My first paper

For some time now I've been writing a paper looking at the capacity fade of lithium ion batteries.  In the last few weeks we've made some improvements, particularly looking at including silicon (which degrades very quickly) in the same framework as the graphite that I had been modelling.

Yesterday, I finally submitted the paper to the Journal of The Electrochemical Society.  Reading over the draft one last time before submitting it, I was quite happy with it.  I'm happy with my writing style (in the past, even reviewers who don't like my science like my writing), and I think Martin's contributions (e.g. the abstract, plus making it "more grandiose") fit well.  There's nothing especially profound about the work I did, but I think the ideas are useful and intuitive.  I did fear that it would be disjointed, because we tacked on so many things that took the focus away from the initial thrust of the paper (which was actually kind of boring, because the effect I had been looking for isn't really there at all), but it was not: it felt like we had a bunch of things to say but they were closely enough related that it didn't matter that it was not just one thread from beginning to end.

Now it might be some months before things are finalised, but I'm reasonably optimistic about the chances of it being published in this journal.

The day before submitting it, I received an email advertising the (northern) spring 2013 conference of The Electrochemical Society.  I asked Martin if I should present my work at this conference, and he agreed it would be a good idea.  So now I need to turn my paper into an abstract, which shouldn't be too difficult, and then convince people how useful my work is.

You may be wondering about the paper I submitted more than two years ago.  Unfortunately, that was rejected by the journals I sent it to.  If I were still working where I wrote that paper, I would have dealt with the criticisms and found somewhere else, but it reached the point where I couldn't afford the time away from the studies I'm actually here to do.  It's a pity, but I suspect fairly common in the science world (especially for us young people who move around so frequently).