Transactions on Power Systems is an iconic journal for the power systems research community. Many legendary authors in the field have been publishing their top papers here since the 1980s. For young researchers, having at least one paper in Transactions is a great achievement. It is evidence that your research is important and your technical and mathematical skills are at a high level. Senior researchers aim to have dozens of publications in Transactions – as proof of an impeccable research career. Overall, I would say that there is not a single scientist working on power systems who has never thought about writing a manuscript for Transactions.
Of course, I was one of the young researchers dreaming of such top publications. My initial plan was to publish at least one Transactions paper during my Ph.D. studies in 2016-2020. But very soon I realised that it was an extremely tough task. My first submission was rejected in 2019 after 8 months of peer review. Now, almost two years after my defense, I finally managed to publish my first Transactions paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9601291
The peer review process is indeed extremely rigorous. Reviewers can raise various objections, from “please explain this equation better” to “I don’t understand your idea, it looks like there is no useful contribution”. Each of the comments has to be carefully considered, and the relevant modifications have to be made in the manuscript. Otherwise, a reviewer can say that his comment is not addressed, indicating to the editor that the paper should be rejected. The edge between the rejection and the chance to modify the manuscript feels really thin. That’s why the acceptance rate is only about 20%:
I am happy to finally be in the 20% of accepted papers. The exhausting multi-round review process was certainly a valuable experience. And of course, I am grateful to my co-authors who guided me through this journey: Prof. Enzo Sauma, Prof. David Pozo, Prof. Janusz Bialek, and Prof. Nikolay Korgin.
Andrey Churkin (Андрей Чуркин) 2022
