A singularly strange PhD thesis
based partially on a "virtual" paper
by N. Rusomarov, O. Kochukhov and T. Ryabchikova,
that has never been published in any scientific journal
A search in Uppsala University Library gives information on the following doctoral
thesis
where on p. 2 one finds
Dissertation
presented at Uppsala University to be publicly examined in
Polhemsalen,
Ångströmlaboratoriet, Lägerhyddsvägen 1,
Uppsala, Friday, 15 April 2016 at 13:15 for the
degree of Doctor of Philosophy. The
examination will be conducted in English. Faculty
examiner: Prof. Dr. Werner Weiss
(University of Vienna, Institute for Astronomy).
and on p. 5 it reads
"This thesis is
based on the following papers, which are referred to in the text
by their Roman numerals.
....
III Rusomarov, N., Kochukhov, O., and Ryabchikova, T.
Three-dimensional magnetic and abundance mapping of the cool Ap
star HD 24712 III. Three-dimensional abundance distribution of iron
and calcium, to be submitted to A&A
....
Reprints were made with permission from the publishers."
Obviously (the titles of papers I-III make it very clear), paper III is the centre-piece of
the whole dissertation. But when up to late 2017 you clicked the links to paper III offered
by Uppsala University Library, there was no full text to be found, just the abstract.
Only after I had contacted the competent authorities at Uppsala University and insisted
on the availability of the full text of paper III -- it took them almost 3 months to react --
was this part of the Rusomarov thesis made accessible.
Interestingly, a search in
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abstract_service.html
for Rusomarov's papers from 2015 up to now still does not list paper III. This means that
although more than 6 years have now passed since N. Rusomarov got his PhD, paper III
yet has to be published in some journal, academic, refereed, obscure, ...
For many a
scientist it will already be rather difficult to understand how it is possible to get a PhD
on basis of a paper yet to be submitted to A&A (or submitted, but not accepted). What
however makes this case appear unique is the fact that
an article that has obviously been
rejected by one or several referees asked by A&A and maybe by even more referees
asked by MNRAS or ApJ is presently listed by Uppsala University Library as
I feel entitled to ask Uppsala University: how often does it happen that articles which
constitute the central part of a PhD thesis remain "submitted" to "other academic"
journals for more than 6 years?
Let me mention that the extended abstract in the PhD thesis reveals the use of an
utterly unphysical regularisation function -- initially proposed by
O. Kochukhov in 2009
-- which does not take into account any of the theoretical results published in numerous
refereed articles before 2016 (e.g. Alecian 2015)
and cannot be justified by any known
physical processes in magnetic Cp stars. I myself therefore entirely agree with the
anonymous referee(s) asked by A&A, who recommended rejection of paper III.
Have a look at my detailed objections to this article!
In this particular context the acknowledgements in the Rusomarov PhD thesis are not
devoid of interest:
"I would like to thank my scientific supervisors, Oleg Kochukhov and Nikolai Piskunov,
for their guidance and wisdom over the course of my PhD studies. Oleg, thank you
for your precious scientific advices and comments on the papers and my thesis.
This work is yours as much as it is mine."
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