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Stream: learning: questions

Topic: How do I publish a paper?

finegeometer (Jan 21 2025 at 01:13):

Hi,

A while ago, I asked how to work in the internal logic of a monoidal topos, and I was pointed to the PhD thesis of Ulrich Schöpp. Since then, I have worked out a very simple way to check whether their type theory is applicable to a classifying topos of your choice. I've done my best to write this up.

Is this something I can publish? If so, how? For context, I'm currently an undergraduate student, and I have never published a paper before, so I don't really know how that works.

Jean-Baptiste Vienney (Jan 21 2025 at 01:58):

Most people first upload their paper on ArXiv. I think you must follow the instructions here to create an account:
https://info.arxiv.org/help/registerhelp.html

Jean-Baptiste Vienney (Jan 21 2025 at 02:00):

We can explain to you how to upload a paper once you succeeded to create an account.

Jean-Baptiste Vienney (Jan 21 2025 at 02:02):

Maybe you'll need a sponsorship by someone which already has an account to create your account. If it's the case I can probably sponsor you (and dozens of other people here might be able to do it as well).

John Baez (Jan 21 2025 at 02:41):

Some basic tips:

• Don't include a reference like [Sch06] in an abstract, since on the arXiv and certain other places people read the abstract to decide whether to open your paper, and thus won't know what "Sch06" means. The usual thing is to say something like "Schopp's bunched type theory" instead of "bunched type theory of [Sch06]".
• Personally I find an unexplained string of symbols like $\mathbf{BT}(1,\ast,\Sigma,\Pi,\Pi^\ast)$ to be sufficiently scary that I would never put it into an abstract - nor would I read a paper whose abstract contained that. In the abstract I would prefer a brief explanation in words. I'm not a type theorist; they seem to like symbols a lot more than I do! However, consider the possibility that your current abstract (and first paragraph) doesn't convey much information to people who haven't already read Schopp's work.
• Put your paper on the arXiv first; you can get someone to endorse you.
• Read the journal(s) you hope to publish your paper in, and try to make your paper look similar to those in every way - even tiny ways that may seem irrelevant to you.
• For other tips on how to make your paper interesting, read Why mathematics is boring.

Good luck!

David Michael Roberts (Jan 21 2025 at 04:11):

One other small piece of advice: don't start a sentence with a \cite! You can use the author's name, and put the citation at the end of the sentence

John Baez (Jan 21 2025 at 04:53):

There are dozens of pieces of wisdom like this one should learn. One way is to read good papers and pay careful attention. Another is to listen carefully to referees who complain about the style of your papers. Another is to read Steven Krantz's A Primer of Mathematical Writing.

Ali Caglayan (Jan 21 2025 at 10:53):

You can also download tex sources on the arXiv if you are curious how authors wrote things up.

finegeometer (Jan 22 2025 at 22:33):

Thank you all for the advice!

Unfortunately, as I was following the advice to improve the paper, I spotted a potential error in my proof. So it's back to the drawing board for now.