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?"

Comments

"PhD" is an expert on meta-knowledge in a field

[peter303]

A PhD is expert not only on the topic s/he has researched and published, but the techniques of science in general, and meta-knowledge in a field. A masters graduate knows some of the advanced domain knowledge but not all the hoops-and-barrels in building it. Metaknowledge includes:

• history of the field, i.e. things already done and who did them
• big problems remaining in a field, i.e. too big to do in the near future
• doable problems or chunks of problem in a field on several month to several year timescale
• experimental procedures in a field, including computer work
• important professional societies and journals in a field
• formats of oral and written presentations in a field

Much of this meta-knowledge is not written down. Instead its learned by apprenticeships to experts, research groups and professors. And watching examples of what they do and imitate them. Generally, successfully publishing three times constitutes a PhD. Behind such there could be several failed projects, because they were wrong, or too small, or too big.