Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Note from the Editor

Applied Mathematics and Computation, Volume 191, Issue 2, 15 August 2007, Pages 299-301
John Casti

In Apologiam
Publicly available scientific knowledge results from the accumulated work of all researchers sharing their ideas and results with others. This edifice is enormous, but it is made up of small units each one of us contributes. To fit one new piece into the knowledge base, two main conditions must be fulfilled. First, the contribution must be new, and second, it must be evaluated by peer review. The novelty is mainly the responsibility of the contributor. The state-of-the-art must be known and the added value must be clearly presented. Evaluation is in the hands of editors. They rely on a large team of experts who assess the proposal, check the novelty, possibly suggest improvements, or reject. The whole process is based on mutual trust and confidence. Whenever it is broken, the case does not help the offender at all.

SummaryPlus | Full Text + Links | PDF (84 K)