Made a discovery and I would like to publish it any advice?

[xdrgnh]

I'm a senior and a physics major at a university and I'm working on my senior project with three physics professor. I made a discovery about the non linear system I am studying which I haven't found in the literature and I would like to publish it. I won't give to much details about the discovery but you can say it relates chaos in Hamiltonian systems to chaos in driven damped pendulum. Any advice on how should I go about publish my results. What type of journals would you recommended I send my paper to?

 

[Doug Huffman]

Do not your professors have a prior interest? Be careful of your contract as a student and its effect on your career.

 

[xdrgnh]

What do you mean by prior interest? When it comes to author I would have them as 2nd and 3rd authors.

 

[vela]

Why don't you just ask the professors you're working with?

 

[xdrgnh]

Oh I did already and they were fine with the idea. I just posted on here because I like hearing a variety of opinions. Also I won't see them till next week and I want to start working on the paper right now.

 

[phyzguy]

I suggest that you just start writing the paper and have it ready for professors to review when they get back. You don't need to decide which journal to submit it to in order to write it. Most of the work is just getting the paper organized and deciding what you want to say and what figures and equations you want to include. This site has a good generic LaTex template for a scientific paper with guidelines for how to organize it. You can copy this template and introduce your won topics and ideas. If you haven't used LaTex, now is a good time to learn.

 

[xdrgnh]

Thank you os much phyzguy. When I click on the link though it says 404 not found. I'm trying to learn Latex right now actually.

 

[phyzguy]

Here's the file uploaded. I had to change the file extension to .txt to get it to upload. After you download it you will need to change the extension back to .tex. You can then edit this file and then use your LaTex software to generate your output file. I usually use pdflatex to generate pdf directly.

Edit: I think I fixed the link. Try it again.

 

[Choppy]

For what it's worth, one hint for making the decision on which journal to submit to is to go with the most frequently referenced journal in either your final reference list or from your preliminary reading. But I agree this is a conversation that needs to happen between you and your supervisors.

 

[ZapperZ]

Oh I did already and they were fine with the idea. I just posted on here because I like hearing a variety of opinions. Also I won't see them till next week and I want to start working on the paper right now.

I strongly suggest that you wait and ask them! They know the level of the work you have produced, and will be able to suggest the appropriate journal. Besides, you will need someone to verify that your work is valid, your manuscript is ready for submission, etc.

Even if you don't see them till later, are they not in communication via e-mail?

Zz.

 

[gleem]

Do different journals have their own style requirements for articles?

 

[Choppy]

Do different journals have their own style requirements for articles?

They vary largely in terms of reference style. The general article format and literary style is fairly universal, although there are always little details to take into account - such as which formats the figures need to be in, word count limits, etc.

In this respect, one could start writing a basic article following the format of a similar journal article, or using a template such as the one phyzguy provided and the adjust the details as necessary, once a decision is made on which journal is most appropriate to target.