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.



Question on "publication List" for applying to post-doctoral jobs
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:



> 
> There is no logic behind asking for separate publication lists for postdoctoral candidates. Job ads only ask for them because it is a default setting on MathJobs, and nobody bothers to uncheck the box. You can just copy whatever list of papers you put in your CV (and leave the list of papers in your CV) or you can add abstracts.
> 
> 
> 


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.


