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.