To submit a post, please send an email to proofsandprompts@gmail.com. Include your proposed post, your homepage, your career stage, and your home institution. See below for more detail.
What to send
Some examples of what we’re looking for:
- an essay on what it means to do mathematics and be a mathematician
- a reflection on authorship, exposition, and related questions
- a political take, or a criticism of how an institution, government, or company is handling this
- something from your own experience: an anecdote, how your work is evolving, a conversation with an AI lab
This is not an exhaustive list, and none of it needs to be developed at length. A single paragraph about something that struck you, or that you noticed and can’t quite place, is enough. Send it.
Length and format
There is no minimum or maximum. A post can be a few sentences ending in a question, or a full-length essay. Send your text in the body of the email or as an attachment (preferably in a format that is easy for us to copy-paste, e.g. word is better than PDF), with a suggested title. LaTeX is supported, so write mathematics as you normally would.
Posts do not need to be perfectly polished, but please send us a text in a form that you would be happy with if it appears. The most important thing is that you express yourself honestly, and stimulate a discussion.
AI Use
Using AI for editing, spellchecking or translating is completely fine. But it is important that posts are as honest, personal and non-generic possible. So please refrain from using AI to develop your ideas, rather develop them yourselves, even if the prose is not as polished. If you do decide to use AI beyond editing, spellchecking or translating, please include a disclosure at the end of your post explaining how you used it.
Crossposting
We are happy to include here posts that appear elsewhere, on your personal blog, on your homepage etc… but if these are from months ago, please review them and send us a revised version: with the speed of things, many claims quickly become out of date.
Who can contribute
Write to us with your institutional email address, and link a homepage, or an institutional page confirming your email address. If you have a homepage, this will be linked in the post, but we will not share your email.
Contributors at any career stage are welcome: bachelor’s and master’s students, PhD students, postdocs, and faculty. People working in tech and at AI labs are welcome too. If you do not fit in any of these categories, but would still like to contribute, you are still welcome to email us.
We can keep your post anonymous if you prefer, in that case we will only include your country of affiliation and your career stage.
What happens next
We will confirm that we’ve received your submission. We will send you comments if we have any, but the final decision on what is published, as long as it is in agreement with these guidelines (see below) is yours. We will give you an estimate on when the post should appear, and then give you a precise date about a week before posting.
Schedule
The current schedule is 7 posts a week: one a day Monday – Sunday. Every week we look at what the next posts are (in terms of the date when we received the first version) and post them in some order across the week, so that there is some diversity of long vs short, research vs teaching, established vs young author, optimist vs dissenter, etc. Additional posts that are time sensitive are just published on top of the normal schedule.
If we have backlog, you might have to wait a few weeks between your first submission and the date it is posted. You will be able to make small changes before the date of posting. You can also book a slot for a post, and only send it to us shortly before that slot. To do that, send us an email with a short abstract for what you plan to write about, and an approximate date by when it will be ready.
What we won’t publish
We welcome sharp criticism, disagreement, and strong opinions, including about labs, institutions, and this blog. That is much of the point.
We will not accept posts that attack or demean people on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or nationality, that condone violence or self-harm, or that are posted in bad faith to provoke rather than to discuss.
Copyright
You keep the copyright to your post. By submitting, you give us permission to publish it here and to keep it online. You are free to republish it elsewhere.
Guidelines
As this is a community project, the guidelines will evolve with it. If you have any concerns, please email us with suggestions.