For two modules M and N, iM (N) stands for the largest submodule of N relative to which M is injective. For any module M, iM : Mod-R → Mod-R thus defines a left exact preradical, and iM (M) is quasi-injective. Classes of ring including strongly prime, semi-Artinian rings and those with no middle class are characterized using this functor: a ring R is semi-simple or right strongly prime if and only if for any right R-module M, iM (R) = R or 0, extending a result of Rubin; R is a right QI-ring if and only if R has the ascending chain condition (a.c.c.) on essential right ideals and iM is a radical for each M ∈ Mod-R (the a.c.c. is not redundant), extending a partial answer of Dauns and Zhou to a long-standing open problem. Also discussed are rings close to those with no middle class.

We consider a natural generalization of symmetric Nakayama algebras, namely, symmetric special biserial algebras with at most one non-uniserial indecomposable projective module. We describe the basic algebras explicitly by quiver and relations, then classify them up to derived equivalence and up to stable equivalence of Morita type. This includes the weakly symmetric algebras of Euclidean type n, as studied by Bocian et al., as well as some algebras of dihedral type.

A long-standing conjecture of Faith in ring theory states that a left self-injective semi-primary ring A is necessarily a quasi-Frobenius ring. We propose a new method for approaching this conjecture, and prove it under some mild conditions; we show that if the simple A-modules are at most countably generated over a subring of the centre of A, then the conjecture holds. Also, the conjecture holds for algebras A over sufficiently large fields, i.e. if the cardinality of is larger than the dimension of the simple A-modules (or of A/Jac(A)). This effectively proves the conjecture in many situations, and we obtain several previously known results on this problem as a consequence.

Since Azumaya introduced the notion of A-injectivity in 1974, several generalizations have been investigated by a number of authors. We introduce some more generalizations and discuss their connection to the previous ones.

If the injective hull E = E(RR) of a ring R is a rational extension of RR, then E has a unique structure as a ring whose multiplication is compatible with R-module multiplication. We give some known examples where such a compatible ring structure exists when E is a not a rational extension of RR, and other examples where such a compatible ring structure on E cannot exist. With insights gleaned from these examples, we study compatible ring structures on E, especially in the case when ER, and hence RR ⊆ ER, has finite length. We show that for RR and ER of finite length, if ER has a ring structure compatible with R-module multiplication, then E is a quasi-Frobenius ring under that ring structure and any two compatible ring structures on E have left regular representations conjugate in Λ = EndR(ER), so the ring structure is unique up to isomorphism. We also show that if ER is of finite length, then ER has a ring structure compatible with its R-module structure and this ring structure is unique as a set of left multiplications if and only if ER is a rational extension of RR.

A positive answer to a question of Müller is given: any semi-perfect complete hereditary Noetherian prime ring $R$ has a weakly symmetric self-duality sending every ideal $I$ to its cycle-neighbour $X$. Consequently, the factor rings $R/I$ and $R/X$ are isomorphic without using the 1984 results of Dischinger and Müller.

Let R be a ring. A right R-module C is called a cotorsion module if Ext1R (F, C) = 0 for any flat right R-module F. In this paper, we first characterize those rings satisfying the condition that every cotorsion right (left) module is injective with respect to a certain class of right (left) ideals. Then we study relative pure-injective modules and their relations with cotorsion modules.

In this paper certain injectivity conditions in terms of extensions of monomorphisms are considered. In particular, it is proved that a ring R is a quasi-Frobenius ring if and only if every monomorphism from any essential right ideal of R into R(N)R can be extended to RR. Also, known results on pseudo-injective modules are extended. Dinh raised the question if a pseudo-injective CS module is quasi-injective. The following results are obtained: M is quasi-injective if and only if M is pseudo-injective and M2 is CS. Furthermore, if M is a direct sum of uniform modules, then M is quasi-injective if and only if M is pseudo-injective. As a consequence of this it is shown that over a right Noetherian ring R, quasi-injective modules are precisely pseudo-injective CS modules.