After spending so many years in academia, this was the first time Lu Zhou had heard of a journal editor suggesting that a contributor split one paper into two for publication.
In most cases, academic editors thought a submission was too watered down. They believed the author had split one topic into two or even several papers, then cited their own work to inflate citation counts, so they rejected the paper and asked the author to rewrite it.
As for thinking a contributor's paper contained too much information and sending it back for revision into two separate submissions...
That really was something he had never seen before.
"Corollary One concerns one of the core issues in Differential Topology: the classification of manifolds..." Lu Zhou stared at the email and studied it repeatedly, rubbing his chin. "The Sullivan Conjecture? What the hell is that? How come I've never even heard of it?"
Muttering to himself, he kicked his suitcase aside, got up from the walk-in closet, and hurried upstairs.
Sitting before his computer, he opened the database and searched for the relevant terms. Before long, something that surprised Lu Zhou happened.
Rows upon rows of papers appeared before him like falling snow.
He would never have known if he had not looked.
Who would have thought that this proposition was actually rather popular?
However, the authors of the most highly cited papers were all unfamiliar to him. Presumably, the Sullivan Conjecture was a proposition that was not closely tied to other fields, yet was quite important within its own branch of research.
Just like the Twin Prime Conjecture.
Unless one worked in Additive Number Theory, hardly anyone would study that damn thing.
"...Holy shit. No wonder this thing was so hard. I spent the whole damn day thinking about it! It