
Ask HN: How to Publish on Your Own? - FullMetalJason
Looking for guidelines to self-publish in various journals&#x2F;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&#x27;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):<p>1. How to choose journals&#x2F;conferences to publish?
2. Do top publications prefer submissions from universities only? (What&#x27;s the ground reality here?)
3. Any blogs&#x2F;articles explaining in detail about this?
4. Would Arxiv let me publish without associating myself with a university?
======
tlb
No university affiliation is required by arXiv or any other journal I know of.
You should put some affiliation, but it can be your own thing like _Full Metal
Jason Labs_.

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..."

~~~
FullMetalJason
Thank you for the pointers. How do PhD admissions look at self-publications?
What are your thoughts on below two situations evaluated by the admissions
committee at a good university(say MIT/Caltech)?

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)

~~~
chatmasta
It's definitely better to have a strong LOR from a PI, even moreso from a PI
at the school to which you're applying. "No great LORs but self-publishing"
can be shortened to "no great LORs."

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.

~~~
robinhoode
> You could self-publish and use it as an "in" to working for a PI over the
> summer

This. Publishing is not an end onto itself. Think of it as a chance to get
your foot in the door of the research community.

------
somada141
I can tell you from experience that academia is as cliquey as it gets.
Depending on the field even having a good university affiliation may not see
you getting through the submission and review process if you don't have one of
the clique-members as a co-author. Reviewers will often find a reason to
reject your submission (it's all too easy citing 'insufficient validation' or
characterising the topic as 'outlandish').

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.

~~~
FullMetalJason
Makes sense. Thanks :)

------
sytelus
World has changed quite a lot since 1905, my friend. Today, research is not
done in silo and publishing new works typically requires significant
understanding and knowledge about previous works and collaborators (unless you
are doing pure math but even then...). If you are writing research paper in
CS, you should have extensive citations in your paper. Top tier CS/ML
conferences have typical acceptance rate of 25% or less. The 75% of the papers
they reject often have nothing technically wrong with it except minor
negligence like missing citations, not enough experiments, missing some
baseline, not having confidence intervals in metrics and so on. It is being
said that experienced reviewers often can tell you with high accuracy whether
paper would be accepted or rejected in about 60 seconds because rejected
papers usually has some signs of inexperience of author reflected in structure
and presentation. Choosing right conferences is also extremely important
because today’s conferences are very focused on specific topic and style. If
you go bit off and you face rejection regardless of content of your paper
merry because area chair and reviewers would say they are not confident.
Typically you should know who has done related work in the field and which are
the related papers in past 5 years at least. You should have at least one of
those people as your co-author. This is needed because today’s research
publications need very specific format, structure, target venue and you need
someone to guide and review your work. It’s not just about correctness or
achieving some great thing, you also need to compare your work with previous
work using experiments and precisely layout pro and cons. Typically this is
done by you being PhD student and your advisor helping you to navigate the
space. Even with 2 or 3 experienced co-authors, typically writing good paper
might take couple of weeks of brainstorming about presentation, content, back
and forth, rewriting, rephrasing and re-reviewing. I don’t want to discourage
you but if you have to ask these questions, most likely you are no where close
to publishing your work. Publishing on arxive is pointless because it is
considered non-peer reviewed and it would rarely get you any audience. I would
suggest to look up ACM conferences in your field (IEEE is another option but I
don’t like them).

~~~
FullMetalJason
No problem at all :) Thanks a lot for the info. I am actually looking for such
realistic views about things to set a clear perspective on how to proceed
forward. Will definitely look into that!

------
gus_massa
A clerk sitting in a patent office with a PhD or without a PhD?

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.

~~~
FullMetalJason
Thanks! I have Masters in CS from a state uni(Have a thesis in Machine
learning). Been in industry(FAANG) for 2 years as an ML engineer(I know that's
not a great track to be in for research). But I am very much interested in
getting into core research teams like FAIR / Google Research as a Research
Scientist(trust me when I say that the teams set the bar very clearly with an
entry minimum of phd though you are exceptional as an ML engineer and they are
highly attached to certain unis too. That's reality). I am not in the 99th
percentile with my grades though(3.5/4.0). I understand that's also an
important factor with admissions. So I am working on boosting my profile up
with some good pubs. Pointers?

~~~
Theodores
A friend in scientific publishing tells me that China is in on the game.

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'.

------
biofox
I'd recommend starting by looking at the literature of the area you want to
publish in. Familiarise yourself with the main journals, and try to get a feel
for the customs of the field.

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.

~~~
FullMetalJason
Definitely :) Thanks!

------
DoreenMichele
This is not snark: You can self publish to your heart's content via blog.

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.

------
Jhsto
1\. I find conferences on
[https://edas.info/rssConferences.php](https://edas.info/rssConferences.php)
and then use my country's national ranking lists to figure out whether it's a
good one
[https://www.tsv.fi/julkaisufoorumi/haku.php?lang=en](https://www.tsv.fi/julkaisufoorumi/haku.php?lang=en),
here, a score of 1 or better is worth submitting to.

2\. I don't think "top publications" like found in
[http://csrankings.org/](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.

~~~
FullMetalJason
That helps! Thanks :)

------
achuwilson
I would like to share my experience on publishing my work in a top-tier
conference, 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
[http://achuwilson.github.io/blog/2016/09/how_i_wrote_researc...](http://achuwilson.github.io/blog/2016/09/how_i_wrote_research_paper_in_30_days/)

~~~
FullMetalJason
Thanks for the share! So you got a phd admit?

------
gatherhunterer
[https://arxiv.org/help/submit](https://arxiv.org/help/submit)

It looks like registering for Arxiv involves naming your institution but it is
not described as a strict requirement. Why not give it a shot? Take a direct
approach. Try to mimic the tone they are used to and be respectful, acting
like you belong can go a long way. I imagine that existing work would be
valued over soft qualifications. If you have work that belongs there I can’t
see why they would turn you away. Try the same thing with other publishers
that interest you.

~~~
FullMetalJason
I guess that's one way to move forward :) Thanks! Will give that a shot then.

