Second Author

"Did you come up with all this?" Professor Tao asked, suppressing his excitement.

"Of course."

"Incredible!"

"Professor Tao, give me your assessment."

"I don't even know how to assess it. To be honest, when I helped revise your previous paper, A Proposal for Compressed Electron Aggregation States, I gave it a great deal of thought. I felt it was a very bold idea, not entirely without a chance of becoming reality, but definitely beyond what current technology could achieve."

Professor Tao continued, "But after writing this paper, Using the Isolation Method to Accelerate Proton-Electron Separation, you suddenly opened a door to a New World for me. It turns out that your previous paper's proposal really can be realized in theory, which greatly increases its credibility."

"Can it be published in a better SCI journal?" Du Ke pressed. What he cared about was still whether the paper could be published.

After all, his startup plan required a massive investment of capital. To attract investors, he needed something compelling, and a powerful paper was an important promotional tool.

"Not for now, Little Du. Publishing it in the Journal of Chemical Physics will be enough. If people are interested, they'll notice it. If they aren't, it'll be rejected wherever you send it. Wasn't Einstein's theory of relativity met with overwhelming opposition at first? And yours can't compare to relativity anyway."

"All right. But I'll still have to trouble you, Professor Tao, with polishing and translating this paper."

"I'll definitely help, but, well, Little Du, I have an impertinent request." Professor Tao beat around the bush for quite a while before finally saying, "I truly think the ideas in your two papers are excellent, and they have the potential to be realized. Even if they can't be done now, perhaps they can in the future."

"And?" Du Ke asked.

"Could you add my name to the author list? Don't worry, you'll definitely be the corresponding author and first author. I only want to be the second author. Really, I'll revise, polish, and translate it for you free of charge!"

After thinking it over.

Du Ke nodded. "Sure. You did participate in revising the papers, Professor Tao. Being listed as second author won't hurt anything."

A paper could have multiple authors, but the most important were the first author and corresponding author. For things like professional title evaluations, papers generally had to be published under one's name as first author. Of course, writing a paper alone carried more weight than coauthoring one, since shared papers split the credit.

But Du Ke didn't care. He wasn't working in some government institution, so he didn't need to consider so much. The only position he could not give up was corresponding author.

Because the corresponding author often meant the overall person in charge of the research project and the holder of its copyright.

"Then thank you, Little Du. Haha, as long as this paper gets noticed, I, Old Tao, can benefit from it too. If your paper gets cited enough, it might even help me become a professor." Having gained something tangible, Professor Tao had already begun calling himself Old Tao.

No matter how much money he had once made from Du Ke, he had always liked to put on airs as a professor. Now he called himself Old Tao, showing that academics still mattered more to him.

Since Du Ke could help his academic career, he could no longer put on airs.

"Too bad the Journal of Chemical Physics only has an impact factor of 0.4. That's far too low. I looked it up—the best SCI journal in the country is Cell Research, and it already has an impact factor of 20."

"How can those be compared? Our country's strongest fields are biology and medicine. There are plenty of SCI journals with impact factors above 5. Physics has only a dozen or so SCI journals in total, and only two are above 5, both focused on optics. Being able to publish in a journal with an impact factor of 0.4 is already pretty good."

After chatting for a while longer, Professor Tao left with the new paper. "I'll first help you revise Using the Isolation Method to Accelerate Proton-Electron Separation, then submit it together with A Proposal for Compressed Electron Aggregation States. The Journal of Chemical Physics is bimonthly, so publication is a bit slow. Submitting both together will be more eye-catching."

"Fine."

After driving back to the villa, Du Ke continued tinkering with his third paper.

Whenever there was work, he went to the vehicle modification shop, came up with modification plans, and sweet-talked rich second-generation heirs. His life was comfortable and peaceful. But because he invested too much time into research, his learning progress slowed, and his stockpile of Mind Power accumulated more slowly as a result. When bored, he also explored Touch of Mind.

The young beauty next door who was being kept by someone became his test subject. He often stood by the wall and used Touch of Mind, sensing her emotions and thoughts.

Most of the time, her thoughts were chaotic and disordered, battering his brain with intense force. But on the occasional occasions when the young beauty was focused on gaming, he could clearly sense her emotions.

He could even slip into her perspective and experience the joy of the game.

"Touch of Mind is a bridge. Perhaps I can use this ability to communicate with the native inhabitants of Fantasy World... Can those Mushroom People really communicate?" He regarded the hypothetical Mushroom People as an intelligent race of Fantasy World, but he always felt that their intelligence was limited.

After all, how intelligent could a sentient race living in mushrooms possibly be?

He had also tried using Touch of Mind to communicate with cats and dogs, but all he sensed were disordered thoughts. Occasionally, they conveyed one or two clear emotions like "comfortable" or "hungry." Clearly, communicating with animals through Touch of Mind was extremely difficult, nearly impossible.

In the blink of an eye, March had arrived.

Du Ke's third paper was still lacking something. He was racking his brains over how to explain the principle without involving specific data.

Meanwhile, at the editorial department of the Journal of Chemical Physics at Huaxia University of Science and Technology, several editorial board members were engaged in a heated discussion, with Professor Tao, who was not on the board, among them.

"This electron flow concept is indeed bold, but it isn't realistic in practice. I think the theory may be correct, but not only would it be difficult to realize technically, it also lacks practicality. It can only serve as a theoretical supplement to current particle-related knowledge," one editorial board member said.

Another shook his head. "The separation of proton flow and electron flow is a castle in the air. It can't be achieved."

"Whether it can be achieved or not, it represents a new line of thinking. Whether it is wrong or right doesn't change the fact that it presents entirely new possibilities. To be honest, these two papers are connected. I have a feeling—might this author, Du Ke, write a third one?"

"Professor Tao, you're the second author. What do you say?"

Professor Tao smiled. "I'm not afraid of you laughing at me, but I only became second author by helping Du Ke revise and translate the papers. As for a third paper, I asked Du Ke about it. He said he was writing one, but he didn't reveal what field it concerned or whether it would continue from the first two papers."

"Who exactly is this Du Ke? Tell us about him. His papers are wildly imaginative—I think he has potential. Don't tell me he's one of the Graduate Students you supervise, Old Tao?"