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Ask HN: How to Publish on Your Own?

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Re: Ask HN: How to Publish on Your Own?

#21

Post by chrisseaton »

tlb wrote: post #2

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 wor…

> No university affiliation is required by arXiv

No university affiliation is required, but you are required to 'belong to the scientific community', and to prove that you will need someone to vouch for you and your work.

It's actually a higher bar of entry for arXiv than it is conferences and journals!

Re: Ask HN: How to Publish on Your Own?

#22

Post by [deleted] »

gatherhunterer wrote: post #7

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 t…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: How to Publish on Your Own?

#23

Post by [deleted] »

FullMetalJason wrote: post #9
gus_massa wrote: post #6

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…

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 except…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: How to Publish on Your Own?

#24

Post by robinhoode »

chatmasta wrote: post #4
FullMetalJason wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

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 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.

Re: Ask HN: How to Publish on Your Own?

#25

Post by 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.

Re: Ask HN: How to Publish on Your Own?

#26

Post by peterhj »

roel_v wrote: post #18
FullMetalJason wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Your self-published paper on arXiv is not going to get great (lots of) citations. Being a sole basement genius yet doing work that will be noticed by mainstream academia doesn't exist (any more). Even for grad students it's hard finding subjects and angles om them that are publishable.

One counterexample: https://arxiv.org/abs/1509.09308v1

Re: Ask HN: How to Publish on Your Own?

#27

Post by FullMetalJason »

sytelus wrote: post #16

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…

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!

Re: Ask HN: How to Publish on Your Own?

#28

Post by FullMetalJason »

somada141 wrote: post #25

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').…

Makes sense. Thanks :)

Re: Ask HN: How to Publish on Your Own?

#29

Post by FullMetalJason »

biofox wrote: post #13

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…

Definitely :) Thanks!
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