Ask HN: How do you publish your work when you're not in academia? - kevindeasis
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achuwilson
I would like to share my experience on publishing my work in a top-tier IEEE
journal, without any connections with academia. I have been working in
industry and is considering shifting to academic research career. But the lack
of publications made my chances very low. So I took up a research project, did
research on it during "after the job hours". Once I was satisfied with the
results, I created an account on IEEE paperplaza, wrote the paper as per the
standards set by the journal and submitted. After five months of review, the
paper got accepted. You can read more of my story here
[https://achuwilson.github.io/blog/2016/09/how_i_wrote_resear...](https://achuwilson.github.io/blog/2016/09/how_i_wrote_research_paper_in_30_days/)

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mindcrime
If you're talking about journals, my understanding is that most journals don't
have any hard requirement that you be associated with an academic institution
to be published. You see, for example, researchers from corporate research
groups get published on occasion. Now, the bar to get in might be a bit
higher, since that academic affiliation is probably perceived (rightly or
wrongly) as having some signaling value. But if you have some sufficiently
interesting results and a well-written paper, I would think you could get it
published.

This is probably even more true if you're not _too_ picky about what journal
you get published in. Getting in _Nature_ is tough for anybody, but there are
plenty of less prestigious journals that probably have less restrictive
editorial policies.

And if you don't necessarily care about being _published_ in the strictest
technical sense, but just want to get your material "out there" then you can
probably submit to arXiv (or BioRXiv or ChemRXiv or whatever pre-print server
is relevant to your field), and/or write it up on a blog and submit the link
to relevant sub-reddits, HN, etc., etc.

~~~
unlikelymordant
You need a educational institution affiliation to publish on arxiv as far as I
know.

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mindcrime
I may be wrong, but that is different from my understanding. I was under the
impression that anybody could post to arxiv, with the caveat that depending on
the subject area and other factors, you might need an "endorsement" from
another arXiv user first. All of that said, while I have an arXiv account,
I've never tried to post anything.

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drallison
One approach is to publish in one of the archives. For example,
[http://www.arXiv.org](http://www.arXiv.org) or [http://hal.archives-
ouvertes.fr](http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr). These are not truly archival
publications, but they are where the action is these days. Another approach--
join a technical society (e.g., the Association for Computing Machinery or the
IEEE) and submit papers for publication to their archival journals. You can
publish small short papers at various blogging sites. For example,
[http://www.medium.com](http://www.medium.com), which has become very popular
as of late as a browse of HN will verify.

No result is real until it has been published.

~~~
rerx
Note that if you are not associated to a renowned academic institution, the
Arxiv will require someone to endorse you before you can post articles.

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danso
On a blog. See iquantny.tumblr.com as a great example.
[http://iquantny.tumblr.com/post/144197004989/the-nypd-was-
sy...](http://iquantny.tumblr.com/post/144197004989/the-nypd-was-
systematically-ticketing-legally)

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quickben
I was wondering about the same. I think you just apply to a conference with
your research paper following it's standards. Again, it may depend on the
conference and the field.

But then again, if it's something genuinely new and well done(i.e. not a new
way how to tweet if your plant is thirsty) I doubt anybody would refuse to
publish the paper.

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joeclark77
Idea #1: Just submit the paper normally and hope for the best.

Idea #2: Write your work as a book or pamphlet and publish it as an e-book,
for example on LeanPub.

Idea #3: Do a favor for a pal in academia and let him co-author the paper with
you. It helps him with his tenure/promotion progress, and with his experience
he may be able to help you prepare the work to go through peer review.

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DrNuke
Good conferences may do peer review for free and act as gatekeepers for
sneaking in as an independent influencer.

