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.

  • stelelor@lemmy.ca
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    3 days ago

    Does the field have a cornerstone forum where amateurs mingle with pros? For example, there are several professional astronomers and astronauts on Reddit, and telescope builders on CloudyNights.com. Atmospheric optics has atoptics.org.uk. The chess community has lichess.org. Places like that could be a good place to post about your idea without going into the technical specifics. Hopefully, other members of the community would let you know if you’re going down a promising path, and refer you to a specific pro/academic to further discuss your idea.