Indecomposable decompositions of finitely presented pure-injective modules (Q1359023)

This is a well-written paper which presents interesting criteria for a finitely presented pure-injective module to have a decomposition into indecomposable summands. A module \(M\) is called pure-injective (or algebraically compact) if it has the injectivity property with respect to all pure exact sequences, and \(M\) is called completely pure-injective if every pure quotient of \(M\) is pure-injective. A well-known theorem due to \textit{B. L. Osofsky} [Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 19, 1383-1384 (1968; Zbl 0169.35602)] states that a ring \(R\) is semisimple Artinian if every cyclic right \(R\)-module is injective. In this paper, the authors generalize Osofsky's theorem by showing that a right pure-injective ring \(R\) is semiperfect if and only if \(R\) is right completely pure-injective. By using functorial techniques, the authors deduce from this result the nice fact that a finitely presented pure-injective module \(M\) has an indecomposable decomposition if and only if \(M\) is completely pure-injective, if and only if every pure submodule of \(M\) is pure-projective.