Monday, October 15, 2007

We got Scooped...

...like so much ice cream. And it sucketh something fierce.

I wish I could say it's the first time it's happened, but no. Still annoying as hell, because it means a lot of time and effort has been put forth for naught. Friday I found out that a major manuscript got accepted, and today I find that a recently submitted manuscript for all intents and purposes got published in the latest issue of the very same journal we submitted our work to. Ironic. And some day, I'm sure I'll find it amusing, but not today. Tomorrow's not looking good either.

What happened, one might ask. From looking at the "received" and "accepted" dates of the "other" manuscript, I'd say it's a simple, open-and-shut case of us not firing on all cylinders. We spent way too damn long before actually submitting the manuscript, seeing as how the dataset was complete, worked up AND written up way before their work was submitted. Not to mention that we presented the work at a conference like a year prior to submitting the research article. Our bad entirely.

While we haven't gotten teh axe from the journal yet, the odds of getting it through in its present form are less than promising. We have done some additional stuff and math'ed it up a li'l bit, but they have used an additional characterization technique, etc.

Same system. Same primary characterization technique. Same freakin' journal. What are the odds.......

2 comments:

Anders said...

Sometimes you get the elevator, sometimes you get the shaft...

Naw, that's too bad Willy-Boy. Better start working on a revision or brand new article.

Wilhelm said...

....yeah.......

We're working on plenty new articles, but I'm not sure we're dead set on re-inventing the wheel for this one. At least we're wary about doing new experiments for it. Rewriting is one thing, but expanding the dataset is quite another ordeal