I (an undergrad) and 2 other profs from my department have been working on something and we were thinking of submitting our work to a conference (a pretty well known one) this week. The fact is there is no related work that has been done on the problem we are solving and therefore there is no paper which we can cite as a starting point for our work. The only existing things that we make use of are trivial definitions from mathematics (like Riemann Integral) and also definitions that are pretty well known in my area (CS). So again, we do not think there is a need to cite any particular papers for that.
Now my question as stated was - is it acceptable to have a paper with no references? Or do you think we should just mention some papers (we never had to use them) where those definitions were actually proposed?
PS: I'm sure some of you might suggest me to ask those profs. But quite frankly none of them have much experience as far as publishing papers is concerned. So it would be great if some one could give me a good advice and help me out.
Edit: Thanks everyone for the answers. Of course somewhere a little sarcastic and ridiculing, but I can understand since this is a little weird. Actually yes, I had the notion that a paper wasn't worth citing unless I use some results from it (say an algo or some theorem). But I guess that isn't the only reason why I should be referencing as many seem to suggest here. The fact is we had seen quite a few survey papers before we started this out and I was under the impression that there wasn't a need to cite them since anyone could find them. But now, things are bit more clear and I guess I should cite them and I will :)
Answer
Though I don't think there's any hard rule against having a paper with no reference, it seems pretty weird. Note that references are not only for citing other people's results (theorems, algorithms, etc.) which you have used, but more broadly to recognize other's scientific contribution. For example:
- Has the problem never been discussed before? Who first realized it was a problem, stated it, formalized it?
- You probably put the problem into the broader context of your field. And if you don't, you probably should. This sure requires citations on recent work on related problems, even if nothing was ever done on the one problem you're addressing.
- For example, is your problem a specific case of another problem, or does it have generalization?
- What are the consequences of your results/findings? They probably have some impact on other related problems, or practical consequences on real-life issues.
- Didn't you or your co-authors ever do any prior work on this issue?
Finally, let's see it another way: you have solved a problem, that no one else has solved, worked on, or more generally discussed. And you did so using only elementary techniques, which have been known for so long that they do not require citation. Stated like that, it may sound like either you're a genius opening an entire field of mathematics, or you're working on a useless problem that nobody cares about. You probably don't want the reviewer to be thinking that way!
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