Overview of Geen Papers

Geen Papers are existing papers explained in plain terms.
To understand a paper on orbital mechanics, you probably have to understand basic mechanics; but you do not have to already be active in the field of orbital mechanics to understand the Geen Paper variant of it.

If the authors' novel idea, as presented in a (scientific) paper, would have been described in easy terms, it would sound less smart. It would sound as if they are doing something simple, and the organisation that funded the work would wonder why they sunk money into the project. Next time, the authors don't get money anymore.

Origin of the word

A Geen Paper is not a paper. That is literally what "geen" means in Dutch. You can say "Ik ben een koe" to say "I am a cow". If you say "geen" instead, you get "Ik ben geen koe" or "I am not a cow". Another example usage of geen could be with money: "Ik heb geld" and "Ik heb geen geld" mean "I have money" and "I have no money", respectively. The word is intentionally fictional in English.

Because the word "paper" does not exist in Dutch, and because nobody made this ridiculous combination before (or at least not in the top DDG results), Geen Paper is a unique term. My grand hope is that people will contribute Geen Papers and, at some point, searching for the Geen Paper equivalent of a paper will get you somewhere with a simple explanation.

Contributions

For contact info, see my about page. I would be more than happy to include your Geen variant of a paper here. Your name can be mentioned or it can be posted anonymously. Or you could contribute improvements.

There is no online submission system (a wiki would be great) because I am not delusional enough to believe that lots of people will randomly start googling "Geen Paper" just because it exists. I expect that there won't be contributions anyway. If at some point I have a nice selection of papers here, maybe the project is worth spreading the word for. At that point, I may take up the task of maintaining a wiki system and combatting the spam that will ensue.

For now, dear reader, I hope you enjoyed the one Geen Paper that is currently online and which probably lead you here. Again, though, feel free to contribute! Next time you read a paper and decode some overly complex math notation or fancy sentences, just write the gist down in simple words and shoot me an email. Contributions should not be complete copies of the work anyway: a short and simple explanation of the basic idea is enough. If someone wants details, they will read the original anyway.