Decision on your Manuscript

One of my goals for this blog is to give my non scientific friends and family a realistic and fair view into the life of academia: all the glory, the gory, and the God-awful.

As you know, I have had a paper out to review for over a month now. The anticipation has been killer.

This afternoon while I was on a scientific safari, hunting down references, I heard my trusty laptop give out a little boop to let me know I got an email. Instead of one of the many of repeated seminar announcements or annoying pointless announcements in Hebrew I seem to get every day, this one was from the boss with the subject line:

"FWD: Decision on your Manuscript"

My heart skipped a beat. I clicked on it, scrolled down to the body of the email and read:

"We apologise for the delay in reaching a decision on your manuscript entitled "Best Nano-Chemistry Ever". We hope to hear from the referees in the near future, and we will inform you of our decision as soon as possible."

JUST TELL ME ALREADY! ARRRRGH!

If you hear on the news tonight about a Canadian researcher in Israel who spontaneously combusted from overwhelming anticipation, you will know what happened.