I think i’ve discovered something important in the field I dabble in as a advanced hobbyist. Like this was a breakthrough and perspective shift enough for me to stay awake all night into the morning until I had to go to sleep testing it works and boilerplating the abstract paper. I constructed a theoretical framework, practical implementation, and statistically analyzed experimental results across numerous test cases. I then put my findings into as good a technical paper as I could write up. I did as much research as I could to make sure nobody else had written about this before.
At this point though I don’t really know how to proceed. Im an outsider systems engineer not an academic, and arXiv requires you be endorsed/recognized as a member of the scientific community with like a college email or written recommendation by someone already known. Then whenever I look at the papers on arxiv they always look a very specific way I cant get with libreoffice writer. Theres apparently a whole bunch of rules on formatting and font and style and this and that. Its overwhelming and kind of scary.
So. What do i do here? I have something I think is important enough to get off my ass and get in touch with a local college to maybe get a recommendation. I’d like to have my name in the community and contribute.
I’ll start off by noting that papers on the arxiv aren’t published, they are generally preprints of papers that the author intends to publish in a journal elsewhere. (Sometimes this doesn’t happen and the arxiv is as far as they get).
The arxiv does have some rules to get a paper posted but they are only intended to prevent spam and complete gibberish.
arXiv requires you be endorsed/recognized as a member of the scientific community with like a college email or written recommendation by someone already known.
This is true - though just having a college/university email address is enough to meet the requirement.
Then whenever I look at the papers on arxiv they always look a very specific way I cant get with libreoffice writer. Theres apparently a whole bunch of rules on formatting and font and style and this and that.
As others have said papers on the arxiv are generally written using Latex, a typesetting language. The formatting comes automatically. It has a bit of a learning curve but it’s not too bad, and there are plenty of examples out there. Figuring out how to get something done in latex is something that LLMs are generally good at too (I don’t recommend their use in general, but solving specific formatting issues is helpful with them).
It’s overwhelming and kind of scary.
Welcome to the world of publishing and sharing your ideas! I wouldn’t get too hung up on formatting your paper yet - that’s generally the last step before publishing anyway. I second the other recommendation to try to get feedback from someone in academia who has the relevant expertise. If you’re concerned about your ideas being stolen, you can try to have your current paper saved somewhere with a time stamp.
Honestly though if you wind up emailing it to someone, then you have the sent email as proof. Getting caught stealing someone else’s work generally would be career ending for a professor, and it would be pretty easy for you to prove and file a formal complaint with their institution.
The hardest part is going to be getting someone to take the time to read what you prepared. Focus on having a short and descriptive abstract, and maybe a slightly longer summary of the paper. Then have what you’ve already written, without trying to reformat it.
Good luck!
You should find out who the prominent academics are in this field of research, and email them asking if you can send them a draft of your paper and asking for their opinion.
Stay humble and remember that academics (especially notable ones) get harassed by crackpots all the time, so you need to distinguish yourself from them by not assuming that you’re the second coming of Einstein.
If you’re really on to something (or not) then they will be able to tell you that before you potentially embarrass yourself by uploading a preprint to arXiv that may have obvious deficiencies.
Bare in mind that it’s rare that laymen revolutionise a field of research without already having been part of the research community.
Good luck!
Best first step towards what you’re suggesting is probably for him to contact a local college and find someone there who can help identify the prominent academics to approach. Being able to say “Dr. Smith recommended I reach out to you about this” is going to be taken much more seriously than a cold call. Also, at least reading any public discussion threads that person is on before contacting them will give you a feel for how they communicate and what they think is important.
Thank you for your insight! Isn’t there a risk if I send someone my work they might snipe it and publish it as their own?
If someone steals your work and doesn’t credit you then they are risking ending their career when you turn up with the receipts.
If you’re worried about that happening, then just have your manuscript notarized so that you can later prove that it existed at a certain point in time.
Frankly, yes there is. However, the same can essentially be said about posting a preprint somewhere online. Some asshole could still rip it off and submit it to a journal. Most likely the reviewers won’t have come across your preprint, and if you accuse them of stealing your idea, they’ll just claim independently discovering the same thing.
The only way you can really stay air-tight is writing up a proper article and submitting it to a journal. That can be a tough process to get through though, so you may be better off finding someone in the academic world that you are willing to trust.
In most fields, there are some people that float between industry and academia, so you may find someone that a common acquaintance can vouch for.
A possible protection for OP and anyone else reading this could be to upload a draft of a report to a repository at osf.io (Open Science Foundation). You can keep the repository hidden for now, but it’ll be there with a date stamp on it should the worst happen and somebody rip off the work
Happy cake day!
I would contact a professor at a university or a researcher and ask them to help. This is pretty easy as if they have publications then their emails are on there
don’t know about arxiv in particular, but latex based documents readily give you that style. https://www.overleaf.com/latex/templates/tagged/arxiv
I’d check which uni/department works in your field/works on something similar to you, and contact them. you might get a prof to have a student do a bachelor or master’s thesis on your topic, or even have a doctoral student do a study.
or maybe some citizen science projects?
Yeah pretty much all sciency, engineery, mathy papers use latex
