Mathematical Reviews

Mathematical Reviews is a special journal made by the American Mathematical Society. It helps people understand new math papers by giving short summaries and reviews of articles about mathematics, statistics, and theoretical computer science. This makes it easier for mathematicians, students, and teachers to find and learn about important new research.

The American Mathematical Society also created an online tool called MathSciNet. This tool is like a big library where you can find all the reviews from Mathematical Reviews and more information about math papers. It is very useful for anyone who wants to learn more about math discoveries from all over the world.

Reviews

Mathematical Reviews was started by Otto E. Neugebauer in 1940. It was created as a different kind of journal from another one called Zentralblatt für Mathematik, which Otto E. Neugebauer also started earlier. By November 2007, Mathematical Reviews had information about more than 2.2 million articles.

People who write the reviews are volunteers. They are usually chosen because they know a lot about the topic of the article being reviewed. These reviews often explain what the article is about and sometimes talk about related work. However, reviewers are not encouraged to criticize the article because the author cannot respond. Sometimes, the author's own summary is used if it's good enough.

Online database

In 1980, all the articles from Mathematical Reviews since 1940 were put into a computer database that you can search. Later, this became part of MathSciNet, which started in 1996. MathSciNet also shows which articles mention each other.

Mathematical citation quotient

Mathematical Reviews calculates something called a mathematical citation quotient (MCQ) for each journal. This number shows how often other journals mention that journal. To find the MCQ, they count how many times papers from the journal were mentioned in other papers over five years, then divide that by how many papers the journal published in those five years.

For the years 2012 to 2014, the top five journals by MCQ were:

1. Acta Numerica: MCQ 8.14
2. Publications Mathématiques de l'IHÉS: MCQ 5.06
3. Journal of the American Mathematical Society: MCQ 4.79
4. Annals of Mathematics: MCQ 4.60
5. Forum of Mathematics, Pi: MCQ 4.54

There is also an "All Journal MCQ" that looks at all journals together. In 2018, this number was 0.41.

Current Mathematical Publications

Current Mathematical Publications was a printed index that listed new and upcoming math books and papers. The editors of Mathematical Reviews chose and organized these listings. This index was used from 1965 until 2012, when it stopped being published.