Orion Crest, Series_1

Chapter 14: Thesis Submission

　　Participating is no problem ......, but I don't want to take the blame if I lose!

　　"I'm not even worried, what are you afraid of?" Professor Tang hummed, after a moment's pause, continued in a moderated tone, "Don't worry about it, with your ability is absolutely enough, this I can be sure."

　　In fact, taking part in such a competition would certainly be beneficial to himself. The only factor that made Orion hesitant was that he was worried that training for the competition might delay his part-time job and his progress in completing the system tasks.

　　He had already planned to stay in school during the summer holidays, and level up the system as soon as possible, or at least upgrade his Maths to LV1, otherwise it would be too unbearable to have all other subjects followed by zeros. And apart from the system tasks, the rest of the time would be used to do part-time jobs, after all, it was not just the expenses during the summer holidays, but also the living expenses for the next semester.

　　As if he could see through Orion's money-grubbing mind, Professor Tang smiled and said slowly, "Although the Mathematical Modelling Competition doesn't have monetary prizes, there are rewards in our college. The group that can get the first prize will not only get $10,000 bonus, but also have priority in applying for scholarships."

　　"Professor, I've thought it over, please let me represent the college!"

　　Tang stifled a laugh, placed his thermos on the table, and waved his hand, "Then I'll register for it, come here on Saturday and meet your teammates. That's it, don't forget."

　　"Yes!" Orion said combatively.

　　Ten thousand dollars! Even splitting that among three people that would be over three grand each! Plus, the $8,000 scholarship, it comes out to over ten thousand. It may not be that much for students from wealthy families, but for Orion, who only had $300 on his card, it was a huge amount of money!

　　Thanking the professor again, Orion took the flash drive and returned to the dormitory. Carrying his laptop to bed and connecting to WiFi, he was ready to upload his paper.

　　In the end, he chose "Theoretical and Applied Mathematics Letters", a publication of the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University, as the target for submission.

　　Opening the webpage, filling in the author information and email address, and spending about ten minutes on these miscellaneous things, Orion finally came to the last step, clicking on the upload. The status reads "Submitted to Editorial Office", and the next step is a long wait for one of the reviewing editors to see his paper. ......

　　Stretching out, Orion was ready to lie down for a while when his mobile phone vibrated slightly. At first, he thought it might be the one called Isabel who had another maths question to ask, but when he unlocked the screen and opened it, it was an email.

　　The moment he saw the title of the email, Orion froze. He almost suspected that he had misread it and couldn't help but whisper silently.

　　"...... How is this possible?" It was a copyright license agreement! In other words, his submission had entered the so-called "proof" process!

　　Although the rules of each journal were different, most of them would send the license agreement after accepting the manuscript, and this process would take vary from one day to two weeks. In other words, his manuscript was directly presented to the journal editor's computer ......

　　Could this also be the power of the system?

　　Orion gulped, opened his email on the computer, downloaded the agreement in the email, signed the authorization agreement as required, and sent the electronic file back to the address given in the email.

　　After waiting about five minutes, he refreshed the submission page.

　　[Under-Review]!

　　Orion felt his heart beating a bit faster. This means that his article has passed the technical editor's formatting review and is about to be reviewed by a professional academic editor!

　　Usually, people would get stuck a few times in that place of technical editing for their first submission, but because Professor Tang had helped revise the paper, he seemed to have passed this barrier just once. As for the next external review, it will be the strictest and longest process in the whole SCI submission.

　　In general, academic editors are busy researchers themselves, and reviewing is unpaid work and requires a lot of energy, the amount of time spent on contributing to the academic community for free depends on the mood of the reviewer. For those who are slow or busy, the "UR" process can take a month or two!

　　After waiting for about five minutes, Orion Crest refreshed the page again. This time, there was no change in the status of the manuscript.

　　For some reason, Orion was relieved to see this.

　　Although the power of the system had destroyed his common sense to a certain extent, it seemed to have returned to the realm of common sense in the most critical places, though. Academic editors couldn't possibly keep an eye on their email inboxes all the time for this kind of unpaid work.

　　It seemed that the system could not manipulate a person's behavior, although it seemed to have accelerated his manuscript within the rules through some mysterious force, and perhaps kept his own manuscript permanently on the first line of the academic editor's email inbox, although there was ultimately a certain constraining factor involved in this force.

　　As to what that factor is, Orion Crest can't say for sure at the moment, but either way, it's a good thing.

　　If the system was really powerful enough to dominate a person's behavior, that would be terrifying. Although he enjoyed the knowledge and various conveniences that the system brought him, he didn't want to become a puppet of the system one day. Freedom was priceless, even when very poor, he thought so.

　　Of course, it would be nice if this final part of UR could be completed before the Maths Analysis exam ......