I normally take the sub-ed’s side, but this …
… Apparent mix-up’s really quite remiss.
This afternoon I’ve been reading what I find an interesting article by Michael Cowling, purportedly on “The Future of Mathematical Publishing”, in the April 2012 issue of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society. It makes a refreshing change, for this curmudgeon at least, from some rhetoric that I’ve seen deployed on the internet.
I should come back and blog at further length about this. (Yes, I know; how many times have I said this before and not followed through?) But that’s not the topic for this post. Rather, I was surprised to see, in the footnote matter, the following:
Michael G. Cowling is honorary senior research fellow at the University of Glasgow. His email address is Michael.Cowling@glasgow.ac.uk.
Why the surprise? Well, the Michael G. Cowling I know of is a professor at the University of New South Wales (having briefly spent time as a professor in Birmingham, UK). The NAMS article matches his writing style, which I’ve seen both in research articles and in some “advice for authors on submission of articles”, and the author refers to being “an editor of an Australian Mathematical Society journal”.
Some searching online shows me that there is a Michael Cowling who is an honorary Senior Research Fellow at Glasgow … but in the Department of Engineering. (There appears to have been a professor Mike Cowling in the Marine Engineering department there, but the pages I could find looked out of date.)
I find it hard to believe that MGC has moved back across the globe, not even into a Mathematics department, taking a demotion, and dropping the middle initial that seems to be used in most of his official writing. So: NAMS sub-editors. What gives?
“Coff. Fee!” “Bee. Eer!”
Update 30th April 2012: now resolved, not entirely to my satisfaction. Scroll down for details.
Here is the text of an email I sent on January 30 to the moderators of arXiv submissions. There is a typo – I meant to say “Borel FC”, rather than “Borel FCC”. (Readers may also note that I engage in some unsavoury credentialism; I can only say in my defence that I was trying to get their attention, and that I’m not proud of lapses into vainglory.)
Dear moderators
My submission arXiv:submit/0406606 was originally submitted in the
category FA and was moved, without consulting me, to the category OA.
I would like this to be reversed, for the following reasons.As someone who has been a student and researcher in FA (specifically,
Banach algebras) for the last ten years, who has used the arXiv since
2006, and who has friends and colleagues who work in OA, I can
confidently assert that- the article in question uses more of the techniques, and has more of
the flavour, of Banach algebras than operator algebras (no Borel FCC,
no Wold decomposition, no double commutant theorem, no Kaplansky
density, etc etc)- the article will be of greater interest and relevance to those
working in FA (specifically, Banach algebras and amenability
questions) than to those working on OA or operator theory. This seems
relevant since people may have RSS feeds set up for one tag but not
the otherThe fact that the examples live inside B(H), and in particular inside
certain Type I von Neumann algebras, is of course relevant, but is in
my view not sufficient to warrant changing *the category which I
chose* – otherwise, one might as well move every article on uniform
algebras, or with an operator on Hilbert space, to OA.This is not the first time that I have had one of my submissions moved
from FA to OA, seemingly based on a rather superficial reading of
title and abstract, and while this is not a big deal in the wider
scheme of things, I am unhappy with the trend towards moderators
over-riding the preferences of *established* authors and arXiv users.Regards
Yemon Choi
I sent this email on first seeing my submission moved from FA to OA, in the “pre-listings” phase. Since then it has been “on hold”, and no response has been forthcoming. (If you are curious/bored, there is a local copy of the preprint available via my webpage.)
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off for a pint of coffee.
Updates, 30th April 2012:
Having become rather peeved with the lack of response, I sent the following on 27th April:
Dear moderators,
The submission submit/0406606 has now been hold for over two months. I
would appreciate any clarification or updates on the moderators’
decisions or thoughts. Note that the preprint was submitted for
publication at the end of January 2012, so delays of this magnitude
are somewhat inconvenient should I wish to refer interested parties to
a copy.Regards
And lo and behold, the “hold” was removed, and the preprint is now finally up at 1204.6343 — they’ve not acceded to my wish that the paper be placed in the FA category as I’d originally specified, but they have at least allowed FA as a cross-list. I still maintain that the small number of FA readers who might be interested in the paper far exceeds the minuscule number of OA readers who could be interested in it; but so it goes.
(The submission is dated 6th February, rather than the end of January, because after the hold was first placed, I discovered a revision to one of the lemmas that needed to be made, and so updated the existing copy then. Also, I’m aware that in the abstract I have mis-spelled “homogeneous” — I guess I’ll fix this in a later revision, once I’ve received the referee’s feedback on the article.)
Smiling and waving and looking so fine
13th February 2007: arrived in Canada as a temporary worker, just for 12 months.
13th February 2012: two postdocs and three cities later, on the tenure track.
Only one possible song for the occasion, really, even if thematically it’s not apposite:
Primary literature? What’s that, Gramps?
Prompted by something that I saw today, and by the same issue that was bugging me in this old post, I have a new idea for a series of blog posts. Though, like all the previous ideas, it will no doubt remain unwritten, thus demonstrating something about vaulting ambition which o’erleaps itself, or something.
Anyway: the starting point for this planned ramble/rant/exposition is the following point.
If you present the known result that for a discrete group G, amenability of G is equivalent to injectivity of VN(G) as a von Neumann algebra, and then say (paraphrasing)
This can fail for non-discrete groups. For instance, whenever G is a connected Lie group, Connes proved that VN(G) is injective. In particular VN(SL(2,R)) is injective…
then I have two suggestions or remarks.
(a) Although the result is indeed first stated and proved in Connes’s paper on injective factors, it is really done as an observation en passant. Moreover, the kernel of the result is really contained in an older paper of Dixmier on the von Neumann algebras of connected Lie groups (which itself apparently needs, in one place, to be patched by a subsequent paper of Pukanszky).
(b) If the example you want to highlight is SL(2,R), then invoking that part of Connes’s paper, or indeed the results of Dixmier, is massive overkill. Semisimple Lie groups are Type I — I am told this is originally due to Harish-Chandra. In the case of semisimple matrix groups, a short proof was later given by Stinespring, streamlining older arguments of Godement. From this it follows that VN(SL2,R)) is hyperfinite — in fact, this is really what Stinespring proves — and it is easy to see that hyperfinite von Neumann algebras are injective.
Which is to say: sometimes “proof by appeal to Fields-medal winning paper” is not just unsatisfying, but it might even be obfuscatory.
edit 09-02-11: typo corrected
Im Bier, Beweis
(though wine may be needed for truth)
Worked out last night over a quiet pint:
Consequently: if 
[Title corrected 2011-12-08]
Latest from the Department of Unwanted Puzzles
(If you are called Matt and are folk of the Dales, mathematically speaking, then I guess I should disqualify both of you from leaving answers to this.)
In each of the following, identify the phrase being loosely paraphrased or indicated. What’s the connection, and which one is the odd one out?
- Smooth guy
- Entrance to place of rest
- Lux aeterna
- When does the present arrive?
- Honestly, Bill
- Erratically circle waterspout
- Petty thieves band together
- Hurry and heave to claim ground
- Transvestite clergyman
- Laterally pierced youth
- Violently vibrate
- Principal ceremony
- Couldn’t complete it
- Isn’t it all the same?
- Humour has worn off
Update 18/11/11: answered in comments.
wie es eigentlich gewesen
I’ve recently found myself wanting to cite a result, proved in an article of Leptin that formed part of some conference proceedings.
According to MathSciNet, the proceedings appeared as
Symposia Mathematica. Vol. XXII. (Italian)
Convegno sull’Analisi Armonica e Spazi di Funzioni su Gruppi Localmente Compatti. Tenuto al Istituto Nazionale di Alta Matematica (INDAM), Roma, 24–31 Marzo, 1976. Academic Press, London-New York, 1977. 464 pp.
On the other hand, the “inter-library loan” copy that I’ve just received today claims that Symposia Mathematica XXII was published in 1981, not 1977.
Any suggestions as to how the discrepancy might appear? Anyone able to confirm, by checking a hard copy, which is the correct year?
(For more on the title of this post, especially if you know enough German to wonder about the missing auxiliary verb, see this blogpost.)
