Chapter 443: Text

Xu Qiu followed Wu Feifei and Han Jiaying to the subway station, while calling Wei Xingsi back and voluntarily explained: "Mr. Wei, we signed at the beautiful country embassy 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" are back. I took a look at it and the reviewers' comments were good. The final editor's comments were minor changes... This is the situation above. Are you still at the embassy of the beautiful country? What was the result of your interview today?"
Xu Qiu simply responded: "The interview process went smoothly. In the end, the results of the three of us were similar. They took the passports away and said that we need to wait for news."
"Then wait, we are not a sensitive industry in photovoltaics, and the problem of oversigning shouldn't be big." Wei Xingsi paused, and said: "I have forwarded the article opinions to your mailbox. You can take a look on the way. Look, we'll discuss it again when we come back, I'm also watching it now... That's it for now, hang up."
Hanging up, 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 "Nature·Energy" article?"
Xu Qiu said: "According to Teacher Wei, it is a minor change, and the reviewers' evaluations are good, so there shouldn't be a lot of supplementary experiments."
"Small changes, the probability can be achieved," Wu Feifei said with emotion: "This is the "Nature" magazine. I guess I have no hope to post it..."
"Senior sister, don't you plan to continue doing scientific research after graduation?" Xu Qiu was curious, and then added:
"At your current level, sister, after going abroad to find a big cow group to do a doctorate, it should not be too difficult to write a good article in the perovskite field, and then set up, don't post CNS or return to China, if it is not enough after two years of the doctorate. In the next two years, it’s great to spell out an article that CNS went back to China and took the "Qing Qian" hat like Wei Xingsi."
"CNS is so easy to post..." Feifei Wu gave Xu Qiu a blank look: "I am not sure what to do after graduation, but I prefer to develop in the industry. The main reason is that the family urges for marriage. I haven’t found a boyfriend yet. If I go abroad for a few years to do a postdoc and get married in my thirties, I’m probably going to have a frying pan at home..."
"Hey," Wu Feifei sighed lightly, "Don't talk about me, how many reviewers are there in your article? The "Science" I reviewed earlier has a total of seven reviewers."
"I haven't read it yet. I said it was five," Xu Qiu said. "With so many reviewers, it is estimated that even minor changes will take a long time. Teacher Wei said that when I go back, I have to discuss with me. I have to read it first. Opinion again."
"Let's take a look on the subway, it's not safe to walk," Han Jiaying reminded.
On the subway, Xu Qiu opened the e-mail and started to browse the e-mail. There were five reviewers in total, which were the same as the news received before.
This is also the largest number of reviewers among the articles published by Xu Qiu.
Of course, journals at the major level of "Nature" really deserve such treatment.
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Like the previous "Joule" journal, because it is just a new publication, in a strict sense, it has the potential to become a major journal of "Nature". Although the influence at this stage is higher than that of AM and EES, the top journals Stronger, but still weaker than the orthodox "Nature" Dazi magazine.
Although "Nature·Energy" is also a new publication, because the word "Nature" has become a golden sign in the academic circle, it is especially sought after by domestic researchers. Everyone is buying it, so it just came out in the energy industry. It spread quickly within, both in influence and attention are very high.
There are many factors that determine the grade of a journal. The average quality of articles published in the journal is of course 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 a debut; if you have traffic to promote vigorously, you can also make a debut; if you have hard power, you can also promote your traffic, plus a little luck, you can become the top flow.
Compared with "Nature", "Science" does not do well in operating its own brand. When you mention "Nature" in the academic circle, everyone will think of a large number of its sub-journals, which involve various sub-regions. "Science" is only "Science" itself.
For example, the orthodox sub-journal of "Science", "Science Development", logically speaking, its status should be comparable to that of "Nature", but in fact the impact factor is only in the early tenths, and the status is basically the same as that of NC. Similarly, they are collectively reduced to a two-zone periodical.
Xu Qiu began to read the specific review comments.
Reviewer 1, seems to be a foreigner, and his comments are relatively short and neutral.
The other party first stated that "I have limited understanding of material synthesis in the field of organic photovoltaics", and then mainly evaluated the exciton binding energy and exciton diffusion distance tests carried out in the article. No other aspects were mentioned too much. .
Xu Qiu speculated that the other party may not be a researcher who specializes in material synthesis in the field of organic photovoltaics, but a researcher who prefers 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-material-related researchers.
There are two main opinions.
The first comment: "For the exciton binding energy and the exciton diffusion distance, which involves fitting curves, error bars should be added."
Xu Qiu still knows the error bar. In scatter diagrams, error bars are generally used to indicate the uncertainty of the measured data.
But why didn't he draw error bars at the time?
On the one hand, because of articles in the field of organic photovoltaics, most pictures do not require error bars, such as the JV curve, just draw the one with the best performance. The same is true for the optical absorption spectrum, which is tested directly with the instrument. The original data can be drawn.
On the other hand, in order to publish articles quickly, and in pursuit of speed, some things need to be discarded...
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, it can be achieved with ORIGIN software:
The normal data point is a round point. With the error bar, a "work" is added to the round point, and a number of points resembling a candy shape are obtained.
The second opinion: "The experimental description of exciton binding energy and exciton diffusion distance in the text is too simple. These physical experiments need to explain the general experimental principle and calculation formula in the paper (the formula derivation may not be involved), Instead of choosing to cite a few documents, let other researchers look through the documents."
Xu Qiu thinks that it may be a researcher in the field of materials, but has a different idea from a researcher in physics.
For materials like Xu Qiu, he believes that the exciton binding energy and exciton diffusion distance tests used in the article are just a test method. The important thing is the data and results obtained.
Similarly, for example, 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.
However, physicists may prefer to list the derivation process of formulas in the paper. Every unconventional experiment involved should be explained clearly, and the derivation process should be written step by step.
Xu Qiu thought for a while and decided to adopt the other party's opinion.
Because this article was cast on "Nature·Energy", it is equivalent to being out of the circle.
In other words, there will be researchers in various fields who can read this article. At this time, it is indeed necessary to take into account the reading experience of other researchers, such as their physics researchers.
Anyway, for Xu Qiu, it is nothing more than a little more effort and two or three paragraphs to describe it. For other materials and chemistry-related researchers, if they are not interested in the newly added publicity and deduction content, they can skip directly. Never affect them
Moreover, the other party is a reviewer after all, so it is better not to offend it.
Reviewer 2, looks like a domestic one, and the review comments given are somewhat templated.
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 receptor material called IDIC-4F..." and concluded at the end of the paragraph: " This submission is a good job. It is innovative and highly influential. It is recommended that the article be published after revision."
Each of the following paragraphs is a part of the article, and a separate comment is made. The text content is relatively long. Xu Qiu read it for nearly five minutes before reading it.
After reading it, Xu Qiu suspected that this reviewer's comments were written by a student. Although it seems to have a lot of words, most of them are nonsense. Only two points are worth noting.
The first point, the energy level structure part, the other party pointed out: "One of the opinions in the article is that the HOMO energy level difference for the acceptor is small, only 0.16 electron volts, while the error of the cyclic voltammetry (CV) test is relatively large. If you want to express a small HOMO energy level difference, it is best to test the energy levels of the donor and acceptor at this time, instead of quoting data from other people's literature, which will cause large errors."
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 result of IDIC-4F is included in the article, and the CV result of J2 refers to Xuemei’s article. , No separate test again.
In fact, if the article cited is not in your own group, there is nothing wrong with the comments given by the reviewer, but now the two materials are developed by your own research group, then the "test error between different research groups" is naturally not Existed.
Regarding this issue, Xu Qiu decided to express it more clearly in the article, stating that "J2's CV data is the result of the preliminary work of our research group."
The second point, the part of the PL fluorescence spectrum, the other party thinks: "The PL image here is 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 fine, because the signal intensity is relatively high, so the signal-to-noise ratio is not large, and the obtained curve is relatively smooth.
But if it is a blended donor film, that is, the effective layer film, because of the exciton split between the donor and the acceptor, the fluorescence signal is relatively weak and the signal-to-noise ratio is relatively large. If the life of the PL instrument is If it is longer, the signal-to-noise ratio becomes 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, and the resulting image will be very "fried".
Therefore, researchers usually use ORIGIN software for smooth processing of the tested PL images, so that the fluctuation of each point is not so large, and it looks like a relatively smooth curve.
The Smooth here is not too problematic.
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, rather than the large fluctuation caused by the material itself.
In other words, if there is a very good machine, this data fluctuation will be eliminated.
Otherwise, if the fluctuation of the data is the characteristic of the material itself, 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 it would be very uncomfortable for Mr. Wei to see this kind of "fried hair" curve.
Different people have different ideas. Some people think that the original data is better, such as directly importing the original data into the ORIGIN software, and then using the PLOT (drawing) function to directly output the picture, and directly put it in the article without modification.
Wei Xingsi believes that this kind of behavior is lazy. He prefers to pursue uniform pictures and look good. Therefore, it strictly stipulates that all pictures in 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.
Smooth operation on some images that can be Smooth is also one of the requirements.
Xu Qiu decided to take this opinion of the reviewer and list his smooth conditions.
Strictly speaking, this kind of reprocessing operation for original data should indeed be expressed in the article.
But because the Smooth of the PL data has no effect on the experimental conclusions, and as a hidden rule of the industry, everyone knows this kind of operation, so some people usually list it, and some people don't.
Reviewer 3 also seems to be a domestic reviewer. Although their review comments are not routine templates, many of the statements in the sentence are only used by domestic people, and foreigners will not use it.
The difference in language expression habits is more obvious when reading documents, and there are similar situations in daily life:
For example, the "WC" that has been circulated for a long time in China is actually difficult to see abroad. When you say "WC" to a crooked nut, it may be like the other party says "the latrine" to you.
For another example, a Chinese restaurant in a beautiful country has a food called "fortune cookie", which is usually made of flour, sugar, vanilla and butter. The bread has notes similar to proverbs or ambiguous prophecies, and sometimes translated text is printed. Idioms, colloquialisms, or "lucky numbers" that can be used for lottery functions.
Most people in China have not even heard of such "fortune cookies".
In fact, this is the variation of language or culture in the process of inheritance.
Of course, doing scientific research is not doing literary creation, and the language of the paper is not very demanding. As long as the text of the paper is not so bad that others can't understand it, that is, it reaches the level of middle school student composition, it is all OK.
This reviewer’s opinion is not as long as the previous one. The reviewer first said: "Congratulations to the author of this article, let the efficiency in the field of organic photovoltaics leap from 12% to 13%, and generally recognize the work of Xu Qiu and others. It is recommended that the article be published directly."
Then, the other party changed the conversation again: "However, I have some questions and I hope I can get an answer from the author."
There are a total of seven questions listed, all of which are relatively brief. They are some general questions raised around the system in the field of organic photovoltaics, such as:
"The author thinks what specific effects will the introduction of fluorine atoms have on optoelectronic materials?"
"In addition to the problem of the low exciton diffusion distance of organic photovoltaic materials mentioned by the author in the article, what other factors make it difficult for organic photovoltaic materials to prepare thick film devices?"
"..."
Seeing these problems, Xu Qiu guessed that this reviewer is likely to be a colleague who is an organic photovoltaic company, and he asked the "big guys" for questions through the way of reviewing the manuscript.
It was the first time that Xu Qiu saw this method of asking questions by reviewing the manuscript. It was quite novel, but it was effective after thinking about it carefully.
For the questions listed by the reviewer in the review comments of the article, the author will most likely read it carefully and reply, even if these questions are generally related to the article itself.
This kind of universal question is 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 and rigorous arguments, even if it is wrong, there is no big problem.
Moreover, he also has a simulation experiment system, which makes it easier to get the rules that others need to get through trial and error.
Reviewer 4, who seems to be a foreigner, is more interested in the process of industrialization in the field of organic photovoltaics, focusing on the thick film and large-size devices. The other party said: "I look forward to the author of the article in the future work, a deeper level of Research on the industrialization of organic photovoltaics."
Good guy, I have arranged work for Xu Qiu directly.
However, the other party's suggestion is indeed similar to Xu Qiu's idea. He also believes that application-related scientific research will eventually be implemented to achieve commercial applications, even if it cannot be achieved, we must work hard in this direction.
In addition, Xu Qiu speculated 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 the target should be 15% and 18%."
If you are a person in the field of organic photovoltaics, you must know how difficult it is to reach 13%.
The reviewer's final opinion is also "recommend the article to be accepted after revision". The questions raised are easier to answer after reading it. Xu Qiu has not paid too much attention to it for the time being.
Reviewer 5, he also seems to be a foreigner.
The reviewer’s evaluation is very simple. There is only a short paragraph, and the core point is "The work is good, and it is recommended that the article be accepted directly."
Xu Qiu speculates that this reviewer 5 may be the reviewer mentioned by the previous editor who has not responded to review comments.
And it is estimated that he is a big man. When I received the reviewer, he was busy, and it was delayed for a period of time. Later, the editor urged the reviewer to read the article twice and thought it was well written, so he didn't give too many comments. , 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. It is rare to review an article "Nature·Energy" now, and you may have a lot to say. 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 changes, reviewers 3 and 5 suggested direct acceptance, and finally the editor gave minor corrections.
Xu Qiu is quite satisfied with this result and does not need additional experiments.
Moreover, the reviewers were more disciplined this time and did not encounter any requirement to cite documents.
More importantly, the opinions of reviewers are mostly neutral or positive.
In the academic circle, in addition to the number of citations of the article and the grade of the published journal, the reviewer's evaluation can also be used to show off an article.
For example, in this "Nature·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 review their review. The draft comments are listed, indicating that our work is indeed NB, and we have received high praise from peer reviewers.
In fact, some people still value peer reviews, especially praise.
Because reviewers usually don't choose people who have collaborated with the author to publish articles, the general interest is irrelevant, and there is even a competitive relationship.
At this time, the bad reviews of others may not necessarily be true, but the good reviews of others are generally true.
Of course, Xu Qiu's article is a little bit special.
First of all, the quality of the article is indeed high enough. The seven highlights have comprehensive representations, smooth writing, and perfect logic. Several story lines connect the entire work together, and experimental data can also confirm each other.
Regardless of the quality of the article, his article voted for "Nature·Energy", which is one level higher than that of the top magazines such as AM and JACS.
If it is an article of the AM or JACS grade, the peers, as reviewers, may be more inclined to prevent others from publishing.
Because my research group also has the opportunity to post AM, other people’s AM and JCAS post too much, but I post less.
And now it is an article in the big journal of "Nature". For the organic photovoltaic field, most of the research groups of the same industry cannot publish it, and there is no competition consideration.
Not only that, an article in the category of "Nature" in the field of organic photovoltaics was published, UU reading www. On the contrary, uukanshu.com can make the overall influence of this field higher, which is beneficial to all researchers in this field.
This is because the editors of major journals will determine the proportion of manuscripts they accept in each 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 allocated to this field by major related journals will increase.
Maybe the first issue of AM only accepted two or three articles on organic photovoltaics, 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 only additional factors, which only represent a tendency in the heart of the reviewers, and their influence on the final review decision may only be 5% or 10%.
If the quality of the article is worrying, peers will not force it to praise it.
For academic papers, quality is ultimately the most important evaluation indicator.