Thought experiment paper

[akassem]

Dears,

I want to publish a thought experiment involving Compton scattering. In which magazine or letter or conference you advise me to publish?

 

Many thanks

 

Ahmed Kamal

[timo]

The mainstream response to this common flavour of questions is: Have a look at the journals that the work you are citing has been published in. Alternatively (in in my opinion even better), ask the professor you work with.

 

Caveat: If you don't work with other scientists and only cite Einstein's general relativity paper and the paper describing the finding of the Higgs boson then the honest advice is: Don't try to publish it at all. No offense meant by that, but realistically publication of papers is meant as a way of communication within the science community. And it's not very common for non-scientists (who tend to be the ones asking on science forum rather than asking their colleagues) to publish in scientific journals - or even their publication to be well-received by the community.

Edited July 28, 2015 by timo

[akassem]

Thanks timo for your response and advice, so assume , just an assumption, that the paper is worth to be published, what can a "layman" like me do in this situation?

[imatfaal]

Ahmed - another thing; if a journal does offer to publish your paper but asks for a substantial fee then you should think twice. There is a shamefully large group of quasi-scientific publishers who purport to be proper journals but actually merely provide vanity publishing for those who will not be accepted by the peer-reviewed journals.

And - Compton Scattering is an area with a vast amount of physical empirical evidence - you cannot contradict even one tiny bit of empirical observation with a thought experiment. If observation says one thing and your thought experiment says another - then most people will decide rightly that your though experiment is flawed

[timo]

A bit in a rush now, so in short:

- first question would be: why do you want to publish a paper in the first place? You don't need it for your CV to get your next post-doc position, and also it's not a cleaned-up writeup for your colleagues world-wide. Maybe another form of publication may be more suitable to get your idea out, which I assume is your intent.

- the original default-answer still stands: have a look at the journals that the papers you read and cite are published in. Or have a look at papers that publish about Compton scattering experiments: https://scholar.google.de/scholar?hl=en&q=compton+scattering&btnG=&lr=.

[akassem]

Ahmed - another thing; if a journal does offer to publish your paper but asks for a substantial fee then you should think twice. There is a shamefully large group of quasi-scientific publishers who purport to be proper journals but actually merely provide vanity publishing for those who will not be accepted by the peer-reviewed journals.

And - Compton Scattering is an area with a vast amount of physical empirical evidence - you cannot contradict even one tiny bit of empirical observation with a thought experiment. If observation says one thing and your thought experiment says another - then most people will decide rightly that your though experiment is flawed

--------

It does not contradict at all with Compton scattering, it does use it to deduce another result that I think it is new !

[Klaynos]

How mathematical is it?

[akassem]

A bit in a rush now, so in short:

- first question would be: why do you want to publish a paper in the first place? You don't need it for your CV to get your next post-doc position, and also it's not a cleaned-up writeup for your colleagues world-wide. Maybe another form of publication may be more suitable to get your idea out, which I assume is your intent.

- the original default-answer still stands: have a look at the journals that the papers you read and cite are published in. Or have a look at papers that publish about Compton scattering experiments: https://scholar.google.de/scholar?hl=en&q=compton+scattering&btnG=&lr=.

---

Many thanks, I thought to get involoved in arxiv before but I found it is hard because members must nominate me. I will see others.

-

One other question, can I make joint research with a scientist or at least can I submit the idea to a scientist that you trust to see if it is worth to be published, or instruct me to complete it in some way?

[studiot]

 

It does not contradict at all with Compton scattering, it does use it to deduce another result that I think it is new !

 

 

You say there is a new currently theoretical result available.

 

Can this result be confirmed by any proposed experiment?

 

If confirmed, would this result have any practical use?

 

 

I ask this because there are scientific research companies you can team up with who would be happy to include you in any paper's list of authors if they thought there was a commercial interest. They might also help perform the experiment.

 

I have done this in the past with a UMIST (University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology) associated company.

Edited July 28, 2015 by studiot

[akassem]

 

You say there is a new currently theoretical result available.

 

Can this result be confirmed by any proposed experiment?

 

If confirmed, would this result have any practical use?

 

 

I ask this because there are scientific research companies you can team up with who would be happy to include you in any paper's list of authors if they thought there was a commercial interest. They might also help perform the experiment.

 

I have done this in the past with a UMIST (University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology) associated company.

Unfortunately I don't see any possible commercial use for it.

[ajb]

Assuming you have done something worthy, then the best place to submit it would be to a journal that has already published something similar, preferably no so long ago. No journal will require you to have any current academic association with a university or similar; they will require a postal address though. Neither will they ask about your educational background. But you need to have done something people will be interested in.

[akassem]

Assuming you have done something worthy, then the best place to submit it would be to a journal that has already published something similar, preferably no so long ago. No journal will require you to have any current academic association with a university or similar; they will require a postal address though. Neither will they ask about your educational background. But you need to have done something people will be interested in.

Thanks ajb, I will search journals about Compton scattering, or about thought experiment. Will I find it on Google?

[Klaynos]

Google scholar is a good place to look.

 

How many papers do you currently reference in your paper?

[ajb]

Thanks ajb, I will search journals about Compton scattering, or about thought experiment. Will I find it on Google?

I don't think there are any journals that really specialise in either of these.

 

Also, you need to think hard about if your paper is suitable for the journals you find. As a thought experiment this sounds more on the side of theoretical physics (so what calculations do you do?) or maybe it is more on the side of philosophy. You need to think about this very carefully as a lot of rejections come from submitting to the wrong journal for the article. Also check the typical length of articles that the journal accepts. There maybe some leeway here, but if a journal publishes only letters and short papers then a 50+ page paper will most likely be rejected.

 

As everyone else has suggested, look at the papers you cite. Find some recent ones and check out the journals they appear in. This is by far the best way to find potential journals. Remember they need to find referees and if they have published something similar recently then they found reasonable referees to use.

[studiot]

OK, so your stuff is too theoretical to get any large organisation behind you.

 

Another route would be to publish as a conference paper.

I assume you want to claim any discovery credit, which is why you are keeping discreet about the content.

 

If you were to look around the conference circuit at a less prestigious one you might find that they would accept your paper for presentation at their conference, and once you have done that any credit that flows would be entirely yours.

 

Attending such a conference would be cheaper than paying some publishing house.

 

I cannot suggest any conferences as all my sources would be trade not academic / theoretical but maybe someone else here with better knowledge in that area will.

[akassem]

Thank you all friends for your sincere help. I don't deny that I got upset, but you clarified reality of publishing for me. I thought it is much easier. Any way I will tru to find some conference as Studiot suggested.

 

Many thanks again.