[jaksmit]

Here is a reply to this tweet thread, posted on behalf of an incarcerated person (christopherhavensmath.com):

"I don't quite agree with much of what is said, but it does also have some truth to it.

The fact is that many people publishing thesis papers are not publishing in major journals and so often have many errors. As well, one can publish a paper that is never refereed by experts in that field at all. Those are disreputable papers. It is our responsibility as mathematicians to pay attention of where the work that we build from comes from. When publishing work, there is a system which ranks the integrity of the academic journals, and my method involves beginning at the best quality journal that is relevant to your work.. the referees attack the paper and send you feedback, possibly rejecting your paper. Then you make adjustments according to their feedback and either resubmit to them, repeating the process, or you submit to the next best journal. After being rejected so many times, your article strengthens more and more until the best possible journal accepts your work.

This method assures that the quality of your work reflects the quality of the publishing journal. My first paper went down the list three notches and landed on a high level journal. But the process of submission was brutal and lasted over two years. There are no gaps in our work (Myself and my 3 coauthors). Rather there are gaps in the understanding of the concepts that immediately surround our work.

When we submit work, often we continue studying in that field and learn rather quickly that our submitted work could have been much better in the sense that you wish you would have included things that are obvious upon countless reviews of your own work. In this sense, good work can have gaps, but that does not necessarily mean that the submission contained errors.

But of course there are many papers out there published through websites or some other means that have zero academic value. The best thing to do is make sure that any research paper you use or reference comes from a reputable journal.

There is one thing to keep in mind... probably the most important part. We research for many reasons. Part of it for me is that research represents the pursuit of beauty. If you're doing math for the reason of adding another notch to your ladder towards academic elitism, then you're doing it for the wrong reason. We are the chasers of mathematical beauty. When we find such beauty the hard part is expressing it flawlessly in the form of human knowledge."