Publication and Erdős–Bacon number

Two brief topics.

My resolution to publish in diamond open-access journals is already in tatters.

I assumed this would happen because I had coauthors who were compelled to publish in certain journals. But the other plausible reason for it to happen is papers celebrating a mathematician, either one who has recently died or one celebrating a significant birthday. It is three such papers which I am talking about here. Two of the mathematicians are Anatoly Vershik and Robert Woodrow. The third is having a birthday, and to avoid possible embarrassment I won’t name the person.

In these cases I have no say in the journal. One of the three is a diamond journal, so that is OK. One is a commercial hybrid journal. I want people to read my paper but I have no money to pay the APC, so I will have to hope that people look at the arrXiv. The third is published by a mathematical society under the “subscribe-to-open” or S2O scheme. I don’t fully understand this. It seems that the journals begin life as subscription journals, but when they have made enough money to cover their costs they switch to open-access. So I suppose that is OK.

The second topic arose during the week, when conversation at coffee got onto Erdős numbers. At some point, someone raised the topic of Erdős–Bacon numbers. I wish to claim the lowest possible Erdős–Bacon number, since I have eaten Erdős’s bacon. (If you haven’t heard the story, you can read it here.)