The third paper for my PhD thesis just got accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics. The initial referee report we received last month was pretty hostile and recommended “eventual publication but only after some substantial revisions.” Basically, the referee felt we had ignored some recent experimental results in constructing our model. We had strong reservations about the validity of those results, so we deliberately didn’t include them.

We reran some of our models with the new experimental data included, and fortunately our conclusions didn’t change. That allowed us to send in a new manuscript that only contained some small changes relative to the original one. The referee now felt we had done a good job discussing the experimental data in question, and had made a good case for not including them throughout the paper. That was enough for him or her to recommend publication.

So, that means three of the five science chapters of my thesis are now finished. The fourth one is approaching a first full draft, and the fifth one is still entirely to be written. That still leaves a lot of writing to do before the end of August, but with the CO paper now accepted, I’m an important step closer to my graduation.

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