I Have a Research Support System

While following Wu Feifei and Han Jiaying to the subway station, Xu Qiu called Wei Xingsi back and explained, "Mr. Wei, we were interviewing at the embassy of the beautiful country just now. You cannot bring your mobile phone in here."

"Oh, okay." Wei Xingsi's tone was a little excited: "The review comments for "Nature Energy" came back, I took a quick look, and the reviewers' comments were all good, and the final editor's opinion is a minor change... generally The above is such a situation, you are still at the embassy of the beautiful country? How is the result of your interview today?"

Xu Qiu responded briefly: "The interview process went very smoothly, and the results of the three of us were similar in the end. They took away our passports and said we need to wait for news."

"Then wait, we are not a sensitive industry in photovoltaic industry, so the problem of over-signing should not be a big problem." Wei Xingsi paused, and then said: "I have forwarded the article opinion to your mailbox, you can take a look on the way first." Look, let's discuss it when we get back, I'm watching it now too... that's all for now, hang up."

After hanging up the phone, Han Jiaying approached Xu Qiu.

The school girl also saw the message sent by Teacher Wei to Xu Qiu just now, so she asked curiously: "Brother, how is the situation of your "Natural Energy" article?"

Xu Qiu said: "According to Mr. Wei, it's a minor revision, and the reviewers' comments are all good, so there shouldn't be a lot of supplementary experiments."

"Small change, there is a high probability of winning," Wu Feifei said with emotion, "This is a big sub-publish of "Nature", I guess I have no hope of publishing it..."

"Sister, do you plan to continue doing scientific research after graduation?" Xu Qiu asked curiously, and then added:

"At your current level, senior, if you go abroad and find a big team to do a postdoc, it shouldn't be too difficult to publish good articles in the perovskite field. Then set FLAG, and if you don't publish CNS and don't return to China, two years postdoc is not enough. In just two more years, it would be great to spell out an article on CNS and go back to China and directly take the title of 'Qingqian' like Wei Xingsi."

"CNS is so easy to post..." Wu Feifei gave Xu Qiu a blank look: "I'm not sure what to do after graduation, but I'm more inclined to develop in the industrial world. The main reason is that the family is very anxious to get married. I haven't found a boyfriend yet, if I go abroad to do a PhD for a few years, and then get married in my thirties, I think there will be a frying pan at home..."

"Hey," Wu Feifei sighed softly, "Let's not talk about me, how many reviewers are there for your article? There are seven reviewers for the "Science" I reviewed earlier."

"I haven't read it yet. It was said to be five," Xu Qiu said, "With so many reviewers, it may take a long time to make even a minor revision. Teacher Wei said that he will discuss it with me when I go back. I have to read it first." Opinion again."

"Go and watch on the subway, it's not safe to watch while walking." Han Jiaying reminded.

On the subway, Xu Qiu opened the email and began to browse the email. There were five reviewers in total, which was consistent with the message he had received before.

This is also the one with the largest number of reviewers among Xu Qiu's published articles.

Of course, journals at the sub-journal level of "Nature" do deserve such treatment.

Like the previous "Joule" journal, because it is a new journal that has just been published, strictly speaking, it only has the potential to become a major sub-journal of "Nature". Although its influence at this stage is higher than that of top journals such as AM and EES It is stronger, but still weaker than the orthodox "Nature" big sub-journal.

Although "Nature·Energy" is also a new publication, because the word "nature" has become a gold-lettered signboard in the academic circle, it is especially sought after by domestic researchers, and everyone buys it, so it just came out. The content quickly spread, both in terms of influence and attention.

There are many factors that determine the grade of a journal. Of course, the average quality of articles published in a journal is very important, but the degree of attention of researchers is also very important.

It’s a bit like the current era of traffic. If you have hard power, you can make your debut; if you have traffic and promote it, you can make your debut; flow.

Compared with "Nature", "Science" has done a little worse in managing its own brand. When "Nature" is mentioned in the academic circle, everyone will think of a large number of its sub-journals, involving various subdivided fields, but when mentioning "Nature" "Science", and only "Science" itself.

For example, "Science·Development", an orthodox sub-journal of "Science", should be comparable to the big sub-journal of "Nature", but in fact, its impact factor is only in the early 10s, and its status is basically similar to that of NC. The same, and they are all reduced to the second district journals.

Xu Qiu began to read the specific review comments.

Reviewer 1, who seems to be a foreigner, has short and neutral comments.

The other party first stated that "I have limited understanding of material synthesis in the field of organic photovoltaics", and then mainly evaluated the two tests of exciton binding energy and exciton diffusion distance carried out in the article, and did not mention too much about other aspects .

Xu Qiu speculated that the other party may not be a researcher specializing in material synthesis in the field of organic photovoltaics, but a researcher who is biased towards physics.

After all, his work involves a wide range of materials, chemistry, and physics. The editor selected five reviewers, and it is normal to assign one or two non-materials-related researchers.

There are mainly two opinions.

The first comment: "For the curves involving exciton binding energy and exciton diffusion distance, which involve fitting, error bars should be added."

Error bars Xu Qiu still knows that in scatter plots, error bars (error bars) are generally used to indicate the size of the uncertainty of the measured data.

But why didn't he plot the error bars then?

On the one hand, because of the articles in the field of organic photovoltaics, most of the pictures do not need error bars, such as the J-V curve, just draw the one with the best performance, and the light absorption spectrum is the same, directly use the instrument to test The original data can be plotted.

On the other hand, it is also for the sake of publishing articles quickly, and in order to pursue speed, you need to give up some things...

Xu Qiu chose to accept this opinion, because doing so can indeed make the data reported in the article more rigorous.

The specific operation is not difficult, and it can be realized with ORIGIN software:

The normal data point is a circular point. With the error bar, a character "工" is added to the circle point to obtain points similar to candy shapes.

The second opinion: "The experimental description of exciton binding energy and exciton diffusion distance in the main text is too simple. These physical experiments need to explain the general experimental principle and calculation formula in the paper (the derivation of the formula may not be involved), Instead of choosing to cite a few documents, let other researchers look through the literature."

Xu Qiu thinks that it may be that researchers in the field of materials have different ideas from researchers in the field of physics.

For a material scientist like Xu Qiu, he believes that the exciton binding energy and exciton diffusion distance tests used in the article are just a test method, and the data and results obtained are important.

Similarly, for example, if I took a set of electron microscope photos with TEM, I don't need to list the principles of TEM in the article, I only need to analyze the TEM images.

Physicists may prefer to list the derivation process of the formula in the paper. Every unconventional experiment involved must be explained clearly, and the derivation process should be written step by step.

Xu Qiu thought about it and decided to accept the other party's opinion.

Because this article was submitted to "Natural Energy", it is equivalent to being out of the circle.

In other words, researchers in various fields will be able to read this article. At this time, we should really take into account the reading experience of other researchers, such as their physics researchers.

Anyway, for Xu Qiu, it is nothing more than spending a little more effort and adding two or three paragraphs to describe it. For other materials and chemistry-related researchers, if you are not interested in this part of the newly added public derivation content, you can also skip directly. However, it will not affect their reading.

Moreover, the other party is a reviewer after all, it is better not to offend if you can not offend.

Reviewer 2, which seems to be domestic, gave some templated review comments.

The other party first changed the abstract of the article and put it at the beginning of the first paragraph: "Xu Qiu and others developed a non-fullerene acceptor material called IDIC-4F..." and then concluded at the end of the paragraph: " This submission is a good job, with high novelty and influence, and it is recommended that the article be revised and published."

Each of the following paragraphs is a part of the article, and it is a separate comment. The content of the text is relatively long. Xu Qiu read it for nearly five minutes before finishing it.

After reading it, Xu Qiu suspects that a student wrote the reviewer's comments. Although it looks like a lot of words, most of them are nonsense. There are only two points worth noting.

The first point, the energy level structure part, the other party pointed out: "A point of view in the article is that 'the energy level difference between the donor and acceptor HOMO is small, only 0.16 electron volts', and the error of the cyclic voltammetry (CV) test is relatively large, If you want to express the small HOMO energy level difference, it is best to test the energy levels of both the donor and the acceptor at this time, instead of citing data from other people’s literature, which will cause a lot of error.”

The donor material used in Xu Qiu's article is Xuemei's J2, and the acceptor material is the newly developed IDIC-4F. Only the CV results of IDIC-4F are included in the article, and the CV results of J2 are quoted from Xuemei's article , no separate test again.

In fact, if you are citing an article not from your own group, there is nothing wrong with the reviewer’s opinion, but now that the two materials are developed by your own research group, then the "test error between different research groups" is naturally not correct. exists.

Regarding this issue, Xu Qiu decided to express it more clearly in the article, indicating that "the CV data of J2 is the result obtained from the previous work of our research group".

The second point is the part of the PL fluorescence spectrum. The other party thinks: "The PL image here has been processed by Smooth (smoothing). It is best to use the original data, or indicate the parameters of the smoothing process."

In the PL test, if it is a single-component donor material or acceptor material, it is okay, because the signal strength is relatively high, so the signal-to-noise ratio is not large, and the obtained curve is relatively smooth.

However, if it is a blended donor-acceptor film, that is, the effective layer film, because of the splitting of excitons between the donor and acceptor, the fluorescence signal is relatively weak and the signal-to-noise ratio is relatively large. If the service life of the PL instrument If it is longer, the signal-to-noise ratio will be even greater.

For example, if the peak value of the PL intensity of the blended film is assumed to be 10000, the noise fluctuation range may be ±2000, so the resulting image will be very "fried".

Therefore, researchers usually use ORIGIN software to perform Smooth processing on the tested PL images, so that the fluctuation of each point is not so large, and it looks like a smoother curve.

The Smooth here is not a big problem.

Because the smooth operation will not affect the experimental results and conclusions, that is to say, the fluctuation of PL is caused by the instrument, not the large fluctuation caused by the material itself.

In other words, if there is a very good machine, the fluctuation of this data will be eliminated.

Otherwise, if the data fluctuation is the characteristic of the material itself, then it is not Smooth, but tampering with the experimental data.

Xu Qiu's PL pictures were indeed processed by Smooth, which was mainly requested by Wei Xingsi, because Mr. Wei would feel very uncomfortable seeing this kind of "fried hair" curve.

Different people have different ideas. Some people think that the original data is better. For example, import the original data directly into the ORIGIN software, and then use the PLOT (drawing) function to directly output the graph, and put it directly in the article without modification.

However, Wei Xingsi thinks that this kind of behavior is a lazy person. He pursues the uniformity of the pictures and looks good, so he strictly stipulates that all the pictures in the articles published by the research group must be consistent.

Including: the thickness of the line, the size of the text below the scale, the size of the legend, the legend cannot have a border, and so on.

It is also one of the requirements to perform Smooth operations on some images that can be Smoothed.

Xu Qiu decided to adopt the reviewer's opinion and listed the conditions for his Smooth.

Strictly speaking, this kind of reprocessing operation for the original data should indeed be expressed in the article.

But because the smoothness of PL data has no effect on the experimental conclusion, and everyone knows this kind of operation as an unspoken industry rule, so some people usually list it, and some people don't.

Reviewer 3 also seems to be a domestic reviewer. Although their review comments did not use a routine template, many of the statements in the sentence can only be used by domestic people, and foreigners will not.

The difference in language expression habits is more obvious when reading literature, and there are similar situations in daily life:

For example, the "WC" that has been circulating in China for a long time is actually very difficult to see abroad. When you say "WC" to a crooked nut, it may be like the other party saying "toilet" to you.

For another example, in the Chinese restaurant in the beautiful country, there is a food called "fortune cookie", which is usually made of flour, sugar, vanilla and cream. Idioms, sayings, or "lucky numbers" that can be used in lottery features.

Most people in China have never even heard of this kind of "fortune cookie".

In fact, this is the variation of language or culture in the process of inheritance.

Of course, scientific research is not literary creation, and the language requirements of the thesis are not high. As long as the written expression of the thesis is not so poor that others cannot understand it, that is, it reaches the level of composition for middle school students, then it is OK.

This reviewer's opinion is not as long as the previous one. The reviewer first said: "Congratulations to the author of this article for making the efficiency in the field of organic photovoltaics leap from 12% to 13%. I generally recognize the work of Xu Qiu et al. It is recommended that the article be published directly."

Then, the other party changed the topic again: "However, I have some questions, and I hope to get answers from the author."

There are a total of seven questions listed, all of which are relatively short. They are some general questions about the field of organic photovoltaics raised around the J2:IDIC-4F system, such as:

"What specific effects does the author think the introduction of fluorine atoms will have on optoelectronic materials?"

"In addition to the low exciton diffusion distance of organic photovoltaic materials mentioned by the author in the article, what other factors make it difficult to prepare thick-film devices with organic photovoltaic materials?"

"..."

Seeing these questions, Xu Qiu guessed that the reviewer was most likely a fellow in the field of organic photovoltaics, and was asking questions from the "big boss" through reviewing.

It was the first time Xu Qiu saw this method of asking questions through manuscript review, and thought it was quite novel, but it was effective after thinking about it carefully.

Most of the questions listed by the reviewers in the review comments of the article will be carefully read and answered by the author, even if these questions are generally related to the article itself.

This general question was not difficult for Xu Qiu to answer.

Anyway, it is just to put forward some opinions and opinions, and there is no need to do experiments for strict demonstration, even if it is wrong, it is not a big problem.

Moreover, he also has a simulation experiment system, which can easily obtain the laws that other people need to get through trial and error.

Reviewer 4, who seems to be a foreigner, is more interested in the industrialization process of the organic photovoltaic field, focusing on thick film and large-scale devices. The other party said: "I look forward to the author of the article in the future work. Research related to the industrialization of organic photovoltaics."

Good guy, I just arranged work for Xu Qiu.

However, the other party's suggestion is indeed similar to Xu Qiu's idea. He also believes that application-related scientific research must eventually be implemented to achieve commercial applications. Even if it cannot be realized, efforts must be made in this direction.

In addition, Xu Qiu speculates that the other party may not be engaged in organic photovoltaics, but may be engaged in other photovoltaic fields, such as perovskite.

Because the other party is very familiar with the photovoltaic industry, but said: "The efficiency of 13% in the field of organic photovoltaics is not high, and we should target 15% and 18%."

If you are in the field of organic photovoltaics, you must know how difficult it is to reach 13%.

The reviewer's final opinion was "recommended to accept the article after revision". The questions raised were easier to answer after reading it, so Xu Qiu didn't pay too much attention to it for the time being.

Reviewer 5 also seems to be a foreigner.

The reviewer's evaluation is very simple, only a short paragraph, the core point is "the work is good, it is recommended to accept the article directly."

Xu Qiu speculated that this reviewer 5 might be the reviewer that the previous editor said had never responded to the review comments.

And probably a big boss, when I received the review, I happened to be busy, so I delayed it for a while. Later, the editor urged me, and the reviewer read the article twice and thought it was well written, so I didn’t put forward too many opinions. , wrote a paragraph and gave it directly.

If you are an ordinary researcher, there is a high probability that you will not be able to publish a high-level article like "Nature Energy" in your life. Now that you have a review of "Nature Energy", you may have a lot to say, and For the big guys, "Nature Energy" is just an ordinary review, and the writing is more casual.

After reading it roughly, reviewers 1, 2, and 4 suggested minor revisions, and reviewers 3 and 5 suggested accepting it directly, and finally the editor gave minor revisions.

Xu Qiu is quite satisfied with the result and does not need additional experiments.

Moreover, the reviewers this time are also more ethical, and no one is required to cite the literature.

More importantly, most of the reviewers' opinions are neutral or positive.

In the academic circle, when an article is published, in addition to the citations of the article and the grade of the published journal, the evaluation of the reviewers can also be shown off.

For example, for "Natural Energy", reviewers 3 and 5 gave very high evaluations. Later, when Xu Qiu or Wei Xingsi told others about the work of "Nature Energy", they could use their reviewers The manuscript comments are listed, indicating that our work is indeed NB and has received high praise from peer reviewers.

In fact, some people still value peer reviews, especially good reviews.

Because reviewers usually do not select people who have cooperated with the author to publish articles, the general interests are not related, and there may even be competition.

At this time, other people's bad reviews may not necessarily be true, but other people's good reviews are generally true.

Of course, Xu Qiu's article is a little special.

First of all, the quality of the article is indeed high enough, with seven highlights, comprehensive representation, smooth writing, and perfect logic. Several story lines connect the whole work together, and the experimental data can also be mutually confirmed.

Regardless of the quality of the article, he submitted this article to Nature Energy, which is one level higher than AM and JACS.

If it is an article of the grade of AM or JACS, as a reviewer, the peer may be more inclined not to let others publish it.

Because my own research group also has the opportunity to post AMs, and when others post more AMs and JCASs, I post less.

But now it is an article of the grade of a major sub-journal of "Nature". For the field of organic photovoltaics, most research groups of the same industry cannot publish it, so there is no consideration of competition.

Not only that, the publication of an article in a major sub-journal of "Nature" in the field of organic photovoltaics can increase the overall influence of this field, which is beneficial to all researchers in this field.

Because the editors of major journals will decide the proportion of manuscripts they accept in this field according to the real-time popularity of each field.

To give a simple example, if the field of organic photovoltaics becomes popular, the number of articles assigned to this field by major related journals will increase.

Perhaps the first AM issue only accepted two or three organic photovoltaic articles, but now it has become four or five articles, and everyone has more opportunities.

Therefore, at this time, peers, as reviewers, may be more inclined to let the article be published, and the object of competition has changed to researchers in other fields.

Of course, these are just additional factors, which only represent a tendency in the reviewers’ hearts, and may only affect 5% or 10% of their final review decisions.

If the quality of the article is worrying, colleagues will not brazenly tout it.

For academic papers, quality is the most important assessment indicator after all.