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Best Way To Publish an "Indie" Research Paper?
alexmipego writes "I'm a developer, and a few months ago while working on a common geodesic problem (distance between two GPS points) I started to research a new algorithm that greatly improves the performance over existing algorithms. After relearning a lot of math I'm now fairly close to the final algorithm, after which I'll run extensive benchmarks comparing my algorithm with the most commonly used ones. After spending so much time on this, and if the final results are positive, I feel that simply posting this type of work on a blog might not be the best option, so I'm looking into something more formal, like a research paper. I've no experience on those, have not even read a complete one, so my first question is what resources do you recommend to learn how to write one? And even after I write it, I can't expect to be published by Science or other high-profile publications. So where should I send it to make it known by people in the respective fields and be taken seriously?"
You've taken out the patent already right?
I know I'm going to catch some hell for this, but if you have the money to do it why not look into patenting it if it's really something that's groundbreaking?
Said professor also has navigated precisely the same waters you're asking complete strangers for advice on, and presumably is somebody you trust. They will likely appreciate your work, teach you how to turn it into proper research, and critique it so you fix any glaring flaws.
Oh, and be prepared for that professor, or the conference or journal you submit to, to promptly inform you that your idea is nothing new and that very smart people have either worked out this idea before you or have demonstrated conclusively why it doesn't work.
I am officially gone from
You said you have never read a research paper, so how do you know you've not discovered an algorithm that has already been discovered?
Even if your algorithm is original, then you would be expected to cite relevant work in the field and know where your algorithm fits in.
In either case you probably need to start reading before you start writing.
I've no experience on [research papers], not even read a complete one
Then you will likely have a hard time writing a legitimate paper. A key aspect of most papers is a comparison of your work to work previously published. You need to establish how yours is novel. Without ever reading any other articles, I doubt you'll be able to do that successfully. Of course you'd need to do this to get a patent as well if you go the route others seem to be suggesting.
if this is really just a math algorithm, you can't really patent it. If it is a software 'process', then you are good. Hire an attorney and get some pro advice before you go any further.
Also, you might do some research before submission to see if you haven't just discovered something that people have know about for the last 200 years, but you haven't talked to the right math professor to know about.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Yeah, well, be as well prepared for editors of respected journals, even editors with vast academic background, to reject your paper before even passing it to peer review, for the silliest reasons. Some of the most innovative, creative papers have been rejected before peer review. Papers with some of the dumbest, most glaring mistakes, have been accepted after peer review, by respected journals.
IOW: it's actually a lottery. I've read a book on how to get your paper published. On the cover of that book there is an illustration of two dies. Now what does that tell you?
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
If you want to publish in a high profile journal do not shoot yourself in the foot by posting it to any abstract service before submitting and being published in said journal. Generally speaking the high impact journals want their journal to be the breaking news source not arxiv nor do they want old news.
Came here to say precisely this. No one here wants to say anything discouraging, even though it's the elephant in the room. My advice would be to survey the literature before you go to the trouble of writing an academic paper, which is 100% certain to be rejected by everybody if you don't show a good grasp of existing work in the field. Also, remember that peer review is an essential step in getting a paper accepted, so do a little of that yourself before submitting it (if you trust anyone not to steal your idea, that is).
Realistically, it's about 99.9% certain that your algorithm isn't the big advance that you think it is. But one in a thousand is worth the effort, for sure.
First of all, the haversine algorithm only requires five trig calls (two sines, two cosines, and one arctangent), so I'm already a bit skeptical about your work. Look, if what you're doing amounts to some math and replacing trig calls with something faster... that's not new. That sounds like standard code optimization stuff which people have done for longer than computers have even existed. A good, speed-oriented compiler is going to use lookup tables for those trig calls anyway. Have you even compared techniques using a commercial compiler (no, gcc is not good enough) with aggressive optimization flags?