Are there any math journals for undergraduates? I have some ideas I would like to try and put in paper-form, and having the option of potentially submitting one to a journal would be good motivation.
I once had a paper published in The Journal of Undergraduate Mathematics. That was in 1975, and that journal may not exist anymore. I find some references when I Google to something called The Journal of Undergraduate Mathematics and Its Applications, but that may not exist anymore either.
There are no journals that are closed off to undergraduates. Talk to your favorite math professor, and ask him which journal he thinks would be the best fit, then go ahead and submit it there.
Chronos, I’ve always been under the impression that you can’t do anything really interesting in math until you at least get to grad school. I’m done with all my undergrad math classes, but I’m not a prodigy or anything, and I doubt anything I come up with now will be accepted to a regular journal. Do you know undergraduates who have been published? What kind of thing did they research?
I second talking to a math prof, not to find a journal, but because almost certainly your idea isn’t original, and has been described already (probably decades ago).
Not a snark, just reality.
There’s interesting, and then there’s publishable. You’re not going to be pushing the boundaries, but it’s entirely conceivable that you can fill in a gap. I second the suggestion to talk to faculty (but be prepared to hear that it’s been done before).
To the extent that that’s true, it’s because in practice, you probably don’t have any new ideas until that point. It’s that the ideas be new, not that the person with the idea have had X years of education, that’s important.
Just out of curiosity, what sort of ideas are these that you are exploring?
Check out Crux Mathematicorum, http://cms.math.ca/crux/ I think it is more a resource for math clubs than a place for undergraduates to publish, but interesting for all that.
There’s the MAA’s Mathematics Magazine. I’m not sure if they primarily publish submissions from undergrads, or if they just have a focus on undergraduate level mathematics.
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/maa/mm/2008/00000081/00000005
Many academic honors societies have journals that their undergraduate membership may publish in. For Mathematics, Pi Mu Epsilon may fit your needs; does your college have a chapter?
Journal Information: The Pi Mu Epsilon Journal
Chapter directory: Pi Mu Epsilon State Chapter Listings
There certainly are examples of undergraduates publishing in math journals. I did, and I didn’t even make it to a Ph.D.
Certainly this happens - no one here is saying it doesn’t. But did you come up with something original, write it up and have it published completely independently, or were you working with one of your math profs? I suspect the latter.
And that’s how it should be - scientific publishing is a learned skill. I have undergrad pubs too - they were done with a faculty member. I didn’t known enough to know what I didn’t know (to paraphrase Rumsfeld), so I worked with someone who did.
No, I did not work with a faculty member. I came up with it myself. It wasn’t even related to any of the specialities of the faculty members at my undergraduate college.
There’s always those math espidoes of Schoolhouse Rock… try writing a snappy song about long division.