Dear and respected all.
Today I am not going to post any problem right now but would like to get suggestion on the following matter. I do not know what step shall I take. I need your valuable suggestion.
I am at present engaged in writing a mathematical book. While preparing the manuscript, I have discovered some special technique regarding polynomial. But the thing is, till now I have not published them to any journal.
Moreover, these techniques are very much useful in my book cause they are serving helpful tool for certain problems. But since I have not published them so far, I am unable to take decision whether I should include them in my book or not.
Now suppose that untill I complete the publication matter in any journal, assume that I publish the book first. Will it be ok/ valid if I add some appendix at the end of the book where I rigorously discuss my inventions ? If so, may I declare there that "I have discovered these methods during the preparation of my manuscript etc?" And if I do so, will it be considered as my own genuine work in future? Mean to say, untill I publish them to some journal, what if somebody copy these methods down, submit to some journal and declare his own work? What to do then ?
So basically this is my problem right now. I really don't understand what to do. I have already discussed with one professor and he said that untill I publish my invention to some journal, it won't be considered as authentic. So no question about including them in my book even at the appendix format. Moreover, mere publishing those things in a book through the way I specified will not guarantee that the result is genuinely mine.
I am discouraged and confused. Shall I include them in my book as their role of application is important or shall I publish them to some journal first and then entry them to my book ?
Thank you in advance
P.S. Kindly some one edit the tags and add the suitable one. I could not figure out the proper one.
Publish first, if you can.
If you ever want the community of scientists to accept your techniques as being correct, you will need to publish in a peer-reviewed journal. And don't be surprised if one of the referees points out some earlier discoverer of your result.
By all means continue writing your book, using the techniques. Don't worry about citing the journal article: the time taken to write a mathematics book and go through the cycle of editorial improvements is much longer than you think. If you don't even have a publisher lined up, you are years from publication.
Finally, all this advice is moot if what you mean to do is self-publish a book or manuscript based on neither peer-reviewed material nor carefully edited presentation. Such a book is nearly useless to anyone beyond the circle of the people who have worked on it, and then it doesn't matter what else you do in terms of publishing your result.
P.S. Nobody is likely to steal your result to write their own book before you! But somebody might publish an identical result before you.