A good week

Its nice to occasionally get good news. As you may recall from a previous post, I had three papers rejected in one weekend in late July. When the editors at Applied Physics Letters refused to send the paper out for review, we submitted it to Optics Communications. Both reviews came in positive. The reviewers' summaries follow.

Reviewer #1: This manuscript describes characterization of the response dynamics of cascaded photomechanical devices based on photosensitive liquid crystal elastomers.  The idea of these cascaded devices is the most interesting aspect of this work.  The authors have built and characterized the time response and fit to a three exponential functions. The authors have identified two possible mechanisms contributing.  The paper is well-written, conclusions well-founded and should be of strong interest in the community.  Publication is recommended.

Reviewer #2: This an excellent study of cascaded optomechanical devices that take advantage of the properties of liquid crystal elastomers.  It should essentially be published as is.

We have resubmitted a revised manuscript, which addresses only a couple of minor issues, so we expect the paper to be accepted soon.

In another post, I reproduced a letter that I sent to the Optical Society of America about allowing authors to submit papers in two-column format. I sent a similar email to Applied Physics Letters. Since I hadn't heard back from them, I assumed that they were blowing me off. I just received an email that the journal has actually implemented the change! They write:

Dear Dr. Kuzyk:

Since your e-mail, we have decided to allow 2-column manuscripts to be submitted. We will try it out and see if we receive e-mails from reviewers who do not like the 2-column formatting.

Thank you again for your help with our APL manuscripts.

Regards,
Apl