Not signed in (Sign In)

Vanilla 1.1.9 is a product of Lussumo. More Information: Documentation, Community Support.

Is this question acceptable?: Advice on where to publish

Bottom of Page

1 to 8 of 8

  1.  
  1.  
    My friend and I have proved some results about cryptography/secret-sharing using algebraic geometry. Unfortunately, we're both undergraduates and our professors do not know where we should submit our paper. We've posted the paper on the arXiv here: http://arxiv4.library.cornell.edu/abs/1009.4188

    Two questions:

    1) Is it appropriate to ask an MO question about where to submlit our results?
    2) Any ideas about where to submit?

    I hope this is the appropriate forum in which to ask this question! We are anxious to submit in time for grad school applications.
  2.  
    My gut impression is that this is not a good question for MO, but I'm not sure exactly why.

    Some advice and a comment.

    1. You're at the University of Chicago. It's a huge department! You should ask some other people for advice on where to submit (in particular, have you asked everyone that you thank on the first page of the paper?). I assure you that SOMEONE at U of C could give you some good advice.

    2. Refereeing papers takes a long time. It is very unlikely that your paper could get accepted in time to make a difference in your grad school applications. But this isn't such a big deal -- undergrad research plays a pretty tiny role in grad school admissions, so don't feel like if you don't have a published paper then you won't get into a top school. The first paper most people write is their thesis.
  3.  
    Cryptography papers are typically submitted not to journals but to conferences. You may be better off finding someone who does some work in CS theory and asking them.
  4.  

    +1 to both Andy and Noah.

    Some reasons why I feel the question may not be a good one:

    (a) If you phrase it as "where should I submit this paper", then it is not of interest to the mathematical population at large;

    (b) whereas if you phrase it as "where should [undergraduates] submit papers on [cryptography]", then you will likely get a bunch of opinions with limited usefulness.

    (c) Opinions about journals have a somewhat personal flavour to them, and you will, in the best case, get contradictory opinions (especially about journals which are obviously not one of the Top ones that everyone agrees are good), and in the worst case, start a question that leads to some arguments. (Many people here, I'm sure, have scratched their heads at a Referee report that goes something like: "The mathematics of the paper is correct. The theorem is of interest. But I don't think it is of a level appropriate for Journal X; I suggest submitted to Journal Y", when they hold Journal Y in higher esteem...)

    (d) As a corollary, there's no best journal for submitting papers. The refereeing process is often a bit of a crapshoot.

    On the other hand, it would be better if you asked a question that can be objectively determined to have a right answer. Something like this or this which asks about facts, or statements that can be easily checked against the mission statement of the journal itself, certainly will be a better question.

    • CommentAuthorvoloch
    • CommentTimeOct 7th 2010 edited
     
    I might as well give my answer to the question here. As mentioned above, a lot of crypto is published in conference proceedings such as Crypto, Eurocrypt, etc. As for journals there is the journal of mathematical cryptology and also the IEEE transactions on information theory publishes some crypto. I haven't looked at the paper so I don't really know if it is suitable for any of these.
    • CommentAuthorBen Webster
    • CommentTimeOct 7th 2010 edited
     

    Like Andy, I don't really think this is a good idea. After all, use the categorical imperative: what would MO be like if every time anyone wasn't sure where to submit a paper (read: every time anyone wanted to submit a paper) they asked MO? It would be a disaster.

    Also, if you're worried about grad school, you might benefit from reading this question and its answers: How important are publications for undergrads?

  7.  

    Agreed. I was recently tempted to ask a similar question and decided to ask a mathematician of my acquaintance instead.

  8.  
    Thanks for your comments, everyone; it's a big help.

1 to 8 of 8

  1.  
Back to Discussions Top of Page