Letter from the Director
The scientific publishing process is a beautiful one, filled with surprises, disappointments, and learning experiences. I remember the first time I submitted an article for publication. I remember even more the referee report outlining the many reasons why my work was not yet ready to see the light of day. It’s difficult not to take personally moments of rejection in your life; but I promise you, the more you dive deeper into research and writing, the more you will realize that the publishing process has a way of getting the very best out of you.
So, what was wrong with my first article? I had worked with my mentor, an experienced scientist who wanted this article published just as much as I did. It turned out that aside from little errors in equations and confusing statements, the work was perturbatively new, in a sense.
We were studying scattering experiments in which the interaction of a photon with a proton creates new particles. The products of these scattering experiments had been investigated before within a theoretical framework introduced by physicists such as Murray Gell-Mann, who sought to understand the strong nuclear force.
We used an approach in which the particle interactions satisfied relationships consistent with the mathematical underpinnings of the strong nuclear force. An example of one of these relationships is that the proton and the neutron have approximately the same mass and thus can be interpreted as two states of the same particle. Until our work, scientists had looked for contributions to the scattering process only from particles with 1/2 and 3/2 units of angular momentum (spin).
We had the right computational tools and techniques to also incorporate contributions from particles with a spin of 5/2. (If you have ever worked with this class of particles, you know that their mathematical interpretation is very complex, as they are products of different objects in the Lorentz group.) Although there was lots of room for error in calculating the scattering amplitudes, not many people ventured this deep in the process. Our work was new and, in a way, unchartered territory.
When we received the first referee report on our work as part of the peer review process, my mentor knew what was coming. I did not. The lengthy report included questions, perceived errors, and sometimes statements like, “Why are you doing this? The contributions to the amplitude are negligible.” On another occasion later in my career, I received the feedback, “Nature cannot possibly behave that way.”) I felt sort of disillusioned at first, despite having just started a doctoral program in physics in a new city. I knew I would be publishing more in the future.
I began writing a response and revising the draft, my mentor now miles away, while balancing a load of classes, preparing for my qualifying exams, and thinking about where my physics interests would take me next. The process of submitting, revising, and responding turned out to be an amazing learning experience, preparing me well for the journey ahead.
I want undergraduate physicists and astronomers to think of the Journal of Undergraduate Research in Physics and Astronomy (JURPA) as your first home for publishing, a home that will give you, at this stage in your career, the same learning experience that I received in my very early days as a physicist. Although my first experience with publishing did not happen until deep into my master’s degree, for you it can happen now!
As you do research, I hope you will share your work with the Society of Physics Students and Sigma Pi Sigma community. I am excited for you to start (or continue) your journey in the very important and rewarding experience of publishing your contributions, which have the power to guide the ongoing odyssey to understand the physical world.
