Pseudonymity in Academic Publishing: A Wikipedia Edit Sparks Debate

2024-12-27

A paper on editing mathematics on Wikipedia has sparked a debate about pseudonymity in academic publishing. One of the authors used the Wikipedia pseudonym "XOR'easter," but the American Mathematical Society (AMS) refused to publish the paper because they didn't know the author's real-world identity. This highlights the conflict between internet pseudonymity and traditional academic publishing, and the question of how readily academia accepts anonymous publications. The authors argue that Wikipedia's pseudonymity policy protects editors, and that academia needs to rethink the meaning of anonymous publication.