Chapter 351 - 292: Your Journal’s Review Is Not Rigorous, I Decline to Submit

Chapter 351: Chapter 292: Your Journal’s Review Is Not Rigorous, I Decline to Submit

And so, the seminar room, which was originally only used at scheduled times, became the most frequented place these past few days.

On the seminar room’s whiteboard, the densely packed notations for Selmer groups, Tate-Shafarevich groups, and Bloch-Kato were repeatedly erased and rewritten, then erased again.

Li Dong would occasionally interject with a few words of crucial guidance...

...like deconstructing and reorganizing a local Galois cohomology calculation that had gotten stuck midway, or pointing out that the Whittaker model of a certain automorphic representation was unsuitable for the current framework and suggesting a switch to a local analysis path using new vectors.

Every time he did so, the group in front of the whiteboard would fall silent for two seconds, followed by a chorus of "Ohhh~"s.

And while everything was proceeding as usual in this seminar room on the second floor of the Yan University School of Mathematics...

...

「Utrecht, Netherlands.」

In the little red brick building that housed the editorial department of *Compositio Mathematica*, in the innermost cubicle on the third floor.

It was just past two in the afternoon. The lunch break was over, and no one could muster any energy.

Five or six executive editors sat in the office. Some were reviewing the formatting of manuscripts, others were chasing authors for revisions, and a few were chatting about the public invitation for a paper that had recently caused a stir throughout the entire academic community.

"I mean, seriously, what a mess. *Inverse Problems* completely threw face out the window this time."

"To extend an invitation like that... Torres must have nerves of steel."

"I bet the night that announcement went up, Torres didn’t get a wink of sleep."

"Who would’ve thought the guy would reject it on the spot? And even say their peer review was sloppy."

"Tsk, what a comeback."

"Hey, I’m telling you, I heard a couple of days ago that Torres went on sick leave."

"No way, that can’t be true."

"I don’t know, but the deputy editor-in-chief’s name on the *Inverse Problems* homepage has changed."

A few chuckles echoed through the office.

Sitting in the corner was Marten Fan Derbo.

In his early thirties, he wasn’t considered a veteran in the editorial department.

He chatted with his colleagues while habitually clicking on the next submission email.

He had been in this line of work for over five years and had developed a highly efficient initial screening process.

First, check the title. Then, the author. Only then would he glance at the abstract.

If there was a problem with either of the first two steps, he generally wouldn’t waste time on the third.

After all, in the world of mathematics, hundreds of papers were submitted to *Compositio* every day.

Less than a tenth of them made it past the senior editors.

And those that were ultimately accepted were fewer than one in a hundred.

As a low-level executive editor, his main job was to block the manuscripts that were obviously not up to par right from the get-go.

Fan Derbo was about to chime in with, "Torres probably won’t sleep well for a week," but before the words could leave his mouth, his gaze was captured by the email’s subject line.

"The Surviving Correspondence Between the Anomalous Residues of Cyclic L-Factors and the Local Dimension of Deformation Rings."

Fan Derbo blinked. ’A pretty title.’

Although he didn’t understand what it was about, he had seen many submissions with similar topics over the past five years.

Deformation rings, inertial types, L-factors.

This was a field that was both difficult and niche.

There weren’t more than a hundred people worldwide working in this area, and even fewer who could produce actual results.

The number of manuscripts submitted to their journal each year that dared to tackle such a topic could be counted on one hand.

The probability of a paper on this topic passing the initial screening was astonishingly low.

It wasn’t that the topic wasn’t difficult enough.

But rather...

...most of the submitters didn’t have the clout to be tackling a problem like this.

Fan Derbo shook his head, already feeling pessimistic about this manuscript.

He glanced at the names again.

First Author: Fu Chen, Yan University.

Second Author: Gu Ming, Yan University.

Fan Derbo frowned slightly. ’Never heard of them.’

He glanced further down...

’A master’s student and an undergraduate????’

Fan Derbo burst out laughing.

He had practically made up his mind already.

The senior editors would reject this paper, 100 percent.

After all, for a topic combining deformation rings and l ≠ p, the author’s credentials alone needed to be on par with insiders like Kissin or Gengji.

Two unknown students, a master’s and an undergraduate, wouldn’t normally even qualify to get a senior editor’s attention.

Fan Derbo sighed and clicked open the manuscript’s PDF.

’Now, I just have to go through the formatting checklist step by step.’

Font size, spacing, reference citation style, theorem numbering, whether the TeX source file was attached, and a plagiarism check.

If there was a problem with any single item, he could add one more line to the rejection reason.

He continued to scroll down.

References—formatting is correct.

Theorem numbering—clear.

TeX source—attached.

Citation—Citation 43.

It cites a section from Taylor’s 2009 Harvard lecture notes, but without specifying the exact subsection number.

According to *Compositio*’s style guide, citations from lecture notes should be precise down to the subsection.

’But... it’s not a serious issue.’

’The kind that could go either way.’

For a minor flaw like this, if the author was a big name, he would probably just fix it himself and send a modification notice to the author.

If the author wasn’t a big name, he’d just write this down as a reason for rejection.

And this one... a master’s student, an undergraduate?

Fan Derbo shook his head and prepared to click the reject button.

But just as he was about to press it, his eyes habitually darted to the corresponding author field.

Corresponding Author: Li Dong, Yan University.

Fan Derbo’s finger froze in mid-air.

One of his colleagues in the office was still laughing.

"Seriously, that ’sloppy peer review’ line from Li really tore into Torres without giving him any way to save face..."

Fan Derbo didn’t respond.

His eyes were glued to the small line of text on the screen.

Corresponding Author: Li Dong.

He let out a long breath.