Best Way To Publish an "Indie" Research Paper? 279
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?"
It's actually really simple (Score:5, Informative)
You can either submit it to a conference (look on google for them) or to a journal (also google them). They usually have an electronic form to upload your paper and after that it's simply wether the reviewers think it's worthwhile to publish. There really isn't anything complicated in publishing a paper other than having a good paper.
LaTeX, Arxiv and Why the Hell Not? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a developer ... I'm looking into something more formal like a research paper.
LaTeX. Here's a template (you wanted article.ltx) [dsl.org]. Some distributions of LaTeX come with templates as well. Here's a quick guide (PDF) [cc.ca.us].
I've no experience on those, not even read a complete one, so my first question is what resources do you recommend to learn how to write one?
The template will make you get the basics right [statpac.com]. The most basic I've seen are Title, Abstract, Sections, Conclusion, References. It's easy (I taught myself in college) and the production value of LaTeX gives you an instant artificially inflated level of credibility [mit.edu].
And even after I write it I can't expect to be published by Science or other high-profile publications.
Why the hell not? Just do it up and see what happens [submit2science.org]!
So where should I send it to make it known by people on the respective fields and be taken seriously?
Sounds like you should do some research on arxiv [arxiv.org], a prepublication center where you can find some of the best stuff as well as absolute drivel. I would need to hear more about your method to ensure it's indeed an algorithm worthy of publication but I guess you would put that [arxiv.org] in Data Structures and Algorithms [arxiv.org]? But why stop there? Why don't you put it on arxiv and blog about it? Why don't you send out e-mails with the arxiv link to open source projects and commercial entities suggesting the use of your algorithm? I'd imagine the USGS [usgs.gov] would be interested in hearing from you. Sure that's all very wishful thinking but if you've got what you say you've got, why not? At the very least you'll learn why your idea isn't good enough to catch eyeballs.
I will caveat all this with the brutish reality of capital and give you a very unpopular option. Software algorithms are currently considered intellectual property by the United States government and several other countries. You could apply for a patent and then attempt to license your algorithm to companies like ESRI and Google or the USGS. You're on your own if this is what you're aiming for.
conference paper (Score:3, Informative)
Submit it to a relevant conference for publication; the peer review process for conferences is less intimidating than journals. You'll likely have to pay to attend & give a brief talk, but it helps get your foot in the door.
Then if/when you want to do a follow-up, you can reference the conference proceedings, which gives you more credentials to submit the follow-up article to a journal.
IEEE style guide; arxiv (Score:4, Informative)
http://standards.ieee.org/guides/style/ [ieee.org] is the page with the IEEE style guides.
http://standards.ieee.org/guides/style/2009_Style_Manual.pdf [ieee.org] is the guide itself.
If your paper agrees with this it shouldn't be too hard to change it later to fit into the particular style requirement of the final journal.
You can also go to http://arxiv.org/ [arxiv.org] and read some of the papers in the Math or Computing Science sections closest to your topic to see the styles in the field.
academic skepticism (Score:5, Informative)
I would say your best bet would be to contact your favorite comp. sci. college professor and ask him to sponsor your paper, before submission. First, it is good to publish with other people and second it more likely to be reviewed and get published. I am a biologist, but my understanding is that computer science publications are mainly submissions to large conferences. So, you may want to submit your paper to a conference.
No offense, but your paper won't get into science unless to at least 10-fold improvement or something really earth shattering. My guess is that most algorithms would go to a specific journal like the Journal of GPS Algorithms.
OK, here it is (Score:3, Informative)
1 - Patent. I don't know if US grants 'first publishing' rights or not, still. You don't need to wait for the application to go through though. Send it and the check to USPTO and it should be ok.
2.1 - Know how to make your case in the article. Research similar stuff, references, etc, etc
2.2 - Check for respectable publishers in the area concerned. I'm not sure Arxiv is a good idea, I'd try for IEEE, ACM or something more specific (and not as 'famous'). Easier to publish as well than Science, Nature, etc. Just avoid some journals that publish anything you throw at them.
2.3 - Yay! You have a paper with your name on it. yay... sorry, no profit.
Re:LaTeX, Arxiv and Why the Hell Not? (Score:5, Informative)
The above amounts to good advice, but I have one thing to add. If you're still interested in publishing in an academic journal, use something like Google Scholar to find recent articles about algorithms like yours. That will give you (a) an idea of what journals publish on that subject and hence what researchers in that area read, (b) examples of published articles in that field to use as a stylistic template and (c) some idea of which academics are active in the area, which could be useful if you'd like to either recommend reviewers (as many journals ask you to when submitting) and possibly contact one of them for advise. (Though if the advise is that your idea is rubbish, ignore them - they may be right or they may just be dismissing you without giving your idea due consideration, or have another angle).
Finally, if you'd like some help from a postdoc in a completely different field, send me a message, and I'll proof read whatever you've got and advise you on dealing with reviewers and the like.
Wait a sec (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not sure about this -- it's been a long time since I was in academia, but don't the most prestigious journals (and most journals, really) have as one of their criteria that the paper not have been published elsewhere, and wouldn't a conference presentation count as such?
Someone who knows this stuff for sure, please answer on this -- what constitutes a previous exposure/publishing such that a prestigious journal won't publish the paper?
Or are those old rules which people no longer follow?
If you're serious about it... (Score:2, Informative)
you might want to start with a guide like "How to Write & Publish A Scientific Paper" by Robert Day (ISBN-13: 978-1573561655).
Then search for the appropriate journal. One suggestion is: GPS Solutions (published by Springer),
http://www.springer.com/earth+sciences+and+geography/geophysics/journal/10291 [springer.com]
Manuscript submission instructions and forms at: http://www.springer.com/journal/10291/submission [springer.com]
Hope it works out for you!
Publish in a journal (Score:3, Informative)
"Indie" status doesn't actually matter that much in the publishing pipeline; you can submit your paper to a journal in the same way that anybody else does, and it will get the same consideration. (The place where organization status matters a bit more is at the reverse end -- if one of the authors is particularly well-known, that tends to make the review process easier)
If your project has practical applications and you wish to patent, make sure to file that first. In that case, consult with a patent attorney on the right things to do next.
Otherwise, pick the appropriate journal and submit following the guidelines on their web page. You'll definitely want to format your paper in LaTeX, since pretty much everyone requires that; some journals have standard LaTeX style packages they want you to use, but these are easy to plug in. (e.g., the Physical Review uses revtex.sty, and many other journals now use it too)
As far as which journal you want, it depends on the particular field, but I'm guessing that Science isn't it -- that's a very high-profile journal which is intended to be things of interest to the scientific community at large, but in practice it has a fairly strong bio/chemistry/some physics focus. Someone else on this thread may have particular journal suggestions, or you may want to search on-line for similar (recent) papers and see where they were published. ACM transactions are often good "default" places in CS. Also, CS tends to prefer conference talks to straight-up journal publications; you may consider submitting your algorithm as a talk to some appropriate CS conference, in which case the article is published as part of the proceedings. Again, the conference depends on your particular subject.
Don't worry about your lack of organizational affiliation. That's rarely a big issue.
incorporate and/or collaborate (Score:4, Informative)
Obviously, it should not matter if you are an individual or an institutional scientist and the science should stand on its own merits. Unfortunately, the signal to noise ratio of quality papers coming from non affiliated individual submitters is probably bad enough that most journal editors would rather not take the time or risk to send your work out for peer review. (Think of all the perpetual motion machine crackpots out there still). In most fields, peer review is a voluntary system of review for which reviewers are not compensated and requires substantial effort, so editors are loathe to ask volunteers to review a suspect manuscript fearing it will poison reviewers to subsequent inquires.
Practically though, one way to look more credible is to incorporate (this is inexpensive in most states) and submit it corresponding from the corporation. Another strategy is to find a co-author at a research institution. This may be difficult because academics in my department get a surprising number of calls like this from people who are usually either disturbed or obviously idiotic. But most academics I know will take these calls, especially the younger ones. They might be able to check your work from a different perspective and can certainly help with the arcane apects of manuscript preparation, tone and format.
How I'd do it... (Score:3, Informative)
1. Identify the IEEE "Transactions" journals and/or ACM journals that your work is most closely related to. If you don't have access to IEEE or ACM libraries online, you can either buy membership to those organizations (expect to pay $100-$300 per year, I believe) to get access; or you may have luck at a university library.
2. Study the structure of the papers in those journals. Take note of what sections their papers have, and what fraction of column space is dedicated to each. You may want to be guided by this.
3. In those same journals, look up their rules for submission. Also, look for advertisements by the editors regarding topics they'd especially like submissions for. If you find a call that's right up your topic's alley, you may want that to be the journal to which you submit the paper.
4. Submit your idea to exactly one journal. I believe submitting the same paper to multiple journals get can get your paper thrown out.
5. Some (most?) journals conduct "blind" reviews of submissions, in which the reviewers don't know your name or affiliation. So for those journals you probably don't need to worry about a lack of credibility coming from your lack of affiliation.
6. Accept that your paper is unlikely to get accepted in its original submission. However, you should get comments back from the people who review it. Those comments are likely to be extremely valuable in making you aware of other related work, and/or in showing you what needs to change to get published.
7. Oh, and use LaTeX.
You've got lots of reading ahead of you (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Wait a sec (Score:5, Informative)
You can't publish it verbatim from a conference to a journal, but there are quite a few people who publish essentially the same thing in a conference and a journal. You just have to rewrite it with a different spin or maybe a little more work/discussion/etc. Say in one, you focus on the accuracy of your model/method and the other focuses on speed vs. other methods.
arxiv.org (Score:5, Informative)
A lot of work (Score:5, Informative)
To be published, your paper need references. Since you mention you've never read a research paper, you'll need to do an extensive publication search and review, introduce yours and other analysis methods, discuss why yours is an improvement, all complete with proper citations.
If it sounds like a lot of work, IT IS, especially for your first one. It has to pass peer review, meaning, specialists in the field will read it and comment on whether it is suitable for publication. How you present your results is very important so the reader understands the idea.
It may also be EXPENSIVE: Many journals charge you for publishing your article, and this can be hundreds of dollars. It also takes a lot of TIME, and be a few months before the first comments from reviews get back to you. You'll make revisions, then send it back, and wait awhile longer.
The format of the paper is not too important, it will be formatted once accepted. The key is to efficiently and accurately disseminate your paper, which may include equations, graphs and tables. Many journals have templates in both LateX and Word -- Microsoft Word is perfectly fine for this.
To determine which journal you should submit to, look up keywords common to your topic on Google Scholar. Perhaps some IEEE journal would be a good choice (just a guess, I have no idea what you're doing).
If your idea is truly novel, patent it (writing a patent can be easy, might be expensive if you get a patent expert/lawyer involved, and you might also cite/review other similar patents). If you still want to write a research paper, try going to a local university and find a sympathetic professor who will aid you in your mission. Some profs won't bother helping, but some will be very pleased you've taken the initiative to do this and help you.
Practitioner Reports Track (Score:1, Informative)
That's exactly the reason why some conferences have a track for "Practitioner Reports", e.g. OOPSLA Practitioner Reports are exactly what you call an "Indie Paper", it has to be less formal than an academic paper yet reveal an interesting practical problem. I've seen some of these at OOPSLA and they are good. Plus, you'll get a very good crowd of listeners at such a forum: a mix of practitioners and academics. Talking to a college professor is also a good idea (though might be confusing). Best of Luck!
Re:Wait a sec (Score:5, Informative)
I'm coming from the medical science field, but generally at a conference you are presenting an abstract, which is not the same as the full manuscript that you're sending to a journal. That being said, sometimes you need to just tell the journal that an abstract of the work was presented at such and such conference. I've never heard of it being turned down because of that.
Other than that, finding the right journal is usually the hard part. Read up on impact ratings (how "prestigious" a publication is, if you will) and read what else is getting published in there. Often there are multiple fields where the work might be relevant (my work applies to neurosurgical, spinal, and pain related publications for example).
Once you have the journal, they give very explicit instructions on how they want it presented. Follow them exactly, and you're 9/10ths of the way there.
research paper tips (Score:5, Informative)
0) By "greatly improves the performance" do you mean by some order of magnitude, or merely by a constant factor? For example, are you going from O(n^2) to O(n log n), or is it only O(10n) to O(5n). Don't get me wrong, the latter can be useful, but the former would draw more attention from the research community. I assume you know Big-O notation and formal analysis of algorithms, otherwise you will need to learn about it before submitting a research paper in algorithms.
1) If you have never even read a full research paper, then how do you know your approach is new or better than existing approaches? First, I would recommend getting a data structures and algorithms book and a computational geometry book. Read through those looking not only for things similar to your technique, but also just to make sure you have the vocabulary correct. Then move on to Google Scholar and start looking into the more recent scholarly journals and conference proceedings on the topic. You will need subscriptions (probably via a university) to see a lot of that content, but you can try the "All X versions" link beneath most articles to see if the author published a PDF on a public web site. Books are usually years behind the state of the art, and a lot of newer research and algorithms only fully appears in papers. Also, a lot of research (most?) is not published on blogs, so your algorithm may not be as new or groundbreaking as you think. Or if it is, you still may find more inspiration to improve it from related techniques.
2) Ditto what others have said about learning LaTeX for page layout. However, if you might want to publish in a specific journal or conference, then you might have to use their specific format, so you might just want to type your first draft as plain text and a collection of images, for import into a specific LaTeX template later.
3) Writing style: You must be *very* *formal* in your writing style to be considered credible in academic circles. Have an English teacher (or similarly-minded person) go over the paper with a fine-toothed comb looking for any spelling, grammar, or word-use errors. Absolutely no slang or colloquialisms whatsoever are acceptable in a research paper. Do not use contractions. Try not to use any analogies unless they are truly apt and likely to be universally understood. Try not to use first or second person in the paper. Remember, people from all over the world from different cultures, many of whom do not speak English as their primary language, will hopefully be reading your paper, and you don't want them to get confused by any culture-specific concepts or words.
4) If your algorithm really is new or groundbreaking, then I would strongly recommend trying to publish in a proper academic workshop or conference first (try ACM or IEEE conferences on computational geometry, location-driven computing, etc.), rather than a free online archive. You will get far more credibility and exposure in academia, and you just might get your employer to pay for a junket to a conference! Workshops are more for newer, less developed research, so you may have an easier time publishing there. Conferences are for more established research, so it's harder to get in them, but they carry much more respect. Also, most workshops and conferences have industrial tracks, if your paper focuses less on formal algorithmic analysis and more on real-world uses.
5) Be warned though, that although conferences are supposed to be submitter-blind, often it's much easier to get a publication when you have a known academic co-author on the paper. You might want to look up authors of papers related to yours, find the Ph.D.s on the paper, and approach them about a collaboration. This might take a bit more time, and you would have to share credit (just make sure you are first-author), but it may be worthwhile to get more exposure and credibility. They might also be able to help point you toward making further improvements to your algorithm.
6) Please, please, do not patent your algorithm! There is more than enough patented math already; the world does not need yet another algorithm that can't be used by anyone for 20 years.
Re:academic skepticism (Score:3, Informative)
This is my sentiment exactly. The hard part, if you are not part of the academic community, is to know if there are any nearby professors who are expert in your area. Professors always want to get their names on papers so they are more than happy to assist you. Even if you talk to someone whose research interest isn't what you are working on, they likely know who the right people to talk to are.
Another advantage to dealing with a professor is that they may have additional resources that can be brought to bear on the problem. They have grad students they are looking to give interesting problems to and access to computing resources that you don't have.
Keep in mind that the review committee for all conferences and journals are made up of academics. You will definitely want the help of a professor to figure out just how to present your results in a way that is likely to get your paper accepted. The last thing that you want is to spend a lot of time on a paper that gets rejected because you didn't present what they want or because you were unfamiliar with the existing literature on the topic.
Re:Wait a sec (Score:5, Informative)
If he is publishing in computer science, a conference counts as a publication exactly as much as a journal does. CS conferences are peer reviewed and the top tier ones are as prestigious as top tier journals in other fields. In CS, journals are used more as a record of a large body of work than as a venue for first publication.
Are you sure it's new? (Score:5, Informative)
Having had to write just such code for a DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle, I'd question whether a new algorithm developed without looking at the literature is likely to be new. There were high-precision GPS systems with 15cm accuracy seven years ago, and the new ones are even better. [novatel.com] Novatel is now offering 1cm repeatability. [novatel.com]
Besides, distance between two GPS points is straightforward. The high-precision receivers give you ECEF (earth-centered, earth fixed,; 3 axes centered at the center of the earth) coordinates, which are Cartesian. There, it's trivial. If all you have is latitude and longitude, the GPS device has already converted from ECEF to latitude and longitude using some standard geoid (a standard formula for the pair-shaped earth correction, like WGS-84). You use the appropriate geoid for the GPS device to convert back to ECEF, then compute the distance.
Re:archive.org (Score:5, Informative)
As for writing the paper, here's my favourite set of slides on this topic:
SPJ's `How to write a research paper' [microsoft.com]
Yes, SPJ works at Microsoft Research these days, since they sponsor his primary pet project (the Glasgow Haskell Compiler), but he has been extremely successful before and after going there. I've done enough writing to basically agree with him-- there are variations here and there when it comes to structuring the paper, but his main points are very sensible and good.
Re:Slashdot (Score:1, Informative)
Well, nothing, for a while. But about a month later, we'd get three /. stories over the course of a week linking to a blog that links to a blog that links to a general news (= gets tech stories wrong, always) site talking about, but not linking to, the research paper over 5 2-paragraph ad-laden pages. (The summaries, naturally, will be misleading, as a result of a you-fail-third-grade level misunderstanding of the story.)
Then none of us will read any of the articles, but the blog's server will melt down anyway. As far as /. comments go:
(Yes, most of us post multiple times, usually with different identities.)
Oh, and the GNAA... well, I'd rather not say what they'll be posting.
Talk to an academic (Score:2, Informative)
I would suggest you go to someone who you know in an academic or technical field that has published papers of this sort, and ask that person to help you publish it. If there's no university nearby, ask local friends if they know anybody --- if you're not in a similar situation, someone will remember a computer science or applied math professor from college.
You will probably need to improve your material with their help, too and that may mean sharing credit. As long as you establish up front that you mean to be the lead author, things should go well.
Re:LaTeX, Arxiv and Why the Hell Not? (Score:3, Informative)
I'm a developer ... I'm looking into something more formal like a research paper.
LaTeX. Here's a template (you wanted article.ltx) [dsl.org]. Some distributions of LaTeX come with templates as well. Here's a quick guide (PDF) [cc.ca.us].
LyX [lyx.org] is the best TeX document processor I've used. This is the 21st century, no need to program and compile your technical documents from the command line using vi and multiple compile steps.
Re:academic skepticism (Score:5, Informative)
I would say your best bet would be to contact your favorite comp. sci. college professor and ask him to sponsor your paper, before submission. First, it is good to publish with other people and second it more likely to be reviewed and get published. I am a biologist, but my understanding is that computer science publications are mainly submissions to large conferences. So, you may want to submit your paper to a conference.
No offense, but your paper won't get into science unless to at least 10-fold improvement or something really earth shattering. My guess is that most algorithms would go to a specific journal like the Journal of GPS Algorithms.
As an academic in computer science, and having both written and reviewed a quite a number of papers, I have to agree here. There are definitely venues to publish a truly novel algorithm. However:
(1) Frankly, I would be surprised if you have been able to come up with something radically different from existing algorithms. I am sure that any reviewer of your paper will be equally suspicious, so you better back up that claim thoroughly. Do not assume that the reviewers know what is and isn't out there as related work, but show that you know what you are talking about, and in particular that YOU know what is out there as related work. Clearly explain why your work is different and superior. This is the hardest part of the paper to write. Doubly so in your case, since this is not a field where reviewers will expect that new things can be discovered.
(2) Keep in mind that if you submit your paper to a conference, you are expected to present it there. You'll have to travel there, and pay the conference fee and living costs. Yes, the conference fee applies even if you present a paper there. A university group might be willing to pay all this for you in return for a co-authorship and the right to claim it as 'output' of that group. Journals are cheaper to publish in, although some ask for money per page. Also, their turnaround time can be maddening.
(3) Picking the right venue for your paper can be tricky. Simply looking at the call for papers for the conference or journal may give you the impression that your subject fits well, but in reality they all have their own culture, and tend to concentrate on more specific subjects. The good news is that there are so many small and good-but-obscure journals out there, in particular in the more algorithmic side of computer science, that there surely will be a journal that is willing to publish good novel research. Try to find one where your paper is as on-topic as possible, because you'll have the greatest chances of getting reviewers who can properly evaluate your paper.
(4) Write clearly. Reviewers nowadays don't have time to wrestle with muddled thinking, incoherent explanations, and glaring omissions of information, even if an obvious genius has written the paper. Not every reviewer will know what is novel in your approach if you don't point it out, and many will only bother to read the entire paper if you have motivated them enough in your abstract and summary (yes, many skip to the summary at first read.)
Since there is more to learn, I have to repeat that hooking up with a research group is a very, very good idea.
Getting a paper accepted is a lot of fun, though, and at least for me it compensates for all the grief that is part of the peer-review process.
Re:Wait a sec (Score:2, Informative)
I'm coming from the medical science field, but generally at a conference you are presenting an abstract, which is not the same as the full manuscript that you're sending to a journal.
Computer science has a culture where conference publications are full-length, peer reviewed manuscripts that're considered "equivalent" to journal publications in other fields.
To answer the grandparent's question: in CS, it's considered self plagiarism to submit to multiple conferences/journals simultaneously, but it's fine to publish an expanded version of a conference publication in a journal later. The rules for submitting expanded conference papers vary from journal to journal; you typically need to acknowledge that it's an expanded conference paper when you submit, and usually at least a third to a half of the expanded paper needs to be new content.
As a PhD researcher... (Score:2, Informative)
Here is a not so short intro(but shorter than most) to Latex. Intro [slashdot.org]
Furthermore, you'll want to have a number of references. It depends on the conference/journal in question but around 15 to 20 is pretty standard. Make sure to reference any and all algorithms you'll compare it to and any foundational work you used. Text books are fine if they're standard books to the field.
That's another decision you have to make as well. Do you want to publish to a Journal or to a Conference. A conference will have a higher acceptance rate usually and you can go network with other people in the field. A journal will be more prestigious, but will take much longer to get published(a year or more as you go through the review cycle). To decide I would start looking at IEEE(or ACM or whatever else you think might be of interest) to find a conference/journal you think might be appropriate and then read several papers in that area. Also go to your local university and browse through books on your subject as there may have been work done several years ago that just isn't used due to processing power issues. This can effect the tone of your paper.
On the topic of tone, you need to decide how you wish to frame the contribution of your paper. Is it a systems type paper that focuses mainly on implementation and comparison? Is it a proper new algorithm? Is it a mix of the two? Why do I as another researcher in the field care? This choice of tone will greatly affect both the place you submit the paper and the likelihood of where it will be accepted. You can try submitting to major journals like Science if you'd like, but it's very likely you will not get accepted as those types of journals focus very heavily on major cutting edge work.
Someone else mentioned looking through ArVix, but that is usually more of a pre-publication forum for math and physics type papers more than what I think you're working on. I'm not sure that will be particularly helpful to your situation.
I don't work in your field particularly, but I do have a fair bit of background in geodesic calculations and math so if you'd like to discuss things feel free to message me.
Good luck!
Some advice from someone else just starting out. (Score:4, Informative)
As a graduate student, who has just started learning how to write and submit papers, I have the following advice.
First, the submission process is a lot more open then I thought it would be; you create an author account, and then just submit the paper. Your paper then will largely be judged on its merit --- whether it is well written, well-explained, interesting, and brings a worthwhile new idea to the table. So in short, don't be scared off from publishing. :-)
Second, do a lot of background reading before hand so that you can figure out where your idea ties in to what has been done before. This is *very* important, because for your paper to be taken seriously you need to show that you have done your homework to learn what has been done before.
Third, keep in mind that most people who read your paper won't care about the details and will just want to figure out what the big takeaway idea is that they should learn --- the same that you yourself will often find yourself doing when perusing academic papers. So although you should endeavor to explain your ideas clearly and precisely enough that someone can implement your algorithm, you should also have a high-level description that explains the big-picture insight behind your idea.
Finally, part of what makes good papers is that they have a good "story" behind them. They start by talking about what has come before, leading up to the new idea that is being presented in the paper and how it follows from or intentionally diverges from previous work. They then talk about the intuition behind the idea itself to give the reader a high-level understanding of the insight behind it. (Note that this is where most people will stop reading, so you want to make the parts up to this good for their benefit. :-) ) Next they go into the technical details of their idea, in a way that is as pedagogical as possible; at every step they explain not only how something was done, but why it was done in that particular way. Finally, they describe how the idea works out well in practice, and then conclude by reminding the reader about what the significance of the idea is (because by this point if they actually read over the details they probably have forgotten :-) ), and end with an optional (brief) discussion about what future research questions are inspired by your idea.
Good luck, and most importantly --- have fun! :-)
Re:Wait a sec (Score:3, Informative)
Right.
Also journal papers are usually much longer than conference papers. Conference papers are often limited to 8-10 pages, while journal papers typically have no hard restriction, and are often 40 pages long.
It is very common to submit a "journal version" of a previous conference paper.
Read a paper first (Score:3, Informative)
If you haven't even read a complete paper first then it is unlikely you will get your own paper published simply because journals have some expectations of how the material is to be presented (including how much history to include, relating to the wok of others etc.), proper methods of citation, and so on. This has nothing to do with the merit of your idea or the results it is simply that if you want to present in a particular forum then you need to know the rules and expectations of the forum.
Unless you are going to publish as a conference paper (the easiest way and usually the lowest bar for refereed papers) you can expect that it may takes years before it is reviewed, returned to you with the comments of the referees, resubmitted, and then finally published. So you might want to get it out on a website somewhere just to stake claim to having thought of the idea first.
Another alternative is to do a poster at a conference - it is much easier to get accepted for that, the amount of work putting your stuff into the expected form is much less etc. etc. It doesn't count as a refereed paper but if you aren't interested in academic points then so what? Also (you may find this surprising) many academic journals expect you to pay them to publish your paper.
...it's who you know. (Score:1, Informative)
As noted above, you won't be getting it published in anything like Science but you can tack a professor onto the paper and offer them last authorship, which they will gladly take (i.e. publish or parish). It's always who you know. While peer-reviewed journal are supposed to be anonymous the circle jerks of scholars usually know who is working on what.
Also, you'll want to look at specific journals that might deal with algorithms or the specific type you researched. You'd be surprised to know how particular journals can become. I also imagine that computer/math related journals have whats called an impact factor, which is basically how many people cite the authors from that journal. It also indicates how difficult the journal is to be accepted to. Furthermore, once you've narrowed down the search you'll want to know who the editors and reviewers are on the journal so you have an idea of who might be reviewing your paper.
And finally, if you email one of those potential reviewers asking them to provide feedback they cannot be the final reviewer on the paper because it's a conflict of interests. So blindly email the paper to whomever you'd like on the board and thank them on the paper for looking over it (regardless of whether they did or not) and the editor will have to select other people.
Yay for science.
Re:Literature search (Score:4, Informative)
Even worse:
How does he know his algorithm is that novel if he never read the corresponding literature? Not everything is in textbooks....
As a Physics researcher... (Score:2, Informative)
First, getting your paper out there for other people to see is the easy part: just post it on arxiv.org. Free, open for everybody, and easy to submit to. It also has the bonus of offering the LaTeX source of most papers submitted to it, meaning that you can just download a closely-related paper, and copy their formatting! Often specific journals also have their own LaTeX formatting rules and support files, so if you are able to pick out a specific, look at what they have.
Now, for the paper itself, you primarily need two big things:
1. Clarity.
2. Context.
Clarity is absolutely essential. You need to explain your idea in full, with enough detail that another person can fully replicate your results. Explaining your reasoning for doing it a certain way, and also presenting evidence for why it should be this way instead of some other is also paramount. For this algorithm, for instance, both numerical stability under a wide range of coordinate choices and performance are going to be important metrics with which to judge the work.
Context is also essential. This means that you have to show the reader of your paper where the paper fits within the total body of literature. You need, in short, to start looking through the literature surrounding this sort of algorithm, and discover what has already been written. If you don't do this, the first thing you risk doing is simply replicating what somebody else has already done (in which case nobody will care about your paper). Or perhaps even worse, you risk making obvious mistakes that others have already shown are bad things to do (for one reason or another). There's also the positive that they can give you ideas for things you didn't think about in your own work, ways to make your own algorithm even better.
So, if you really want to write a proper research paper, if I were you I'd first sit down and try to find out what other people have written on this topic. If you can get a hold of a comp sci professional who works in even a related area, they could be a tremendous help for finding you relevant papers and information to get you started. Then, once you've read and understood at least a few related papers, you should have the added bonus of getting a grasp of the overall structure and format to use for your own paper. You can get an idea of the overall context by at least skimming some of the papers they reference, and that should help you build a nice introduction. You might also get an idea of what journals you can submit to, and start trying there.
Anyway, that's what I have to say on the subject. Best of luck to you!
Re:More details from Author (Score:2, Informative)
One more note, some people ask the usefulness of the algorithm and if it's 10% improvement then it's not worth it. The algorithm to calculate distances between points can be used not too often on certain devices or apps, however, there are systems like Google Maps or 4Square that have to compute the distance between a point and millions of other points in real time, often hundreds servers are used solely for this. If you could improve that step in 1% it would represent 1 less server in 100.
Do not quote me on this yet, but from initial benchmarks (with a unfinished version) I estimate between 100-200% improvement.
Re:academic skepticism (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, a "die" can also be a metal form of some sort used in machining, and the plural of that is "dies". The literal reading would therefore be two shaped pieces of metal. Likely variations would be "two dice" or "two deaths".
Re:Warning on arxiv with Science/Nature (Score:3, Informative)
It depends on the journal you are submitting to. Better research what each journal/publisher wants regarding this point. Articles submitted to APS (I am a physics phD) usually shows up on arxiv as soon as they are submitted, and an doi link is added when the paper is accepted and published. Nature, on the other hand, don't want the article to show up before hand.
To original poster: you said you have not read any existing research paper. Well, you are expected to do an extensive (if not exhaustive) literature search before you submit because 1. you are expected to cite relevant works and 2. how do you know if you haven't already been scooped?
The inverse geodetic problem (Score:2, Informative)
GPS Journals and Conferences (Score:2, Informative)
Vincenty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincenty's_formulae [wikipedia.org] is the current benchmark for distance between two points. If you think you've done better, you've got two real options:
(1) A GPS/Navigation Journal, or
(2) Surveying journal
Forget computer science - not really interested in this problem.
As far as conferences are concerned, it's worth trying to get into one of the following:
* IEEE PLANS http://www.plansconference.org/ [plansconference.org]
* ION PLANS http://www.ion.org/meetings/ [ion.org]
If you think it's still good for a journal, look for who has cited Vincenty's paper in Google Scholar - it will give you a good indication as to what journals to chase.