稿也快，呵呵！心里暗暗有点高兴！下面是文章的处理过程：
Revision Received2009-05-07 09:53:41
Waiting for Revision2009-04-08 13:45:38
Decision Sent2009-04-08 13:45:38
Decision Letter Being Prepared2009-03-30 16:29:58
Editorial Evaluation - Editor2009-03-30 11:04:55
Under Review2009-03-16 12:31:33
Securing Reviewer(s)2009-03-12 15:43:32
Under Consideration - Editorial Office2009-03-12 11:35:24
Author-Approved Files Submitted2009-03-09 03:59:53
Under Consideration - Editorial Office2009-03-09 03:59:52
Author-Approved Files Submitted2009-03-09 03:59:52
Awaiting Author Adjustment/Approval of Converted Files2009-03-09 03:45:11
Manuscript Files Uploaded2009-03-09 03:35:28
Preliminary Manuscript Data Posted2009-03-09 02:59:45
嘿嘿，一个月还不到就收到初审意见，这对JAP来说速度是算快的了，我们实验室还有一篇文章投出去都快100天了，现在还在找审稿人，真够让人郁闷的。一如既往，把审稿意见贴出来吧。
Reviewer Comments:
Reviewer #1 Evaluations:
RECOMMENDATION: Major Revision
Sufficient New Physics in an Applied Area: Yes
Appropriate Length: Yes
Well Organized and Clearly Written: No
Good Title: Yes
Good Abstract: Yes
Clear Figures: Yes
Adequate References: Yes
TECHNICAL QUALITY RATING: Marginal
PRESENTATION RATING: Marginal

Reviewer #1 (Comments to the Author):

I recommend major revision, because there are a few things which need to be improved:
-the theoretical part describes in very detail an improved description of the split-gate induced potential. The authors claim that these calculations are more precise than earlier calculations. To justify this claim they compare their data with experimental values, see Fig. 5 b). But the experimental values used are very limited and only for large pinched off channels. This claim is not justified by using only these data!
- The quantized current is calculated for a split-gate device. Then at the very end, experimental data of an etched device is presented: this does not fit together. The potential landscape in an etched device is different from a split gate device. Why do the authors not calculate such a device? Then, experimental and theoretical data would fit together.
- So either the claim that their method of calculation is better needs to be more solid, or the experimental and theoretical data needs to fit together.
- finally, the language needs some improvement (a lot of prepositions are missing)
审稿人的意见很中肯，于是，我按照审稿人的意思，把文章又仔仔细细地改了一遍，补充了实验数据。删掉了最后一个与我们计算的器件不是对应的实验图，增加了一篇参考文献。其中还改了里面的英语表达。修改完成后，给审稿人的修改说明竟然有四页，呵呵。修改完成，马上投过去，这次更快，速度快得惊人，当时还把我吓出了冷汗。不信就看看吧

Manuscript Sent to Production2009-05-11 13:03:17
Decision Sent2009-05-11 13:03:17
Decision Letter Being Prepared2009-05-08 14:35:22
Editorial Evaluation - Editor2009-05-08 13:31:50
Under Review2009-05-07 13:47:23
Securing Reviewer(s)2009-05-07 11:15:56
Under Consideration - Editorial Office2009-05-07 11:15:55
Author-Approved Files Submitted2009-05-07 10:14:15
Under Consideration - Editorial Office2009-05-07 10:14:15
Author-Approved Files Submitted2009-05-07 10:14:14
Awaiting Author Adjustment/Approval of Converted Files2009-05-07 09:57:41
Manuscript Files Uploaded2009-05-07 09:53:40
Preliminary Manuscript Data Posted2009-05-07 09:29:22
从投出去到审稿结束仅仅一天！五月十二号收到编辑的信
Dear ×××:

I am pleased to inform you that your manuscript, referenced below, has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Applied Physics. Materials are being prepared for AIP Production Services.
×××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××
Reviewer Comments:
Reviewer #1 Evaluations:
RECOMMENDATION: Publish as is
Sufficient New Physics in an Applied Area: Yes
Appropriate Length: Yes
Well Organized and Clearly Written: Yes
Good Title: Yes
Good Abstract: Yes
Clear Figures: Yes
Adequate References: Yes
TECHNICAL QUALITY RATING: Good
PRESENTATION RATING: Good

Reviewer #1 (Comments to the Author):

The authors have significantly improved the manuscript and therefore a submission is now justified.
从意见看，审稿人对我的修改非常满意！呵呵！
经历了坎坎坷坷，终于接收。在这里我还真得感谢小木虫，感谢虫子们对我的帮助和鼓励，在这里我学到了很多有关投稿写作的经验。
越挫越勇，不言放弃，就是成功！
谢谢大家！