Yet another post somewhat related to Virginia Tech. I found out today that a research paper that I submitted a while ago was finally accepted into publication! You won't be able to search for it just yet, but it means that it's in the process of being published into a journal.

So how is this related to Virginia Tech? Well, when you submit a research paper to a research journal, your paper is peer-reviewed by other researchers in your field. The editor of that journal will send your paper out to reviewers anonymously. That is, they know who wrote these papers, but you as the submitter are never told who reviews your paper. The editor is the one who chooses who to send the papers to. Basically, he/she sends it to people whom he/she thinks will understand the content well enough to make a decent review. The reviewers make comments and make suggestions to the Editor about whether or not your paper should be accepted or rejected. In my case, Kevin Granata was actually one of my reviewers. How do I know this? In Munich this past summer, Dr. Granata made a passing hint that he had read my paper and gave it a fairly positive review (plus, remember how I said that he was one of the few people who actually understood what we were doing in our lab?). His comments were very mild and though he only had a few comments on things that should be revised or added, the things he pointed out were very insightful and well thought out.

Anyways, so in summary: the good news is that I got a paper published. The bad news is that it's under these sad circumstances.