

Ask YC: Contributing to Mathematics Journal? - ComputerGuru

While working on a (coding) project I had need of a particular numerical method/algorithm which is pretty popular and used in many places. While working with it, I noticed that with a small change to the fundamental idea of the method would result in a pretty decent improvement in terms of efficiency and accuracy, and rewrote it. A friend recommended that I try to publish the revised algorithm in an academic journal as it would be good for my career, etc.<p>What's the general opinion about coders contributing to scientific journals in the community? Keeping in mind that I've never even read a mathematics journal (though I have read many individual articles here and there), what would be a good journal to approach and how does one go about submitting an article for peer review with them (process, steps, requirements, etc.)?
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cperciva
The process varies from journal to journal, but often you can just submit a
paper online (see <http://ams.org/mcom/mcomsubmit.html> for example).

That said, if you're not familiar with the journal your odds of getting a
paper accepted on your own are rather slim. A better approach would be to find
someone with publication experience in the field and get them to look over
your work before you submit it -- if you don't have anyone else, I'd be happy
to help with this.

As for which journal to approach -- it depends on the material, of course. A
good place to start is with whichever journal is most frequently named in your
list of references. :-)

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ComputerGuru
Thanks. I have a pretty good relationship with some university professors who
I could ask for a hand - but I've heard scary stories about professors taking
all the credit?

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hugh
Only a small minority of jerks would bother to try, so just make sure that the
professor you're approaching isn't a jerk. Frankly most professors don't have
time to bother trying to steal credit, especially for something which isn't
close to their core research.

Ultimately you're just asking them for help in refining it into publishable
form, so you should be first author, they should be second author.

Also, note that the first professor you go to is likely to think that what
you've done isn't sufficient for a publication. That's OK. But if you try
three professors and they all think that, you might want to give up trying.
Based on your description (small change, decent improvement), what you've done
may or may not warrant a publication all on its own.

~~~
cperciva
_Ultimately you're just asking them for help in refining it into publishable
form, so you should be first author, they should be second author._

Only if you've feeling very generous. I would acknowledge help received in a
section at the end of the paper, but I would never list a co-author who didn't
contribute any of the ideas.

~~~
brent
If I had to guess I would presume the OP has not done a formal analysis of the
algorithm. This would undoubtedly be the contribution of the
professor/researcher assuming the analysis proves it is an improvement over
prior algorithms. This analysis/proof is certainly worth being a second author
even if it is not a contribution to the algorithm itself.

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lliiffee
The possibility of it being accepted depends on the nature of the improvement.
If your improvement, for example, takes it from 100n^3 to30 n^3 operations,
your odds of being accepted are very low. If you go from 100n^3 to 100n^2 (or
even 10000n^2), and that has never been discovered before, it is _definitely_
publishable. However, even so, it is important that you write in the correct
style, because (unfortunately) there are certain conventions, and many
journals aren't that friendly to "outsiders". So the advice of getting someone
who has published to look at it is very good.

Nevertheless, it depends on the nature of the improvement, as I said above. If
you have that, you can be sure that it can eventually be published.

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bdittmer
100n^3 and 30n^3 are both O(n^3)...no improvement, hence it won't be
published. Depending on the problem the algorithm is solving O(n^3) to O(n^2)
can be a massive improvement.

~~~
rw
Constant-time factors matter to everyone working with finite resources.

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vegashacker
I don't think you have to limit yourself to journals--conference papers are
another alternative. At least in Computer Science, a good conference is a
totally respectable way to go. (It's been awhile since I've been in grad
school, so my info may be stale.) STOC and FOCS come to mind. SODA, as I
recall, has some sort of "short paper" conference which might be good.

~~~
brent
I think this is dead on. The OP should look towards publishing in a conference
proceedings. In CS this is much more common than journals and his odds of
getting it accepted are probably much higher. You nailed the top conferences
in this area. However, these are still quite competitive. Perhaps the OP could
be more specific about the area where he made an improvement and experts on
the forum can try to suggest the best places to submit it.

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yummyfajitas
What algorithm and what type of improvement did you make? Also, can you prove
the correctness/accuracy of your improvements?

The answer to these questions significantly affects the journal you should
submit to. I can offer you suggestions if you give a little more detail.

You might want to work with someone at a local university on it. Doing
research is hard, and writing papers is also difficult (especially your first
paper).

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mark-t
Journals are really picky. The whole process takes ages. I'd recommend just
writing it up and posting it to the arXiv.

~~~
wheels
The time argument is the thing that really turned me off. In my one published
paper we wrote the draft a full two and a half years before it saw the light
of day. One referee didn't like it, so it went through a review process, then
got bumped down to a lower journal (PRL to PR-A for the physics folks) started
the acceptance process again...

Even in CS where things are mostly conference oriented, you're still probably
looking at close to a year between finishing the research and seeing it
published.

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jfarmer
Make sure you hook up with someone who has written papers before. Aside from
the procedural stuff there's all sorts of stylistic issues when writing math
papers (I call it math-ese).

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keefe
Back in grad school when I was working on papers, it seemed pretty essential
to have an experience PhD involved in the process. No matter how "great" the
idea I had, there were always a lot of complications. For example, making sure
I had the appropriate literature review done, did controlled comparisons
against best of breed algorithms etc. I would write an abstract of your
improvements with hard numbers and the conclusions that you draw from them and
also a 2 page summary explaining all this, and email it to a friendly applied
mathematician.

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auferstehung
<http://arxiv.org/help/submit>

<http://arxiv.org/list/cs.DS/recent>

