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Can anybody advise mathematical journals that publish research announcements? (I mean little papers without proofs.)

It sometimes happens that a proof is so long that it takes years to review and few journals are willing to accept it. I think in this case it would be useful (apart from posting your paper in arXiv) to announce the result in a short communication (this is how this problem is resolved in Russia, but I am asking about the rest of the world).

I am working in Functional analysis and in Geometry.

EDIT. More generally, I am curious,

how do people solve the problem of long texts?

Suppose you write a long text, where the main results are just several propositions, say, 5 theorems, and the rest are various technical lemmas, many of them, say, 100. Your text is devoted to the explanation of one idea, those 5 theorems appear only in the end, and it is impossible to separate them so that some of them could be proved in the middle of the text. As a corollary, it is impossible to divide your text into several papers, on 40-50 pages, so that they could be sent to usual journals.

You have to send this long paper to a journal, that publishes long texts, they will spend some time on finding a reviwer, he will check everything in your text, after that they will put your paper into the queue, and this is a long process, you understand... It can take 2-3-5 years before your paper will be published.

Of course, it will be difficult to explain to your employer, what you were doing the prevoius 5 years, when you were writing this paper.

So how do people resolve this problem? In Russia there is a possibility to write several little papers, without proofs, but with the formulations of the main results (those 5 theorems), then send them to some journals (together with that long text with accurate proofs), then the reviewer checks everything, agrees, they publish these little papers (this is much quicker, since these papers are little, there is no need to put them into a long queue), and everything is OK. As far as I understand, in France the situation is more or less similar. What about the rest of the world?

Sergei Akbarov
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  • Do you have in mind without complete proofs? – user64494 Jul 05 '15 at 17:20
  • What specifically do you want to know? Just a list of journals or something more specific. –  Jul 05 '15 at 17:21
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    CRAS http://www.academie-sciences.fr/activite/cr.htm – Alain Valette Jul 05 '15 at 17:22
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    @user64494: Perhaps I should have explained this from the very beginning. I mean, sometimes (for me this is the usual situation) the proof is so long that it's impossible to publish it in a usual journal. I have to send my paper to a journal that accepts long papers, but usually it's a long story, I have to wait for several years, so I think it's normal to announce the result in a short communication (and to post it in arxiv). I wonder if there are lists of journals that accept short communications? – Sergei Akbarov Jul 05 '15 at 17:29
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    I took the liberty to add this extra information to the question itself. Feel free to re-edit or rollback if you want to. – Joonas Ilmavirta Jul 05 '15 at 17:33
  • @AlainValette, oui, je sais. Je suis couriex de savoir s'il y a des autres. – Sergei Akbarov Jul 05 '15 at 17:34
  • @JoonasIlmavirta, OK. – Sergei Akbarov Jul 05 '15 at 17:35
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    It's hard to imagine any reputable journal being willing to publish statements of theorems without complete proofs. – Jim Belk Jul 05 '15 at 18:50
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    @JimBelk: Nobody says that the proof does not exist at all. The reviwer can check the proof (posted in arxiv for example) and after that to recommend to publish the formulation of the result in the journal. This is normal for some jornals in Russia and in France. Does this exist in the rest of the world? – Sergei Akbarov Jul 05 '15 at 18:57
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    @SergeiAkbarov: Though I am aware of journals that publish research announcements (with the expectation that the complete paper will be published elsewhere; this is what Comptes Rendus does, for instance), I have never heard of a western journal that published papers without proofs like you describe. And research announcements are much less common now with the internet. What's the purpose in publishing them? – Andy Putman Jul 05 '15 at 21:18
  • @AndyPutman: I edited the question, so I hope now it is more clear. – Sergei Akbarov Jul 05 '15 at 21:22
  • I think you are mistaken about the french system: all the french mathematicians I know publish complete proofs of their theorems. It is vital for the scientific record that the proofs of theorems are carefully refereed and that they are published. Sometimes it takes a long time, but there is no shortcut. – Andy Putman Jul 05 '15 at 21:42
  • Andy, I don't understand you. In what I describe (in Russian system) the research announcements are also carefully referred (including the proofs). And of course the long text with the accurate proofs is eventually published (after being referred as well). What is the difference with the French customs? And which shortcut do you mean? – Sergei Akbarov Jul 05 '15 at 21:48
  • Isn't it important not just that the proofs are formally correct and vouched for, but that they are presented in a coherent manner so that a motivated reader can actually understand what you have done? – Sam Hopkins Jul 05 '15 at 22:03
  • Sam, you can evaluate yourself, here is the text I have in mind: http://arxiv.org/abs/1303.2424. – Sergei Akbarov Jul 05 '15 at 22:11
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    Algebra Montpellier Announcements: http://www.emis.de/journals/AMA/ – Name Jul 05 '15 at 22:36
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    See my question http://mathoverflow.net/questions/71701/equivalents-to-comptes-rendus – David Roberts Jul 05 '15 at 23:51
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    OK, I misunderstood you. I thought you meant that the short paper was published instead of the long version, which remained as a permanent preprint. What I wonder now is how the process you describe actually speeds things up. Carefully refereeing a long paper is the thing that takes real time, and there is no way to speed it up. The time between acceptance and publication might be sped up, but in my experience mathematicians do not distinguish between papers that are accepted and papers that have appeared. In a previous era, research announcements were used to claim credit for results – Andy Putman Jul 06 '15 at 00:00
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    that were being (slowly) refereed elsewhere, but that function has basically been taken over by the internet/arXiv. I should add also that in my experience mathematicians do not take research announcements very seriously when evaluating people for hiring/promotion/etc. – Andy Putman Jul 06 '15 at 00:02
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    Andy, for the employer there is a difference between the paper accepted in a journal and a paper published in a journal. Perhaps in the West the employers are smart as you describe, but in Russia they are not. If you do not publish anything for several years, you have great problems in your university (now, in modern Russia, while not long ago that was not so important). – Sergei Akbarov Jul 06 '15 at 04:43
  • And these are not mathematicians who make the decisions on hiring/promotion of a mathematician in Russia. – Sergei Akbarov Jul 06 '15 at 04:55

3 Answers3

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Tl;dr: I don't think the math publication ecosystem has a perfect solution to your problem.

First, note that even moderate-length papers can take years to be published (my personal record is of 5 years from submission to print, involving only one submission, for a 15-pages paper). If your employer only considers published papers, and not accepted or arXiv posted ones, you are basically out of good options (of course if any journal where to count, you could find a quick predatory journal, but I would not advise this).

The usual process is to post the complete paper on the arXiv and submit to a suitable journal (Memoires de la SMF is another good available option, similar to Memoirs AMS, and I think Documenta is able to publish long papers). Publishing an announcement has become rare, but is still possible (several venues for this have been mentioned already). However, when you say that proofs are thoroughly check, that is usually not true; and if it were, then you announcement would also take much time to be accepted, since the review time would be long.

So, it somehow seems that your main concern is about the accepted-to-published delay. I thus advise you to have a look at the AMS data on delays (published yearly in the Notices), you might find a good venue. Also, you could have a shot at an electronic only journal where this delay can be much shorter. Forum of Mathematics (Sigma or Pi) could be an option if your paper is very strong, but I think they now charge authors, and you will have the usual problem that you could spend a year or more waiting for a report which could turn out negative.

We lack a math megajournal which would publish any good paper (good meaning good enough to deserve publication) electronically, avoiding unecesary delays in resubmission along the prestige ladder and in finding room into issues of fixed length. That would be about the best option for you, where it to exist.

To finish on another note: once your large paper is written and waiting for a venue, you may consider working on smaller scale projects to get your beans to be counted. I do not like to advise this, but given the incentives you mention that might be the only solution. It is a bit like a painter working for hire in advertisement and buying himself time for his masterpiece; be careful that your smaller scale project have some interest instead of being noise in the publication record.

Benoît Kloeckner
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In addition to the above list let me add Comptes rendus, Proceeding of the National Academy, Electonic research announcements, Bulletin of the London Math. Soc.

In addition to this there are various conference proceedings.

EDIT. Before you edited the question I thought that your problem is with publishing a short paper. But now I see that your problem is opposite :-) Of the journals mentioned in the answers, Math Notes and Bull LMS do not publish announcements without proofs. A 70-100 pages paper indeed causes problem, not speaking of the paper with 100 lemmas and propositions. I think that a paper with 100 lemmas is a book, and there are very few journals which wuld consider this.

To convince your employer that you were not idle, post this enormous paper on the arxiv.

Now I do not understand your concern about the country where you work: I think Comptes rendus and other journals mentioned, including Russian DAN, and Funk Analiz, publish papers from all countries.

Alexandre Eremenko
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Look at Mathematical Notes and Functional Analysis and its Applications and Russian Mathematical Surveys and Doklady RAN and Proceedings of the AMS.

user64494
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  • Да, я знаю, конечно! В первом у меня уже два коротких сообщения за последние два года, мне как-то неудобно их дальше мучить. А у второго почему-то не нашлось рецензента в последний раз, когда я им слал, я поэтому сомневаюсь сейчас, правильно ли будет их теребить снова. – Sergei Akbarov Jul 05 '15 at 17:39
  • Насчет третьего я не думал, спасибо. – Sergei Akbarov Jul 05 '15 at 17:40
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    Proc AMS does not publish research announcements. – Andy Putman Jul 05 '15 at 18:19
  • Andy, excuse me, what is the difference between short communication and research announcement? – Sergei Akbarov Jul 05 '15 at 18:22
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    @SergeiAkbarov: A "research announcement" is a short communication without complete proofs. – Steven Landsburg Jul 05 '15 at 20:46
  • If this is so, I change the title of the question. – Sergei Akbarov Jul 05 '15 at 21:33