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I recently submitted a paper to the preprint arXiv, which was rejected because we didn't list all of the authors on the first page. We chose to follow the polymath model, using a generic name for our group, with a footnote linking to a place with all the actual contributors.

I was surprised that our paper was rejected, as there are many arXiv papers by "D.H.J. Polymath". Does anyone know if this is a recent change?

More importantly, what should be the practice for papers involving a huge number of coauthors in a collaborative setting? Is there a way to petition the arXiv for exceptions in such cases?

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    $\begingroup$ "For named collaborations, it is acceptable to only use the collaboration name within the metadata, however a complete list of all authors and their affiliations must be contained in the full printed text." source $\endgroup$
    – Carlo Beenakker
    Jun 17, 2020 at 21:28
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    $\begingroup$ The tag "publishing" was made a synonym of "journals", so "journals" is supposed to encompass all that concerns "publications". $\endgroup$
    – YCor
    Jun 17, 2020 at 21:31
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    $\begingroup$ @PaceNielsen : The sheer number of authors doesn't seem to me to be an automatic reason to suppress the names. The physics papers with 5000+ coauthors do explicitly list all the names, even when the number of pages required for the names far exceeds the number of remaining pages in the article. On the other hand, it does seem that there could be situations where using a pseudonym has a strong justification. Anyone read The Bourbaki Gambit by Carl Djerassi? $\endgroup$
    – Timothy Chow
    Jun 18, 2020 at 0:45
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    $\begingroup$ As someone who has tried and failed to post a "paper by John Rainwater" to the arXiv, not to mention years ago being knocked back when I tried to post my typeset version of Johnson's Cohomology in Banach algebras, I am not particularly surprised that the arXiv rejected your submission while smiling on the DHJ Polymath submissions. Dismayed, yes, but surprised, no. $\endgroup$
    – Yemon Choi
    Jun 18, 2020 at 2:38
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    $\begingroup$ Not exactly Maths, but the paper announcing the discovery of gravity waves, published in Physical Review Letters (physics.aps.org/featured-article-pdf/10.1103/…) has over 1000 authors, ranging from Abbott to Zweizig. $\endgroup$
    – Gordon Royle
    Jun 18, 2020 at 4:12

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This is a matter of opinion, but whatever the policy is, it should be consistently applied. If D.H.J. Polymath is allowed to post papers without listing the members, then other collaborations should be allowed to do so as well. D.H.J. Polymath shouldn't get special treatment just because it is famous.

I'm gradually becoming convinced that the mathematical community as a whole needs to pay more attention to arXiv policies. Seemingly small questions of policy can have a huge impact on mathematical research, simply because such a huge fraction of all mathematical research gets posted to the arXiv—far more than is submitted to any single mathematics journal. There is a myth that there are no barriers to publishing on the arXiv, but this is certainly not true. Figuring out the right policies is not a trivial problem; the founders of viXra stated some legitimate concerns about the arXiv, but I believe that viXra has failed to solve the problems it was intended to solve. Perhaps the American Mathematical Society and other professional societies should investigate some of the concerns and complaints about the arXiv that are being raised by mathematical researchers, and try to change some things about the arXiv if doing so would serve the community better.

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