
Ask HN: Does anyone do academic writing in their own time? - r0rbit
It has been a few years since I got my masters degree, and I never had the ambition for an academic career. Pursuing a tech one at the moment. Still miss writing about topics that interest me. Is there anyone here who incorporates (academic) writing with a non-academic career? How do you manage?
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hannob
I don't pursue an academic career, I'm a freelancer doing various things, yet
I published two cryptographic papers in recent years (at real scientific
conferences, one at USENIX Security, other at USENIX WOOT). In one case it was
even financially viable due to bug bounties.

[https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity18/presentat...](https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity18/presentation/bock)
[https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/woot16/woot16...](https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/woot16/woot16-paper-
bock.pdf)

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dahart
I’ve written a few academic papers on my own time after grad school. It wasn’t
much harder than writing papers while in school, it just took some nights &
weekends time, and I had to work a little to find people willing and capable
of reviewing the papers and giving feedback. It cost a bit of personal money
to present at a conference whenever a paper was accepted, but it was what I
wanted to do so it never bothered me.

I’m not sure I understand the question though, what seems like the hardest
part of writing, what is stopping you from doing it now? Lots and lots of
people write in their spare time, and there are plenty who write on academic
topics and submit papers to journals and conferences. Is it finding the time,
or doing the research? Being motivated, or fear about being accepted as an
academic while not part of an academic institution?

FWIW, you can certainly research & write on academic topics without trying to
publish in journals. Plenty of people have blogs with articles that could be
journal papers if they had only a splash of formality. Lots of people are more
interested in doing the reading & writing than they are in publishing. Quite a
few people like that here on HN.

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r0rbit
I think what seems to be the hardest part is to not only find the time but
combat the imposter syndrome of not producing research within an academic
context/with supervision. Also, reduced access to scientific databases is a
bit of a turndown, we used to get it at uni.

Not all that interested in publishing in academic journals persé.

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borroka
Writing scientific papers for decent journals is time-consuming. You need to
write your findings in the context of the scientific discipline, previous
results, be formal in the context of the discipline, write decently well and,
most of all, have novel and interesting results to show.

As for databased or access to journals, luckily there is SciHub.

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chrisseaton
I don't, but if you are interested in doing this then you should definitely
give it a go.

Beside actually doing good research in the first place, there should not be
major barriers to writing and publishing a paper and I don't think there is
the kind of gatekeeping that people think there is. Pick a small conference or
workshop to start with, read a few papers from previous years to understand
the format, style and conventions of the medium, and then you just write and
upload your paper by the deadline. There's no more ceremony or secrets than
that compared to writing a good technical blog post.

Of course, your research has to be good in the first place. I've seen people
try to write papers and get them knocked back and they think it's because
they're outsider, when in reality they didn't actually have a research
contribution in the first place.

~~~
borroka
There is certainly gate-keeping at decent journals. For instance, not having
an affiliation with an institution or a company known to carry out research is
not the best presentation you can make.

~~~
chrisseaton
But reviewers will not know who you are affiliated with until reviewing is
done and the paper is accepted.

~~~
borroka
Very few journals do double-blind reviews. Maybe some conferences in CS, but
in my field (biology) I never reviewed a paper without knowing who the authors
were, along with their affiliation.

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phonebucket
I am a former academic now working in tech. In the past year I have missed
research.

I don't have the time or patience to go through the whole peer-review process
in my spare time. Furthermore, some aspects of peer-reviewed scientific
writing are quite boring to me e.g. introductions, trying to sell the
importance of your results.

Instead, I find that I can scratch my research itch by doing what I want, then
uploading the results to GitHub. So far I've re-implemented a couple of
recently published papers, and put in a modest contribution of my own. If you
want some discussion on your work, you can turn to a pertinent online forum.

Apart from being much faster than writing a full paper, another advantage is
transparency and reproducibility. It has become a fulfilling hobby.

~~~
siscia
What is your field? Can you link some of your work?

I could be interested in helping with the "academic writing"...

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irchans
I have coauthored about 20 articles over the last 25 years, mostly in peer
reviewed mathematics journals.

I published the first three while in grad school. After grad school, my
advisor and I just kept collaborating meeting once a week for an hour or two.
I was never paid to do academic research, it has always been a hobby for me. I
have only published one article where I was the sole author.

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borroka
I switched to tech one year ago after more than * years in academia (biology).
I am still publishing, mostly papers that were half-completed or going through
the peer-review process. I enjoy writing in general and I also enjoy writing
research papers, but the peer-review process is largely dreadful and it is
difficult to justify spending considerable time doing something that I have
already done for years, I moved away from, and that won't further my career.

I published more than 50 papers, some in top journals, and most of them as the
first author; I still find frustrating that companies (recruiters, hiring
managers, peers) don't associate that kind of production and its determinants
(scientific skills, coding, writing, persistence) to proxies of potential
added value to the company.

Edit: 10

2nd Edit: changed "manuscripts" to "papers"

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wodenokoto
What is the difference between a manuscript and an article?

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borroka
In my field, they are called either manuscripts or papers, rarely articles.

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p1esk
In my mind 'manuscript' is a book length publication, while 'paper' is a
standard short publication for journals or conferences.

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borroka
The book-length publication would a book or monograph if shorter. "Article"
would be in my mind for non-peer-reviewed outlets. I typically use
"manuscript" for papers that have yet to be published. -- I edit the above and
I write "papers" instead of "manuscripts" to avoid confusion.

~~~
p1esk
Oh yes, I confused 'manuscript' and 'monograph'. I agree with your
clarification.

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gvurrdon
My SO works in a library but does academic research in her own time. It's
difficult to find the time, but writing papers during evenings/weekends and,
where possible, presenting them at conferences has resulted in some degree of
success e.g. a published book, invitations to participate in
editing/reviewing. Getting a full-time academic post is difficult, though, as
there is a lot of competition for the few in the field that come up.

~~~
borroka
I would recommend an academic career, especially at a minor institution, only
to some of my worst enemies. Poor pay, bureaucracy, days and nights grading,
boredom. Yes, you might spend your career investigating something you are
interested in, but there is also something in variety.

~~~
gvurrdon
Unfortunately, the library job is much along those lines as well, so a job
concentrating on her preferred subject would still be an improvement.

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RobertRoberts
I study every day on my career, and consider it an academic exercise to read
tech blogs on coding, design, server admin, etc... and I sometimes write about
these topics to inform my clients. I kill 3 birds with one stone. I learn, I
get to dive into topics deep that benefit my mind, and my work (doubly
satisfying) and educate my clients. It lowers my stress when my research
provides a very real world solution. (These are really good days)

When I write about my understanding for my clients it is sort of like training
and marketing at the same time. It forces me to know my subject better to make
sure I am giving good advice to my clients. This is not documentation, I keep
that separate. But I am finding more Digital Ocean articles the cross this
boundry between mere documentation and useful teaching/tutorials.

So it feels like a natural fit, I am interested in research and writing and
others need what I know to do better at their work/business.

But, I have other personal topics I research and write about (history,
religion, health, etc...) that is not work related, but I keep them separate
from work complete, keeps stress low. But I do use tech skills to help me with
them. (ie, data scrapers and manipulation, graphs, analysis, apps, database
access and APIs, etc...) But this relationship is one way, "work -> personal
research", almost never "personal research -> work", unless it's purely a side
effect of knowledge gained...

These personal writings are more critical, some extensive (many years of
research, writing and editing) and I have a family and decent social life. I
just don't have real hobbies or too many time wasting activities, and I keep
my personal research separate from my work research. I guess it's all
priorities?

~~~
p1esk
I believe "academic writing" usually refers to original research. One notable
exception is a survey of recent advances in the field.

~~~
borroka
Reviews also have to present original results often in the form of novel
syntheses, not just she did this, then he did that.

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qazitory
I do this. For me it's fairly easy as I left academia and simply carried on
working with former colleagues/acquaintances, in my spare time. My
contribution as a %age of the overall workload has dropped, but is still
meaningful.

Obvious caveats are:

* In some areas such as CS, you'll want to publish at a conference. If you submit a paper, one named author will have to agree to present it. If that has to be you, you'll have to pay the travel and registration cost for the conference.

* IP / ownership issues are big, particularly if you work for a BigCorp in a field close to that you are publishing in --- these tend to be pretty inflexible on this. I found it difficult, but not impossible at the BigCorp I worked for. I'm in a small consultancy now, and it's a breeze.

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jphoward
In the field of medicine this is standard, at least in the UK. Many medical
specialties expect you to have a PhD to get a good senior post in a teaching
hospital. To get a good PhD grant you are expected to have a pedigree of
publishing research, and the classic way to do that is join a research group
on your days off/evenings/weekends.

I’m lucky enough to be on a good PhD programme so my 9-5 is now academia, but
in my late 20s a typical weekend and weeknight would involve a couple of hours
of academic writing which I would be doing “for free”. I’d be first or second
author on the papers, but I’d be publishing under the institution of the group
I’d tagged on to.

~~~
r0rbit
I like the idea of a research group. I did not know that the field of medicine
this was a standard practice. Was it not too overwhelming?

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jaq
Thank you for this question. I have been struggling with a deadline for my
dissertation for personal reasons and feel like giving up on the whole thing.
It is unlikely that if I give up on my deadline that I will return to do more
academic work. However, I enjoy researching and want to continue to research
and write. Just a few days ago I asked my husband if he thought it was
reasonable to ignore the deadline and just continue writing my dissertation
for myself. He sent me a link to your question today. :)

~~~
r0rbit
Amazing :). Keep on going, especially for yourself.

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chaoxu
I still publish. I joined an industry lab this June. My day to day function is
highly non-academic, but we can do academic research on the side (we don't
have to).

I intend to keep on researching since research is fun. But writing itself is
not as much fun, so I wonder if I will try to publish as much.

1\. Collaboration. If you look at my publication records, I only have a single
paper where I am the sole author, and I made sure a few very knowledgeable
friends read it. So find someone sharing similar interests and talk to them.
Once a collaboration starts, it is much easier to get going.

2\. Branch out. Recently, I improve algorithms in areas (more applied
operations research) close to mine (theoretical x {computer science,
combinatorial optimization}). This includes 3 of the papers I'm preparing. It
only took a few hours to realize improvements are possible, although it takes
much longer to polish and present. It also leads me to an interesting problem
in my own field.

3\. Giving talks. It is probably much easier to have an opportunity to give
tech talks. Giving the talk itself forces you to organize your thought well. I
often find better ways to organize my writing after I've given the
presentation. (I really should give talks before writing the paper...

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Tharkun
Possibly slightly off topic: not ever having been in academia, how would one
go about "writing a paper"? I assume you start off by researching something
interesting and jotting down your results, but I'm guessing there's a little
more to it than that. Are there any resources that could help one get started
with this?

~~~
sjg007
Yes, you would also read some research papers relevant to your work and cite
them in your paper. So typically intro, hypothesis, experiments, results,
conclusions/next steps.

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hef19898
I did my Masters part-time and really struggled with the writing part, to the
point I took a 7 months sabbatical to finish my thesis. Thus was not just due
to my full-time work but also family, commuting and other things you do. But I
do get why you are missing the research part because it is fun! Hope you find
a way doing both!

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bhritchie
I dropped out of a PhD in philosophy and am now a software developer.
Tinkering with some of my old papers is my main hobby these days. I also have
little kids, so I don't get a lot of time for it, but I'm hoping to have at
least one significant item ready for publication in the next year or so.

~~~
efficax
I'm also an ABD PhD in Philosophy (the clock on that is almost 4 years old now
so there's little chance of me actually writing a thesis at this point) turned
software developer. We failed philosophers turned hackers should form a little
society or something

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efficax
You might be interested in the resources available via the National Coalition
of Independent Scholars: [https://www.ncis.org/national-coalition-independent-
scholars...](https://www.ncis.org/national-coalition-independent-scholars-
ncis)

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realandreskytt
I’ve done a conference paper and had another one accepted. For me, the hardest
is finding good places to publish. Conference levels fluctuate and magazines
carry different weight - this is not necessarily obvious for a bystander.

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tincholio
I do. I was in academia for over 15 years, and exited almost 2 years ago.
Since then I've published quite a few papers, and stayed active in conference
organization / journal editorial activities. Lately, I've slowed down
notoriously, I'm busy enough with my day job.

I think it helps if you have a good group of people to work with, since it
motivates you, and you get good feedback (also helpful if they're still in
academia and can easily register/attend conferences and/or pay open access
fees).

~~~
r0rbit
Why did you decide to exit academia?

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tincholio
Death by a thousand paper cuts. Bad management making bad decisions, funding
getting harder and harder to get, pressure to do contract research (I was at a
large public research institute, not at a uni)... Things were going downhill
quickly and seemingly irreversibly, so I was no longer happy there, and there
were no good alternatives in research where I live.

~~~
r0rbit
Sounds rough :(

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tincholio
It was... but if you do care about science, you can still do it :)

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siscia
In what area you are interested in?

I guess we could create a small "research group"... I would join and give my
contribute.

~~~
r0rbit
I'm thinking about expanding on the ideas of Nicholas Nassim Taleb. For
instance the concept of anti-fragility.

My academic background is in information studies but I'm not married to the
field.

~~~
irchans
That seems really cool!

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DrNuke
If you work in tech at a level high enough, then conferences, white papers,
technical reports and so on are part and parcel of the job. All these
generally coalesce into 1-2 academic-like papers per year for important
journals in your field.

~~~
borroka
Working for a tech company that does research and at a level that is high
enough is no small feat.

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DrNuke
Ok but academic writing serves a purpose, it is the consequence of an
intellectual effort at a level high enough for peer review and actual
progress; you can even do it alone if minded and disciplined enough to bear
the stress, maybe starting from conferences in your field to test waters while
honing your skills. It is not a given that comes with a degree, though, so a
gentle nudge is not enough.

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qualsiasi
I always wondered how you can submit your work for approval and publishing
from outside the academic life. Are there conferences that accept submissions
from someone who is totally unknown?

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therobot24
no interest in pursuing an academic career

while working on my phd my focus was on biometrics where i had a few
publications, but moved onto robotics/autonomy so it took a bit to ramp up in
the domain, but after a few years i'm close to where i was and just submitted
3 papers to ICRA last week

to echo other comments here, there's no way i'd have any output if i wasn't
working with others on these papers

