
Ask HN: Is it possible to publish research work in CS without any affiliation? - ghoshbishakh
I am a CS undergrad student from India and I would love to continue with academics&#x2F;research. But getting into top institutes in India requires high percentiles in competitive exams which are not my cup of tea.
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kubrickslair
I was in a similar boat as you many years back. Did not get CS at the older
IITs, I was too interested in coding and entrepreneurship to be super involved
in JEE.

I persisted and got an internship at a top CS place in India. Ended up
publishing more research than most PhD students in just a year. And got
admitted to all top 5 CS programs I applied to. Was advised by a very well
known professor in grad school and even published with one of the grandfathers
of machine learning.

I now mentor several undergrads who are going through the same phase. I think
just partnering with the right professor helps. Having a vision helps. Most
research students just blindly follow whatever the professor tells them to do.
Being able to think independently really helps; most of my classmates who
ended as Professors still crave for such students. And find it hard to
encounter such folks.

To repeat, independence and persistence. You will make it. Good luck!

------
aecs99
You surely can, but it _could_ be very difficult.

Publishing research without any affiliation _could_ be difficult because of
various reasons beyond your control. Having an advisor or a team can
significantly boost your publication quality. Think in terms of how quickly
you can validate your ideas, get proper feedback while preparing the
publication, and get proper visibility for your work.

Keep in mind that several large tech-companies (e.g., Google, Facebook, Yahoo,
IBM, Xerox, etc.) look for research engineers, or software engineers that work
with research teams. You could start looking for such jobs and collaborate
with teams/team members that publish their work at top journals/conferences.
Such teams tend to be highly selective, but that is definitely something
different from taking competitive exams. You'll probably have to create a
strong portfolio to indicate that you can "independently" conduct research
(e.g., showcasing some novel ideas on your website, sharing implementations on
GitHub, listing your contributions to open-source projects, etc.).

Another option is to look for any research associate positions with
labs/professors.

------
mhandley
I'm a CS professor, so I've a fair bit of experience publishing research. A
few things to think about:

It's easy to publish research, but the first lesson is that the places it's
easy to publish in, no-one will read your research. I was one of the authors
of DHTs back in 2001. That paper has clocked up nearly 10000 citations over 16
years. That's a 16 year mean of around 2 citations per day, and that's just
one paper! It should be clear that the total number of CS papers published is
huge. It's likely that many of those papers will almost never be read. If you
want your research to have any influence on people you need to publish in
places that are not easy to publish in.

The second lesson is that the hardest part of doing good research is coming up
with a good problem. There are three parts to a good problem: it must be
solvable with the resources you have, it must not have already been solved
well enough, and people must care if you succeed in solving it. I see people
fail on all these three, but especially the third. "Make something people
want" applies to research as much as to startups. Knowing what will be a good
problem is hard without people around you to guide your problem taste, and
even then it's hard. Rejection letters from conferences and journals rarely
say the biggest problem with your work was that it wasn't interesting; you
have to read between the lines if this is what the feedback should have been.

Most people think that the hardest part of research is coming up with a good
solution, but usually this ends up being the easiest part. If you find a novel
question and really understand it well, solutions tend to present themselves.

The third lesson is that evaluation is hard. Usually harder than coming up
with a good solution. I've never yet met a new PhD student who could devise a
good experiment plan, and properly interpret the results. It's just not
something that is taught properly in schools or at the undergrad level. It's
all too easy to evaluate what you _can_ evaluate, not what you _should_
evaluate, or to only run experiments to confirm what you think you already
know. You should be looking hard to convince yourself that you're wrong (you
often will be), and only when you've failed to convince yourself you're wrong,
will you have a convincing evaluation. Good PhD students eventually learn how
to do this, mostly by osmosis from their advisor. Some fail to learn this even
then. As an independent researcher not surrounded by people asking critical
questions, you'll likely struggle on this part.

------
f_allwein
In my field (social science) you do a PhD in order to learn research methods
and familiarize yourself with the literature you are going to relate to in
your research. Without this background, it would be virtually impossible to
get punished in a big journal.

If you are serious about research, you should do a research Masters / PhD
somewhere. What if you join a non-top university? Or can you work on your exam
skills? Many universities offer support with that.

~~~
katnegermis
_Please_ let it be intentional that you wrote punished! It conveys the feeling
of publishing so well.

~~~
f_allwein
Haha, Freudian slip thanks to Swype... but I'll keep it there.

------
gphilip
I can speak of theoretical computer science: if you have work that is worth
publishing (as evaluated by your peers), then yes, it is possible to publish
without any affiliation. I would be _very_ surprised if a good result is
rejected just because the author is not affiliated.

(Indeed, it is possible to get published even if you have _negative_
affiliation; see:
[http://insa.nic.in/writereaddata/UpLoadedFiles/IJPAM/20005a2...](http://insa.nic.in/writereaddata/UpLoadedFiles/IJPAM/20005a23_643.pdf)
)

The operative word in the first sentence above is "if". In my opinion, unless
you are in the Ramanujan or Erdős class, then it is highly unlikely that you
come up with a publishable manuscript on your own. Briefly put: you need a lot
of "context" to be able to do publishable work, and you are unlikely to get
this context unless you interact with the research community.

~~~
ewjordan
The corollary to this: most correct work is not worth publishing. And most
people bitter over their work not being accepted were not rejected because
their work was incorrect, but because it was not notable. So at the end of the
day, it's all a popularity contest, and that's what you're really engaging in.

------
SamReidHughes
Yes. Previously:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=616143](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=616143)

------
JohnStrange
It is always possible to publish without affiliation, but I'd recommend you
try and "get" some affiliation nevertheless. Many universities have interest
groups, reading groups, loose projects, etc., that in principle anyone can
join, and in most cases all you need is one project leader or professor
interested in your publications who allows you to mention the affiliation. For
instance, at our institute we have the status of a collaborating member, which
includes anyone from the outside who works together with someone from the
institute on a project. There are restrictions of our funding agencies of what
we can count as a publication _of our institute_ , of course, for that you
need to be an integrated member, but that's another issue.

At least that's how it works in many places in Europe, I imagine some places
in the US have stricter conditions, especially the top universities. Anyway,
contact some people at universities and see if they are interested. That's my
advice - assuming that your planned research and publications are of high
quality. If not, you're going to have a hard time convincing anyone, of
course.

------
sytelus
First, please understand that publishing a research paper is not an easy task
(at least at reputable venues). I'm writing this mainly because lot of
undergrads have this feeling that they are someone special endowed with some
magical capacity to envision beautiful ideas that no one else has thought
about. Many of them tend to think that they don't need to study prior art, do
advanced studies or be upto date with any recent works. It seems to me that
some of this thinking in young students have developed thanks to constant
onslaught of movies like Harry Potter, Lord of the Ring or even Star Wars
where main character is great just because they were born _that way_ and they
don't need to put in any work to get there. They are just destined to be
great. They are the chosen ones to crack the hardest problems and save the
world :). This is then further re-enforced by stories of Faraday and Edison
who did not had PhDs and ended up doing great discoveries. The world has
changed big time since then!

Typically these days to publish research paper at reputable venue requires
_lot_ of work. Count in 10-12 hour per day for 3-6 months per paper + lot of
luck + competatnt collaborator(s). You will most definitely need to be
intimately familiar with everything that has been going on in the field.
Design experiments to prove how you compare to others. If you are doing
research, you won't have time for anything else. It's a full time job, not a
weekend hobby. If you don't know what were the major paper came out during
last 3 months then it means you are not quite ready. If you can't name the 20
people who have published significant work during last 20 years in your field
then you are quite possibly not ready. If you haven't been reading at least 1
paper a week (or if you are reading but have no clue what's going on) then you
have quite some way to go.

So to summarize, being a researcher is a full time job of _reading_ research
papers with some occasional bouts of _writing_ your own papers. In today's
complexity levels, it would be very hard to do significant novel work without
any collaborations at all (ala Einstein 1905). More importantly you need other
eyes to enhance content and/or fix issues. The best way for undergrads to
write papers is to get enrolled in Masters and then to PhD. There is almost no
escape from this requirement and people who tend to think that there is
another way would usually tend to regret it if research is what they really
wanted to do all along.

~~~
anon1253
Not to mention that the review cycle can take /years/. I've published a paper
that was under various stages of review for a year and a half at JAMIA. And,
that's actually kinda short. Be prepared to let go, revisit, refine, redefine,
etc for potentially a very long time. Often it's not a deal of submit, revise,
accepted. It takes time. A lot of it.

~~~
tom_mellior
> Not to mention that the review cycle can take /years/.

In journals, yes. In conferences, you get your review within two months or so,
and the decision is final (modulo a two-week author response period in some
venues).

------
fooker
You can, because reviews in any reputed conference are anonymous. You will not
be able to get travel support funds though. That step assumes you have an
academic apparatus behind you.

What are you interested in? Can you demonstrate expertise in that field? If
you can, just email a professor. Most of them, at least the young ones, will
be happy to collaborate.

------
PeterisP
If you have made decent publishable research, then sure, publishing without
affiliation isn't a problem.

Making decent, publishable research is the difficult part though, and this is
where academic institutions are very useful - both in doing the actual
research, and also in getting funding for the (many!) weeks you'll need to do
this.

------
ChuckMcM
Are papers not published by the 'lesser' institutes?

I ask because you state that you can't test at the highest levels and so won't
get into a 'top institute' but are you concerned you would not get into any
graduate programs?

I ask because while the source institution might get you in front of the
review committee more often, it is the quality of the work (in the ideal
situation I know) that gets you into the journal. You can also publish papers
as an undergrad with your adviser's support in the US, is that not true in
India?

~~~
gphilip
> You can also publish papers as an undergrad with your adviser's support in
> the US, is that not true in India?

It is just as true in India as it is in the US.

And: while it definitely helps if your college/department/advisor is there to
lend you support, such support is not a prerequisite for getting published.

~~~
ghoshbishakh
Yes as an undergrad I have 3 publications till now (in 3 years) in India.
Still other institutes in India won't care how many publications I have when I
am applying.

~~~
gphilip
Here is one thing you could try:

1\. Identify research scientists (e.g: in Google/IBM/Microsoft/... research
labs) and professors (in institutes/universities) that you would like to work
with.

2\. Write to them directly, attaching your publications and requesting an
internship.

Depending on how your publications are perceived, there is a good chance that
at least a few will choose to engage with you.

Indian institutes funded by taxpayer money are required to follow a prescribed
set of rules for selecting PhD candidates, in the interest of ensuring
fairness, preventing nepotism, etc. . The competitive exams that you seem to
loathe are part of this process, and professors can do nothing about this.

They have much more leeway in choosing interns, though. The rest follows as
per kubrickslair's recipe.

------
raincom
Publish it on arXiv.org or ECCC (Electronic Colloquium on Computational
Complexity). Then, check whatever you have published on arXiv is novel, then
submit to a 2nd/3rd tier conference.

~~~
lorenzhs
That order is no good. You’d want to check what other people have done in that
area _before_ you spend weeks figuring out the details of your idea, let alone
produce a decent paper and publish on the arxiv. Not to mention that the arxiv
is for _preprints_ , not half-baked ideas.

Step 3 is absolutely correct.

~~~
cosenal
I agree that the order of Step 1 and 2 should be reverted, but how is Step 3
absolutely correct? The tier of the conference you should submit to depends on
the content of the paper, not on the author/affiliation.

~~~
lorenzhs
I don't think anybody's first paper will be accepted at a tier 1 conference.
It takes practice to learn how to write a paper, not just in style but also
the substance. In academia, your supervisors will typically help/guide you.
It's going to be much harder on your own without any experience.

------
netzone
Honestly, the easiest way to get involved is, similarly to open source
contributing, I think, is to build upon someone elses work. Find a paper you
like and think you can use as a base for something. Then when you've done,
publish it and contact the writer of the paper you used as a base. If you're
lucky, you'll get some important feedback from him.

------
megaman22
Sure, got a blog?

There are some very high quality resources out there hosted on WordPress or
home-grown websites. Maybe not the same level as prestige as a published
journal, but of all subjects, CS is less steeped in credentialism than most.

------
jupiter90000
Do you mean doing academics and research on your own time outside of a job? Is
it for fun or do you have some goal to accomplish in mind? I ask because
getting published might be relatively easy to do. However whatever you publish
may get lost in the million plus papers that get published each year. Perhaps
there are more effective ways to let others know about your important ideas?

------
qrv3w
You can apply to the Ronin Institute [1] which helps people in exactly your
situation. They allow you to be affiliated with their "institution" and also
provide some support for access to publications.

[1]: [http://ronininstitute.org/faq/](http://ronininstitute.org/faq/)

~~~
tom_mellior
That looks interesting, but somehow I can only find information on how to to
give them money, not how to receive it. How _do_ you apply?

------
sacinsq
openAI does have some public research problems they want people to work on.

[https://openai.com/requests-for-research/](https://openai.com/requests-for-
research/)

As with anything , you will need to give it time and learn all the
dependencies to be able to do some quality research. They also have a gitter
page where you can talk to like minded people .

As far as competitive exams are considered , i would highly recommend you go
through the drill. 1\. These are human artifacts of judging your credibility
2\. The science you actually learn can be mind expanding . 3\. Life is mostly
about the people you surround yourself with. You shall be able to meet peers
that may have similar interests.

Further, having gone through the education system myself I would congratulate
you on the belief that you can achieve anything if you set your mind to it .

------
fsloth
If it's love of the art that drives you then nothing really can stop you from
doing what you want.

If you want academic prestige, on the other hand, you really need
collaborators and mentors who can spar you and introduce you to the community
and its culture.

------
CyberFonic
Doing research and getting it published requires you to show how you have
built-upon the work of researchers who came before you. In order to get to
that point you have to read and understand a huge body of work. Much of that
material is behind paywalls which are expensive to access unless you are
enrolled as a research student at a university that subscribes to those
journals. As a minimum you would need access to ACM, IEEE and Springer-Verlang
conference papers and journals.

People without the depth of knowledge often "re-discover" stuff that has been
documented a decade or so ago. So if you were to submit such material to any
respected journal it will be rejected during the peer review.

As for calling yourself an academic, you would need to be part of some
academic institution in order to do that. Passing exams as an undergraduate is
the first of many hurdles.

~~~
laichzeit0
Sci-hub.cc

Libgen.io

scholar.google.com

What is missing from these three resources that would prevent anyone from
doing a literature survey of Ph.D standard in any research area related to
Computer Science?

------
kapauldo
The lack of affiliation is less of an obstacle than being an undergrad. I'm 48
with a phd in cs, my advice is spend your energy elsewhere.

------
Ice_cream_suit
Try one of the IITs in India. They have a reputation for excellence and and
for quality research.

~~~
ghoshbishakh
Sure, and most of them require a huge GATE score. Even if as an undergrad I
have several top tier conference publications, IITs won't even consider me
without a very very high GATE score.

~~~
govg
No, this is not strictly true.

a) I think you're underestimating how tough it is to actually publish at top
tier conferences. Professors at the IITs rarely get more than a few a year.

b) There are MS programs that are typically not as big on GATE score. In fact,
at places like IIITH you don't even need a GATE score, you can talk to the
professors involved and he/she can accept you as a graduate student.

c) If you did publish at even national level conferences, you can talk to
professors from the IITs who will show up there to present their work. They
can put in a word with the admissions head, and get you admitted if you really
wish it.

Source : I study at one of the older IITs, and have seen it happen where a
professor is impressed with students who have interned with him, and ask them
to join the graduate program.

------
pizza
facetious answer: yes, due to computational trinitarianism! All you need to do
is convert your proof from a logical form into an executable, type-checked and
fully verified program - that should get you around the academic clout pre-
reqs.. people love to use hobbyist-made software alll the time, but they
equally hate to even look at hobbyist research :P /s

------
dogma1138
Possible but exposure would be a problem that said that is true for most
affiliated research also, most papers are only read by their reviewers and
authors and given what we know about the peer review process even the reviewer
part is in question.

If you have good research the best way to get it published is honestly through
talks, register for local or international conventions as a speaker and make a
talk out of your paper. It the talk picks up so will your paper.

On the other hand you can always “pay” to promote your research there are
companies that connect popular media outlets with researchers.

------
zo7
I feel it's pretty arrogant to think that you can contribute to research
entirely on your own. You really need to be around other researchers who are
smarter and more experienced than you to share ideas with and learn from, you
simply do not have the insight needed to make progress in your field on your
own. If you were that wunderkind who could do it, you honestly wouldn't be
asking.

If you truly want to get into research, grad school should sound like a dream
(at any school with a decent program, not just top schools). You'd be
surrounded by likeminded people, get to do crazy science stuff all day, and
you'd push the frontier of knowledge a little bit. It's really the best and
most effective way to immerse yourself in the material and become a good
researcher.

~~~
rifung
> If you truly want to get into research, grad school should sound like a
> dream (at any school with a decent program, not just top schools). You'd be
> surrounded by likeminded people, get to do crazy science stuff all day, and
> you'd push the frontier of knowledge a little bit. It's really the best and
> most effective way to immerse yourself in the material and become a good
> researcher.

Are you speaking from experience? It honestly sounded like a dream to me but
many who have gone have said that many parts of it really suck because you
have to do a lot of things besides research.

~~~
slavik81
Grad students usually teach so that they are paid, but you're not required to.
Classes are required in my program, but only a handful. Your mileage may vary
by university.

~~~
rifung
What about things like applying for grants though?

