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Would having a review article published in a reputable journal as sole author look good to grad programs?
I'm aiming for a PhD in computational neuroscience or cognitive neuroscience (if it turns out I'm no better at applied mathematics by the time I finish undergrad).
I have been doing experimental psychology research on novelty and reward processing in those suffering from common psychiatric symptoms. I started this research several months ago under the supervision of a professor of psychology.
I have a relatively advanced understanding of my field (I was a very bored and curious teen/pre-teen) and wanted to dedicate my undergrad to building foundational research experience rather than learning material I'm already familiar with. I can pass a psychology GRE exam and can pass most schools cumulative bachelor's exams (or senior exams) in behavioral neuro/neuroscience no issue, so I wanted to have a solid research background to prepare me for my PhD.
As big-headed as I was, I did not anticipate how difficult conducting research was, mostly how difficult it was to gather enough data and work around flakey participants, not to mention how difficult it was to model the experimental data. I graduate here in summer of 2025  and start my neuro degree in fall of 2025.
I was aiming to have a publication with my supervisor by the time I graduate, but it may fall through at this rate. I wrote up a review article and submitted to a reputable neuroscience journal that covers my specific topics often, it's currently undergoing peer review. I wanted to do research at my next institution under the supervision of a faculty member, possibly get my name on a publication or two (maybe even as primary author if I can convince a faculty member to let me work on a project of my own interest). I feel like having a publication in a reputable journal will help me make a convincing case for a faculty member when I write up a research proposal, I'm just wondering if it will make me a more appealing candidate when I apply  for a PhD.
I am also wondering if it will be useful to write two or three other review articles before I finish my undergrad. Ideally I'd have my name on original experimental research, but  fat chance a faculty member at an established research/medical school  will take me seriously if I ask to work on a project that interests me.
EDIT: I appreciate all of the advice, and have taken all of your advice to heart. I'll extend more effort to actually gaining research experience rather than trying to find an easy way out as a means to to fluff my CV. I appreciate  the grounded perspectives.

Instead of considering writing an article because it helps you (or not), consider who the intended audience of your article is, and why would they want to read what you write? Take into account that there are already way too many articles published.

I recognize that different fields have different review article cultures, but I have a hard time imagining an undergraduate who hasn't published original work yet could produce three useful review articles.

@Anyon that's completely fair, I have experience in whole brain network modeling and some experience tinkering with ANN's.  I am currently doing supervised research and will be using computational methods for my data analysis. As for how i could, I know it seems rather conceited, but i have a solid/advanced  conceptual understanding (and a moderate/ basic techinical one). I wasn't exaggerating when i said i spent a good portion of my teen years immersing myself in this, by age 16 i could keep up in academic conversations. That said, your criticism is fair and i often get ahead of myself.

@MaartenBuis Thats fair, I just want to secure my position in  a good PhD program, and people tend to take the idea of undergrads doing scholarly research as insulting/ laughable. I was lucky my supervisor now wasn't one of those people. I'll keep this in mind, and i'll make sure that I actually consider the weight of my percieved contributions before i pull a lit review out my rear end  just to make my CV a bit more appealing. I appreciate the grounded perspective.

@Anyon: different fields have different review article cultures --- This is definitely something I had no idea about until I began reading Academia SE about 8 years ago. In mathematics, survey/review papers are nearly always written by a seasoned researcher who is especially knowledgeable with recognized expertise in a certain topic, and only rarely would be attempted by a recent Ph.D. Example 1 and Example 2 and Example 3

@diddyDANK Welcome to Ac.SE. Not to burst your bubble, but anyone who is thinking about a PhD in X has a "relatively advanced understanding" of their field, and should easily pass a subject GRE. I left that para in, but I don't think it's really necessary. The US doesn't have bachelor's exams, so I can't comment on that, but I would suspect anyone who is only six months out from graduating should be able to pass one ...

Can you clarify "I graduate here in summer of 2025 and start my neuro degree in fall of 2025." Is the latter a master's degree?

I made some other light edits (to "get your name on a publication" means to be a "co-author").

@DaveLRenfro In my fields (not too far from diddy), grad students are often encouraged to try to  publish their qualifying paper as a review paper. I didn't, but there's definitely a cultural notion.

@AzorAhai-him-i haven't started my neuro degree and am finishing my associates in comp sci, my neuro degree will be an undergrad degree. And i'm not too sure about that, The school i'm attending for my neuro degree requires seniors to pass a cumulative exam and requires honors students to complete independent research before graduation.

@diddyDANK You still have a lot of time, then, to have a research publication.

@DaveLRenfro That's true for OP's field (which I am in), too, at least as far as useful reviews that other people will read and use. Recent PhDs may find that the background part of their thesis is easily translatable to a review and those might be useful, too, depending on their area of research. But, as Azor Ahai mentions, that doesn't mean that undergraduates and new grad students aren't encouraged to try to publish these things by their mentors.

At top programs in your fields of interest in the US, you will be competing with applicants who do have research papers. Whether that should be "required" or not isn't really the point: when admissions is competitive, you're competing. Undergrads I've worked with who applied to graduate school had difficulty without a publication and then success in subsequent cycles with publication.
I don't think there is much value at all in most "review papers" published by undergraduates, though. They look to me like just CV padding. I think it's fine if you have one review paper, but I wouldn't try to stack a bunch of them, it's not going to make up for a lack of research papers. You'll have trouble getting them published in actually reputable journals, because there just isn't any value in these papers. Some publishers will accept them for a hefty open-access fee.
Then again, the humans reading your applications might be fooled and see a bunch of "papers" as evidence of productivity, so I can't say for sure that it won't help. But, I would put your focus instead on getting a research publication and figuring out what you need to do to get it, which might include securing a job to finish that work before starting graduate school (definitely apply in the meantime, though).
If you have a paper that is complete and ready to be submitted but unlikely to be accepted by the time your applications are due, I would highly recommend talking to your coauthors about posting it as a preprint: a preprint isn't quite the same as an accepted peer-reviewed publication, but it means a ton more than a vague claim that some CV item is "in preparation" or "submitted". It would be a lot more meaningful than a review.

This is good advice. When I sit on grad admissions committees I am well aware of the fact that undergraduates often have very little control on publication times for lab-based research. A preprint is a great idea, and additionally, if the faculty writing the letter of support can mention potential manuscripts that will be coming out, that is usually more than good enough. If I see too many CV padding fluff papers, that is a bit of a red flag. Will this person really want to do quality research, or will their PhD just be more CV padding towards their postdoc? i.e. is this systematic behavior?

@R1NaNo There's also just very little connection between "capable of writing an undergrad-level review" and "interested enough in research to follow through when stuff is tough"; as OP notes, it's easy to underestimate how difficult research is when all you know of it is reading the papers that result.

Yes, anything you publish in a reputable journal will help you. It is a positive. But whether it is enough or not depends on too many factors to assume you will be successful in gaining admission to a "top level" institution. In many fields (this is not mine) the programs at such institutions are small and have a huge number of highly qualified applicants. You need to be competitive in many areas, not just publications.
My advice is to do what you can in research and publications, but when it comes time to apply for graduate study, cast a wide net. If your self assessment is accurate then I'd guess you have a good chance, but those evaluating your record (and the records of others) will make decisions.
I can almost guarantee that if you apply to ONLY the top three institutions in the world you won't get accepted. (almost)
In the US alone, in many fields, there are at least fifty (at least) institutions in which you  can get a fine education. There will be professors qualified at all of them. Not every top-level professor is at a top-level institution, for somewhat the same reasons as above (small size) but also personal preference about where and how to live.
See the following for admissions guidance in many countries: How does the admissions process work for Ph.D. programs in Country X?. Note, importantly, that no single thing works anywhere unless you are truly exceptional.

thank you, and I don't plan on applying to just the top programs, just want a program with enough funding and resources to allow me to carry out the research that interests me.


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Accepted subject to minor revisions. How should I list this in my CV?
I submitted a paper to a good journal in theoretical computer science. Today I received an email from the editor stating that the status of the paper is:
"Accepted subject to minor revisions".
The revisions suggested by the referee were only typos. More precisely, there were only 5 typos. The referees strongly recommended to accept the paper.
To tell the truth, this was the paper with the least number of corrections I ever had (even though it may have been the one which required the greatest amount of my time to write). Often when submitting papers to conferences I get a much bigger list of corrections/suggestions. Nevertheless, the paper appears at the conference's list of accepted papers much before the corrections are implemented. So shouldn't the same reasoning apply to journals?
Question: Should I list the paper as "Accepted" in my CV / homepage?
In other words, what do theoretical computer scientists / mathematicians write in their CV in this case?

Often "accept subject to minor revisions" can become "accepted" within hours/days of making the revisions

If you are going to send your CV today, you could state "Accepted subject to minor revisions" in the CV. Otherwise, just wait until it is accepted and then include it in your CV as a regular paper with DOI instead of isssue/pages.

@MaratTalipov: there can be quite an interval between acceptance and being assigned a citable DOI. (This may depend on the field.)

If you are conflicted about this, perhaps the safest option is to list it in your CV as "Accepted subject to minor revisions".

It's important to distinguish your case of "five minor typos" and the more general case of receiving an email "accepted subject to minor revisions". In other cases, minor revisions can often involve some substantial work, and thus, there is a possibility (although typically small) that such a paper would not be subsequently accepted. Are you asking the general question about "accepted subject to minor revisions" or about the specific question where the minor revisions truly are trivial to complete? Based on your choice, the body and title of question should be made consistent.

The following apparently does not apply to theoretical mathematics, see comments and other answers for detail.
From my experience, during the time between acceptance and publication, you list the article as "in publication". This indicates that you have gone through the work of writing, submitting, responding to feedback, and the article has gone through peer review, been accepted and is just waiting to be published.
I've seen other qualifiers as well, including "in submission" for those going through the submission process, and "in preparation" for those that you're writing but haven't submitted. I strongly recommend against listing any papers in either of these categories, as until they're accepted they're not really "peer-review articles", they're just "ideas you have that you hope someone will publish one day".
Your case falls in the "in submission" category, and as such I would not list it.

If the goal is to keep a CV up-to-date, I think waiting until it's accepted is sound advice. But if the CV is to be sent as an application for a position, omitting mention of the journal article could be genuinely harmful advice. If you have say 20 journal papers, then okay, you can omit it. But there is a big difference between 0 journal articles and 1 journal article. In some (not all) CS departments, journal papers are (perhaps unfortunately) the most important aspect of a CV ...

... hence you would be gravely under-representing yourself to omit the entry entirely. Listing the article as "accepted pending minor revisions" is the best, most general advice. It is entirely honest and gives you credit for the work you have done until that point. If the panel have questions about the status of the paper, they can ask later (they can only ask if they are made aware of it). It does zero harm to list the article like this. On the other hand, omitting it could be a grave mistake.

tl;dr: if the CV is being sent as part of an application, it would be egregiously naive not to list this journal article as "accepted pending minor revision". While there are cases where people try to pad out their CV, this is certainly not one!

@eykanal: you should make clear in your answer that your experience is not in theoretical computer science or mathematics, and therefore not directly relevant to the original questioner. Your suggestion that submitted-but-not-accepted papers are not valid CV items is utterly inconsistent with the current practice in mathematics, for example.

@TomChurch - I think the comments and other answers have made that clear :)  Still, I can edit it in.

You can probably get away with describing it as "accepted" if you are quite confident that the revisions are really minor, but if they turn out to be not so minor (e.g. the referee points out what appears to be a typo, but on closer inspection it is a logical error that invalidates your proof), you will be embarrassed.
The safest course of action is to wait until it is finally, completely accepted - when the referee has signed off on your revisions, and you have a letter from the editor saying "we will let you know when it's time to correct the galley proofs".  At that point you can describe it as "Accepted", "To Appear", "In Press", or something like that.
Until then, the safest course of action is to describe it as "Submitted", "Under Review", or whatever term you would normally use on your CV to describe a paper that has been submitted but not yet accepted or rejected.  (And contrary to eykanal's answer, in mathematics it is standard practice to include submitted papers on a CV.)

In my area, cognitive neuroscience, 'in revision' is the common phrase. I would not list it as accepted, until it is. Between acceptance and publication, it would be 'in press'.

While I upvoted your answer (as most others in this thread), I don't think that "in revision" fits this particular situation (where the paper is essentially accepted, while formally tentatively). IMHO, "in revision" should be used to emphasize the phase between submission and acceptance or any other decisions by editor(s). I am new to this, but that is what common sense and logic tell me.

@AleksandrBlekh - true, but shit sometimes happens. I was reviewing a paper just last month, and then had to drop out of the reviewing process due to some family circumstances. So even though the authors did their first revision based on my comments, they were assessed by a completely different reviewer the second time. That new reviewer might not agree with my judgement, and the paper might get rejected. So I think it's better to play it safe and say 'in revision'.

@AleksandrBlekh - although, admittedly, I myself wrote 'accepted pending minor revisions' in my CV once, for my very first paper. There it made a huge difference for my CV and graduate studies application. I think that sort of situation is a reasonable exception, though still risky.

I see. Thank you for detailed clarifications - they indeed make sense.

"Accepted subject to minor revisions" is not yet accepted. You can list in your CV just like any other non-peer-reviewed manuscript if you want (just like e.g. papers that you have posted to ArXiv).
"Accepted" is accepted. You can list in your CV just like any other journal publication. Of course you don't have full bibliographic details yet, but you can simply give the authors, title, journal, and a note "to appear" or something similar.

"Accepted subject to the editor agreeing that I've correctly corrected these five typos" is so close to "accepted" that I don't think there's any harm whatsoever in describing this particular paper as "accepted".

@DavidRicherby I know of a case in which the decision was essentially reversed at this stage (after "accepted subject to minor revisions" and before "accepted"), due to the publication of a competing paper. It ain't over til the fat lady sings.

@Bitwise Sure, but that's extremely unlikely. And, frankly, if that happened to the paper described in the question, I see no difference at all between "The editor told me the paper was accepted subject to fixing five typos, I fixed them and then he changed his mind and rejected the paper" and "The editor told me the paper was accepted and then he changed his mind and rejected it."

If I were keeping my CV up to date and didn't want to wait for the final acceptance of the paper, I'd write exactly what the editor wrote to you, "accepted subject to minor revisions".  I might be tempted to add something to the effect that the recommended revisions are just corrections of typos, but I'd probably resist that temptation.  By quoting the editor exactly, you have an obvious and conclusive answer if anyone should question what you wrote.

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How to find out the terms used for a topic, so that I can find the appropriate literature on it?
My English is not perfect, moreover I am not familiar with the exact phrases for a topic of research or a technical term in the literature
I have some ideas or projects done, if I knew the exact word for the topic to which my idea belongs I could search better and find more appropriate resources and write better papers
For example suppose I have done an image processing projects which detects damages of an equipment in a manufacture, I thought its belong to the fault detection area but then I found the fault detection could be something more general or a different area ..... and defect detection is more close to the topic
As you see I need a website where I can mention what I have done or what is my idea and get the research area where I can find the proper resources

"I need a website where I can mention what I have done or what is my idea and get the research area where I can find the proper resources" does not necessarily follow from "if I knew the exact word for the topic to which my idea belongs I could search better and find more appropriate resources and write better papers"

@ff524 I meant if I knew I could perform better, then I don't know and need a website to get advice

As Aleksandar says, you do need to learn the terminology in order to search effectively for articles. And in fact, you'll need to know the terminology in order to understand those articles. When I'm exploring a new subject area, I don't start with the journal articles; I start with books, web tutorials, etc., to get the basics.
For learning the terminology, I also suggest reading the relevant articles in Wikipedia or Scholarpedia. They will also have links to journal articles; get hold of those articles and see what keywords they use. Anytime you find a useful article, note the keywords, and what journal it's in. This will help you find other useful articles, and places where you might submit your own articles in future.
Also, your college librarian may be able to help you figure out some of the keywords to use. They usually know a little about a wide variety of topics, at least enough to have some ideas of what search terms might be useful. If you set up an appointment, they may be able to spend some time with you, helping you find some sample articles and working with you to figure out a good search strategy.

I think an encyclopedia like Wikipedia or a glossary is a good hint

I edited the question and clarified my example. As you can see now, sometimes my bad English lead me to the wrong ways.

I don't think you can find a place where someone will tell you what you need to search for, i.e. you have to know what you want to find in order to find it. If you are not familiar with the terminology of your field, I suggest reading a couple of standard textbooks; while reading them, you will encounter most of the terms that are relevant to the field.
You should also keep in mind that many fields (fault detection being one of them) are quite broad, so you usually have to spend some time refining your search keywords in order to find what you are looking for.
Anyway, the bottom line is that you have to master the terminology before reading and writing papers.

For learning the terminology, I also suggest reading the relevant articles in Wikipedia or Scholarpedia. They will also have links to journal articles; get hold of those articles and see what keywords they use. Anytime you find a useful article, note the keywords. Also, your college librarian may be able to help you figure out some of the keywords to use.

@mhwombat I think you should post that as another answer.

and I second that, wikipedia and its references (and its references *) as an entry point to an area. Because starting is hard.

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Can I write a paper out of a simple idea?
Sometimes I have simple ideas that can be useful. They could be obvious or not, or it is possible that no one ever considered them the way I did.
For example:
To gather information about the statistics of the unemployed in a city or state, I suggest to build a website in which unemployed people register and enter their information. This information is very useful for decisionmakers on unemployment. But, after a while these statistics are not valid. On the other hand, unemployed people are very reluctant to update their employment status via the Internet or they don't have access to it. To solve this problem, we can send an SMS to them and they answer with 1 (as employed) and 0 (as still unemployed), then we integrate these answers to the central database. This way, we have up-to-date information in periods.
The idea was that simple, however maybe no one in our country implemented it. Could it be a paper? If yes, what can it include? Because it is as short as the above. Should I, for example, explain how we integrate the SMSs to the database (however, it may be simple too or the subject of other tools or papers). If I implement the system, should I provide the statistics of unemployment in a city or the percentage who contribute the plan? Totally, I don't know what else such a paper should cover.
For another example, suppose that I am the first one who invented the sliced bread. How long could my paper be and on what would I probably argue?

However it was just an example and after some research I may realize it is not workable, but I should say I actually built the website for an organization in my city one year ago (However not the SMS and updating part), then I was thinking if I can make a paper out of it. Maybe I could use some parts of the real data I gained in such paper, for example the people who registered (which was more than 80% of all the unemployed ranging from 20 to 40 years old) and those who had a cell phone (which was more than 98% of them), this topic shed some lights on my way.

I feel like almost all good ideas, feel simple to the people who come up with them. (One of the causes of Imposter syndrome, maybe).

You can write a paper out of a simple idea, if your idea contribute to the knowledge. Otherwise, your paper may not receive significant attention.

You can write a paper out of everything (actually I can write a paper about how I commented your question). The question is whether somebody will be willing to publish your paper. Looking at your suggested implementation it lacks a lot of details (why do you actually believe that unemployment people will answer everything, or will answer truthfully, what if only people who got employed will answer and you will get that everyone is employed). What you described is more suited for a github project rather than a paper.

Mate, the people who reply to the text are the ones with the jobs and those who don't reply are the one's who still can't afford phone credit, or even worse, had to sell their phones.

@SalvadorDali I have the total numbers of the registered unemployed people in the website. Then those who answer that they got employed contribute a percentage of the whole number. However, you are right, this information may be obtained more trustfully from insurance agent where employers must provide the insurance for employee. We can check our result against insurance agents, but still system gives information about the remaining part who are still unemployed. (note we can track their gender, their education....which is very useful info)

@SalvadorDali The scope of a problem is another issue I face. For example my purpose of this idea could be one application of SMS and its convenience to gather some information, why then I should struggle with the problem that if the answers are trustfully or not!

@Mew Come on, today, even cats and dogs have cell phone!

@Ahmad Cats and dogs may have cell phones, but then they don't have to pay the bills. I have known of actual people (students, in fact) who had to sell their phones due to temporary "liquidity problems". The digital divide is not only about age groups, economics can also be an issue.

If a person is unemployed and receiving unemployment benefits, then the state already has those numbers.  They're only missing the unemployed who are not receiving benefits (of any sort, usually; welfare tends to want to know your employment status, for example).

All of that aside, how many people respond to unsolicited texts?

@LightnessRacesinOrbit you can consider it as a proposal to a legitimate organization. One of the main points in the question is the one who want to suggest an idea.

Please, someone sketch a paper about the promises, pitfalls, and possible use-cases of sliced bread.

An idea is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for a publishable paper.

I think the latest edit goes too far. Folks who have taken the time to provide you feedback with their answers are not here to do your homework for you: it is up to you to take their points in the general sense and apply them to your specific example(s).

@MadJack It's not a homework and it is a simple well-known example, I just want them to be more practical.

Just a tip: Your original question was "Can I write a paper from a simple idea?" Then you edited the question so that now you're basically asking "I'm determined to write a paper about a simple idea, please tell me how." Changing a question so much when it already has answers (especially when your changes seem to disregard the advice in those answers) generally discourages others from putting more time into answering the question.

@ff524 I can change it back to the original question, but I don't think it changes the matter much. the How is inside the first question too. If I just say Can I... some may just say Yes or No. But as you say you are academic people and speak precisely, then I expect to get precise answers.

I'm not saying that you need to change it back. I'm just letting you know that as a general strategy for getting answers on this site in the future, it's usually better not to change a question too much.

@ff524 thank you, however I didn't change the content much, and removed even some updates. Also, if you note to the accepted answer, it includes the How part. But I take your advice, just I wasn't glad when they down-voted my own answer and left no comment!

SMS don't provide a way to authenticate the sender. As such you would get political problem if you force people to reply to SMS that aren't authenticated to provide personal information. At least in Germany where I live that's likely.

similar questions: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/8121 https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/16324 https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/19826 https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/28398 https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/29212 https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/105405 https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/108451 https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/110985 https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/114396 https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/117386

I like papers about simple ideas. (I am writing one right now, hope others like it as well.) They are far easier to communicate and understand than complex ideas.
Then again, the question is why nobody else has thought about an idea if it is all that simple. In your specific example, the idea may not be workable, because people may simply delete the update SMS without replying to it. (And those that do answer may not be representative of your sample as a whole.)
So I would say that writing a paper about a simple idea is good, but it needs to meet the same conditions as any other paper: it needs to show that the idea actually works. An idea by itself is usually not worth an entire paper. Having the idea is often the easy part. Showing that it works is where the actual work happens.
So: Build your website for one city, let it run for six months, then write a paper about what you learned.
How to show that something "works" may well be the hard part. (For instance, in some parts of machine learning it is easy to "show" that a method is better than an established method by testing both on many datasets but then only reporting those on which the proposed method is superior.) Some journals/conferences/reviewers may be more stringent about what they consider proof that something "works". You may be able to get a publication out of a proof of concept by just building the website, without running it productively. Or by running it productively, but without assessing in some way whether the statistics collected by the website are actually more accurate than those collected in some other way. Look at what kinds of papers your target venue or community publishes, and let yourself be guided by that.

EDIT 2016-04-07, about that article based on a simple idea: it turns out that this simple idea (a randomized probability integral transform) was really good. So good, in fact, that multiple people had had the same idea previously, and at least partly independently of each other. Happily enough, a guru in the field pointed this out to me when I circulated a preprint and didn't savage me, but pointed out shortcomings of the rPIT and possible new lines of inquiry. The paper has just been published.
Bottom line: your simple idea may be good, but chances are that those ideas that are both simple and good have already been worked on.

"Build your website for one city, let it run for six months, then write a paper about what you learned." and perhaps use a second city with a similar situation as a test group to compare results against.

By the way, I should say I built the website for an organization in my city one year ago (However not the SMS and updating part), then I was thinking if I can make a paper out of it. Maybe I could use some parts of the real data I gained in such paper, for example the people who registered (which was almost all the unemployed) and those who had a cell phone (which was more than 90% of them), this topic shed some lights on my way

I think you should add the info that you build the website and have the data to the question.

No, you cannot write a paper out of a simple idea. A simple idea contributes nothing. I guess we all have simple novel ideas every day.
However, if you ground that simple idea within theory, and/or build a theoretical framework, with suitable references to existing literature, and you demonstrate that this hasn't been done before, and maybe explain why it hasn't, and suggest how it might improve on existing alternatives, then that's a paper.
If you take that theoretical grounding and then set out a plan of implementation, together with a monitoring and evaluation framework to assess its impact, together with a comparison against existing alternatives then that's a paper.
And if you implement it and evaluate it as above, then that's a paper.
If you want one higher impact paper rather than three lower-impact papers, and if journal space allows, you could do all three of those things in one paper.

you are right, however it depends on our expectation of papers. I see thousands of complicated papers on nonsense things in some fields.

I may summarize your answer with this interesting quote from @ff524 "No, you can write a paper about research but a simple idea itself is not research."

Warning: Harsh answer following.
@energynumbers has covered some of the aspects of why a "simple" idea is not enough for a research paper. It needs prior literature search, must improve on previous methods, a theoretical justification why it should work and an experimentation section providing the benefits of the idea, compared to previous state-of-the-art.
Still, when I read your original question and your later comments, initially I thought you were joking. Without wanting to be harsh, I could not believe that sending bulk SMS to unemployed people is your idea of fighting unemployment or meaningful research. As a computer scientist myself, I try to refrain from suggesting ideas about problems I do not have not the capacity nor the knowledge or the necessary background to understand. And your comments like "even cats and dogs have cell phone" not only show you know nothing about unemployment but you are also indifferent and ignorant to this huge problem's social implications.
But let's stick to the "scientific merits" of your idea. Any EU country has an unemployment rate of (very rough estimates) 4% (Germany, Austria) to more than 20% (Spain, Greece). That means that even in countries with low unemployment rates (e.g. Germany), sending a SMS to unemployed people would require 3,4M SMS. Since, the unemployed should answer these SMS by yes or no that means another 3.4M SMS. Who will pay for those 7M SMS of your idea? Even for a big city (1M people) that would require at least 8K SMS for Germany or 20K SMS for Spain. Perhaps you are implying that the unemployed people should pay the response SMS from their pockets, for their "right" to participate in your "novel" research? You also seem to assume that all unemployed people have internet connections (for filling in their data) and cell phones, when usually unemployment benefits (if they have not expired) can only cover very basic needs. And you also want to force those unemployed people to fill another form for giving you their data (and who authorized you to collect this data? It will be probably illegal in many countries) besides registering to the respective unemployment agency and sending bulk CVs to potential employers for hoping to land their next job. This is not only insensitive but borderline silly.
Bottomline: Research is a very serious job. Not everyone can do it. Especially when there are sensitive groups and people involved. Treat it as such. If your concept of  research is ideas that come to you when you are ordering french fries or you are in your bathroom during your "physical" duties, you are WRONG. Otherwise your "research" ideas would sound like the infamous French phrase "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche". They will not only lack any scientific merit but they will also sound insensitive and ignorant.
UPDATE: a) At the OP. You (and I) are no Newton. Even if someone hit you with all the apples of the world, you will most likely develop a head trauma than the theory of gravity b) As others have commented, brilliant ideas can come anytime but ONLY after studying a problem for weeks, months or year. Check the term Eureka effect, why that happens. c) Even after studying a problem for a long time, the majority of the ideas that one comes up with are not necessarily good d) Even if you come up with a brilliant idea, it needs weeks of work on pen / paper, pc or lab for that idea to actually be publishable. e) What "most people grasp" is not scientifically correct. People believed for thousands of years (some people still do) that the earth was flat and the sun revolves around the earth. So, basing your scientific ideas on "common sense" has no scientific merit. f) If you do not believe me or the others commenters, try to publish your "simple" idea and wait until the peer review replies back. Then you will have your answer.

Thank you, no, if I was that serious I wouldn't give the "sliced bread" example and wouldn't select that title for the question. The main question is the ideas which are useful and benefit society but maybe short and simple.

I think you have hit it on the nail when talking about research being a "job". It is work, and needs to be done in a professional manner. So I agree having a good idea (simple can be good) to start with is necessary, but by no means sufficient.

But about your arguments, I think you mistook "the unemployed" with "the poor". In my country (Iran), the unemployed people are among young and they are supported by their family, they afford their life. They may have high education but just they can't find a suitable job (they may work as a simple worker). they do anything to find a good job. Then, assuming that they won't contribute in such a plan which benefits them, or won't reply a simple SMS is unlikely. Moreover, it can be considered a proposal for the legitimate organizations who are responsible for its implementation.

And I disagree with your bottomline, being a researcher or a scientist is hard. But you can't limit where and when an idea comes up. they can come in bed or bathroom. Newton made his biggest idea when an apple hit his head!

@Ahmad the inspiration can come any time, but you still need a lot of work to get it into useful shape. As Picasso said, "may inspiration finds me working".

I agree but I think your answer misses the point of the question The question was whether a scientific paper can be about a simple idea, not whether the particular idea that the OP put forward as an example has merit.

@Ahmad Newton had also been studying for years by the time his, erm, idea struck him. The point Alexandros is making isn't that only ideas in certain settings are valid. He's saying an idea doesn't have merit just because it exists: it needs to be backed by fully-mastered understanding, research, and hard work in order to be sound, and it needs to be sound in order to be published. There is no shortcut. Do you think Newton became renowned by writing a short paper about his idea?

@CodeMoose If you note I also said being a thinker and a scientist like Newton is hard, but when you are and have the background then the ideas can come anytime. Then you mean it is not important that I be the first one to have a mere idea that earth revolves around the sun but I should someway prove it!?

@Ahmad yes, I'm saying exactly that. The purpose of publishing (and in fact the essence of the academic spirit) is to expand and further humanity's potential. To help us understand reality, and do better things faster. Anyone and everyone can have an idea at any time - so what? Why does this matter to X field, and how can you prove that it's more effective than what we're doing now? Show me. Convince me. Prove it. If you can't do that with your idea, then it doesn't further your field and you shouldn't be publishing it.

@Ahmad: To run with the Newton example, suppose you are the chairman of the Royal Society and you get a paper from Newton that says "Hey, I had this idea: maybe gravity obeys an inverse square law" but offering no supporting evidence. Then you get a similar paper from Robert Hooke proposing an inverse cube law. They can't both be right, so why should you publish either paper? But if  Newton provides computations showing that his formulation is consistent with Kepler's laws, and analysis of data from experiments on falling objects, then you'll know his idea is worth something.

@NateEldredge Yes, but sometimes the proof and everything is inside the idea itself and I expect most people grasp it. for example "Hey, we can better eat by spoon", "Hey, we can better make a fire by rubbing these stones" , "Hey, why we don't setup a social network, many people like to be connected ", .....

@Ahmad: The whole point of science  is that we do not accept anything as self evident - evidence is required. Often times "most people grasp" something that turns out to be wrong.

Well, Thank you for the update, you have a bit a subjective tone, but that's OK, I see you. I also admitted you but just as a side note, we can't deny the simple ideas who changed the world and suggested by ordinary people, while scientist were busy with publishing complicated articles. Yes, they just hasn't the skill  to prove them. (the ideas don't recognize a time, a place, a person, a race ...) they are every where, and can strike anyone, just some know how to get and show them to others. And yes, they strike more to people who are hardworking and think more.

@Ahmad: Yes, there are many ideas that change the world but are not publishable as academic research. That's fine. Some ideas become research, others become pieces of art, business ventures, religious movements, political movements, ... Many ideas are also forgotten, sometimes deservedly, sometimes undeservedly. That's all fine. Not everything needs to be the same thing.

@Toxaris However, by the answers now I found the basic of scientific work and academic research, but not yet its ultimate mission. I confused it with a place people discuss useful things. but It seems there, one can write thousands lines of arguments about an artificial thing, providing his arguments obey the rules.

@Ahmad: "What is the ultimate mission of scientific work and academic research?" sounds like a different question. Not sure it fits this site, though.

@Ahmad "we can't deny the simple ideas who changed the world and suggested by ordinary people, while scientist were busy with publishing complicated articles". You've made it clear you don't have patience or respect for academic rigor, and because of that I'm concerned you won't like the outcome if you do try to publish. Have you considered taking your idea to the business domain? With the right contacts, it probably wouldn't be difficult to sell. That way, you can still influence the world and become famous, without all the pesky hassle of dealing with academic integrity.

@CodeMoose Good advice but its also my problem! I can't discriminate what is for business domain and what is for academic domain. as I said before I someway confused them with each other. I thought any useful idea is first raise from academic

You can't publish "an idea" alone, whether it's simple or not (with some notable historical exceptions). I'll copy some of the things I said to someone who was trying to sub-contract the scientific work necessary to make her/his ideas worth publishing in exchange for authorship.

Ideas have very little value by themselves. The chances that they are absolutely original is very low and it's the rigorous test of their validity along with informed discussion about why they work that is worth publishing

and further down in my comments:

An idea like 'We should build space elevators!' is not worth a lot compared to 'I have made these rigorous calculations/experiments about the strength of carbon nanotubes that could, maybe, constitutes wires going from Earth to Space'

So, like Stephan Kolassa implies in his answer, it doesn't matter if the idea is simple or not, you need to test its validity in some way, whether experimental or not, to make it into a paper.
I can't think of a scientific discipline in which to put your idea (or sliced bread for what matters). I'm not sure using 1980's technology to obtain data of dubious quality would be considered a breakthrough. Nonetheless there are many things you can do with this idea other than trying to publish it, if you believe in it, like convincing your local government to hire you to implement it.

Thank you, while I agree, I just can't get  why we should waste our valuable time on implementing and testing and comparing something that works, while our brilliant mind could search for the remaining ideas. There are engineers and programmers who do the stuff work. Why Einstein which his depth of thoughts can change a world should be busy on implementing a  device to measure the time in the speeds near the light? Then it is not always implementation, but maybe mathematics, logic, literature too. While I feel today all want you experimental results

I feel I am kidding, I got that you all say, that publishing a paper has two parts. 1- idea, 2- defending it.

How to validate an idea depends on the academic field of study. Some fields require experiments, some fields require mathematical proof, some fields require careful arguments, etc. Check published papers in your field to see how they validate their ideas.

I am still confused. OK! the technology of the idea is not breakthrough, but what about that it can be employed to gather information of "the unemployed"? I just don't know the scope of such work! I feel if I just know the scope of my idea and those things that I should talk about I solved it, but while I insisted on it in my question, few talk about it.

@Toxaris Sorry but I can't get some filed want this, some field want that, I can't get subjective things, I rather to think objective, whether experiment or not? if experiment for this work then always experiment, I didn't ask how to please some group to publish a paper, I asked about the essence of work

@Ahmad why we should waste our valuable time on implementing and testing and comparing something that works You don't know if it works. If you do then it's not a new idea. It doesn't need to be experimental. You could test a theory by checking its self consistency or by comparing its prediction with existing observations, etc.

If you are still unconvinced that naked ideas have little worth, try to sell them.

Academic papers are (or should be) not really about presenting ideas, but about answering research questions. So your paper should state the question, the answer, and why the answer is true. So even if your research starts with an idea, you should ask (and answer) questions about it, such as:

how effective is the idea?
how expensive is the idea?
is the idea better or worse than other related ideas?
is the idea different or similar to other related ideas?
is the idea expected or unexpected given other related ideas?

The exact questions you can ask depend a bit on your idea, of course. For your example idea of sliced bread, some questions come to mind:

is sliced bread more or less healthy than unsliced bread?
how long can sliced bread be stored?
how expensive is bread slicing in the bakery vs. at home?
are customers prefering bread sliced vertically or horizontally?
how should a knife for slicing bread be shaped?
should we ban sliced bread in war time?
will people eat more or less when sliced bread is available?
how does the bread-slicing machine work?
how much time is sliced bread saving the average family per day?
overall, is sliced bread cheaper or more expensive for a society?

Scientific research is about delving deep into such detailed questions, and figuring out the actually true answer. So research is not just about asking these questions and answering them somehow, but about finding the true answer, and convincing other researchers that you found it.
Since each question usually requires substantial investigation (by experiments, computation, simulation, thinking, ...) , usually a paper will only answer one question, or sometimes you even need multiple papers just to answer one question. For example, if you ask lots of customers whether they like their bread sliced horizontally or vertically, and more say "horizontally" than "vertically", that might be a paper. Now if you actually observe lots of customers buying more vertically sliced bread than horizontally sliced bread, that's another paper. Yet another paper can then ask the question: Why do people say one thing and buy another? This way, an understanding about an aspect of the world (here: people's bread-buying preferences) is build paper-by-paper, in an collaborative effort of the scientific community.

Nice! thank you for pointing the example! then if I just prove that sliced breads sell more, it would be just a proposal for a company and not a scientific paper? You mean I should also consider the customer health, benefit loss....?

If you actually prove that sliced bread sells more, that might be a paper. If you only say that sliced bread sells more, it's not. If you just say what sliced bread is, it's not a paper either.

Interesting! then you mean paper 1) sliced breads sell more .. paper 2) The possible harms of sliced breads to the customers... 3)  why Amricans favor sliced breads:  An investigation into the psychological and social factors  ... 4) The machinery required for sliced breads... These are all papers?

I edited the answer to make it clear that no single paper has to (or can, usually) answer all the questions.

Thank you, just I think some of the problems (or papers) raise after the sliced bread got widespread or justified. And I look for the first paper on the sliced bread. (I also answered the question based on your suggestion which you can find at (http://academia.stackexchange.com/a/48671/21885)

It all depends on various factors, most importantly your target audience and/or journal (or other publishing outlet) as well as, potentially your field of study. For some people, outlets and fields of study, a simple idea might be very well appropriate, when "wrapped" into a research paper format, for others it might not (either due to being too simple, that is, obvious, or due to being "wrapped" inappropriately). Obviously, it also depends on how you "wrap" your idea, in other words, what contents, level of detail and level of rigor you would employ for presenting the idea to community.
In regard to suggestions by previous answers' authors that one need to fully implement an idea and present corresponding findings, I respectfully disagree and think that for many ideas building a prototype or, even, presenting a design or architecture of a proposed system is enough for a paper (usually, that would be a working paper or a conference paper or other work-in-progress paper).

I also have the same feeling, for some simple idea or architecture, implementation or results, is like saying something twice. For example in the system I described above, I should waste a lot of time to finally say "Yes people prefer to update their employment status via cell phone and 90% contributed versus 50% in the usual update via internet"

Moreover, as I said in the question, I really don't know why I should mix many things to "wrap" a simple idea. Or what are those. Each of them may have their own subject

@Ahmad: You don't have to "mix many things" to "wrap" a simple idea, however, you have to have a minimal set of elements for a body of work to qualify as a research paper, as opposed to, say, blog post or a popular press article.

@Ahmad Your idea only has scientific value if you can provide some evidence for your hypothesis, or, at least, very strong arguments why that may be the case. In your case, you could refer to statistics on internet access vs phone penetration in different societies have; and how well targeted employment policies are (that is, given the same budget, how much better could we be doing?).

@Davidmh Good advice, however they shift the paper from a "simple idea" to a research on unemployment policies and social and economical factors.... I agree, but I have problem to find the scope of each paper. (Maybe from a technical viewpoint in computer science, the application is not important and just the technical details of the implementation are wanted!)

@Ahmed I think what you are looking for is a patent, not a paper. You can file a patent and then sell the idea or implement it yourself, or frame the patent confirmation and hang it on your wall as evidence that you had a new idea. A patent is how you lay claim to an idea for a product or process. A paper describes the results of research.

I read the answers and I am going to take a different view. I think every idea should be written down as a paper. I agree with other answers that a simple idea is not suitable as a research submission etc. You also mentioned that you have now realized why your idea is not going to work. I would say that both of above conclusion (i.e. is idea going to work and if it is, then is it worthy of being called as research) should be drawn after the paper writing. Not the polished, final draft paper writing but may be after zeroth draft. Paper writing is not the culmination of research. It is an integral process of coming up with an idea, developing that idea into a testable hypothesis, carrying out experiments (real and simulated), and writing it up. You may ask that above mentioned process talks about writing at last stage so how is it an integral part? Because you should plan by writing. You should leave placeholders for data you are waiting for. If your data does not validate your hypothesis, go back to writing and draw new plan and repeat. Doing this will tell you when your idea is not going to work, writing literature review will tell you whether or not your idea is worthy of publication in good journal. It is possible that once you start writing, your paper may go in some other direction. For all this to happen, you should always write things as paper.

I myself conclude that it follows the same common steps to write any paper, to explain them I directly go to the examples A (SMS to the unemployed) and B (sliced bread)
1) You should first ask  what is the problem? An idea without mentioning a problem is lame.

For A) After awhile the unemployed statistics is not up-to-date and people don't update them for these reasons...

For idea B, some scenarios is possible

1) Many breads is wasted because of the way people buy, store and use them
2) A plan to increase the consumption of bread or jam (It looks like more a business idea? it works if bread and jam company are partners)

2) What is your idea or plan?

For A) Sending periodical SMS to the unemployed to gather short data
For B-1) Sliced bread
For B-2) Sliced bread

3) Then you may ask What is the contribution of this idea to my field of study?
Gathering data about unemployment using SMS, for example, might be a useful contribution to the field of economics (if it is indeed demonstrably better than existing methods), but as currently described it is not likely to be a useful contribution to computer science
4) How does it solve the problem
Description of the idea and the way it works
5) How are you sure? why it is better than other solution?
There could be several ways to show it for A:

Based on the statistics of cell-phone penetration in "the unemployed" their usage pattern, previous researches,  arguments like "Concerning the penetration of cell phones, SMS is a cheap and effective solution to gather periodical and short data..."
Testing the idea in a small city and showing the results

For B: Test it on some families, or better a city

Do they buy it?
Problems with its consumption, (with which foods they can consume it)
Is it have any affect on you or them to consume jam more...
Is the cost for slicing bread compensated?
....

Please those who down-vote, say what is wrong with the post!

You are missing a crucial step. You need to ask: What is the contribution of this idea to my field of study? Gathering data about unemployment using SMS, for example, might be a useful contribution to the field of economics (if it is indeed demonstrably better than existing methods), but as currently described it is not likely to be a useful contribution to computer science.

@ff524 Do you see any aspect of such project which could be in the scope of computer science? I see some papers about the application of mobile or internet to different things. Then how it can't be considered of such an application?

Generally, an application that does not contribute something new to our understanding of computer science is not considered a research contribution. If you read a paper that seems like "just" an application, either (1) it's not a good paper, and probably wasn't published in a good conference or journal, or (2) you didn't understand its contribution (i.e. you didn't understand why it's more than just an "application").

Here is a related paper and here's another about use of SMS as a survey tool for medical applications. Note that the papers are published in a medical informatics and medical journal, not computer science. Also note that they perform a rigorous evaluation of the proposed idea, extensive survey of the literature, and more; they don't just write out an idea and call it a paper!

@ff524 Thank you, I edited my post with your suggestion, do you see any flaw in the other steps?

To me, this answer just misses the point. The answer to your question of "Can you write a paper about a simple idea?" is "No, you can write a paper about research but a simple idea itself is not research." Your answer tries to list all the "ingredients" of research and say, "That's how to structure a paper about a simple idea," but the question of how to do research is much, much bigger than the scope of this question and answer. It can't be distilled into a simple formula, like you're trying to do.

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

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Right time to reach professors requesting to be my guide in Ph. D
I am completing my masters in a few months, and going for a job. I want to pursue my doctorate after 3-4 years of working. Is it better to speak with professors now, if they want to be my guide once I come back? Or better to reach them when I finally decide to come back to the university and start preparing for the entrance exam for Ph.D. ? (That is a few years from now).

I don‘t see any downside doing it as early as possible.  It’s probably too far off for them to make a final decision, but you can clarify if they are interested and potential issues.

Even if you don't want to work with them in the future, or change your mind one way or another, it is good to reach out while you still have an active connection to them. If nothing else, you will want letters of recommendation from them and it is all too easy for a professor to lose track of you over a few years. They have other students they are more actively thinking about after even a couple of years.
If you speak to them (preferable to writing) you can also ask what you might do in the interim to increase your chances of success in a doctoral program.
Note that in some places a professor might have little to say about graduate admissions (US, in particular, where it is a committee decision). But you still want to prepare them for a future ask. A wise professor will keep some notes about you, or even preemptively write a LoR and file it for future use so they don't forget details that might help.
I've been in that situation as a professor and had to ask the student to remind me of a few interactions we had to jog my memory.
No one, of course, will agree now to admit you in 3-4 years as things will likely change. They might not even be around then for various reasons.

No harm in engaging with your current supervisor about this as you have that connection already. They may also provide advice about things you can keep in mind while working, and what to do when ready to start your PhD. So for that reason, I'd recommend talking with them now than after 3-4 years working without contact.

My current supervisor is a good person, but he is retiring in a few years, so i am thinking, he will not be here once I come back. But yes, good suggestion, I can always seek advice from him on this regard.

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text:
Submit papers without the affiliation to any university/research center
Recently I moved from university (3y Ph.D. and 6y PostDoc position in Information Engineering) to a teacher position in a high school in Italy (sad destiny due to the Education Ministry Gelmini under Berlusconi's premiership).
I'm wondering if I can still submit papers to scientific journals, and if so, I'm also wondering if the current affiliation (high school) is acceptable for journal policies.

@Anyon thanks for this link!

There is also the question Do journals in general have any kind of policy regarding papers submitted by someone without a research affiliation?. You may be particularly interested this answer, which reports a rejection that seems to be based on a complete lack of affiliation. While I think that is very rare, it appears to be at least a possibility.

Yes you can submit papers. You don't need any affiliation at all, and consider that if the school you are at doesn't have a way to support your research. You can be an "Independent Researcher" for purposes of publication. If you need to attach an email address, make it a relatively permanent one
But a high school is also valid. Most reviewers (I can't promise all) will take the paper on its merits, not your affiliation.

Thanks a lot (+1). I'm sure reviewers are fair as I am. My doubt is just about journals policies.
As you say, may I also provide no affiliation? May I provide a personal email address? Again, these questions are related to journals policies, not to reviewers point of view.

Journal policies won't get in your way. Yes, a personal email is fine. You might need to chat with an editor in a few places, but there are lots of independent researchers, including retired faculty.

ok, got it. Thanks again!


text:
How to name an algorithm in a paper
In a paper, I should refer to an existing algorithm in different parts of the paper. There is no name for this algorithm. For the firs time I wrote "the Algorithm proposed by (Xia, et al. 2008) .....", but I don't think it is a good way to use this method any time I want to refer to it. I may name it Algirhtm A, or Algorithm 1 or Algorithm Xia, Algorithm base ...
What do you suggest for referring to this algorithm for several times?

Calling it "Algirhtm" sure makes it uniquely identifiable ;-)

FWIW, my MSc thesis references multiple times "the Baeza-Yates–Perleberg approximate string matching algorithm" so I would say using the surnames is an OK option.

@AndreaLazzarotto, you just did that to increase the word count and page length though, right? :)

@mikeazo, at most that would've given me 2 more lines, not even pages. :P :D

@CaptainEmacs I could have several algorithms in a paper.

@Ahmad This was "tongue in cheek" - an allusion to the typo, just to lighten the mood. Please do not take it too seriously.

@CaptainEmacs Oh! I see :). People here were used to be serious, then I didn't expect that lightening!

When you first refer to it say something like "the Algorithm proposed by (Xia, et al. 2008) which we refer to as XAB" where you replace XAB with the first letters of the authors' last names in the order that they appear in the bibliography. So if the authors are Xia, Alpha, Beta, you would use XAB. If the authors are Xia, Yen, Ping, you would use XYP. I wouldn't use more than about the first 3 or 4 author's last names, however.
This way if you are referring to multiple algorithms, you can give a clear reference to each. If it turns out that multiple algorithms you are referencing would have the same name given this scheme, you can also throw in the last two digits of the year. So you would have XAB08 and XAB09.

Thank you. It's also possible that the same authors proposed another algorithm in another year, and your last suggestion works for this case too.

If you're going to be referencing a single critical algorithm in your paper, I recommend that you simply restate it with a citation, and then reference it by number as you would any other algorithm:

...the algorithm devised by Bob and Joe [ref]:
       a^2 + b^2 = c^2        (1)
Now, if we assume a^2 is a cat, then (1) can be extended as follows...

An algorithm is not a formula. Who is going to mark an algorithm with "(1)"?

@AndreaLazzarotto - Good point, I was thinking of something more along the lines of signal processing filters and techniques. This clearly won't work in many scenarios.

@AndreaLazzarotto right, however if one copy the algorithm pseudo-code in the paper, he can refer to it with Algorithm 1, similar to Table 1.

@Ahmad, ah yes if you put it into a float then absolutely.


text:
How to know if a topic is related to my discipline?
Sometimes detecting that a topic is related to your discipline or not is confusing.
On which factor you know that a work is in your discipline or not.

This question is impossible to answer here. We won't answer it about your specific research problem (see "Can I ask about my specific situation" in the [help/on-topic]) and its impossible to answer generally, because the approach is different for every research problem. You really should find a mentor who can help you out on a more personal level with your research.

@ff524 not specific, not general, I wonder then what you do. however I agree and try to modify it.

I'm not saying you should change it. I'm saying that this is a question that can't be answered on this site, no matter how you rephrase it. This is a great site for many questions about academia, but some questions just can't be answered properly here.

@ff524 To me the answer is not that hard, for example the single answer actually says it "Discover what you do, if what you do is the result of what you have learned in your discipline and provide a solution for some problems of the work, then it is related."

Your question seems a bit complicated. But here is my take on it:

For your fake example, it depends of what you do in such a project. Do you design the survey about unemployment? Do you design the website? Is the experiment about the decrease of validity of statistical data? To answer that, ask yourself what are you doing. If you do everything, ask yourself what comes out of the work. Here for example, it looks like a sociological experiment.
It's only related to Computer science because there is a website, and automation of data collection. But that's pretty much it.
If your architecture is novel, yes (for a research paper I mean). Otherwise, it is just a technical solution. I will say it again, but it is related to the field of computer science because of the technical nature of the solution.
I don't understand the last question.

In general, ask yourself the right questions about what exactly you do, and what does it brings, what challenges does it face, what solutions does it provide.

Thank you, the 4th question was "What would you do if you were me" however I merged it with the second question. I would like to know your examples and approaches when you select to work on an application.

Your point about "a solution for data collection" seems promising, however still I am not sure it is in my field. I develop the site but maybe not the survey, but I could be the first one who suggest such architecture for gathering information on unemployment.

It's hard without knowing the specifics, and without knowing why you want so bad to categorize your work in such a narrow way. It is perfectly acceptable to work in several field at the same time.
However you are attached to a "main field" usually.
If you only design the computer architecture to handle what you describe, then i would say it's computer science. But don't take my word for it, you know best ;)

@Buld yes the design could be computer science, but is it something to present? it could be a usual application of it. Then you mean just to forget it. I insisted on it, cause I have limited time to increase my papers :)!

That's something only you know.


text:
Which articles don't need experimental results?
I see that every paper which propose (present) something (new) (over existing methods) should possess an experimental result section and some tables and figures and numbers. Some papers may be rejected if they don't follow this format regardless what they are going to say. They may are needed for the evaluation of the method or comparison of it with the related methods.
I myself, when read some papers, based on the arguments in them, propose a new or more general techniques which covers their shortcomings. Or I may  propose a new formalism or tool which can be shown that is novel or useful.
However, providing some experimental results for them is not always easy. Some measures should be defined and samples should be gathered to get some statistics ( for something that you know works in practice). In fact some times, I don't know how can I offer such results or whether it is necessary or not.
Then, I would like to know which type of researches need those quantities and tables and diagrams?
Or in the other words, which articles don't need a results section? How can I write or put my arguments to show that it doesn't need further evaluation.
I give some examples to show my problems (first I should say my filed of study is computer science):

There are some grammar or annotation scheme to build a linguistic corpora for English, there is no such corpora for Persian, I justified a similar scheme for building such a corpora for Persian based on the language features, Should I provide (experimental) results?
I developed a software which filter a webpage and remove noise and reformat the content to enhance readability and comprehension for non native English speakers ..... I used the results of another article on reading comprehension which didn't implement a web tool for their foundings.. Should I provide (experimental) results?
There is an algorithm for converting a linguistic corpora specially designed for English language, I generalized it to cover some other languages and justified that with some arguments, should I provide results?
I proposed a formalism for extraction rules for a data extractor from webpages, I provided many examples how it works, and how it is more robust, understandable and easier to use and based on previous tools and methods and how it borrowed their features ..., should I provide (experimental) results?
......

Are you talking about journal articles or about funding proposals?

@jakebeal Journal articles

It's unclear to me what you think the difference between an "example" and an experimental result is in this context. But the basic answer to your question, is yes, you should provide results that prove your methods are better than what is currently available.

@BillBarth based on my question, then I get that the answer is "YES", whenever someone propose something over the existing ones, should do some experiments.

How do you define "result"; e.g. you say: "an algorithm for converting a linguistic corpora specially designed for English language, I generalized it to cover some other languages and justified that with some arguments" isn't the new algorithm the "result"?

@CuriousCat My English is not well and also I am not expert in research, yes that is the result, but I mean the referees always want figures or numbers for example to measure something about an algorithm or results of questionnaire  or results of executing the algorithm.... I just doubt if it is always the case and should be done!

..."I developed a software which filter a webpage and remove noise and enhance readability and...". This kind of software exists for decades and it called a web crawler. I doubt you can build a better one than the many already existing. Perhaps you are using regexp to clean HTML as NOT suggested by the one of the most famous SO questions http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags"

@Alexandros i just mention it as an example, you can suppose my software has unique features which enhance comprehension for non natives. However I admit that need an experiment to show it, but I used the foundings of some other articles in language comprehension and developed a tool for it

In all the work you are giving as examples, you are essentially developing methods. Not giving any experimental or very strong theoretical evidence that those methods do what they are supposed to do has many negative effects:

It strongly diminishes the value of your work to the extent that you may have trouble publishing work that you could otherwise publish it in a high-ranking journal. Peer reviewers may very well demand that you report on the results of applying your method to some data and may reject your paper if you have no very good arguments for not doing so.
Publishing methods without giving such evidence is the exception and usually only done, if deriving and explaining the method makes for a whole paper and applying the method is done in a follow-up paper or if the method paper and the experimental paper are better published in separate journals. And even then, there is usally some short application to (often artificial) example data in the method paper.
It makes it much less likely that people ever use your work, build upon it or cite you. If I read a paper in which the author proposes a method but fails to show any application, I would strongly suspect that this is because they can’t, which in turn hints at something being very wrong with the method. I would be very skeptical about such a method and would be much less likely to use it.
It will be harder to get funding for your work or justify that you spent your funding well.
Whether you publish it or not, applying methods is one of the best ways to learn what demands and problems occur in reality, which allows you to develop better methods.
If you repeatedly do something like this, you may obtain a bad reputation due to the above.

How bad all this is, eventually depends on your field’s openness to theoretical work and how difficult its is to apply the methods and properly evaluate them. But as far as I can tell from my limited insight into the computer-science literature, I would consider the impact to be rather strong in your case.
Given the nature of your work, I expect it to be impossible to provide convincing theoretical evidence that your methods work. For example languages are notorious for exhibiting weird behaviour and having tons of exceptions. Thus only by applying your method can you demonstrate that your it isn’t rendered useless by peculiarities or special cases you did not account for.
So, to sum it up: Yes, it may be possible to publish your methods without experimental evidence that they work, but I would strongly advise against it.
If you strongly despise experimental work, I suggest that you team up with somebody who does this work for you.

I think that you answer your question yourself in its title: experimental results section is needed in papers, reporting on experimental research studies. However, not all studies with quantitative results are true experiments. Thus, speaking more general, all quantitative research studies are expected to report their results by including corresponding quantitative results sections.

I mean for any proposal, they ask for results! are there proposal which don't need them? Maybe I should study type of researches!

@Ahmad: A proposal by definition cannot have the results section, since there is nothing to report (study has not been performed yet at the time of submitting proposal). However, a proposal IMHO can and should include the expected results section.

by proposal I mean a new tool or method or ... you propose in a paper? isn't it a proposal? papers are full of "We propose in this paper...." Should any proposed method a way to be compared or judged and is it necessarily the experimental results?

A "proposal" is typically an ask for money from some organization, and a "paper" or "article" is a document reporting on some results of research. When a paper says "we propose..." the authors are usually being a bit demure. They don't want to be too boastful, so they say "we propose this new theory about how birds fly". It's not a style that I like, but it's very, very common. They then go on to provide some sort of evidence backing up this "proposed new theory". They may be experimental results, a mathematical proof, or other evidence.

@BillBarth: I guess, your comment is addressed to the OP. If I'm right, consider mentioning him, using @, so that he can be properly notified.

@BillBarth what is the other evidence? I may should first ask about how to provide evidences?

@Ahmad, it depends on what you are trying to prove. If you have a theory about why Arthur Conan Doyle wrote Sherlock Holmes in a particular way, then that evidence might be quotes from the books, Doyle's letters, other published criticisms, etc. What evidence would convince you that what you want to say is true? That's a good place to start. You can't just go around claiming things are a certain way, you need to convince people. In math this is a traditional proof that goes from proposition to proposition, etc. In other fields it may be something else. What field are you studying?

@BillBarth I study computer, I may propose a tool or a formalism for something (something that may never had that before), in all of the paper I explain why I did that choice and what other did, and what I did differently and because of this my solution is better, simpler, easier,..... but one may ask you should plan a experiment and measure those with some samples, I don't know if that is necessary always or not!

@Ahmad, look at articles in journals/conferences in CS where similar things have been done. Do they make implementations of the tool or formalism? If so, do they measure the performance or other factors? If so, and if you wish to publish there, you should follow their examples.

@BillBarth that was my question, that when measuring is required, anyway thank you, I brought my other examples in the question now and you can read


text:
GPA rounding 2.498 to 2.5. How ethical is this?
I finished this year with a cumulative GPA of 2.498 (pretty low, not gonna lie). The main concern that I have is that when rounding to 2 digits, it will be pushed to a 2.5, and I'm worried that in interviews when I say that I have a 2.5, and if the interviewer checks my transcript, he/she may think that I am bumping up to meet requirements, even through it's very close to the line.
I am already aware of past questions regarding gpa rounding, but those seem to deal with round from 2 digits to 1 digit, which doesn't fit my situtation. Am I wrong in thinking I shouldn't do this? I don't want to want anyone to think down on me.

Ethical GPA rounding is also concerned with rounding to 2 digits. Gets messy right at cut-offs though.

I would argue that, given the way GPAs are computed in general, that four significant figures are overkill.

I always figure that since GPAs are given out to one decimal place, two decimal places is really as precise as you can meaningfully get.

If they care enough to call you on that, they'll care enough not to interview at 2.5 in the first place. If they care at all.

My first thought was “don’t even mention it,” but I guess you mean “if they ask.”  In that case, you could say “almost 2.5—2.498.”  (As Maxwell Smart would say, “missed it by that much!”

OTOH, there's a big difference between, say, 3.97 and 4.0, possibly several percentiles.

Does your transcript not round your GPA?

Conversely, the difference between a 3.97 and 4.0 is something like 31 As and 1 B vs 32 As. Without knowing (or having) the border between an A and a B in every class involved, and without knowing the exact performance that led to each grade, the difference is negligible.

Now consider the difference between 31 A+s and 1 B+ (in a non-major elective), vs 32 A-s. Do you still think that 4.0 reflects a substantial improvement over the 3.97?

4.0 should probably be considered a special case, because it represents "perfect".

wishing people understood mathematics and the meaning of rounding numbers...

If they ask, ask back how many digits they want. This might give you the  chance to show that you know how to round which might give you more points with the interviewers than the 0.002 difference you're considering.

@HermanToothrot I think there's a crucial difference between the two: in the other question the form forces you to round, and the question is which way, whereas here the question seems to be whether to round or not.

@Barmar: 4.0 is no longer "perfect". Both of my daughters who have graduated from high school did so with a GPA > 4.0, due to honors and AP classes being worth 5.0 for an A. I'm not an expert on university grading, but I wouldn't be shocked to find that universities are doing something similar.

@BobJarvis Didn't know about that, but it sounds eminently reasonable. In fact, it seems like there should be a more general "degree of difficulty" factor in calculating GPAs. An A in an Honors or AP class should count more than a regular class.

Seems to me the most unethical aspect of this general conversation is the level of significance and stress assigned to grading details.

There's no way to know how someone will react to a given situation but I would suggest to at least have a reason if you are challenged.
For instance, it might be reasonable to supply the same number of digits that they are asking for. If they ask for a 2.5 minimum GPA, then you report a 2.5, if they ask for a 2.50 then report a 2.50, but if they ask for a 2.500 then report a 2.498. If there is no reference number then I would assume the precision is up to you and report a 2.5.
That being said, I doubt anyone would think anything unethical happened over a .002 rounding that follows all the normal rounding rules.

@UTF-8 - 2.498 rounded to 2 decimal places is 2.50.

@noslenkwah You'd think that, but I've seen a 3.9997 GPA rounded to 3.99 on the transcript. But I don't think there's anything unethical about rounding an official 2.498 to 2.50 if two places are asked for.

I'm not so sure. Clearly 2.498 is not "at least 2.5". Compare with if for a degree you're 1 point short (out of say 2000) for a first, they don't round you up - you get a second. Or any other boundary-based system.

@OrangeDog Who are you quoting? The answer doesn't say "at least 2.5" anywhere.

@AzorAhai nobody, the quotes are to make "at least 2.5" a single entity. However, one would expect the wording on a job posting to be something like "GPA of at least x" or "GPA x or higher".

@OrangeDog In principle I agree with you. However it all depends on whether you compare 2.498 and 2.5 before or after rounding. 2.498 rounded to one (or two) decimal places is at least 2.5. As anyone who has done any programming will attest to.

@ElizabethHenning How do you even get a 3.9997 GPA on a transcript? With a 120-hour curriculum, even making As in 119 semester-hours and a B in only one semester-hour would result in a 3.992 GPA.

@reirab an A- is often worth 3.67 for example

@ElizabethHenning 4.0 means "perfect". Arguably, "perfect" is a boolean, and thus rounding to 4.0 might be seen as disingenuous, even when normal rounding rules would apply to any other value.

@ElizabethHenning If it's like our system that makes perfect sense. Our grades are done on an IBM mainframe with custom code on a 1970s database. IBM's pre-IEEE floating point uses truncation, not rounding.

@Luigi Even so, you'd need about 1,000 credit hours of As and one credit hour at B for that to come out to 3.9997.

"If there is no reference number then I would assume the precision is up to you and report a 2.5." No... if there is no reference, you report what the school reports on your transcript.

"If there is no reference number then I would assume the precision is up to you and report a" 3 :D

@AzorAhai The answer does state "If they ask for a 2.5 minimum GPA", which could be worded as "at least 2.5".

@DavidStarkey Yeah, but that's not what quotes mean. Anyway, they clarified.

@AzorAhai https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/226821/usage-of-imagined-content-in-direct-speech

@LightnessRacesinOrbit: Good point!!

I missed a scholarship requiring a 3.0 when I had exactly a 2.99.

You probably want to read about significant figures.  The premise of significant figures is that only so many additional digits mean anything.  Depending on how many digits others want to see your GPA at, yes it is ethical to round a 2.498 to a 2.5.  It's well known that GPA isn't a precise predictor of any kind of future achievement, otherwise your interviewer might simply be taking the person with the highest GPA and not so much as interview.
Mentioning two digits of your GPA (2.5) is probably enough information for your interviewer.  If they ask, your interviewer would probably be thinking much more about the first digits than about whether you are bumping up your GPA to meet some sort of line.

This is the only answer to use

The only caveat I was told in college (by my coop adviser) was that NOTHING rounds to a 4.0 Basically, you add as many decimals as you can (up to 3), or truncate. I had a 3.975, so I usually reported 3.98/4.00.
He also said that, generally speaking, the lower your GPA, the less precision matters. Basically, only graduate schools really care about stupid-high GPA's, because that says you are book-smart. I had a 4.0 my first term coop'ing, and couldn't get a job. My buddies with 3.2 GPA's would get 3 offers...

@FundThmCalculus Arguably (no, factually) that adviser is simply wrong. They’re right only insofar as this is fairly widespread nonsense but (a) it’s not a “rule”, and (b) it makes no sense in the real world because it assumes a degree of precision which is simply nonexistent, as this answer explains.

@KonradRudolph, I actually agree with him. The implication of a 4.0 says you have perfect grades. Which, incidentally, if you have less than an "A" in anything, you do not. However, your point about significant digits is correct. Still, it's a common view, so it's something to be aware of. Case in point, answer below from a bureaucratic government job.

This answer is the best one if you ask me. All that's missing is some clarification that most of the world doesn't actually care about a GPA after your first job/research position/etc.

@FundThmCalculus Hence my comment. What you say does not make sense, because it assumes/implies/requires a degree of precision which standardised testing and grade assignment do not possess. These grades are a rough estimate of your capabilities, nothing more. Your interpretation of the GPA, while widespread, is simply statistically invalid.

@FundThmCalculus the lower your GPA, the less precision might matter if GPAs are assumed to bunch up around the top.

@FundThmCalculus: I'm on the fence on the topic, but remember that "A" in everything doesn't mean perfect. You could get 94% in every class and still get an A in everything, still getting a 4.0.

This is true if they're just reporting the GPA, but if there's a specific cut-off, it's reasonable to interpret it as an exact figure. i.e. in "GPA at least 2.5", 2.5 has infinite significant digits.

In "interviews"?  Probably not.  OP didn't say there was a cutoff.  Regardless, if someone says the cutoff is 2.5 it could actually mean 2.45.  If the cutoff could just as well have been 2.4 or 2.6 but those numbers seem a bit too random, 2.45 really screens for the same thing.  If the cutoff is 2.50, that adds another significant figure and 2.495 is the lowest GPA to become that.

@La-comadreja: What if they wanted it to be literally 2.5, no epsilon less?

@Mehrdad then what they actually want is your GPA rounded to the same number of significant figures as your report card.

I doubt an employer would perceive you rounding to 2.5 as unethical. However, you need to be aware of how they are using that information.
If you are interviewing for some government or academic appointment, 2.49999 is not "at least 2.5" and could disqualify you from a bureaucratic technical standpoint.
If that's the case, you could end up getting fired. This would be considered  misrepresenting yourself and fraudulent.
My best advice is just don't volunteer your GPA. Unless there's some requirement, don't put it on your resume. If asked verbally, say "about 2.5". If filling out some form, put down the exact answer.

Personally, I would report it as 2.49 for the very reason you allude to here - rounding it up may give the impression that you're exaggerating your accomplishments. Many interviewers would prob think it's OK, but I'd err on the side of caution. Let them say "oh, well that's 2.5 to me" rather than you.

If you're worried about it, then report the full 4 digits. The most ethical thing to do is always the thing that leaves you certain you have not lied or misrepresented the truth. If you are worried about it, then you should report 2.498 because your conscience is telling you it's the most honest thing to do. Don't do something that makes you question whether you're being honest or not. Instead, flee as far from dishonesty as you can.
There is some chance that your interviewer cares, and there is some chance that they do not. There is also some chance that they might respect you more for being straightforward that you are just barely below the threshold, even though it could potentially cost you the position. Regardless of their reaction, your conscience and peace of mind are more valuable than getting a particular position.

Baloney.
2.498 rounds up to 2.5 (2 figures) or 2.50 (3 figures because 2.498 rounds to 2.50 even if you are simply rounding up the 9). Anyone who focuses solely on that to determine your future is not worth working for.
If this is the cutoff to get into a selective program, without a really strong achievement test score (GRE, MCAT, etc) and/or a load of other really positive things (or later in life, experience and a proven track record), 2.5 is too low & don't focus on that.  You can always go to a community college and take other courses or retake courses to boost the GPA, if necessary.

It's a fairly common practice to do the following:
Often, you can say X.Y GPA (in major).
This signals to the interviewer that you took your major seriously, and though you may not have pinged the electives, that's probably alright.
In engineering especially, this is very common, because you have to take a lot of cruft that may not be relevant.
For me, I did not do well in my undergrad in the forced electives, nor did I do well in chemistry, but I'm not a chemical engineer, so I could and have argued that wasn't all that important.
In graduate school though, this is less common, especially because they will show you the door if you drop below a B+ average or so.

Conversation with unclear connection to the answer moved to chat.

If you don't want anyone to think down on you, then don't fudge.  When writing, just mention 2.498.  When talking, you can mention about 2.5, or even say 2.498.  (People will recognize just how close that was.)
Is this your final year at the educational institution?  If not, your GPA is certainly expected to change.
If so, congratulations on graduating.  Can you still bump up that GPA?  If you live nearby, maybe a night course.  Even if you need to move away, is there an online course?  Even if it is "Basic Mathematics: Addition".  Yeah, rather cheesy.  However, it then means that you'll actually be fully compliant, instead of "almost compliant so let's just pretend like I hit that mark that, technically, I actually missed by a slight amount".  Just simplifying things may be worthwhile.
Then again, it might not be worth it.  A lot of places look more closely at, just simply, "did this person get the degree?"  In such cases, GPA might not be looked at, at all.  As mentioned elsewhere, you might decide to just not even both mentioning it.

These numbers are not per cent. That's 2.498 of 4.0.

@firegurafiku : Technically, you're right.  And I see that Captain Man has knocked off the inappropriate % signs.  And I do approve of every single minor change of that edit.  I really do dislike inaccuracies, even minor ones, and am a bit disappointed that I created those myself.  But I'm also happy that they got taken care of.  Thanks, Community.

2.5 is 2.498. Don't floor it down and neglect your effort.
Though, in all honesty, I'd avoid bringing up the GPA at all, if you can. It doesn't really correlate to your workplace success, short of becoming a graduate student.
If you need a 3.0 as a cutoff for certain jobs (e.g. government positions), I'd recommend padding by getting a second degree in something easy. Alternatively, you could just work for a years, and it shouldn't matter with a decent work history - you earned your diploma.

I feel like any person who graduated the 3rd grade understands the concept of rounding, thus rounding up to 2.5 is fine. I can only imagine folks who even care would be those in a science or math field where numerical precision is necessary. In that case its more about the culture of the company than the validity of your GPA. Of course, my school automatically rounded to the nearest decimal and that's what went out in my transcripts.

Sadly this isn't really true. I've come across a statement, from somewhere that really should know better, that 0.45 rounds up to 1.

@JessicaB - Interestingly enough, that kind of rounding is discussed in this answer

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