[Clascomment] New Collaboration-wide review: 'Beam-spin Asymmetries from Semi-inclusive Pion Electroproduction' by Kyungseon Joo et al.

[Reinhard Schumacher]

Hello Wes et al.,
     I'm sorry my comments on your paper come so close to the deadline.  
I see from  the entries on CLASCOMMENT that you have had no shortage of 
suggestions about the paper already, so I decided not to send another 
dump of small corrections.  Instead, I have looked at your paper the way 
an outside reader might:  take a quick took to see what the main 
message(s) is(are), and whether I should bother to read the paper in 
detail.  With this in mind, I have the following suggestions:

1) The abstract is really bad as it is written now.  It does not make a 
compelling case for the reader going on to actually read the paper.
First sentence: why make the reader plow through 2 lines to learn... 
your notational choice A_LU ^sin phi?  Maybe rewrite along the lines "We 
have measured the moment, A_LU^sin phi, corresponding to the polarized 
electron beam-spin asymmetry in SIDIS."  Then put the sentence about 
"A_LU^sinphi is a twist-3 structure..."  Then go on "Data were taken...  
All three pion channels...  within the range 1.0 < Q^2 < 4.5 GeV^2."  
(That is, in the latter sentence get rid of the word "intermediate" 
since one man's "intermediate" is another man's "low" or "high".)
Then say "This observable was measured with good statistical precision 
over a large range of z, P_T, x, and Q^2, which permits comparison with 
several reactions models."  Then the final sentence, as it stands now, 
is extremely weak.  You ought to give the reader some reason to think 
that what you have done has value.  Try to say *some*thing about the 
comparisons you have already made with the models shown in the paper. 
Perhaps something like: "It is seen that the reaction models fit the 
data perfectly and there is nothing left to be learned in this field".  
OK, I expect you will NOT make that statement, but you get the idea.

2) Figures 15 through 18, your main results, are not of professional 
quality, and therefore detract from your message.  The axis numbers need 
to be bigger in size and smaller in number.  Use color to liven things 
up.  Don't make the lines so think it looks like they were made with a 
crayon.  Put bigger axis text labels, and don't park the y axis labels 
on the top of the plots.  If you don't do these things, rest assured the 
editor of the journal will reject the paper until you fix these things.

Good luck with the revisions.
Reinhard

On 11/8/2013 11:53 AM, David Ireland wrote:
> Dear CLAS Collaborators,
>
> The paper entitled "Beam-spin Asymmetries from Semi-inclusive Pion Electroproduction" by Kyungseon Joo et al. is now undergoing Collaboration-wide review.
> The collaboration-wide review started today, and will end on November 22.
> To check the status of this Collaboration-wide review, read the latest version, and contribute your comments, please login
> via the CLAS shifts online interface and then click below:
> http://www.jlab.org/Hall-B/shifts/?display=admin&task=paper_review&rid=3353927&operation=view
>
> Best regards,
> David Ireland
>

-- 
___________________________________________________________________
Reinhard Schumacher         Department of Physics, 5000 Forbes Ave.
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, U.S.A.
phone: 412-268-5177         web: www-meg.phys.cmu.edu/~schumach
___________________________________________________________________