Manifold Atlas: Editorial Policy
From Manifold Atlas
Revision as of 20:11, 30 April 2010 by Diarmuid Crowley (Talk | contribs)
This page describes the editorial criteria and processes in the Manifold Atlas.
The refereeing process is organised and overseen by the editorial board.
1 Editorial criteria
A page is called mature when it satisfies the following criteria of correctness, completeness and clarity.
- Correctness: as the manifold Atlas aims to be a reliable reference for research on manifolds the following two points are essential:
- all information presented on a page should be correct,
- all major statements including theorems, propositions, lemmas, etc, should be justified either by a proof or a reference to the literature.
- Completeness: completeness is a difficult notion to define. However as the Manifold Atlas is a reference source, articles on a given subject should not ignore essential aspects of that subject. In addition, a mature page should adequately reference the relevant literature for the areas it covers.
- Clarity: it is important that information is readily and clearly available for readers. This is especially important for the invariants section of articles in the Manifolds chapter but holds for all parts of all pages.
2 Editorial process
After an evolving page reaches maturiy, the managing editor will organise for it to be evaluated by a member of the board: he or she may or may not wish to consult a referee or referees.
- After reviewing the page, the responsible editor may decide to either:
- approve a page as it stands, requiring only minor changes or no changes,
- approve a page but requiring significant changes,
- reject a page.
- The last two possibilities should be very rare and extremely rare as only mature pages will be refereed.
- Feedback for author-based pages will be sent by email to the responsible authors.
- For open-editing pages requiring minor changes, the administrators will simply make the changes directly to the page in consultation with the significant contributors.
- For open-editing pages which require significant changes or which are rejected, the responsible editor will write a brief, informative report on the discussion page of the page under review.
- The report will outline the editor's view of the deficiencies of the page and will serve as a plan for the open-editing community to improve the page.
3 Editorial outcome
Publication: After an evolving page is finally approved and all changes have been made, it is ready to be published.
- A separate, static and citable version of the page is created entitled page name/nth edition.
- Static pages are articles of the Atlas: they are edit-protected and bear the blue approval message.
- At the same time, the published page is copied into the evolving version of the page which is now returned to open or author-based editing as appropriate.
- The evolving page is now open to further improvement, addition, modification and even correction.
- Evolving pages for which a version has been published bear a green editorial message which links to the corresponding static article.