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General

What is zbMATH Open?

Zentralblatt MATH (zbMATH Open) is the world’s most comprehensive and longest-running abstracting and reviewing service in pure and applied mathematics. For general information on the database and its history see our About page and in particular our tutorial videos.

Why will zbMATH Open improve my research?

zbMATH Open is much more than a common search engine.
First of all, its functionalities and algorithms are strictly focused on mathematics and its applications, allowing for systematic queries yielding higher precision, accuracy and integrity while searching for mathematical content. zbMATH Open offers various filters, cross-links and special search fields relevant for mathematics, e.g. for formulae.
Secondly, zbMATH Open provides additional reviews summarising and evaluating the content and the quality of an article or book from a neutral point of view. We also provide additional descriptors such as the matching MSC (Mathematics Subject Classification) categories and suitable keywords for every document.
Thirdly, errata and retracted articles remain in the database making it possible to track the development of scientific debates.
Therefore you will find only scientifically relevant, peer-reviewed mathematical content (including bibliographic data for material not available online), making zbMATH Open the most comprehensive mathematical database in the world. For documents available online we provide full-text linking.

What is included in zbMATH Open?

The zbMATH Open database contains around 5 million bibliographic entries from all areas of pure mathematics as well as applications, in particular to the natural sciences, computer science, economics and engineering.
A paper or book is relevant to zbMATH Open if it either contributes to mathematical theory, deals with mathematical problems, or applies advanced mathematical techniques.
The coverage starts in 1826 and is complete from 1868 to the present by the integration of the “Jahrbuch über die Fortschritte der Mathematik” database. Since 2024 preprints from a subset of the arXiv are displayed on zbMATH Open, see Preprints.
For current facts and figures on zbMATH Open see Facts & Figures.

How up-to-date is zbMATH Open?

zbMATH Open is updated daily with new bibliographic data and abstracts. New issues of major journals are included at the latest within 3 months after publication and regularly even sooner.
Reviews are also updated on a daily basis after initial editorial work has been carried out. The final editorial work on reviews and abstracts is subsequently done as quickly as possible.

How are indexing decisions made?

Journals to be indexed, either cover-to-cover or in parts, are selected by the editor-in-chief, together with the editorial board. Publishers who would like their journals to be indexed in zbMATH Open are encouraged to contact our journal administration using our Contact Form. Provided that the suggested journal falls within the scope of zbMATH Open, our staff will contact the publisher for the arrangement of a suitable data delivery procedure.
Since a journal's scope and content may evolve, there is of course a possibility that a reconsideration may uncover new aspects and lead to different results. Hence we regularly review previous positive indexing decisions as well as reconsider indexing requests for journals that were declined in the past.
However, experience teaches us that significant changes only happen during longer time periods, usually related to developments in the journal's policy, community, and/or editorial board. Hence, in case a journal was not accepted for indexing in the past, a resubmission after a short time does not appear reasonable, and we may choose not to answer every single request in the case of frequent resubmissions, but reserve the right to internally define a more appropriate period for reconsideration.

Should I become a zbMATH Open reviewer?

Reviewing mathematical papers is a valuable service to the mathematical community and is highly appreciated by your colleagues. The reviewers benefit from the fact that they regularly receive major publications in their field, and that their visibility is greatly increased within the community thanks to their reviews.
As a reviewer of zbMATH Open you can take advantage of certain privileges besides your invaluable contribution to the scientific community. Books and articles that you have reviewed remain your property. There is financial compensation for your out-of-pocket expenses. For detailed information about the benefits you receive as a reviewer and the technical details please see our Guide for Reviewers.
The content and quality of zbMATH Open is highly reliant on contributions from our reviewers. We are very grateful for their help and we encourage active mathematicians to join them. Please click here if you are interested in becoming a reviewer.

Who runs zbMATH Open?

zbMATH Open is produced by the Berlin office of FIZ Karlsruhe – Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure GmbH (FIZ Karlsruhe). Editors are the European Mathematical Society (EMS), FIZ Karlsruhe, and the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

What happened to Zentralblatt?

The zbMATH Open database is the consequent transition of the printed Zentralblatt für Mathematik und ihre Grenzgebiete into the digital age. In 1996 we started to offer all services online under the name zbMATH in addition to the printed edition. Since then we worked also on the digitisation and incorporation of the printed volumes in the database now dating back to 1826.
The production of the printed volumes was finally discontinued in 2013 reflecting the altered demands of the mathematical community and in order to concentrate on the enhancement of our online services.
Since January 2021, the database is available open access under the name zbMATH Open. Please see also https://zbmath.org/about/#id_3_5 for the recent history of zbMATH Open.

Searching

Simply start searching zbMATH Open using the one-line search and filter the results afterwards using the drop-down menus. If you want to clear the search field, just click on the chosen search tab again. For an explanation of the possible search fields and operators you can always refer to the Help Summary available by clicking the Help button or to the general help page.
Alternatively, you may employ the Structured Search which offers a convenient query mask combining all benefits of the one-line search and the formula search. For a short description of the most recently included search features see https://zbmath.org/about/#id_1_5.
To quickly identify the Zbl number of publications, e.g., from a list of references, the citation matching tool zbMATcH is the easiest way. Apart from classical queries using author, title, and other fields, one also has the option to just put a raw reference string (possibly also containing typos and unusual reference formats) into the first field. A fuzzy search will return the zbMATH Open result closest to the input, if a minimum score of similarity is achieved. For bibtex snippets or files you may use the BibTeX interface.

What are the six different tabs for?

There are six different search tabs within zbMATH Open, each aiming at different content and offering specialized search opportunities, which are explained in detail if you click the Help button.

  • Use the Documents tab if you are searching for bibliographic entries (journal articles, books and book articles). Here you can also use the Structured Search which includes the formula search.
  • Use the Authors tab if you are searching for author profiles. All parts of an author's name, different transliterations, name variations and pseudonyms are searched.
  • Use the Serials tab if you are searching for a journal's or serial's profile. All parts of a journal’s name, as well common short forms are searched. You can also search with the ISSN (International Serials Standard Number) or the publisher's name.
  • Use the Software tab if you are searching for mathematical software. You can search for names, verbal description, classification according to the MSC, free keywords, the programming language and creators.
  • Use the Classification tab if you are searching for all bibliographic entries belonging to a certain classification category of the MSC 2020. Both classification codes and texts are searched. Alternatively, you can browse the classification tree.
  • Use the Formulæ tab if you are searching for bibliographic entries (journal articles, books) by their formula content. Every entry containing the given formula in its title, abstract or review is found. Queries are formulated in LaTeX and search variables should be marked by a preceding question mark and ended by whitespace characters.

Alternatively you can use the Structured Search within the Documents tab which combines all search possibilities for documents.

Can I get full texts out of zbMATH Open?

The database zbMATH Open contains about 2.5 million direct links to electronic versions of the indexed publications, to the publishers’ websites and/or to electronic libraries with open access to the full texts (in particular to the European Digital Mathematics Library EuDML and to ElibM).
The number of full-text links is constantly growing, please see also https://zbmath.org/about/#id_1_4.

How can I receive updates about developments in my field?

zbMATH Open offers biweekly updates in a feed format that can be read by all modern newsreaders. Simply click on the feed icon  next to the author ID in an author's profile, or the subject heading in the classification tab (opens in new tab). Note that several author IDs or MSC codes can be joined by comma, e.g., you can use the link https://zbmath.org/atom/cc/52%2C14T%2C12K10 to stay informed in the fields of convex geometry, tropical geometry, and semifields.

I found a mistake in the database. Who should I contact?

We very much appreciate your help in correcting erroneous entries in the database in any sense. Please contact us using our Contact Form.
For suggestions regarding the author profiles see "How to correct my profile".

Author Profiles

How does the author disambiguation work?

At zbMATH Open we pursue two parallel strategies to improve the unambiguous identification of authors. We apply an algorithm mainly based on the analysis of co-author collaboration and the pattern of publishing activity.
Since 2015, an integration of several related services, such as the Mathematics Genealogy Project (MGP), Wikidata or ORCID, allows our algorithm to improve the time consistency of the authorship assignments.
Additionally, since 2014 we offer an easy-to-use author disambiguation interface. This tool allows you to edit any author profile and to correct and/or complete the authorship assignments performed by the algorithm. We are constantly working on improvements of the algorithm and the revision of the legacy data.

Can I correct my author profile?

Yes, you are warmly invited to correct your own profile as well as those of colleagues. Please help us to improve zbMATH Open by confirming or excluding documents from an author profile, merging two or more author profiles into one, including author identifiers like ORCID etc. or writing further suggestions to our author disambiguation team.
Editing an author profile requires nothing but a valid email address. You may use the Author Disambiguation Interface which you reach via the Edit Profile button on each profile page. Every user request will be thoroughly checked by our team.

Why is my latest paper or preprint not included?

We are constantly in touch with publishers to enhance the data delivery process while also working on further improvements to the internal workflows.
Provided the paper falls into the scope of zbMATH Open, there are two main factors for a paper's delayed addition to the database. There might be a delay in delivery of bibliographic data by the publisher. The selection process for sources which contain only a fraction of mathematical documents may also require additional time.
An arXiv entry might be missing because it is not in one of the subcategories which are displayed at zbMATH Open. Furthermore, arXiv preprints are assigned to author profiles using our author disambiguation framework. However, due to a larger number of errors in their metadata compared to the published corpus, the assignments are less accurate than for published articles.
However, if you can not find your latest article even though it matches the criteria of zbMATH Open please do not hesitate to contact us using our Contact Form. Please see also "How are indexing decisions made?".

What about article references?

For the articles in about 600 journals, lists of references are delivered, with links to their zbMATH Open entries as well as their electronic versions via Document Object Identifier (DOI).
It is one of our current main projects to improve and broaden the inclusion of references. Currently more than 1.75 million entries contain references.

Why do I have fewer citations in zbMATH Open than elsewhere?

Citation counts in zbMATH Open are sometimes lower than those provided by other services. Firstly, zbMATH Open is focused on peer-reviewed, mathematical research contributions only, so references from journals outside our scope or from preprints are not counted. Secondly, the author disambiguation excludes falsely contributed documents from the analysis.
Due to this high data quality and the comprehensive coverage of the world's mathematical literature the citation numbers provided by zbMATH Open very reliably reflect the specific impact of your research within the mathematical community.
Moreover, our reference recognition is continuously being improved. Currently zbMATH Open has more than 22 million linked references.

How can I determine the collaboration distance between two authors?

To determine the Erdős number of an author, or the collaboration distance between any two authors, use the link "Co-Author Distance" available in every author profile. You can also use the direct link to the Collaboration Distance interface.