Peer-reviewing publications is generally an enjoyable process, especially being a developing scientist, as it gives you some exposure outside your local safety box. Being peer-reviewed, in principle, can offer even more benefits: an informed critique of your work, along with some useful suggestions to make the manuscript more accessible to the community at large. Frequently this is the case, but sometimes you end up with someone who obviously is working along similar research lines and savors the opportunity to unleash a vendetta concentrating all the anger from their unfulfilling life. Would double-blind reviews solve this? Probably not. One reader in the APS magazine last month suggested reverting to the (g)olden days when both the reviewers and their comments would be published in the appendix along side the manuscript. Of course this would create just as many problems, but it’s a nice thought.
I enjoyed the APS this year more than last. Maybe it’s because I was presenting this time, or all the tasty seafood in New Orleans. Getting to put faces to names is the best part, especially meeting up with collaborators who were only 1’s and 0’s before. After a couple of referee hiccups, the paper I presented got accepted to PRL. Now a week to prepare before it’s back to Louisiana for the ACS Spring meeting.