Can a layman publish a scientific paper?

[twofish-quant]

I wonder if you even need to hold a degree since peer-review is a blind process?

No you don't. However, technically you don't have to have any credentials to compose a symphony orchestra, climb Mount Everest, play chess at the grandmaster level, or swim the English Channel, but your odds of doing it without any prior experience is pretty close to nil.

If a laymen can afford the costs (time, energy, and money) of publishing an article himself (because you won't likely make a convincing PI for a grant) and also has a scientific story with the intellectual merit to pass peer reviews then I don't sees what's stopping them.

If...

 

[twofish-quant]

In response to that, I'd say publish away. If it's good, it'll stand its own ground. If it's not, no special inroads into publishing will help you. Thus, the focus is clear: If it can stand on it's own merit, it will. If not, it won't.

That has it backwards. In astrophysics, you only publish after you spend a few months getting everyone to beat the idea to shreds. If you have a brilliant new idea, you talk about it over lunch, and if it survives a lot of beating (and most don't), then you spend a few months refining it, and then you publish.

 

[twofish-quant]

There have been a couple of comments about how a "layman" would be unable to compile experimental results and publish.

That's actually not true for observational astronomy. There are a lot of good journals for amateur astronomers.

http://www.aavso.org/publications

With about $10K, you can put together a decent observatory and publish good papers.

If you want to do "real" astronomy, I suggest that you start there. Also I would strongly suggest that anyone that wants to publish theory avoid "crank-heavy" fields like cosmology and work on things like interstellar medium or variable star. Part of it is the idea that *I CAN EXPLAIN THE UNIVERSE* gets in the way of actually doing so.

Part of the problem is that layman trying to do theory is that they don't know what the problem is enough to realize that it's not a easy problem to solve. One thing that you have to do in order to do something original is to understand what has been done before, and that usually takes a good two to three years.

 

[turbo]

That's actually not true for observational astronomy. There are a lot of good journals for amateur astronomers.

That is exactly the point that I was making. Did you even read my post? Just asking...

Also, you don't have to publish in some "amateur" journal. My collaborators and I published in "Astrophysics and Space Sciences" which is a well-respected peer-reviewed journal by Springer. You do not need academic or professional credentials to publish serious scientific papers. You just need to do careful meticulous work and come up with something unique or "new" in some sense.

http://arxiv.org/abs/0805.1492

 

[Chalnoth]

If you want to do "real" astronomy, I suggest that you start there. Also I would strongly suggest that anyone that wants to publish theory avoid "crank-heavy" fields like cosmology and work on things like interstellar medium or variable star. Part of it is the idea that *I CAN EXPLAIN THE UNIVERSE* gets in the way of actually doing so.

Yes. I think this largely comes down do the Dunning-Kruger effect, where if people don't actually know a whole lot about something, people are extremely prone to overestimating their knowledge.

 

[twofish-quant]

That is exactly the point that I was making. Did you even read my post? Just asking...

Yes and I was largely agreeing with your post.

One problem with data mining databases is that you have to be *really* careful in making conclusions.

Also, one problem with the question is that if you get yourself to the point that you can publish, you aren't really a layman. My best guess is that 80% of the people in the world, with the right motivation and with infinite access to resources can get to the point that with a few years of exposure to science get to the point that they can publish professional level research.

 

[twofish-quant]

You do not need academic or professional credentials to publish serious scientific papers. You just need to do careful meticulous work and come up with something unique or "new" in some sense.

It also works the other way. I have academic and professional credentials, but I'm not currently in a position to publish anything serious because I don't have the time, energy, and social networks. In order to publish something in a field that I've already worked in, it would take me about month to catch up, then three months to get some data, and then three more months of full time work, and it's hard because I'm not in a position to have co-authors.

Part of it is that there are no formal restrictions. You send the paper to ApJ, and that's it. The problem is that before I can publish something, it has to pass "internal peer review." I have to convince myself that it's worth publishing, because if it has my name on it, and I think it's garbage, then I'm going to be ashamed and embarrassed even if no one else cares.

It might be possible to "crowd-source" science, and one thing about Wikipedia is that you get a lot of professionals working on it because

1) there is no minimum time commitment. I've been using wikipedia for my work, and when I find an error, I fix it, and that takes five minutes.
2) anonymity helps a lot. One thing about having a professional paper is that before I sign something, I'd going to quadrulpe check it to make sure that I don't see anything stupidly embarrassing. On wikipedia, if I say something really dumb, someone fixes it and everyone forgets.

 

[Pythagorean]

No you don't. However, technically you don't have to have any credentials to compose a symphony orchestra, climb Mount Everest, play chess at the grandmaster level, or swim the English Channel, but your odds of doing it without any prior experience is pretty close to nil.



If...

I hope you realize you're preaching to the choir; I intentionally put a giant conditional after the if. It was supposed to come off as a daunting task! if you're intentionally preaching to the choir, though, then hallelujah!

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Yes.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40782104/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/science-journal-publishes-study--year-olds/"