1) Many Mathematics departments ask to send a "list of publications" while applying for research postdoctoral jobs. My question is: how important is it to post my papers in arXiv. I know, posting on arXiv is always good, because people might search for the arXiv -ed papers, but how much difference is publication on arXiv going to make ? What if I prepare a publication list (in .pdf) of accepted paper(s), and submitted paper(s) and paper(s) in preparation and send it to the employers ? Will that be sufficient or as good as putting them on arXiv ? (I will also send them a link to my site containing the publication list, including the downloadable links).
The situation is: I can put one of my papers in arXiv, but the others are either in collboration or deal with problems that stem from a question raised by collaborator(s) and the collaborator(s) did't agree to put on arXiv right away. Hence I am asking.
2) Also what exactly should I write in the "list of publications", the name of the paper, author(s) and its status(accepted/submitted/in preparation), that's all or or should I briefly also describe its content/abstract (to make it more informational) ?
Thank you.
Best Answer
While usually I don't like answering questions like this on MO, there is actually an important fact here specific to the mathematics community which would probably be missed on academia.stackexchange, or another non-mathematical site.
The answer to your 2) is:
The question 1) is a bit more serious, and maybe better for academia.stackexchange. However, I would say that putting a paper on the arXiv is a serious signal that you think it is complete. To me, it means something.