I’m a programmer who specializes in simulating differential equations. After doing some independent research, I’ve devised a method for solving a specific type of equation. I’ve written a paper on the topic and I’d like to get it published.
You don’t need to know your referees. In fact, it is generally preferred that you not have collaborated with a peer reviewer of your manuscript. If you have done enough of a literature review to know who is active in the field enough to be a good reviewer, then you just suggest those people. Most journals require that you not have a professional connection to your referees and that your referees be from several institutions, so having connections at a single university will not help.
I would suggest that you list your employer as your affiliation. Come up with 3 potential referees whose work you’re citing in your paper and include them as suggested referees in your cover letter when you submit to JED. In general, the editor of JED will send out the manuscript to other referees if the ones on your list aren’t suitable–that assumes your paper is otherwise properly formatted and suitable for JED. The worst that can happen is that the editor rejects the paper outright without sending it out for review.
This is all based on my experience as an academic in the physical sciences.
Echoing what’s been said above. I’m actually a little surprised that JDE asks for suggested referees — that’s not something I’ve seen before. But your employer should be a fine “affiliation”, and the people whose work you cite (or who have worked in the field) are fine for listing as possible referees regardless of whether you know them. Referees aren’t like employment references; if any of them aren’t suitable, the editors will do the work of finding other referees.
What about taking a class, especially a graduate one? If you have at least a Bachelor’s some schools will let you take a grad class or two without going through the competitive application process. Once you’re a student, you should have unrestricted access to the campus and can visit/troll professors looking for advice or sponsorship. In the 1990’s (I think dinosaurs were still alive back then), taking a class (any class) was a common suggestion on where to get Internet access because all students got an account as a matter of course.
I have been an editor for three journals, two in math, one kind of on the border of math and CS and none of them has asked the author to suggest a referee. You submit the paper and it is up to them to find a referee (math journals generally use only one, although there might be exceptions). But if you do need to suggest a referee, use the names on your bibliography that seem most relevant. That is what I, as editor, used to do to find referees. If there is no bibliography, then I wonder whether what you have done is original, since you may well not have looked for a history of the problem. But I will affirm that academic standing is by no means a prerequisite to publication.
This has been my experience also with IEEE conferences and journals, from both the author side and the editor side. I know it happens - I was just a suggested referee. For those who use this model, what percentage of reviewers of the paper are suggested by the author versus being chosen by the editor?
It’s hard to say, because the reviewers often remain anonymous even after publication. Just to ballpark it based on what I do know, I’d guess that roughly half my reviews come from suggested reviewers.
If you guys usually have just one review per article, that might be a big part of why you don’t suggest reviewers - we usually get 3 reviews. I’ve had four reviewers a couple of times, and never fewer than two. If I were an editor, I’d probably appreciate a little help finding referees.
We use 3 - 5. For the conference reviewers register including the topics they want to review for, so the program committee member who owns a paper can select from a set of volunteers - though you often have to go out and solicit more reviewers, especially when you have an oddball topic. Most of the issues of the IEEE magazine I’m on the Ed Board for have guest editors, and they know the right people. I’ve never been an editor for an archival journal, but I do review for them, and given the speed at which I’m given another review after I finish one I guess it is automated to some extent.
By the time you become an editor you are supposed to have enough contacts to know who reviews what. It is also important to avoid people assigning reviewers who hate the guts of the authors.
I was asking my question of editors, since authors almost never know the identity of reviewers. That’s another reason I’m dubious about suggested reviewers. If an author suggests three, and all the reviews come back crappy, he is going to wonder who stabbed him in the back. Similarly, if I were a suggested reviewer I might be a bit more careful with criticism especially if the author could affect my career. I know that a suggested reviewer might not actually review, but I’d still worry.
Not me - I’m too old to have to worry about this stuff any more.
I concur with the others. You don’t have to know anyone or have any affiliation to submit a paper to any of the journals I have ever published in. Getting the paper accepted is another matter. People who’ve published good work in the past or are otherwise known quantities often get the benefit of the doubt, when a unknown name may not.
Be aware that inexperience can be a problem. You really have to do your homework to figure out what others have done before, how your paper fits in, and what new thing it contributes. In my experience as an editor, the single biggest reason why reviewers rejected papers was for failing to give proper credit to others (most often the reviewer).
One other point: If you don’t have any experience writing, or even reading, math papers, it would improve your chances of having the paper accepted if you show it to a few mathematicians first; there’s a definite style to math papers, and also determining the boundary between rigor (good) and pedantry (bad) can be tricky if you don’t any experience with math publication. If you’re a programmer and have an algorithm to solve a particular differential equation, your paper might be a better fit for an engineering or applied computer science journal than a math one. (Obvious disclaimer: I have no idea what kind of background you have in math or academic publishing, and I don’t know anything about your specific result than what you wrote in the post.)
In theory it’s possible for anyone to publish research, but realistically you need someone who’s familiar with the system to guide you through the process. Find a numerical analyst at your local university and ask them for help.
Respectfully disagree. The advice to get a mathematician to read it is good, but there is no “process”. You write in (in TeX, of course, using the journal class file if you already know the journal), choose an editor and send it off.
The reason we use only one reviewer in math is that math papers are so damnedly hard to read. You have to follow often extremely intricate reasoning. They were always so hard, but as publication (especially typesetting) costs rose, there was enormous pressure to make them shorter, always shorter. Sometimes I look at a paper from the 1930s or 40s and am amazed by how readable they were. Now that I publish exclusively in online journals where length is no longer an issue (electrons are cheap), I am consciously trying to return to a more discursive style.
Bottom line: Good referees are hard to find. Finding one is hard. Two or more just about impossible.