Editor's Announcement

To encourage the submission of excellent short papers to the Annals, the editors announce that Annals papers under 20 printed pages in length will be published on an accelerated schedule. We will also make efforts to expedite the refereeing of excellent short papers.

Statement by the Editors on Computer-Assisted Proofs

Computer-assisted proofs of exceptionally important mathematical theorems will be considered by the Annals.

The human part of the proof, which reduces the original mathematical problem to one tractable by the computer, will be refereed for correctness in the traditional manner. The computer part may not be checked line-by-line, but will be examined for the methods by which the authors have eliminated or minimized possible sources of error: (e.g., round-off error eliminated by interval artihmetic, programming error minimized by transparent surveyable code and consistency checks, computer error minimized by redundant calculations, etc. [Surveyable means that an interested person can readily check that the code is essentially operating as claimed]).

We will print the human part of the paper in an issue of the Annals. The authors will provide the computer code, documentation necessary to understand it, and the computer output, all of which will be maintained on the Annals of Mathematics website online.