P.R.L

Du Ke was a bit stunned.

As for Xu Weijun, a sophomore, he was filled with envy, jealousy, and hatred. He had been appreciated by the editorial board and assigned to the editorial department of the Journal of Chemical Physics to do odd jobs. However, he wanted to be a graduate student under the editorial board member, but the member had never given him a clear yes or no.

Yet this newcomer, who had only published three papers, had Dean Chen Yang himself shamelessly stepping in to fight over taking Du Ke's doctoral students.

There was no justice!

Where was fairness!

"Little Xu, go call the waiter to bring some rice. We can't drink anymore, or we won't be able to get back," an editorial board member shouted.

Xu Weijun immediately stood up and said hurriedly, "Okay, I'll go call the waiter right away." He then rushed out of the private room. When he returned, he was carrying a large basin of steaming white rice.

"Which teacher wants some rice?" he called out, and then began serving rice to the editorial board members.

He even obediently called out to Du Ke, "Senior Brother Du, do you want some rice? I'll serve you."

"Oh, okay, okay. I'll do it myself," Du Ke said sheepishly, taking the rice ladle and serving himself a small bowl.

While eating, the conversation returned to the papers.

Chen Yang said, "Little Du, some of your viewpoints and ideas can be written into a fourth paper. You can start brewing it, and see how the first three papers perform after they're published. If the results are good, I'll write you a recommendation and submit it directly to P.R.B. If P.R.B accepts your fourth paper, you can continue to build on it, combine the four papers, and write a review article, trying to submit it to P.R.L. With a P.R.L, you'll have no obstacles in the field of physics."

P.R.L stands for Physical Review Letters, a physics journal sponsored by the American Physical Society, which is basically the holy land in the minds of physics researchers.

Physical Review Letters requires the publication of important research results in first-tier physics disciplines, so the difficulty is immense.

Under the American Physical Society, there are other journals that basically represent top journals in second-tier disciplines, namely the Physical Review series A, B, C, D, E, etc. Among them, P.R.B (Physical Review B) corresponds to the second-tier physics discipline of condensed matter physics.

"Your electron flow theory, taken as a whole, should be a completely new branch of condensed matter physics, a special branch, perhaps on par with superconductors, semiconductors, and magnetism," Chen Yang continued. "Of course, if P.R.B rejects it, there's no point in submitting it elsewhere. Just publish the papers in sections in the Journal of Chemical Physics, and then focus on electron flow, striving to submit to CNS."

CNS refers to Cell, Nature, and Science, the three major journals.

From a physics perspective, it can be basically determined that Nature and Science are in one tier, followed by P.R.L, then the physics-related sub-journals of Nature and Science, and then the American Physical Society journals like P.R.B. Of course, P.R.L's impact factor is not very high, generally staying around 7 to 8. There are physics journals with higher impact factors, but most are by invitation only and do not accept unsolicited submissions.

P.R.B's impact factor this year is 3.4, which is also not very high. There are several physics journals in China with higher impact factors, but in terms of academic status, they are truly incomparable.

It's like the impact factors of the three major journals, which only hover in the teens to twenties, but this does not diminish their status as top SCI journals.

Impact factor is just one factor in measuring a journal. Some journals publish many diverse papers, diluting citation counts, so their impact factors are inevitably not high; some journals are specialized, with high cross-citation counts, so their impact factors are naturally high. For example, the legendary Clinical Cancer Journal for Physicians has an impact factor of up to 292, which can be frightening. The reason is simple: it only publishes a few dozen top-tier papers a year, which are naturally cited by countless people.

P.R.B publishes thousands of papers a year. On average, being cited three to four times is already quite an achievement.

After receiving guidance from Chen Yang, Du Ke basically had a grasp of the value of his papers. The next step was to see how they would be published. To publish in Physical Review B, he would need to polish his papers well, and the English translation had to be excellent. His English was barely at the CET-4 level, so he definitely couldn't write flowery prose. Tao Xun's English was also limited; he could write, but he couldn't write with flair either.

"It's best if you write directly in English. This way, the content will better fit the mindset of foreigners. Of course, if you and Tao Xun are unsure, you can come directly to me. If I have time, I can help you revise it," Chen Yang said.

Back home, after sobering up from the alcohol, Du Ke began to reflect on the interactions of the day. He had restrained his words, ensuring that he didn't reveal any important secrets, and he had also managed not to get drunk.

Although he knew that if he got drunk, he would just pass out and wouldn't babble nonsense, he still had to be cautious to avoid exposing the secrets he carried.

Caution is the parent of safety.

Therefore, he wasn't in a hurry to write the fourth paper. Three papers in a row were already shocking enough; a fourth one would be unbearable. So, he spent most of his time in experiments, painstakingly deciphering the cellular chain structure of the Long-Haired Bomb, the most important secret of this bomb caterpillar from the fantasy world, slowly unveiling itself, revealing its most mysterious parts.

At the same time, Du Ke was earning money while diligently studying biology, especially anything related to DNA.

The reason was simple: he wanted to perform DNA tests on the creatures from the fantasy world, to see if these magical beings, similar to Earth's carbon-based life, had a double-helix DNA structure, and what strange organelles were in their cells that allowed them to perform magic. The Shield Crow's magic shield and the Horned Roc's fire resistance ring were incredible existences.

Another month passed in the blink of an eye.

Du Ke spent the entire month of April in busy yet solid work. Apart from going to work at the car modification shop, he had almost no free time to waste. Even when he wasn't conducting experiments, he was either cramming DNA knowledge or searching for more instruments and equipment to replicate. Occasionally, when he wanted to relax his mind, he would practice the Touch of Mind, attempting to "communicate mentally" with the beautiful woman in the villa next door.

As for the papers, both Chen Yang and Tao Xun had urged him. He uniformly replied that he hadn't found any breakthroughs yet, so they stopped pressing him, as writing papers is usually calculated in years.

Even great scholars take several years to polish a significant paper.

Not everyone is like the child prodigy Cao Yuan, who published two Nature papers at 22 and another two at 24. He published four Nature papers by himself. After he finishes his studies and returns to China, he'll likely start directly as a professor, and they might even set up a key laboratory for him. Of course, Du Ke is still writing review-like and peripheral papers. If he were to delve into the core of electron flow, he might also publish consecutively in Physical Review Letters, or even Nature and Science.

"Phew, the energy for my second world crossing is almost gathered. Just a little longer. I'll start a new round of crossing in May... This time, I'll stay in the fantasy world for a few more days!"