Looking for guidelines to self-publish in various journals/conferences(especially related to computer science). Most of the wisdom related to processes in this space is passed on in a streamlined way to incoming grad students and researchers in an academic setting. But let's say I am a clerk sitting in a patent office and I have few experiments that I worked on with thorough proofs and results. How do I get this officially published(not about formats but about the processes)? In general, these are my questions(TIA):
1. How to choose journals/conferences to publish? 2. Do top publications prefer submissions from universities only? (What's the ground reality here?) 3. Any blogs/articles explaining in detail about this? 4. Would Arxiv let me publish without associating myself with a university?
However, it's hard to write well for an audience in a given field without having gone to grad school in that field. Readers will sense that your paper is from an outsider. So stick to topics that people will believe an outsider about. Proofs and working systems are good, criticisms of common methodologies are bad.
When you publish, especially on arXiv, you still have to get people to read it. Zero people wake up in the morning thinking "I'll just browse for new papers from people I've never heard of." You might email a few authors of recent papers you're citing saying, "Hey, I really liked your paper on ___. I've just published something related on arXiv that addresses a problem you mention in your future work section..."
Minor comment, but that's fairly dependent on the field. Every morning I am at work I take ~5–10 minutes to skim the titles of the day's new arXiv/astro-ph postings[0] to see if there's anything interesting. If there is, I'll mark it for later, save it, or spend some time reading/skimming it. That's fairly common among my peers in the field. There are even websites that piggyback on arXiv to facilitate voting on papers to create agendas for discussion groups or journal clubs[e.g., 1].
[0] https://arxiv.org/list/astro-ph/new
[1] https://voxcharta.org/about/about-this-website/
No university affiliation is required, but you are required to 'belong to the scientific community', and to prove that you will need someone to vouch for you and your work.
It's actually a higher bar of entry for arXiv than it is conferences and journals!
1. A strong LOR from a PI managing a known lab(but with few moderate pubs on my name) vs. 2. No great LORs but self-publishing one or two good papers(quantified with good number of citations and overall quality)
Why do you see these things as mutually exclusive? You could self-publish and use it as an "in" to working for a PI over the summer. If you do well and the PI likes you, they likely have a lot of sway with admissions and can help you get into whatever grad program they work with.
Disclaimer: Never applied/went to grad school but know many people who did... I've seen the strategy I described work at a high tier school.
I myself don't put much faith in LoRs unless they're from someone I know pretty well. Other people differ.
If you're sure you can produce a good paper, I think that's better than a LoR. But research can be hit-or-miss.
Make that 1 person.
I feel dirty for even saying this but the best way to get your work published in a good journal is to let a member of said clique, typically a professor with a good amount of publications on the topic, piggy-back on your article. Their presence on the author-list will lend credence to your work.
If you choose not to go the above route, and power to you for not playing their game, things get tricky. You can try applying to some well-known conferences and best-case you can get your work presented and published as proceedings (very common in the IEEE world). Depending on the topic you can try and submit to a decent journal with a strong impact-factor but depending on the editor you may not even get to the review process.
Lastly, it's mentioned elsewhere here, do not publish to rando journals that expect a fee. Even if your work is fantastic publishing in one of those will cast doubt on every single one of your words cause they're seen as completely predatory and lacking in credibility.
To be more specific: Do you have a degree in the university? In which field? Is it related to what you want to publish?
In which field yo want to publish? In physics they like papers in journals. In computer science, they like conference presentations.
Beware that there are many predatory journals that publish any article if you pay the fee. Nobody cares about them, it's borderline a scam.
From the other comment:
> Proofs and working systems are good, criticisms of common methodologies are bad.
I agree. Be very clear about what is your new result. It is very difficult to convince people about something like "Quantum Mechanics is wrong" unless you have a big trajectory or a very solid proof. It is easier if you have a new algorithm that outperforms the 2 or 3 more popular algorithms in the 2 or 3 more popular benchmarks.
Not wishing to say anything trade confidential, however, a major Western publishing house is having difficulty competing, the reason being turnaround speed. Try and get something published here and it takes a long time. Having a baby can be quicker.
Meanwhile in China you submit to your journal and you get it peer reviewed the following week and published shortly thereafter.
Try it, at least under the pretext of learning about how the world of scientific publishing works in the West as well as in China. Even if you do not get published there will be benefits in knowing what the score is.
Sorry I have no more details to share with you on the internal difficulties of the publishing business, there has been a lot of merger and acquisition activity going on as the business model is currently going through some pains.
It may seem disloyal going to get published by the underdog, however it isn't a biggie. Where do you think growth for journal subscriptions is coming from these days? China. The publishing community is gladly selling them 'our IP'.
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Almost all publications provide guidelines for authors, and most editors will be happy to answer questions on the submission criteria.
Speaking as a reviewer: the most important things, above everything else, are always (1) the quality of the science, and (2) the clarity of the presentation. If you get those right, you will have little problem publishing.
If you'd like any feedback, feel free to send me an email. My address is in my profile.
I've actually been interviewed by a paper (and misquoted and misgendered in the article they published) due to my blogging, and I was homeless at the time. I also was interviewed by a college student who wrote a piece about me and was asked to write a paid piece with a byline because of my blogs.
I've actually been interviewed at least three other times without it being published because people find my story hard to believe. Years ago, I was quoted in a book.
I'm not even making any kind of effort to get that kind of attention. In fact, I actually spent a lot of years trying to figure out how to deflect attention while finding my voice.
I imagine if you were making a concerted effort to figure out how to get taken seriously, you could get a lot more legitimate media attention than I've ever gotten, assuming your work is solid and the writing is good.
2. I don't think "top publications" like found in http://csrankings.org/ turn down submissions because it's from an independent author. Instead, it would be harder because you are working alone. Now, you need more time, nobody is steering or affecting your opinions what is currently relevant, and nobody is giving you a fresh pair of eyes to identify your own biases. That's hard.