Physics How to close the gap: From Independent Research to Academic Discourse

[Esim Can]

Hello Physics Forums Community,
I'm hoping to draw upon the community's collective wisdom regarding a procedural challenge that I believe many independent researchers face.

I'm working on a self-contained theoretical framework from a foundational starting point. The work touches upon concepts from general relativity, quantum foundations, and cosmology, attempting to connect them based on a single relational principle. It has now reached a point, where some parameter free values seemingly emerge out of it, reaching the limits of my capability. At this point, as someone working outside the formal academic structure, the path forward is unclear.

I will NOT post details on the model in this forum, because i respect of course, that this place is not the right place for such things. So my questions are more about the process, what to do next.

I ask myself now, what are the most viable pathways for an independent researcher to bring a comprehensive body of work to the attention of the academic community? Is a preprint server like arXiv a recommended first step? I'm aware of the endorsement process, which can be a hurdle. Or; What is the most respectful and appropriate way to initiate contact with an academic professional for feedback, without it being an unwelcome imposition?

I post these questions here, hoping that perhaps other people may have been in such a situation before or, perhaps are facing similar challenges right now.

I would be very grateful for any advice, experiences, or potential strategies the community could share.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Greetings,

Esim Can

 

[berkeman]

Do you have any local universities with professors or graduate students who are working on the same thing? If so, you can consider paying them for several hours of consulting to discuss your work and get feedback. You will want to have some kind of Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) in place before discussing your work in detail.

 

[Dale]

I would simply submit your research to a journal. Usually a good indication of which journal to submit to is the journal that was the source for most of your research. Although you surely studied hundreds of papers in a dozen journals, focus on the journal that you returned to most frequently.

 

[WWGD]

Do you have any local universities with professors or graduate students who are working on the same thing? If so, you can consider paying them for several hours of consulting to discuss your work and get feedback. You will want to have some kind of Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) in place before discussing your work in detail.

If you contact and address politely a prof whose work/research overlaps with your issue and make sure you know what you're talking about and ask clear and specific questions, so that you don't waste their time, they may exchange emails with you for free. It happened with me. If you need more of his time and effort, you may go the Berkeman route.

 

[Esim Can]

First: Thank you all very much for these very helpful ideas.

@berkeman
Thank you for your very practical perspective from an economic point of view. Very interesting, as i do this work from a very different place of mindset. Always refreshing to not forget the economic point of view.

@Dale
In a way perhaps a very good idea, you came up with. To be not desk-rejected by a journal as an outsider with an idea, some has to have a bit lucky of course. But even if it then goes to peer-review process, it takes months or a year to go through this process. If then rejected after a year,.. wow, i think my psyche would not survive this. LOL! But in principle a very good way of trying.

@WWGD
Thank you, for sharing your experience. This makes me hope really and is like a small light at a distance. Although these people are very busy, at the end we all are just humans right? And even an outsider can have some good idea, some may never know.

In this topic i have to say, i have published and written before, but never in physics. And physics seems to have the most high hurdles to publish own work from outside of academia. I of course understand why this is, the world is full of people addicted to rule out Einstein or what so ever. But not all of independent researchers are like this, some are really trying their best to deliver something productive to the whole.

Thanks again and best wishes to the community.

Esim Can

 

[fresh_42]

And physics seems to have the most high hurdles to publish own work from outside of academia. I of course understand why this is, the world is full of people addicted to rule out Einstein or what so ever. But not all of independent researchers are like this, some are really trying their best to deliver something productive to the whole.

Your request is not about publishing. To publish something is easier than ever. What you really want is to be read. This means you require time from professional scientists. The productive timespan of scientists is somewhere between 20 and 30 years. This makes it extremely expensive. Publishing in a serious journal is one way of saying that your work is worth it, since you cannot address the entire physical community otherwise. However, this in turn requires the time of reviewers, which is again expensive, too, and in addition an unwelcome duty. There is no established path over such hurdles.

I have recently written down my opinion on independent research https://www.physicsforums.com/insig...side-the-box-versus-knowing-whats-in-the-box/ and specifically looked for events when independent research in physics actually might have happened. I couldn't find any. Maybe Archimedes. It is hard to tell if little else is known at the time. Maybe Galois in mathematics, but he didn't publish himself and died too young to determine what he knew.

 

[Dale]

To be not desk-rejected by a journal as an outsider with an idea, some has to have a bit lucky of course.

Desk rejections are not done because the paper comes from an “outsider”. They are usually done because the submitter did not follow the journal’s instructions for authors or because the paper doesn’t fit the journal. They are also often done because the style of the paper is not professional or because the content is already well understood. These last two occur more frequently for “outsiders”, but that is correlation not causation.

It is particularly frequent for “outsiders” to believe that they have something novel when in fact what they have is well understood already. I put in about 3000 hours of intense graduate level study of the existing professional scientific literature before I had my first actually novel idea. “Outsiders” usually don’t grasp how difficult that is because they rarely have spent the necessary thousands of hours studying the existing professional scientific literature.

If then rejected after a year,.. wow, i think my psyche would not survive this

You will undoubtedly get rejected at first. I have over 100 published papers. Most of them were rejected by the first journal I submitted them to. The rest were only accepted with substantial revisions.

I think my first paper was rejected by two journals, before being accepted by the third. It is now the subject of a patent that is used every day on many patients to provide life-saving care. The rejections were not because the idea was poor, but because my paper was poor. As an outsider you can expect that your first paper will also be poor and will also be rejected.

In every case, both the rejections and the requests for revisions resulted in improvements to the paper. Peer review is a process that improves the papers, not an obstacle to cross. Peer review is useful, even when it leads to rejection.

 

[Esim Can]

Thank you both, @Dale and @fresh_42, for the valuable input which helps to sharpen the focus on the core issues.

@Dale
Your point about peer review being a process for improvement is a very constructive way to look at it. Thank you for that.

My question is about the practical workflow. Given your experience, is a 'journal-first' approach the standard? Or is it more common to post to a preprint server like arXiv first, to establish priority and invite feedback before formal submission?

@fresh_42
Thank you for your candid assessment. I have red your article before and have to say, that it was partly the reason, why i posted my question in the first place. This discussion really reinforces the central challenge that I mentioned in my initial post: the lack of an academic "safety net" to catch errors when one is working in isolation.

This is the very reason I'm trying to find a path for responsible feedback before any formal submission, to avoid wasting the valuable time of reviewers. The hurdles in physics seem particularly high, which is a stark contrast to the culture in mathematics, where significant contributions from independents are more common.

Thank you both again for the discussion.

Greetings,
Esim Can

 

[fresh_42]

The hurdles in physics seem particularly high, which is a stark contrast to the culture in mathematics, where significant contributions from independents are more common.

If you read my article, then you have read

They [ALMA, astronomy] have output rates of more than three papers a day! This means that thousands of observations have been made, all contributing to our current knowledge of what’s in the box. It is even difficult for professionals to keep track, let alone for laypeople.

And GR or QCD isn't fast food either. It requires not only higher mathematics but also specific physical language. Modern science is highly specialized, and even luminaries in one field are not necessarily experts in another.

I think these are some of the reasons why it is more difficult in physics. Mathematics is a bit simpler: either something is provably correct or wrong. However, if you set up a whole new terminology as Mochizuki did in his attempt to prove the ABC conjecture, you'll be lost, too. And if there is someone outside the academic world who claims he solved the Riemann hypothesis, then it is a safe bet that he didn't. I have looked into a few of those attempts as they show up from time to time. They weren't even written in an understandable fashion.

 

[Dale]

Given your experience, is a 'journal-first' approach the standard?

I publish in the medical technology literature and it was all journal first. I think that it is common in physics to post to arxiv at the same time that you submit to a journal

 

[berkeman]

Do you have any local universities with professors or graduate students who are working on the same thing?

My question is about the practical workflow. Given your experience, is a 'journal-first' approach the standard? Or is it more common to post to a preprint server like arXiv first, to establish priority and invite feedback before formal submission?

If you are actively working on new research, you should be regularly reading peer-reviewed journals in your areas of interest (even if you don't subscribe to those journals, you should be able to get access to the articles through your local library). And the references that you include in your paper will be from that reading. How many references do you list at the end of your paper? What journals are they from?

 

[Esim Can]

Hello @berkeman,

It depends on the specific paper. The number of references can range from 5-7 to 20 or more.

I try to build the arguments primarily from the foundational, seminal works. So, in the case of the physics papers, the references are often the "old standards" – the original papers that established the concepts I'm working with.

My background in AI influences my search, but the work itself remains firmly grounded in that foundational physics literature. Old stuff in fact. Sometimes, if i use actual values from experiments then i cite them, or if i use rotation data from SPARC or so. This interdisciplinary method is also why feedback from a professional physicist is so crucial, to ensure the work is correctly contextualized.

 

[Dale]

I try to build the arguments primarily from the foundational, seminal works.

This will not impress anyone, and makes it much more likely that the content is already well understood. You should start by fixing that before anything else

 

[Esim Can]

Hello @Dale
The motivation for this foundational approach comes precisely from the fact that, despite the vast literature, fundamental issues remain open. The very existence of the Standard Model's free parameters or the persistent MOND vs. dark matter debate are signs that a re-examination of the foundations might be a worthwhile endeavor. Some may call it a 'back to the roots approach'.

 

[Dale]

That is a depressingly standard excuse.

Best of luck

 

[PeroK]

Hello @Dale
The motivation for this foundational approach comes precisely from the fact that, despite the vast literature, fundamental issues remain open. The very existence of the Standard Model's free parameters or the persistent MOND vs. dark matter debate are signs that a re-examination of the foundations might be a worthwhile endeavor. Some may call it a 'back to the roots approach'.

The obvious point is that you are not working on a specific problem, but on a grand unification of everything. If you were doing your own medical research, say, you might find something interesting. But, if you were working on the elixir for eternal life (simultaneously curing all cancers, preventing all strokes and providing immunity against all viruses), you'd be a crackpot.

You don't have the skills to tackle a specific problem - like studying neutron-star mergers and predicting the gravitational wave patterns that may be detected. It's plausible that a sufficiently gifted amateur could do such a thing - after 5-10 years of serious study. They would be at the level of other graduate researchers, in other words.

Instead, you throw everything out (because it's far too hard and time-consuming to learn) and start from scratch - hoping that your modest efforts (a few hours a week?) will replace all of known physics. It's delusional to believe you might be successful. As a gifted amateur you are not trying to get to the level of other researchers, but to completely eclipse every physicist who has ever walked the Earth! And, just as a part-time hobby!

 

[Esim Can]

I understand your skepticism - theoretical physics attracts many questionable claims, and caution is absolutely justified.

My intention here was NOT to present a new theory, but to discuss the process of how independent researchers can responsibly approach publication.

Whether or not something proves meaningful is ultimately a matter for peer review, not for forum debate, especially when there is not enough information available about a theory or a person to justify such judgments.

I appreciate your time nevertheless.

 

[fresh_42]

I'm always reminded of Asimov's Relativity of Wrong in those discussions. A new theory must explain all existing observations, and there are many, most of which are unknown to the broader public. This implies that they either have to repeat current theorems, or introduce them as a limit determined by the constraints of their applicability. That's why I am satisfied with Newton and do not need to invoke Einstein when I'm driving my car. And a possible GUT has to explain why relativity theory makes so incredibly precise predictions that we can navigate to the scale of meters with it or take pictures of the accretion disc of a BH.

Archimedes didn't have these requirements, and possibly Galois neither. However, the brilliance of Galois theory only affects a very small part of mathematics. Galileo did not invent telescopes; he used them differently. Planck did not invent quantum mechanics; he only needed a good old proportion factor! And if we look at mathematics, then it has been the techniques that have driven development, not singular results. The chances of a breakthrough in any area by one big idea become smaller every day, with every single idea that did not work.

 

[Muu9]

Galois did not invent telescopes; he used them differently

Galileo?

 

[fresh_42]

Galileo?

Corrected, thanks. Stumbled upon their similarity.

 

[WWGD]

Galileo?

He's just a poor boy, nobody loves him.

 

[fresh_42]

He's just a poor boy, nobody loves him.

Depends. He possesses four Jupiter moons.