Eight years ago

[posic]

https://www.facebook.com/posic/posts/709895045691999

"I do not care how math. research journals operate, what they do, need or want. These are their problems, and I have enough of mine. The relevant question is what they exist for. They are there to publish mathematics, my work is mathematics, ergo they exist in order to publish my work. I am not working to produce something they would like to publish. I am doing research in mathematics, that's all. They are needed to publish what I've written. If they don't, they are not needed.

Should they have some meaningful suggestions concerning improvement of my writings, we can talk about that. If they just aren't prepared to publish my writings, we have nothing to talk about. For me, it means that they've rejected their mission and raison d'etre, and I can henceforth view them as nonexistent. I don't care whether they are coming out still or are being closed down already."

Comments

[chaource.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of the problem Albert Einstein had with the referees at The Physical Review. Einstein said essentially the same thing: the job of a journal is to publish my research, without trying to evaluate its fitness for publication.

In 1930s Einstein, Rosen, and Infeld sent a paper about gravitational waves, but a referee rejected it with comments. Einstein replied:

Dear Sir,
We (Mr. Rosen and I) had sent you our manuscript for publication and had not authorized you to show it to specialists before it is printed. ...

https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.2117822

The thing is, their paper contained an important error — their initial conclusion was that gravitational waves could not exist.

[posic.livejournal.com]

I would be very grateful to any editor and/or referee who found an error in my research. I would pay the utmost attention to their arguments as to why it is an error, to any refuting arguments, counterexamples, requests to clarify specific steps in my proofs etc. Unfortunately, this happens very rarely, and essentially never happens with important errors.

What I was (and remain) angry about was not reasonably well-justified claims by the referees of having discovered mistakes in my research, but rather the totally unsupported claims about my papers being not on the journal's quality level, or not interesting enough, or only interesting to a very narrow audience etc.

[chaource.livejournal.com]

What I'm still angry about is that most referees today don't seem to care to do their job properly, and neither do journal editors.

Einstein came from a tradition where members of an Academy of Sciences were entitled to having their scholarly works automatically published with very little scrutiny; refereeing someone else's works is out of place because all discussion comes only after publication. The Physical Review operated in a tradition where referees are honestly trying to understand the new research and comment on it; a referee's objection is a possible reason for rejection.

Einstein's displeasure was due to misplaced expectations; he expected the first tradition but got the second one. Your displeasure is similar: you expect the second tradition to hold, i.e., you expect referees to try to understand your research and comment on it. Instead, you get the modern treatment where the referees don't care even to read the papers. The editors of the journals that rejected your work also don't read your papers; instead, perhaps they follow a hunch about getting some political advantages in the academic game if they publish Professor N's work instead of yours (regardless of the contents of those works).

[posic.livejournal.com]

I am striving to live the second tradition. I read carefully the papers which I review and try to understand them, then write detailed reports based on what I understood. I fully expect the same of the reviewers of my papers. When I get treatment totally contradicting the second tradition and resulting in irresponsible rejection of my papers, I strive to penalize the perpetrating journal.

[posic.livejournal.com]

Which brings us to the issue of the "this reminds me of" approach to social blog commenting. Like, the story of academician Ambartsumyan winning a Volga car in a state lottery reminds someone of the story of plumber Sarkisyan losing 100 rubles playing dominoes with his friends in the yard.

On the one hand, we read, in my blog entry: "Should they have some meaningful suggestions concerning improvement of my writings, we can talk about that. If they just aren't prepared to publish my writings, we have nothing to talk about."

On the other hand, the Physical Review did not reject Einstein's paper, this is just not true. Instead, we read, under your link: "Tate returned the manuscript to Einstein on 23 July with a critical review and the mild request that he “would be glad to have [Einstein’s] reaction to the various comments and criticisms the referee has made.” Einstein wrote back on 27 July in high dudgeon, withdrawing the paper and dismissing out of hand the referee’s comments".