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.
This is true - though just having a college/university email address is enough to meet the requirement.
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).
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!