Accepted!1!!Eleventy!!11!!!

This morning there was an email waiting for me to tell me that my paper is accepted! You know, the one I've been fretting about here basically since this blog's inception. Yay!

There are a few minor revisions to make, but basically the reviews were, dare I say, glowing. One of the reviewers who read the first version of the manuscript reviewed it again. This person didn't like it at that point because it wasn't novel enough, but now s/he says I addressed all of his/her concerns, so the paper is okay. The other reviewer, who is different from last time, said things like the paper is "well organized" and "very concise" and "illustrate some great evidence [for phenomenon we were trying to measure]". Woot.

Ecogeoman took me out for a very nice dinner tonight to celebrate. Our tradition, which we established long before either of us had anything ready to publish, is that we go out for beers when one of us submits a paper, out to a nice dinner when a paper gets accepted (on the other's dime, of course), and then a smaller dinner like pizza when the paper finally comes out. Tonight we went all out with a bottle of wine and dessert, but this was partially justified by it being our official five-year anniversary tomorrow. :)


You know how sometimes when you are waiting to hear the result of something, you say negative things but deep down you expect a positive outcome? On the contrary, I really expected this paper to get rejected from this journal, but to get accepted elsewhere. Since the 2008 data have been integrated, this journal is one of highest ranked in my field. I'm obviously super pleased with this, but that's in part because I think this is the only piece of my Ph.D. work that is broad enough in scope to be suitable for anything but a specialists' journal.

Honestly, this feels even better than I thought it might. How rare.