Today I received the first check from Lulu with the proceeds from the first few months of Mathgen book sales: US\$76.32. I’ve just dispatched a check for the same amount to the American Mathematical Society.

Thanks to all who bought the books! Not only do you now own a fantastic conversation piece, but you’ve helped support real (non-randomly generated) mathematics research! And for those who haven’t: you still can.

Update: In the interests of transparency, here is the receipt (PDF).

Stefan Friedl of the University of Cologne writes with the news that he has gotten a Mathgen paper accepted by Journal of Algebra and Number Theory Academia. (Yes, that’s really the name of the journal; it was nominated for Clunkiest New Journal Title of 2010.)

Friedl’s masterpiece is entitled “On the uniqueness of prime, Jacobi functors”; you can read the manuscript (PDF). Its abstract:

Let $\delta^{(\Omega)} \le i$ be arbitrary. Every student is aware that every factor is independent. We show that $\bar{f}$ is co-trivial and extrinsic. In this context, the results of [32] are highly relevant. On the other hand, in [32], the authors address the reversibility of additive scalars under the additional assumption that there exists a compactly semi-Monge locally symmetric monodromy.

The anonymous referee’s report offers unqualified praise for this magnificent paper:

I have gone through the paper. It is a good paper. In my view the results obtained are original, new and interesting. This paper may trigger further research in the direction of work.

Clarity: This paper is well-written and well-presented.

Literature: The authors’ references to the literature seem adequate.

Interest: Readers of the journal will find this paper interesting.

Recommendation: I recommend that this paper be accepted for publication in the Journal for Algebra and Number Theory Academia.

Unlike Advances in Pure Mathematics, JANTA is not an open-access journal but is available only by subscription; current subscription rates are US\$300 per year (6 issues). They do, however, require that the author pay an “article processing charge” of US\$20 per page. Friedl also points out that JANTA is indexed by Zentralblatt, a well-respected review database.

Congratulations to Stefan for his successful work!


Date: Mon, 24 Dec 2012 11:25:19
From: srp
To: marcie.rathke@gmail.com
Subject: Dr.Marcie Rathke, Merry X'mas

Scirp Editorial Office


I just received the following email:


CALL FOR PAPERS

I am writing to cordially invite you to submit or recommend papers to the Advances in Pure Mathematics (APM, ISSN: 2160-0384), an open access journal. For more about the Aims & Scope or other information, please visit the following website: www.scirp.org/journal/apm.
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With regard to the Marcie Rathke affair, a number of readers have seized on the provisional nature of the acceptance letter from Advances in Pure Mathematics. Indeed, they did not accept it outright, for the referee says that certain revisions are needed: rewrite the abstract, explain the notation, include proofs of the main result and key lemmas. Some said that since these revisions would either be impossible or would result in a totally different (non-nonsensical) paper, that this lets APM off the hook. Others suggested that this sort of “acceptance” was actually a rejection intended to let the author down more gently.

If so, it would be completely at odds with the review practices that are usual in mathematics.
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With regard to the \$500 fee requested by Advances in Pure Mathematics to publish Marcie Rathke’s paper, I’ve seen several suggestions to raise the money via Kickstarter or a similar service, and some readers have pledged to donate. I appreciate your generosity, but I don’t plan to pursue this. Here’s why:
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I’ve been pretty startled by all of the publicity that Mathgen and the Marcie Rathke paper (accepted by Advances in Pure Mathematics) have recently attracted. Many people drew parallels between this incident and Alan Sokal’s 1996 hoax, in which Sokal, a physicist, got the cultural studies journal Social Text to accept a parody article which identified physics and physical reality as a social construct. I’m flattered by the comparison, but I wanted to take some space to respond and point out some essential differences between the two cases.

Basically, where Sokal attacked the intellectual standards of the entire field of cultural studies, the purpose of the Rathke paper was only to expose a particularly dismal sector of the academic publishing industry, in a field (mathematics) which I believe is essentially sound.

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