Mes: diciembre 2012

Aprenda un poco de inglés con… Gian-Carlo Rota (10/11)

(Sigue de las entradas Aprenda un poco de inglés con… Gian-Carlo Rota (1/11), (2/11), (3/11), (4/11),  (5/11), (6/11),  (7/11), (8/11) y (9/11))

9 Write informative introductions

Nowadays, reading a mathematics paper from top to bottom is a rare event. If we wish our paper to be read, we had better provide our prospective readers with strong motivation to do so. A lengthy introduction, summarizing the history of the subject, giving everybody his due, and perhaps enticingly outlining the content of the paper in a discursive manner, will go some of the way towards getting us a couple of readers.

As the editor of the journal Advances in Mathematics, I have often sent submitted papers back to the authors with the recommendation that they lengthen their introduction. On occasion I received by return mail a message from the author, stating that the same paper had been previously rejected by Annals of Mathematics because the introduction was already too long.

Aprenda un poco de inglés con… Gian-Carlo Rota (9/11)

(Sigue de las entradas Aprenda un poco de inglés con… Gian-Carlo Rota (1/11), (2/11), (3/11), (4/11),  (5/11), (6/11),  (7/11) y (8/11))

8 Give lavish acknowledgments

I have always felt miffed after reading a paper in which I felt I was not being given proper credit, and it is safe to conjecture that the same happens to everyone else. One day, I tried an experiment. After writing a rather long paper, I began to draft a thorough bibliography. On the spur of the moment, I decided to cite a few papers which had nothing whatsoever to do with the content of my paper, to see what might happen.

Somewhat to my surprise, I received letters from two of the authors whose papers I believed were irrelevant to my article. Both letters were written in an emotionally charged tone. Each of the authors warmly congratulated me for being the first to acknowledge their contribution to the field.