
How can an average joe publish a scientific breakthrough?  - n00shie
Say I am an average joe and I made a breakthrough scientific discovery. How do I publish the work so that I am taken seriously, and ensure I get proper credit for it?
======
dalke
First, said average joe must know the field, since it's otherwise difficult to
know that something is a breakthrough - it could have been considered and
rejected some decades previous.

Second, use a site like Google Scholar to find similar work in the area, or go
to the library and do the same. This gives average joe an idea of which
journals are relevant to the field.

Third, pick an appropriate journal, go to its web site, and follow its
instructions to the authors when writing the paper. It's a good idea, though
not required, to read some of the recent publications in that journal to get a
sense of its style.

Another concern here is that some papers require a publication fee, and others
don't. Some of the ones which require a fee are also disreputable, and will
publish essentially anything in order to get the fee. See
[http://www.biosciencewriters.com/Selecting-a-Target-
Journal-...](http://www.biosciencewriters.com/Selecting-a-Target-Journal-for-
Your-Scientific-Manuscript.aspx) for more details about how to select a
journal.

Fourth, send in the paper, or as that previous link suggests, send in the
abstract and ask the editor if the journal is interested in a paper of that
sort. The paper (or abstract) submission might be rejected by the editor or
reviewers, in which case it's a matter of picking another journal or improving
the paper based on the comments. Or it might be accepted with some changes
needed, or it might be accepted outright. In which the paper is published.

There are many resources on "how to write a scientific paper", such as
[http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~jw/paper.html](http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~jw/paper.html)
and even a book with the title "How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper",
which you can get from your library either directly or through InterLibrary
Loan.

To increase the chances of recognition, average joe could also do a good job
of making the paper readable and reproducible, with details that are cognizant
of the history of the field and the reasons why the new discovery should be
considered "breakthrough" rather than "novel." Said joe could also attend
relevant meetings and talk with others who are interested in the topic, and
even present that information.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Pretty much that translates to 'don't be an average joe; study to be an actual
scientist'? The emphasis on putting discoveries in the correct orthodox format
is unsettling; would a real discovery be ignored if the report was mis-
formatted? Something is wrong then.

~~~
dalke
I don't understand your comment. Nothing I said requires someone to "study to
be an actual scientist" nor did I emphasize an orthodox style. How did you
infer that? For that matter, how do you define "actual scientist" any
different from "average joe who makes a breakthrough discovery"?

There is certainly a required style - a paper needs an abstract, it needs a
body, and it needs a references section. This is because it fits into a larger
system of use. People read the abstract to get a sense of if the paper is
relevant to their interests. If so, then they might spend the money to get the
rest of the paper, or spend the time needed to fully understand it. People use
the references to get a better sense of the background required to understand
the paper. Only people who fiercely believe they are exceptional (ie, not an
average joe) might think they don't need to include this information.

Another part of the orthodoxy is that it needs to be written in the language
of the journal. Angewandte Chemie only accepts papers in German, so if you
submit a paper in Malay then it's not going to be accepted no matter how good
it is. It also needs to be relevant to the interests of the journal - even if
it's in German, Angewandte Chemie won't publish a paper about low-energy
neutrino detection.

The "instructions to the author" describe these sorts of points. If that is
too much orthodoxy for your hypothetical average joe, then joe will have a
hard time doing anything, which makes joe decidedly not average.

On the other hand, editors will usually bend over backwards to get a seriously
ground-breaking piece published. They just have to be able to understand that
it's 1) ground-breaking, 2) relevant, and 3) likely to be true. Joe's first
step is to convince the editor of that. If no editor can be convinced, then
it's unlikely that other, non-editors will be convinced.

You mentioned "mis-formatting" as a possible hang-up. To start, this means you
haven't read many papers, because I find mis-formattings all the time.

Remember, editors in nearly all cases are working joes who volunteer their
time. As the UNSW link points out "Even sending the [manuscript] back to you,
unread, with a covering note saying "Read the Instructions to authors" takes
time." \- time that the editor would rather spend doing research. The problem
is that editors get a lot of crank submissions and a lot of poorly done
research. These are disproportionately poorly formatted. Editors are human,
and if they see something that looks nothing like a scientific paper, it's
much more likely to trigger the "crank" flag than to be seen as a breakthrough
paper.

There's a balance at work here. A novelist who just wrote the next Great
American Novel, but wrote it using a leaky ball-point pen on tissue paper,
making the result difficult to decipher, will find it harder to publish. Xkcd
#483 points out that the probability of new words created by the author is
inversely proportionally to the probability of the book being good. And so on,
and so on, and so on.

I think one of the points of confusion here is that "ground-breaking" is a
very broad term, almost to the point of uselessness. _Every single published
scientific paper_ is supposed to break new ground. Some find a new sandbox,
others a back yard, others an island, and a very few find a new continent.
Without more information about your hypothetical case, it's impossible if this
is something like "discovered antigravity" or "found a new intermediate of
acetylene catalysis on the Platinum(100) surface", but odds are that it's not
something like the first, so the requirement for convincing people that it's
actually ground-breaking is higher.

For the record, scientists are average joes in just about every measure,
except that they can put some extra letters before or after their name. Don't
get hung up by thinking they are special in any way. Also, editors have no
clue on the background of a new author, and I've seen many papers where the
author has no institutional affiliation, so it's not like they can tell if
someone is/isn't a scientist. "By your words are ye known", to misquote
Matthew. To directly quote George Lundberg, editor of JAMA, after publishing a
paper which included Emily Rosa, a 9 year old, as co-author: "Age doesn't
matter. It's good science that matters, and this is good science".

~~~
JoeAltmaier
My point was the one you just made - "Editors are human, and if they see
something that looks nothing like a scientific paper, it's much more likely to
trigger the "crank" flag than to be seen as a breakthrough paper."

The format is the message to some degree. Lazy editors help perpetuate this as
you suggest.

~~~
dalke
It's been 50 years since McLuhan's "The medium is the message". It's not
really an aspect of laziness, but intrinsic to all communications.

If you are an editor and you receive a 100 page treatise which starts out with
50 pages on the numerology of the Great Seal of the US, 25 pages on the
quality of the author's boogers, and 24 pages tracking the lineage of David
Hasselhoff back to Adam, then are you really "lazy" if you missed the elegant
1 page proof of Fermat's Last Theorem on page 78?

Odds are most editors would reject that paper after reading the first page or
two and leafing through the rest to double-check that it was more of the same
dreck. Yes, I would place the fault more on the author than the editor for
this case. Wouldn't you?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Strawman. Instead suppose you received the letter Tomas Hardy received from a
crank called Ramanujan a century ago. Today mightn't it be dismissed out of
hand? And missed one of the stellar minds of the millennia.

------
CyberFonic
A couple of points:

1\. Even experienced academics / researchers have difficulty in getting
published. Especially if their discovery contradicts any widely accepted
theories.

2\. How do you know that yours is a breakthrough discovery? Have you read up
on all the publications in the relevant field(s)?

3\. As a general rule, anything you write for publication needs to cite the
relevant existing knowledge and then show how your contribution builds upon
that, extends it, etc.

I assume that announcing your discovery is time-critical. Then I would suggest
that you setup a website, that you own and control. Publish the material on
that site. Doing so establishes that time of release and the facts. Then you
could push your material to [http://arxiv.org](http://arxiv.org) \- that might
require some seeking out of connections, but you have protected yourself by
publishing on your website. Finally, submit to Hacker News, Reddit, etc so
that the "news" gets picked up.

If your discovery is a breakthrough you will generate some interest. Of
course, be prepared for the trolls and all those who are protecting the
status-quo.

~~~
dalke
Hmm. I've seen that it's pretty easy to get published. What's difficult for
experienced academics / researchers is that they want to get published in
journals with a high prestige rate. This is used as a proxy for one's "impact"
on the field, with effects on one's standing in a department, pay grade,
career advancement, etc.

Other than that quibble, I agree with your points.

~~~
CyberFonic
As you say in your reply to the question, there are many journals who will
publish almost anything just to get paid. We have all heard about the
gibberish papers that get publish in Nature, etc.

Even for the average joe, publishing their findings in such a journal will
very likely trigger the "crank" flag and thus erode any credibility.

~~~
dalke
You're right. I was thinking more about priority, and forgot the original
question also included "taken seriously."

------
allworknoplay
I think Schneier's "Memo to the Amateur Cipher Designer"
([https://www.schneier.com/crypto-
gram-9810.html#cipherdesign](https://www.schneier.com/crypto-
gram-9810.html#cipherdesign)) is relevant to most fields.

In it he forcefully makes the case that unless you really understand all the
science at hand you can't possibly expect that you've actually invented
anything worthwhile. He also lays out how you can make a credible case for
your breakthrough -- it's hard, but if you do it clearly you'll be able to get
someone's attention.

------
RollAHardSix
Yes.

Example: "A scientific experiment performed by a high school student, later
published in The Journal of Medical Toxicology, suggested that a domestic
electric iron at its hottest setting (at least 400 °F (204 °C)) used for at
least 5 minutes should destroy all anthrax spores in a common postal
envelope". - From wikipedia. Source contained within the article.

Now did this student probably have help with a formal publication? Most
likely. But the answer to your question is yes.

------
scaramanga
The same way all scientists do.

Except when you submit to the journal just put "No affiliation" in the
institution field.

~~~
CyberFonic
Helps to select journals that do double-blind reviews. Eliminates possible
bias against non-affiliated submissions.

------
JSeymourATL
A trick Tim Ferriss (4HWW) employed was to befriend very specific bloggers and
targeted authors who frequently wrote about aligned subject matter. He would
very causally offer to share tidbits of what he was working on, sensing it
would pique their interests. Steadily he was able to build buzz and street-
cred via a non-traditional route. Quite brilliant strategy actually.

~~~
CyberFonic
Your idea can be equally applied to academics. As suggested elsewhere in the
replies, you could identify academics who are already working in the relevant
field by doing a bit of background reading. Then use carefully use the Tim
Ferriss trick.

Academic institutions are, generally, keen to be seen to be collaborating with
industry. So if said joe can work that angle there might even be collaborative
research grants available to the cooperating institution.

As mentioned in my reply, it might be prudent to establish priority by self-
publishing on average-joe.com and a reputable internet scientific archive like
ArXiv. Doing so mitigates the risk of somebody else claiming the discovery as
their own.

------
chrisBob
You could also start by contacting a professor that does research in the
field. Not all of them would be interested in helping, but I think my advisor
would entertain the idea if someone off the street approached him with
something interesting. Having a second author that is respected can go a long
way to getting a paper published and recognized by a wider audience.

------
ig1
In a respected academic journal in the field.

