Using "et al." in maths papers

Question

In general, mathematics papers have no first author; instead, authors are listed alphabetically. Therefore, citing “Smith et al.” is at best misleading (it implies that Smith did all the work) and at worst insulting (Zelmanov never does any work!). Basically, all the authors are considered equal but citing “Smith et al.” messes this balance up.

The “et al.” style is made slightly more complex because it means that the “big shot” may come further down the list. For example, Zelmanov is the big name but the paper is Smith, Smythe and Zelmanov, cited as Smith et al. So you don’t realise that it’s a Zelmanov paper.

My question is:

What should be done if a journal changes your citation of Smith, Smythe and Zelmanov [10] to Smith et al. [10], especially when Zelmanov is the big name?

Is the answer simply to ask them to change it back to Smith, Smythe and Zelmanov? I think that changing the citation to “Zelmanov et al.” undermines the equality ethos even more — it is a slap in the face to Smith and Smythe, and anyway how do I not know that Smith won’t win a Fields medal himself one day?

I should say that before today I have never seen this in a maths paper.

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Added 2018: This was resolved nicely. I send the copyediting team an email asking if every instance of "et al." could be changed back "especially on line 244 because "et al." here is just a single person!", and if not can I edit the certain bits to remove the names. So they removed each et al. and it appeared online a week later. No hassle (but lots of worry!).

Answer 1

Disagreeing with the other answers here, I advocate that you argue with the publishers and ask them to revert the citation style to what you originally wrote. I have personally succeeded in doing so in exactly the situation you describe.

Of course you should be polite, and only "argue" if the publishers refuse to accommodate an initial non-argumentative request. But do remember that the role of publishers is to take our golden eggs without payment and then sell them back to us at extortionate rates. As such, I think it is perfectly appropriate to put your preferences above those of the publishers. The publishers might refuse in the end, in which case you should just relent, but I don't think you lose anything by pushing an argument to such a refusal.

Typically, I have found journal copyediting staff to be accommodating and helpful when I have requested that they undo changes like this.

Answer 2

While mathematics is not my area of specialization, I think that in your question you are making a general and IMHO wrong assumption about the importance of the name, appearing in the "et al." construction. Essentially, this construction is used only for the purposes of convenience (brevity for readability) and not for implying the amount or importance of work, performed by any of authors.

When people see the "et al." citation, I am pretty sure that decent scientists immediately refer to the full citation in a reference list in order to obtain full information on all authors of a paper in question. Therefore, I believe that the "problem" that you have described in your question is really an artificial one, which exists only in your imagination (due to the incorrect assumption, mentioned above).

Answer 3

Regarding your specific question, the answer is leave it be and don't argue.

1. Most journals follow some house style guide that has been set in stone for who knows how long. This is not a useful fight to have since you will invariably lose.

2. Many style guides offer something similar to what the APA guide says, which is that for papers of N or fewer authors (for APA, N = 5), at the first instance of mentioning the paper the full author listing must be included; in the subsequent ones et al. is used. In pure mathematics papers with more than 4 or 5 authors are quite rare (enough that people come up with team names when that happens). So credit usually is given properly (at least at the beginning of the paper).

   N.B. since the OP mentioned Springer, I should note that the Springer MathPhys style which applies to most (all?) mathematics journals in the Springer catalog does not follow the same schema as the APA style guide. Experience suggests (since I cannot find it written down somewhere) that for 1 and 2 authors they always show all names, and for 3 and more authors they always abbreviate. My experience also shows however that if you write "the Smith-Smythe-Zeldanov construction [13]" they will not call you on it.

3. Whether Zelmanov is a big name should have absolutely nothing to do with it; for all you know a lot of the technical insights could have come from Smythe.

4. If you must show all three names, rewrite the sentence/paragraph so that the appearance of all three names is logical.

   In 1989 Smythe [12] showed that all gadgets are widgets. This result was later generalized in his 1993 paper [11], written together with Smith and Zeldanov, which showed that in fact all weak-gadgets (hereon "wadgets") are also widgets.

   Of course this formulation puts the emphasis on Smythe, but if "credit" is so important to you you should have a good idea how to phrase things correctly.

Answer 4

While formally the author order is unimportant, our psychology does not obey such formal rules. In the situation described, after the passage of time we are likely to remember either "paper by Smith et al." or "paper by Zelmanov and someone else".

Existence of publisher's style is mostly irrelevant (at least in my part of mathematics). Practically all the new papers are on arXiv, and so few read the journal version. So, authors' decisions matter.

In my opinion, the real choice is between the following options:

• Inclusive, "Smith, Smythe, Zelmanov [25] showed"
• Simple, "in [25] it is shown".
• Verbose, "Smith, Smythe, Zelmanov [25], building on the previous work of Smythe [26], showed".

Answer 5

The term "et alii" (abbreviated "et al.") means "and coworkers" or "and collaborators". It implies no preference who did what. So go with the style as suggested -- it does not imply that you elevate one of the authors over the others, it just abbreviates the list of names.

Answer 6

How the paper is cited will have nothing to do with the author's impact factor, or any citation tracking number in existence -- only the fact that the paper was cited at all has meaning. Tenure committees will not care whether you said et al. or listed the authors' names. Authors will not care, because it really makes no difference.

It is a decision made by the style sheet of the journal you're publishing in. If you don't care for the style, submit only to journals that reference by superscripted numbers in the text.

Answer 7

Sorry to contradict, but I have published Maths papers with a true, ordered (by contribution) authors list. This may not always be the case, but this counterexample proves that the assumption that the authors list is always ordered by name only is wrong.

As for the et al. - this is just an abbrevation, not for selecting important authors. As a general rule for citing (used in many journals), if there are more than 2 authors, you do not list all, just the first and then write et al. in italics. Sometimes you would use this short citation style in the text, and list the complete author list in the references, like

This has been proven by Smith et al. back in 1975 [8].

[8] AJ Smith, T Southall, EK Forkner and UI Janeson, Why Squirrels cannot Fly, Nature 4(5), September 1975.

As someone who cites, please respect the order given (for whatever reason), do not change it! This would just confuse people.

Answer 8

One purpose of the way to shorten author lists is to allow finding the cited work when it is listed in a library catalog, which happens (primarily/only) by first author. Hence knowing the first author is essential in order to find the text - no matter how important whose contribution to the work in question is (a subjective question anyway). Granted, this kind of restriction comes from the time of cardboard catalogs, but the implied citing tradition still stands ...