Is Independant Research forum first place to start?

[Buckethead]

I've been working on something for quite sometime and made what I think might be a significant discovery (much by accident). Whether or not it actually is significant is of course TBD. The topic involves rotation curves of galaxies. I am a non-acedemic and this research is strictly my own. My questions are:

Is the best place to start to submit a formal post to the Independant Research forum and will the fact that I am a non-acedemic be reason for refusal?

If it is accepted in this forum, should I find an endorser to submit the paper to arXiv and can I find such an endorser on this forum?

If it turns out my research is significant, is submitting to this forum a good way to insure my name gets attached to the submission? In otherwords, will my work be protected if it turns out to be significant?

Thanks.

 

[Astronuc]

Just follow the guidelines - https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=82301

When in doubt - ask.

 

[Anti-Meson]

I've been working on something for quite sometime and made what I think might be a significant discovery (much by accident). Whether or not it actually is significant is of course TBD. The topic involves rotation curves of galaxies. I am a non-acedemic and this research is strictly my own. My questions are:

Is the best place to start to submit a formal post to the Independant Research forum and will the fact that I am a non-acedemic be reason for refusal?

If it is accepted in this forum, should I find an endorser to submit the paper to arXiv and can I find such an endorser on this forum?

If it turns out my research is significant, is submitting to this forum a good way to insure my name gets attached to the submission? In otherwords, will my work be protected if it turns out to be significant?

Thanks.

Answer to your first question - Discuss your research with an academic that is already working in that field and ask for some feedback. Most American and British universities and faculty websites where you can ask some in the department via email and they will either answer directly or pass you onto/or recommend a fellow member of staff. PF is not the place to submit original academic work.

Answer to second question - You may find through your dialogues from professors at universities that they will aid your submission to arxiv.org

If you are concerned about intellectual property, the medium of internet and PF is to be avoided. I would recommend emailing academics that are researching the same interests you have - namely astrophysicists.

 

[Buckethead]

Answer to your first question - Discuss your research with an academic that is already working in that field and ask for some feedback. Most American and British universities and faculty websites where you can ask some in the department via email and they will either answer directly or pass you onto/or recommend a fellow member of staff. PF is not the place to submit original academic work.

Answer to second question - You may find through your dialogues from professors at universities that they will aid your submission to arxiv.org

If you are concerned about intellectual property, the medium of internet and PF is to be avoided. I would recommend emailing academics that are researching the same interests you have - namely astrophysicists.

Thank you for the replies. Do you have any recommendations about where would be the best place to start in finding contacts. My research involves dark matter theory and analysis of rotation curves and the like. What universities are doing the leading work on this or should I just find a university in my state? I live in OR.

I'm not concerned about intellectual property as I hope that my submission will be useful to everyone, I just would like to be known as the originator of the discovery if indeed it's worthy.

 

[Anti-Meson]

Thank you for the replies. Do you have any recommendations about where would be the best place to start in finding contacts. My research involves dark matter theory and analysis of rotation curves and the like. What universities are doing the leading work on this or should I just find a university in my state? I live in OR.

I'm not concerned about intellectual property as I hope that my submission will be useful to everyone, I just would like to be known as the originator of the discovery if indeed it's worthy.

To start, visit the website of your nearest university that has a physics department. Contact their secretary and explain your reason for contacting them and ask whether the secretary can put you in contact with the appropriate professor.

 

[Buckethead]

To start, visit the website of your nearest university that has a physics department. Contact their secretary and explain your reason for contacting them and ask whether the secretary can put you in contact with the appropriate professor.

This sounds like a good place to start. I'll make a contact tomorrow. If I find a professor that finds the work worthwhile, then what would be my next step?

 

[Anti-Meson]

This sounds like a good place to start. I'll make a contact tomorrow. If I find a professor that finds the work worthwhile, then what would be my next step?

Ask him if he could kindly have a look at your said theory and provide some feedback. Explain to him that your aim is to publish it on arxiv.org and whether he or some other professor he knows would be kind enough to referee it.

 

[Buckethead]

Ask him if he could kindly have a look at your said theory and provide some feedback. Explain to him that your aim is to publish it on arxiv.org and whether he or some other professor he knows would be kind enough to referee it.

Excellent, thank you very much. I'm already looking at some astrophysicists at the U of OR to make contact with.

 

[Anti-Meson]

You might want to take this next piece of advice or not, so use with caution. Some universities are inundated with quack claims such as "Einstein was wrong and here is my theory to prove it" and so a lot of the time professors instantaneously ignore and delete them.

So you may wish to start off highlighting this and to sympathise with them and persuade them your theory is no such quackery, to what you believe. Persuading someone of your theory is at the heart of science as it is important for people to believe you and your theory.

 

[Buckethead]

Good advice and something that I've already come to learn just being an active member of this forum. I plan on going in with full respect for all the research that is being done and in fact the data from current research is what I have been using to work through my theory.

 

[Anti-Meson]

Excellent, keep a positive mindset. I wish you good luck and success.

 

[Buckethead]

Thank you, I'll keep you posted!

 

[Anti-Meson]

Thank-you, I look forward to the news.

 

[jtbell]

I plan on going in with full respect for all the research that is being done and in fact the data from current research is what I have been using to work through my theory.

My research involves dark matter theory and analysis of rotation curves and the like. What universities are doing the leading work on this or should I just find a university in my state?

If you're already acquainted with some of the current research in the area, then I would think a logical place to start would be one of the places where that research was done.

 

[Buckethead]

If you're already acquainted with some of the current research in the area, then I would think a logical place to start would be one of the places where that research was done.

The data I've used has been from the internet and have not paid attention to the exact universities of origin. Nevertheless I've already sent an email to a professor at the U of OR physics department and surprisingly have already received a response to submit my work. Not surprisingly I was warned that submissions like mine are common and will probably not survive muster. I'm not deterred and am excited to get this paper finished so I can submit it. Very excited!

 

[Buckethead]

Well, I submitted my paper to a professor of cosmology at the U of O and it was quickly shot down without any room for discussion. Undeterred I submitted it to a professor friend of a friend and was hoping for a little more discussion but was told the paper had too many fundamental errors. A bit disheartening, but I can certainly understand their positions. I do not have a graduate degree and physics is just a serious hobby for me, so to expect a serious evaluation was probably expecting too much. I suppose I'll just offer a link to the paper and let this forum make their own judgement. Not sure which section to put it under since it is speculative but not really ready for the independant research section which is a formal area with pretty strict guidelines.

 

[Evo]

We don't allow personal theories or overly speculative posts. You can look at the template for submission to the IR forum, but if it doesn't meet the criteria, it will be rejected.

 

[Vanadium 50]

You say that the professor said it was full of errors. How is this not getting a serious evaluation?

 

[Buckethead]

You say that the professor said it was full of errors. How is this not getting a serious evaluation?

I'll change that to "more thorough evaluation". But again, I recognize that this is not possible. I'm used to the open discussions in this forum between amatures and serious academics and thought that I might have gotten a similar discussion going with the alternate route I chose, that's all.

 

[Moonbear]

I'll change that to "more thorough evaluation". But again, I recognize that this is not possible. I'm used to the open discussions in this forum between amatures and serious academics and thought that I might have gotten a similar discussion going with the alternate route I chose, that's all.

That's perhaps a sign that you have too many serious errors for it to be worth further consideration. The most detailed critiques are usually provided on the better written papers, because you can get into nitpicking details if the big stuff is all there. If the big points are way off base, it's not worth the time going into details.

If you have had two professors in the field both concur that it has fundamental errors and shot it down, then it's not likely to pass muster in the IR forum either.

By the way, just the fact that you didn't know who the right people to contact would be based on a literature search related to your topic is telling that you have not done the thorough background reading necessary to even begin to start a project, let alone write a paper about it.