En d\u00e9cembre dernier, j\u2019ai \u00e9crit sur les demandes spam d\u2019admission aux \u00e9tudes sup\u00e9rieures dans lesquelles un \u00e9tudiant envoie un courriel \u00e0 un membre de la facult\u00e9 lui demandant travailler sous sa direction. Les lettres louent toujours les recherches du r\u00e9cipiendaire du courriel, faisant ainsi preuve de la m\u00e9connaissance des dites recherches.<\/p>\n\n
As an editor (not so much here, though it happens, but mainly as articles editor for Crux Mathematicorum<\/em> I see a lot of another flavor of spam: the paper submitted to a totally inappropriate journal. I do not speak here of a paper that might be appropriate if it was at a slightly higher level: that’s a subjective matter, and any proud author might rate their paper a little more highly than the referee does. And I’m not even talking about the truly fractoceramic submissions, the ones purporting to square the circle (and prove the Riemann conjecture for dessert) via two pages of metaphysical bafflegab and a few crudely-typeset equations.<\/p>\n\n At Crux<\/em>, there’s also a string of first efforts from high school students. Many of these would be worthy of praise in a school science fair, but don’t have sufficient novelty or depth for general publication. This is probably a specific quirk of Crux<\/em>: it’s the first mathematical periodical that many budding mathematicians learn about, and we’re proud of that. Moreover, we do expect the articles we publish to be accessible to the brightest high school students–but that’s not our only criterion! I don’t imagine that the CJM<\/em> or Annals<\/em> have this problem often.<\/p>\n\n Today I’m thinking of the papers that quite possibly have a modest home waiting for them somewhere, but whose authors seem unaware that not all math journals are isomorphic. Just this week a submission to Crux<\/em> arrived: I won’t mention the title, or even the precise topic, to spare the author’s blushes, but it was an applied math paper most unlikely to interest the typical Crux<\/em> reader (whom we understand to be a devotee of math puzzles or contest problems.) While it was outside my area of expertise, it seemed to be quite possibly correct and possibly even of some value. Moreover, it had a list of references to articles in various journals. In short, it was clear that the author knew that the world contains numerous math journals. So how did they end up sending it to Crux<\/em>?<\/p>\n\n J’ose supposer que la facilit\u00e9 du processus de soumission \u00e0 l\u2019\u00e8re d\u2019Internet fait en sorte que les auteurs pensent que c\u2019est plus facile de soumettre de fa\u00e7on al\u00e9atoire que de lire les Notes aux auteurs (ou m\u00eame quelques articles) pour savoir le type d’article que la revue publie normalement. Malheureusement, ceci n\u2019est pas une bonne id\u00e9e. Au cours des vingt derni\u00e8res ann\u00e9es, un nombre horrifiant des revues pr\u00e9datrices avec des normes mesur\u00e9es par des chiffres imaginaires ont vu le jour; et les soumissions stochastiques, telles que celle d\u2019un article sur les math\u00e9matiques appliqu\u00e9es \u00e0 une revue de r\u00e9solution de probl\u00e8mes, ne seront fort probablement pas log\u00e9es dans un bon foyer, ou seront publi\u00e9es dans une revue qui ne fera pas l\u2019honneur \u00e0 son auteur. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"template":"","section":[23],"keyword":[],"class_list":["post-15432","article","type-article","status-publish","hentry","section-editorial-2"],"toolset-meta":{"author-4-info":{"author-4-surname":{"type":"textfield","raw":""},"author-4-given-names":{"type":"textfield","raw":""},"author-4-honorific":{"type":"textfield","raw":""},"author-4-institution":{"type":"textfield","raw":""},"author-4-email":{"type":"email","raw":""},"author-4-cms-role":{"type":"textfield","raw":""}},"author-3-info":{"author-3-surname":{"type":"textfield","raw":""},"author-3-given-names":{"type":"textfield","raw":""},"author-3-honorific":{"type":"textfield","raw":""},"author-3-institution":{"type":"textfield","raw":""},"author-3-email":{"type":"email","raw":""},"author-3-cms-role":{"type":"textfield","raw":""}},"author-2-info":{"author-2-surname":{"type":"textfield","raw":""},"author-2-given-names":{"type":"textfield","raw":""},"author-2-honorific":{"type":"textfield","raw":""},"author-2-institution":{"type":"textfield","raw":""},"author-2-email":{"type":"email","raw":""},"author-2-cms-role":{"type":"textfield","raw":""}},"author-info":{"author-surname":{"type":"textfield","raw":"Dawson"},"author-given-names":{"type":"textfield","raw":"Robert"},"author-honorific":{"type":"textfield","raw":""},"author-email":{"type":"email","raw":"rjmdawson@gmail.com"},"author-institution":{"type":"textfield","raw":""},"author-cms-role":{"type":"textfield","raw":"R\u00e9dacteur, Notes"}},"unknown":{"downloadable-pdf":{"type":"file","raw":"https:\/\/notes.math.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Je-seme-a-tout-vent-\u2013-Notes-de-la-SMC.pdf","attachment_id":15670},"article-toc-weight":{"type":"numeric","raw":"2"},"author-surname":{"type":"textfield","raw":"Dawson"},"author-given-names":{"type":"textfield","raw":"Robert"}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/notes.math.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/15432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/notes.math.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/notes.math.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/notes.math.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/notes.math.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/15432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15688,"href":"https:\/\/notes.math.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/15432\/revisions\/15688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/notes.math.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"section","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/notes.math.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/section?post=15432"},{"taxonomy":"keyword","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/notes.math.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/keyword?post=15432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}