Question

Dear All,

thanks in advance to anyone that could give some suggestion.

Here's the situation: starting from a type of random graph I extend the construction introducing a new class of random graphs. I studied some properties and I write a paper that I submitted to the arxiv.org successfully after the endorsment of one of the author cited in the references. I have a math degree but I don't have any formal affiliation to my university, so I submitted the paper as a private without affiliation.

After some minor review I consider submitting it to a math journal. I submitted it and after one month my paper was refused because of the following reviewer motivation:

"The paper considers random graphs where roughly speaking one starts with a precise graph and adds new vertices into random cycles. Clearly, the graphs that are obtained have a very special form. The presented results are neither interesting nor significant enough for publication in our journal."

So it seems to me that even if the paper was correct it's not as general results as required.

So here are my questions:

Considering that the paper seems ok, I mean no first read bad mistakes, would I submit it to another journal and see if is accepted?

In case I would try to generalize the process and would I have to submit again to the same journal?

If I don't have any affiliation this could be somehow bad at the eyes of a reviewer?

Thanks to everyone that could help.

Paolo

Answer 1

I think that you need a second (and perhaps third) opinion from a professional. If possible, write some individual emails requesting people to give a quick impression as to the publication-worthiness of your result. Since the result is on ArXiv, no question of precedence should arise. You can ask the author you asked before for names of other people to ask. It is important that you emphasize that you don't need them to spend time going over the paper (if all you need is a quick impression; for a more thorough review, you will want a different strategy of approach).

Please note: MathOverflow is a place for specific questions. If you have trouble with a particular proof, you can ask about that detail. Zev Chonoles is right in commenting that MathOverflow is not a place to solicit reviewers for your work. Pablo Shmerkin is (somewhat) right in the idea that it is smart to include a link to your ArXiv submission, in case someone is interested and volunteers to review it. (In short: Asking for review on MathOverflow, bad; making it possible using less than 100 characters without asking, not so bad, and possibly priceless.)

Gerhard "Will Rewrite Commercials For Barter" Paseman, 2011.02.27