Leonid A. Levin.     For Amateur Authors.

Many authors attack difficult problems and need the professional community to review their work. Some of these are serious contributions, coming both from well known researchers and from young or unknown authors. Some attempts (even coming from real masters) are unsuccessful due to a subtle error, from which nobody is guaranteed, and yet represent a genuine attempt (sometimes even of real value).

Yet, some work is just a faulty attempt by an author who lacks qualifications not only for solving the problem but even for telling a real contribution from a worthless exercise. Even such attempts may be of value for their authors if the realization of fault leads to serious effort to advance their qualification for real participation. However, such efforts must be properly channeled so that the attention of the professional community is used efficiently. This is crucial for keeping the channels open for genuine work of young and unknown authors. Thus, we ask the contributors to take certain steps, my opinion on which is offered below.

I distinguish stable and transient work. I count as stable the papers available in some reputable place of permanent archival. Such places include professional journals or conference proceedings, but also some prominent internet sites, such as arxiv.org . I exclude from this class papers archived by authors who abused such facilities by placing there bogus material at some point. It would take loads of valuable contribution to overcome such reputation, so beginners should exercise great caution before placing something for permanent archival.

All other communications I count as transient. No community members are expected to review such a contribution unless they have some special interest. Such interest could be being a teacher or a friend of the author. It could be a small payment to a qualified graduate student who has more time than money. It could be lots of other things, but the bottom line is that transient materials should not be simply sent to strangers.

After transient material passes a friendly but reliable review it could be archived as stable (again, with a great caution, since ruined reputation is almost impossible to recover). Only then should the experts be asked to look at it. One may approach standard peer review outlets, such as journals or conferences. But on some occasions an expert whose work is closely related to the topic may be willing to look into the work. Needless to say, the author should do everything he/she can to make the reviewer's efforts as easy and productive as possible.