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I have a paper which I'm interested in submitting to arXiv.org.

However, the submission guidelines say an institutional affiliation is required for submission. I've graduated in physics from Unicamp in Brazil, but I didn't follow a scientific career. My current employer doesn't relate to physics.

What do you suggest that I do? Is there a way to submit my paper? Or is there an alternative to arXiv.org?

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If you have no luck, you can always fall back on http://vixra.org/ [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ViXra ]

Many papers there look distinctly dubious at the very least, or trivial, as one would expect from an unmoderated repository. But I'm sure some are sound and worthwhile.

Although perhaps not ideal, one advantage is that at least you'll have evidence of when your paper was submitted, in the event of priority disputes. Also, it is handy to give a standard(ish) URL for references.

The guy who founded ViXra and runs it, Phil Gibbs, is a physics graduate himself, and as clever as a tree full of owls. But there's no getting away from the fact that in academia ViXra is generally treated with a fair degree of contempt.

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    I was reading the about page and I just LOVED it! Thank you!
    – Sony Santos
    Commented May 9, 2012 at 22:29
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    I'd be very careful with viXra. Fair or not, it has a reputation for containing primarily crackpot work, so it's not something you want associated with your paper unless you firmly believe in the principles behind it (namely that there should be no filters whatsoever).
    – Anonymous Mathematician
    Commented May 9, 2012 at 22:46
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    In my experience securing priority is not even worth thinking about. Your only goal should be dissemination: you want your paper to be read by the research community. If you succeed, then priority isn't even an issue. If you fail, then it really doesn't matter if you've "secured priority". The best case scenario is sharing credit with whoever independently rediscovers your ideas and succeeds in disseminating them. A more likely outcome is being relegated to a footnote ("some aspects of Smith's work were anticipated in an unpublished manuscript by Jones that was never widely circulated").
    – Anonymous Mathematician
    Commented May 10, 2012 at 2:21
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    Given the amount of crackpot stuff on arXiv, I'm still surprised viXra even exists.
    – Lev Reyzin
    Commented May 10, 2012 at 2:40
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    I opened a question for that.
    – Sony Santos
    Commented May 10, 2012 at 16:14
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I don't see where it says that you must have a institutional affiliation, Reading comprehension is not my strength.

It also says that you must represent your affiliation correctly. If your current employment is concerned with certain areas of Computer Science or Mathematics (and your paper is in a related area) this will probably count. Otherwise, I'd suggest entering "none", as that is the truth of the matter.

However, I believe that without either an affiliation or a history with arXiv they will expect you to get endorsed before they accept your submissions.

As for finding endorser they write

If you're looking for an endorsement, you can find somebody qualified to endorse by clicking on the link titled "Which of these authors are endorsers?" at the bottom of every abstract.

Now all that is left is for you to convince one of these people that you are serious and competent. Assuming that you were previously affiliated with a institution in the appropriate field you should probably use your contacts there to get in touch with an endorser: they are like to suspect that anyone who contacts them out of the blue is a Not-Very-Serious-Person (tm).

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  • Great! I didn't know about it, thanks! Regarding institutional affiliation, it's on the link I provided, under "Take Responsability": "The following information is also required for submission". The first item is the institutional affiliation, and the second one is (if I got it correctly - did I?) the official number of papers of that Institute.
    – Sony Santos
    Commented May 9, 2012 at 18:56
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    As of 2019, the linked page no longer mentions affiliations.
    – fqq
    Commented Sep 24, 2019 at 22:37
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You can upload your paper to Zenodo and/or ResearchGate.

Also, unlike arXiv or viXra, Zenodo and/or ResearchGate have the added benefit that assign they can assign a DOI to your paper for free.

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  • Why the downvote?
    – User
    Commented Sep 24, 2019 at 20:34
  • @Matthias I'm not the downvoter, but this does not really answer the (obsolete) question.
    – fqq
    Commented Sep 24, 2019 at 22:35
  • @fqq The OP did ask "Or is there an alternative to arXiv.org?".
    – Nobody
    Commented Sep 25, 2019 at 3:05

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