Can I publish in Science even though I am not affiliated with a university?DrP - 28-6-2007 at 07:13
I believe so - so long as you adhere to their format -- you would send them the paper and they would send it to be reviewed by experts in the field.
I reckon you should contact them and ask them what the process is for publication.
What are you wanting to write about?DDoS - 28-6-2007 at 07:44
To publish something, you must have reliable results(NMR, IR-spectroscopy, MS analysis etc). I belive you can buy analysis as service from some
companys or universitys. For example the university I work for offers atomic absorbtion spectrometry services + lots of more.
And publish your article in a big and well-known journal or no-one will notice your work nor will you get any references.Nicodem - 28-6-2007 at 10:31
Actually, I am publishing a paper on mathematicsNicodem - 28-6-2007 at 11:19
Are you sure they publish papers about mathematics? I thought they are focused on science (hence the journal title). Anyway, you do realize that is
impossible to publish in such a high impact journal without having any previous publications elsewhere? They only accept papers with some highly
important topics and are supposed not to take any risks about damaging their reputation (though there actually were cases where Science broke the peer
review ethics and published complete bullshit that had to be withdrawn latter). Though, with mathematics where you need no analytical machinery, it
should be possible to make a breakthrough discovery not being associated with any institution so perhaps it could be possible to get the paper
published. I don't really know. But in chemistry, without a proper experimental part which requires extremely expensive machinery it is impossible,
unless you let the analyses be done by someone else like suggested by DDoS.franklyn - 28-6-2007 at 22:24
Why ask here ? Contact the the specific Journal to learn their submission policy.
The nice thing about your chosen field of endeavor is that the merits of a proof
are self evident and not subject to being argued. If you send out a paper on your
" method " for trisecting an angle using only straight edge and compass, nobody
will even read it and you will not be taken seriously again. However if your theorem
is interesting and even on a fashionable topic there will be a courteous response
as you are seen to be a peer.
The title must sum up your thoughts and discoveries and convey this succinctly.
Then in the first paragraph expound on this and tell them what you are going to
tell them , then go ahead and tell them , finally conclude by telling them what
you have told them. Thus every main point will be repeated at least 3 times.
Computers and desktop publishing graphic software makes the presentation of data
visually appealing - U S E It !
Very important : have people you know proof read and critique your presentation
being especially observant of errors. Given the number of submissions received,
very limited time is allotted to peruse a new paper from an unknown , unheard of
individual , consequently the reviewer may stop reading at the first error and your
tentative credibility will have been badly compromised.
If your claims are radical try to draw parallels associated to what is already accepted.
When the cleric Gregor Mendel submitted his original paper on plant heredity , this
was so far beyond the pale of established convention at that time , he acheived
instant oblivion , and his work remained unknown for decades until found by later
archival research and is now credited with being the founder of modern genetics.
Theres absolutely no 'open' requirement in international science journals that you must be affiliated (except if theres a levy which then youll have
to pay - but thats rare).
If theres prima facia evidence that the paper is not rubbish the editor MUST have it evaluated - thats the stated practice of almost all journals.
What actually happens nowedays is often a complete perversion of what is written in the set of rules the journals publish, and prejudices do come into
it. But if the paper is worthwhile theres about a 90% chance youll get it published if you try a few journals.
(If its rubbish - thats when having an affiliation and publication record are important in getting it accepted).
Remember one of the best scientific papers, 'on the electrodynamics of moving bodies' got published by someone with no track record or affiliationm to
speak off. Those were of course different times. Today he would have had to go thru a few rejections and be prepared to make some revisions of the
arse-licking variety to get it thru. Certainly a mansucript by a no-one with no references, would not get published nowadays, unlike 1905.
[Edited on 13-6-2008 by len1]Nicodem - 13-6-2008 at 00:00
Can anybody show a recent example of an unaffiliated author having a publication in an scientific journal (natural sciences, chemistry in particular)?
I'm really interested if this is still possible. Obviously in organic chemistry it is not possible unless the analyzes are paid for (and thus free
from authorship claims), but perhaps in some other science branch? I only regularly read organic journals where I noted no such case ever (never saw
the affiliation field empty!). It would be really interesting to see how hermetic the science publishing system become nowadays.len1 - 13-6-2008 at 01:51
I have seen it in a physics international journal in the last few years. There was just a residential address given, no institution.
W.r.t chemistry I dont think it can be regarded as a special case anymore most analytical techniques FTIR, MS, NMR are available to anyone with even a
modest income - not the latest models - from the 80's, but they are still plenty good enough- this continuous quest by institutions for the latest
models is in many cases overkill.
So theres nothing stopping anyone unaffiliated getting an article published in a scientific journal, but given the lack of desire shown to do even the
minimal work needed to 'publish' on this forum, I would think it all highly unlikely - for other reasons.
[Edited on 14-6-2008 by len1]The_Davster - 13-6-2008 at 05:12
It is my understanding that Science has a rather high impact factor compared to most 'regular' journals. 5-10x IIRC. They only tend to accept very
high interest type articles with groundbreaking research. I know nothing about math research in general, but you may want to try to get it accepted
in a math journal, not a renowned one for all the sciences.franklyn - 18-2-2012 at 05:26
In 2005 a group of MIT computer science majors wrote a program
to automatically generate science papers. They submitted some of
them to national conferences to be presented, and they were accepted. http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen
.phlogiston - 18-2-2012 at 13:31
Science is a tough journal to get into because it has a very high impact factor. They will only accept papers that describe a real breakthrough. Other
than that, if you have something extremely interesting to report (e.g. you prove the Goldbach Conjecture), and are able to write it down properly, I
am sure your lack of affiliation will not be a problem.
Can anybody show a recent example of an unaffiliated author having a publication in an scientific journal (natural sciences, chemistry in particular)?
Daniel Trachsel seems to give a non-university address for some of his phenethylamine studies. ex: Helvetica Chimica Acta 2003; 86:2754-275.watson.fawkes - 19-2-2012 at 18:00
In 2005 a group of MIT computer science majors wrote a program to automatically generate science papers. [...] http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen
The full story is more interesting than as presented above. They
submitted two papers to a known scam conference. One of them was accepted as a "non-reviewed paper"; the other was denied. Yes, "non-reviewed" does in
fact mean that no one looked at it. Both the acceptance and the denial were apparently random. When questioned about the denial, the conference
impresario sent them back a letter citing academic studies about why papers were rejected, again content free. There's a good piece of analysis here.phlogiston - 24-2-2012 at 15:08
Quote:
Can anybody show a recent example of an unaffiliated author having a publication in an scientific journal (natural sciences, chemistry in particular)?
I stumbled across one today as I was looking up a reference for a paper I am writing:
The reference is
Edgar RC, Nucleic Acids Research (2004) 32(5):1792-1797
In 2005 a group of MIT computer science majors wrote a program
to automatically generate science papers. They submitted some of
them to national conferences to be presented, and they were accepted. http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen
.
Yes, but some of these article venues make their money from the submitters/presenters and not as much from the readers/attendees. There is some
journal calling itself 'Medical Hypotheses' (if I remember right) which seems to be just a platform where you can pay some sum in order to 'have
something published'. There's a whole spectrum of journals and some of them seem like they should damage your reputation if you publish in them.franklyn - 26-5-2013 at 00:12
: