Annals of Mathematics
The Annals of Mathematics, abbreviated Ann. Math. (Engl. Annals of Mathematics), ISSN 0003-486X, is one of the most important journals in mathematics. The Annals are published bimonthly by Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study.
The first precursor appeared between 1874 and 1883 under the name The Analyst (published by Joel E. Hendricks in Des Moines, Iowa). Then in 1884 the first edition appeared under its present name with Ormond Stone of the University of Virginia as the first editor. Between 1899 and 1911, the Annals were published by Harvard University before finally finding their present home at Princeton. From 1933 onwards, the Institute for Advanced Study appeared as co-editor.
The rise of the Annals as one of the most prestigious journals in mathematics is closely associated with Solomon Lefschetz, who served as editor from 1928 to 1958. Publication in the Annals of Mathematics has special prestige because of the journal's high hurdles for publishing articles, not only in peer review but also in the selection of articles. Among the papers published there, for example, is Andrew Wiles's proof of the Fermat conjecture.
After the first peer review of Thomas Hale's proof of the Kepler conjecture, which made substantial use of computers, failed because the reviewers were only 99 percent (they said) sure of its correctness after elaborate years of work, the Annals of Mathematics published the human part of the proof anyway in 2005, and subsequently amended their bylaws with an addendum that specified more precisely how the computer part of the proof would be documented and reviewed for publication.
The journal's impact factor in 2012 was 3.027. In the ISI Web of Knowledge statistics, the journal ranked 3rd out of 295 journals considered in the mathematics category.
The current (2016) editors are:
- Peter Sarnak
- Charles Fefferman
- David Gabai, Princeton
- Nick Katz, Princeton
- Sergiu Klainerman, Princeton
- Tian Gang, Princeton
From 1998 to 2008, the articles were freely accessible online, since then no longer. Only articles older than five years are made available in the JSTOR archive (which is also no longer freely accessible). However, the articles often appear as preprints in ArXiv before publication, a procedure that the editors of the Annals of Mathematics explicitly recommend on their website.
