Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Monday, December 15, 2008

A letter from the future

Dave Bacon has posted a letter from the future, to be sent back in time:

Dear Respected Mathematician/Scientist/Researcher:

First of all let me tell you want an honor it is to write to you from the future. Your work is so important in my time that we have named the main theorem which you proved in your paper "Megamathematical functorial categories which nearly commute" after you. Yes the JoeRandomName theorem is well known and used every day in my field. Thank you for thinking it up and proving it!

But I'm writing to you today, not because of this great piece of work. Instead I'm writing to you because a related piece of work which you published. I believe this work could would be useful in my own research. I've seen references to this paper which seem to indicate to me that it could be useful in my research. But, and here is the problem, it seems that I cannot get access to your work online nor at my library. ...