I wanted to the submit my newly written paper (my first paper) in the prestigious physical journal "Annalen der Physik". Incidentally, a problem arose. I filled out all of the boxes except the institutional information on the author login page. I am a school student from India, but I have no connection with any college, university, school or institution, thus I have no institutional information. I need another option for submitting my paper to this journal as an independent, self-taught researcher (nor as professional information, nor a student, nor as a member in a research project group etc). How can this be done?
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1"I am a school student from India,but I have no connection with any college, university, school, institution" You have connection with your school.– NobodyCommented Aug 17, 2022 at 7:48
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You are right, but After typed my school name, I sow that my school is not in the instruction list– Sima MiddaCommented Aug 17, 2022 at 8:01
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3 Answers
You can always approach Wiley directly to help with the submission process. However, it would seem to me that you might want to make sure that you are not wasting people's time.
You say that you are a school student from India. To be able to published in the Annalen, your work needs to be really good. And really good in Physics supposes a thorough understanding of modern Physics and Mathematics. If you are such an exceptional student that you have (presumably largely on your own) mastered these difficult subjects, then your teacher and your principal should be able to put you in contact with a good university. They after subjecting you and your paper to some scrutiny will be happy to give you an institutional address so that you can submit your article. If they do not succeed with an institution, they can surely find a physicist with a Ph.D. and some background in the field of your article to have a look at it. If that verdict is positive, then it will be easy to find a university interested in talking to you. Even if your paper is not good enough to be published, you might be recognized as a talent worth fostering.
If on the other hand you are not that exceptional, but maybe just a very bright student, your paper is not going to have the qualities needed in a publication there and if you overcome the lack of an institutional address, you will just receive a "desk reject", having wasted the time of a lot of people. If you have talent, that time would have been better spend on finding ways to groom you into a physicist. If you do not have talent, then you are deceiving yourself and the sooner you know this, the better for you.
answered Aug 17, 2022 at 14:56
However prestigious can be the journal, do you really want to submit a paper that has a close defined institutions' list?
In their submission login windows they claim to be prestigious "Based on the fame of seminal papers by Einstein, Planck and many others". Yes, they exploit the fame of some great minds of 100 years ago to exploit the work (and the naivety) of researchers like you to make a huge profit providing a platform where it is difficult even just to submit a paper.
Have a look at preprint servers, like https://arxiv.org/ , since it is your first breakthrough idea, this will put a kind of timestamp on it, protecting to some degree paternity of the idea, and it will as well make your contribution available to the physics community as soon as possible, so you can ask for feedback by providing a link to your arxiv submission.
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side note, nice but not necessarily necessary: submission to arxiv are free of charge, both to contribute to and to read from.– EarlGreyCommented Aug 17, 2022 at 8:38
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3However, arxiv will require an "endorsement" ... they try to minimize junk science.– GEdgarCommented Aug 17, 2022 at 10:21
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@GEdgar but they do it for free :) ! I am very much in favour of the "Having an endorsement" required by arxiv, I think is the right way to proceed for many reasons which are long to clarify. In short: OP will find out that publishing their idea is very important but not very urgent, since it takes a long way to "write a paper and submit to review"– EarlGreyCommented Aug 17, 2022 at 11:31
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1If you "publish" on arXiv, you lose the advantage of the review/feedback process of a reputable publisher.– BuffyCommented Aug 17, 2022 at 11:52
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@Buffy infact arXiv provides a more informal and honest channel for review/feedback, which is what Einstein&co were doing before submitting to the illustrious journals of the time: they were getting feedback on their ideas via snail mail and personal correspondence/discussions. Then after much debates and exchanges, the Einstein&co. were going to submit to a reputable journal to get the paper reviewed (maybe) and published. Publishing on arXiv and getting feedback and comments and then, 5 years down the road, OP is ready to rethink about submiting their work to another publishing venue.– EarlGreyCommented Aug 17, 2022 at 11:55
It seems odd to me that a journal published by Wiley would restrict the authorship to any "approved" list. I suggest that you approach the editor of the journal through their system (or through Wiley) and ask them directly how an Independent Researcher can submit a paper. I can't promise you success in this, but it would be an appropriate step.
This is just a guess, but their most famous author was Einstein, and I'm guessing that at the time he first submitted he had no academic affiliation. Historians of science might prove me wrong in that. He might still have been associated with U. Zurich, but was employed by the Patent Office at the time. But see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annalen_der_Physik
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I believe he submitted his first article a few months after graduating in 1900, whatever that means in terms of his affiliation. As far as I have read, their submission procedure for theoretical physics papers at the time boiled down to sending a letter to Max Planck, who presumably cared more about the science than such things. In addition, none of the Annalen der Physik papers I've read from the time have affiliation bylines.– AnyonCommented Aug 17, 2022 at 16:19