"But such statements about your own work carry no weight."

I would say more: they make your paper seem suspicious.

@MartinEscardo There is a great deal of protesting too much, to be sure. And papers are not where the worst of it is to be found.

The other extreme, "My monomania has yielded theorems. Why you should value them is none of my business.", is also problematic, but cheaper.

@pigworker

It is perfectly possible, and this is what most people do, to write a paper to induce people to believe it is novel, important, surprising and interesting.

These are, indeed, the reasons why a paper is written and submitted and refereed and published and read.

A paper doesn't become important because the author says it is important. Or novel. Or surprising. Or interesting.

@MartinEscardo Congratulations on achieving true Britishness!

The author has a delicate line to walk. They must lead the reviewer to conclude their work is awesome without saying it is awesome. Many people find such subtlety difficult. I find it difficult to write at all, because I've been so dead for so long.

When Neil Ghani rewrites your work, he finds the sentence written between the lines and puts it in plain sight. Unevidenced puff is worthless. Evidenced puff is what makes the reviewers pay attention to the evidence.

@pigworker

I strongly oppose the idea that the paper is written for the reviewer.

The paper is written for the readers.

@MartinEscardo @pigworker The reviewer is the gatekeeper. If the paper is not written for the reviewer, then it will necessarily not be written for the reader, who will never get to see it.

Source: A reader who has been told many times that a paper I would have loved to see was rejected.

@jer_gib @zanzi @MartinEscardo @pigworker based on repeated reviews complaining that I don’t explain Idris syntax in sufficient details, I have always thought about including a ‘readers guide & assumptions guide’ in the last bit of the introduction. The guide gives pointers to documents that provide extra information, my assumptions on readers, and guide about digesting the work. (Peppering this information in the intro and body is not obvious enough) Similar to what some people do in their thesis.

Sadly there is never enough room, after the standard words on semantic highlighting…