Over the next few days, besides the general education courses he had to attend, Li Dong barely went anywhere else. He practically lived in the Yuanpei Study.
The core framework and algorithmic proofs of his paper had been established long ago, but he still spent a great deal of time polishing it, word by word.
Even though his English was actually quite good now, academic writing and everyday English were two completely different things.
He meticulously compared his work against past issues of *Mathematics Computing*, repeatedly checking for tense consistency, accuracy of professional terminology, and proper formatting for figures and tables.
Then, he converted all the documents into PDF format, as required by the journal.
Li Dong also took his core C++ code, removed some sensitive system paths, and uploaded the packaged code directly to GitHub.
In the "Data and Code Availability Statement" at the end of the paper, he included the open-source link.
Finally, he logged into the AMS’s Editorial Manager submission system and filled out the author information as required...
[Status: Submitted to Journal]
Seeing the line of green English text, Li Dong leaned back in his chair.
’Do your best and leave the rest to fate. Now, I just have to wait for the review results.’
Over the past few days, Li Dong’s three roommates in dorm 404 were starting to think he was something else...
It wasn’t about him spending all his time in the library. It was his performance during their major-specific courses that was just terrifying.
Anyone who got into Yuanpei was a top student who dominated their high school, right?
They had always been extremely confident in their own talents.
But once they got to university, especially a place like Yan University Yuanpei, everything changed.
The teachers at the lectern were all professors, associate professors, and even Changjiang Scholars or candidates for the academy of sciences.
The pace of their lectures... tsk tsk... there was no "spoon-feeding" whatsoever. They would often throw out an extremely abstract concept, make a couple of quick derivations, and then jump directly to the next, deeper topic.
This forced these chosen few to work their butts off studying on their own, frantically looking up papers to fill the gaps in their understanding.
But what about Li Dong?
He was just like them back in high school. Struggling to keep up? Not a chance. He even wished the professor would go faster...
That evening, the four of them returned to their dorm room.
Wang Hao collapsed into his chair and couldn’t help but groan.
"Damn... I’m seriously starting to wonder if I ever actually was a top student."
"Today’s topology lecture made my head hurt!"
Chen Nan chimed in with a wry smile as he changed his shoes.
"You can say that again. I feel like listening to lectures now is like when the kids at the bottom of our high school class tried to understand the final question on a math test. My mind is just filled with, ’How did he jump to that step?’ It’s too hard."
Liu Qiang sighed in deep agreement.
Li Dong, having just gotten a glass of water, replied naturally, "Yeah, I think it’s pretty hard, too."
Wang Hao, Chen Nan, and Liu Qiang glanced at each other, then turned to glare at Li Dong, gritting their teeth.
"You think it’s hard, too?"
"Bro, we really couldn’t tell..."
Li Dong couldn’t be bothered to explain.
’He really did find it hard!’
Though he had 0.3 in his Basic Attributes and a brain far superior to an ordinary person’s, that didn’t mean he could master subjects without studying.
He could extrapolate from a single example and see through to the underlying logic. This was partly due to the insane attribute bonus, and partly because he’d been peeking at the chats of the experts in the "Cyan Dragon Study Group," gaining high-dimensional insights from their casual remarks that simplified everything for him!
Without the foundation provided by those gods in the group, if he had to rely solely on himself to adapt to the teaching style of these near-academician-level professors, he’d be in for a world of hurt, too.
Still, watching these guys complain about how "it’s too hard" and "I don’t get it," only to go right back to hitting the books after dinner, Li Dong couldn’t help but feel a little impressed.
This was the hallmark of a true top student.
People who truly didn’t understand and couldn’t keep up would have just given up and slacked off long ago.
They wouldn’t be here, agonizingly reviewing the material.
They found it hard because they were gritting their teeth and forcing themselves to keep up with this terrifying pace.
Late at night, after his roommates were all asleep, Li Dong used his phone to log into the AMS submission system again for a look.
The status was still [Submitted to Journal].
’The review period for a top journal like this is practically a mystery.’
According to the normal process, after a manuscript is submitted, the first step is a technical check and plagiarism scan by an Editorial Assistant.
If there are no issues, it’s then passed on to an Associate Editor.
Only if the Associate Editor deems it worthy will it be sent out for Peer Review.
Going through this entire process, it’s common to hear nothing for several months.
The only exception is if you get incredibly lucky and the academic editor happens to be a top expert in this specific subfield who recognizes the algorithm’s revolutionary value at a glance. Only then might it be put on the fast track.
「Meanwhile, in Providence, Rhode Island.」
Inside the headquarters of the American Mathematical Society (AMS).
As a preliminary editor for the top computational mathematics journal *Mathematics Computing*, Eric picked up the coffee on his desk and took a sip.
He refreshed the backend of the Editorial Manager submission system.
His job was simple but also tedious: the Technical Check.
He didn’t need to understand esoteric topological manifolds or complex algorithmic isomorphisms.
He was only responsible for checking if the paper’s layout, figure and table standards, and reference citations were compliant, as well as running the manuscript through the official AMS-designated iThenticate system for a plagiarism check.
He didn’t have the authority to reject papers. His duty was to pass compliant manuscripts to the relevant associate editor.
For problematic manuscripts, he would add detailed notes and submit them along with the paper to an academic editor for a final decision (Desk Reject).
A dozen or so newly submitted manuscripts lay waiting in the backend list.
Eric glanced over them quickly. The author information for one paper made him snort with derision.
Author: Dong Li (Yenching University)
Title: Undergraduate
"An undergraduate? Submitting to *Mathematics Computing*?"
Eric curled his lip. In his mind, he had already handed the manuscript a death sentence.
Of course he’d heard of Yan University. It was one of Huaxia’s top institutions, and its mathematics department had a certain reputation internationally.
But so what?
He may not have understood the profound number theory derivations and low-level algorithmic calculations, but he understood the playbook for this type of undergraduate submission all too well.
Undergraduates who dared to touch a top-tier journal were either cluelessly overconfident and trying to pass off filler, using some toy-level data to try their luck.
Or, they had copied and pasted large sections from previous works, like their advisor’s research framework and literature review, resulting in a ridiculously high plagiarism score.
’Another young person desperate for fame,’ he thought.
However, out of a professional habit developed over a decade, he still selected the manuscript and clicked to run it through the iThenticate plagiarism detection system.
In Eric’s professional experience, even a purely original algorithm paper written by a titan of the industry would inevitably have a good amount of matchable text. This was because it had to explain the research background, cite established mathematical theorems, and benchmark against common computational frameworks in the field.
For this journal, a high-quality, original manuscript, after excluding properly formatted citations, would typically have a text similarity of 2-6%, with the total similarity rarely exceeding 8%.
And what about those undergraduate submissions?
Their plagiarism scores would either shoot up to 30-40%, or they would be a patchwork of large quotes. Even after careful "polishing" to avoid detection, they could never escape the source-matching flags from iThenticate’s massive database.
’Just run the plagiarism check, flag it red, and submit it to the associate editor for rejection as per protocol. It’ll save me some time.’
Eric leaned back in his comfortable ergonomic swivel chair, preparing to rest his eyes for a moment.
About two minutes later, the plagiarism report was generated.
Eric lazily opened his eyes, grabbed the mouse, and his gaze immediately swept to the upper-right corner of the screen.
There, a colored circle represented the total similarity score.
Red meant heavy plagiarism, yellow was a warning, and green was safe.
The next second, the coffee Eric had just swallowed went down the wrong pipe!
"COUGH, COUGH, COUGH... What the fuck?!"
The circle on the screen wasn’t the warning yellow, and it certainly wasn’t the red that indicated plagiarism.
It was a deep green, representing an extremely low similarity—so low that there was barely any overlap even from common academic terminology!
And in the very center of that circle, a number was starkly displayed:
[Similarity Score: 1%]

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