text:
Department policy possibly affecting inclusion and diversity
I am a last year PhD math student in an university in USA-Canada.
The university I work in offers graduate students the option to teach first year calculus courses as a special kind of TA. The demand for this is high and not everyone gets a position for a given term. However, the department's policy is that everyone who passes a one-term course on teaching and wishes to teach can do it at least once before graduating.
So far so good.
The problem arises when it comes to wanting to teach a second time. It seems like whatever metric is being used to decide who gets the job heavily favours a specific ethnic group. This is, the vast majority of students who get to teach a second time are from a specific ethnic group, while  people from other less represented groups seldom seem to get a second chance.
Clearly the department's argument for this is that these people get better teaching evaluations, but in part this is an echo chamber resulting in the exclusion of members of other less represented ethnic groups in the student body.
The two immediate problems that come to mind are:

Reducing the diversity of teachers for a very diverse base of students.
When it comes to job applications teaching experience can be a valuable asset. Access to it shouldn't depend on our ethnic background.

My (perhaps naive/biased/egotistical) conclusion is that the department's criteria is flawed and it should be modified in some way to reflect this in the future. My questions are:

Who should I talk about this first? I think the best idea is to talk with the person in charge of assigning the positions, who inherited the criteria from the previous person in the position.
How should I approach this person? I think this can be treated as a potential opportunity to improve the department, but I feel like I need to be careful on my approach so that no one feels threatened or accused of anything.
What should I expect? Let me be clear: I don't expect to get a teaching position since I'll be graduating soon, but I'd like this issue to stop and I'm willing to make some noise and bother some people if necessary.

Do you have sufficient proof? or is this just that those chosen the second time around are the "best of the bunch" at teaching, or have the matching knowledge or availability based on the courses they do?

@SolarMike sufficient proof of the ethnic imbalance? I haven't done a rigorous search, but I'm positive it'd just confirm this. I don't think knowledge or availability are a factor here, it's just a matter of how they measure who is the "best of the bunch" at teaching using student evaluations.

If the students are giving feedback on the "best" TA's then the department respects that and uses them, how can you say that is an ethnic control?

@SolarMike That's what I meant by an echo chamber. To put an example: a white male student is more likely to identify or relate with a white male instructor, which in turn is likely to improve his learning experience. If the majority of students is white then the white instructors will tend to get better reviews on average.

There is research supporting @user347489's comments. For a general introduction see The myth of merit and unconscious bias. Although that article is mainly about gender, the same issue can arise with ethnicity.

@PatriciaShanahan and specifically in the context of instructor assessments, here and here

Have you talked to the university's HR department about this? The last thing they want is a minority accusing them of discriminatory hiring practices.

It's a little surprising to hear in 2019 that someone is using course evaluations as the sole basis for teaching assignments. In addition to the well-known problems with bias, they don't correlate with teaching effectiveness, e.g.https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/09/21/new-study-could-be-another-nail-coffin-validity-student-evaluations-teaching

@user347489 That's wrong, students who are not white males also rate white males higher, because they have the same implicit biases that white males do.

Are language skills at all related to ethnicity in this pool of TAs you're describing?

Do all TAs want to teach this course for a second time? In other words, do you know the success rate of applications from the different groups or just the absolute number of TAs that end up teaching for a second time?

@user2705196 1) Yes, language is related. Most of us are non-native English speakers. 2) That's something I was discussing with some peers today. I don't know how often does someone request to do it again. I know of 2 other people other than me at least.

@user347489 could you tell us what kind of evaluation method was used? Did you gain any feedback on your evaluation? Did the lecturer for whose course you TA'ed give you any feedback of their own personal impression? And did you get any initial training for the TA position?

@ObscureOwl The evaluation asks the students a list of questions with answers ranging from "Strongly agree" to "Strongly disagree". These are divided in questions set by the department as well as questions that are used in every department of the university. At the end the students can write comments. The word on the street says that the one relevant number is what you get to the "Was the X and effective teacher?" question.

It's an interesting problem, and wanting a fairer representation is a noble goal. But the goal of fair representation does need to be balanced against another goal: giving students a good education. The first goal of having TAs is to help educate students, not to provide people a career stepping stone to the TAs.

The problem arises when it comes to wanting to teach a second time. It seems like whatever metric is being used to decide who gets the job heavily favours a specific ethnic group. This is, the vast majority of students who get to teach a second time are from a specific ethnic group, while people from other less represented groups seldom seem to get a second chance.

There's a lot of uncertainty here. If you want to successfully challenge your institution on the facts, you need more facts.
If you go to them and say "you seem to hire a lot of X", they can just say "well it may seem like that to you but we don't recognize ourselves in that feeling". If you come and say "group X is represented as 20% of first term TAs and 70% of second term TAs", it's a lot harder to turn you away at the doorstep.
But make sure you get your ethnic classifications right. For example, a pale ginger guy from Argentina with Spanish as a first language, would you classify him as Caucasian or Latino?
The other thing you need to know is what metric they actually use. If you try to argue that their decision-making process is flawed without knowing how they actually make their decisions, you're not going to achieve much.
How are TAs evaluated? Professors are typically evaluated at least partially on feedback forms. But I don't often see specific TA feedback forms. Do other departments/universities do it differently (and do they have a different/fairer ethnic spread)? Can you point to a best practice that your institition could adopt?
The article linked by @PatriciaShanahan points out the value of blind auditions. Once feedback from students has been acquired, how is it processed? To find that out you're going to have to talk to some insiders in your institution. I would recommend finding some progressive-minded professors and asking them if they can explain to you how the internal process actually works. Not accusing them: just asking to explain.

Clearly the department's argument for this is that these people get better teaching evaluations,

Sure.

but in part this is an echo chamber resulting in the exclusion of members of other less represented ethnic groups in the student body.

Well, maybe. What if this ethnic group really has a property that gives them an edge in teaching? For example, they speak the local language better than other ethnic groups (such as foreign exchange students). If, as a student, I have to rate two TAs and one is easier to understand, and therefore I learn more from that TA than from the other one, is it really unfair that the first one gets a better evaluation?

My (perhaps naive/biased/egotistical) conclusion is that the department's criteria is flawed and it should be modified in some way to reflect this in the future.

I think your conclusion is logically flawed. You don't like the outcome of the process, therefore you assume the process must be bad. But what if the process is okay, and the favored ethnic group really did have some advantage that makes them better TAs?
Are students better served by having the best TAs, or the fairest ethnic spread of TAs?
So yeah, your reasoning is noble, but naive. That said, a system which seems to produce ethnically biased outcomes should be viewed with suspicion. So you need to dig deeper into the causes, before you try to convince people to change it.

Who should I talk about this first? I think the best idea is to talk with the person in charge of assigning the positions, who inherited the criteria from the previous person in the position.

Asking them is a possibility. But I think I'd start with a progressive-minded professor who'd been there for a couple of years already. The professor would have some idea of what happens behind the scenes, but not be as directly challenged, and might become interested themselves. Could result in you gaining an ally for your cause.

How should I approach this person? I think this can be treated as a potential opportunity to improve the department, but I feel like I need to be careful on my approach so that no one feels threatened or accused of anything.

In the beginning I would focus on gaining information, not on insisting on change. You don't have strong enough evidence (yet). Ask how evaluations are done. Is there any broader analysis of evaluation results, that give you a picture of the ideal TA? For example, if students mention "good English" as an important criterion, you can look at your non-favored TAs and ask if there's a noticeable difference in their English.
Another question to ask is whether TAs receive any kind of training to prepare them for the job. Does the training match the evaluation criteria? Maybe the training doesn't contain something that already comes naturally to the favored ethnic group. So by evaluation time, they do fine on that criterion, but others struggle because nobody taught them.

What should I expect? Let me be clear: I don't expect to get a teaching position since I'll be graduating soon, but I'd like this issue to stop and I'm willing to make some noise and bother some people if necessary.

That's going to depend on a number of factors, such as how progressive your institution is/wants to be, and what the reasons are that this ethnic group seems to be doing better than the rest, and on how diplomatic you are/whether you manage to find the right allies.

TL;DR -

You need more facts about ethnic representation. Numbers.
You need to know more about how the evaluation is done, what is it testing and how.
You need to find out why other ethnic groups are being evaluated worse. Look for causes, don't just complain about bad people with biases.
You need allies on the inside.
Remember that the institution can always say "our primary goal is to give our students the best education, so we prioritize having the best TAs over having the most diverse TAs". And they're not entirely wrong. You need to find out why more ethnically diverse TAs are being rated as "not the best".

This answer is wrong and harmful.  It is well known that students' teaching evaluations are biased on the basis of race.  There is no need to gather more information about this.

@AnonymousPhysicist good luck trying to convince a department of anything with "it's well known that (...) therefore I didn't need to do any research myself".

For convincing an academic department, "Here are some references to peer reviewed papers showing X" should be effective.

Several references were posted in comments above.

@PatriciaShanahan the studies you linked are a lot more convincing than saying "it's well known". But they talk about a particular testing method and we don't know if this university uses that particular testing method. So if you want to achieve change, you do have to know what you're talking about. Furthermore, just saying the testing method is bad isn't sufficient to change a policy; you also have to show that it's actually causing a problem (i.e. have figures on the ethnic makeup of the TA corps). So I feel justified arguing for more investigation.

What if this ethnic group really has a property that gives them an edge in teaching? — Here, take my downvote.

@JeffE Huh? A very obvious, natural, and realistic candidate property was proposed here. If fluency in the local language is stronger on average in Group A than in Group B, then TA's from Group A will, all else being equal and on average (AEEOA), be more effective than those in Group B, and thus, AEEOA, will receive higher evaluation on more or less any relevant metric, and thus members of Group A will, AEEOA, perform better in the re-hiring competition. Then the solution is probably to provide Group B with more language support, not change the assessment process. If students assess less...

fluent speakers as worse, even though they're not actually any less effective, based on some implicit or explicit biases against having to listen carefully, then fine, the evaluation process should be adjusted, though how it should be adjusted is a difficult question. But the idea that in principle some TA's at a university might be insufficiently fluent in the local language to be maximally effective as instructors does not strike me as nearly as outlandish as you seem to think. Indeed, many universities countenance this by requiring higher TOEFL for employment as a TA than for admission.

@KevinCarlson Sorry, I don't see how "ethnic group" necessarily implies anything about language proficiency, especially since some "ethnic groups" at US universities are almost exclusively native English speakers.  If you mean "less fluent", then say that.

@JeffE this was answered in the comments to the original post. The poster is not a native English speaker, nor were some of the others who did not get a second term. More broadly, foreign exchange students also apply to TA positions and they commonly also have a different ethnic background than the locals. So language fluency is very much a relevant question.

@JeffE Sorry, but I don't see how giving an example of how an ethnic group might tend to have a relevant property implies that I've claimed "ethnic group" necessarily implies anything at all.

I like the proactive approach of this answer and on the practical side of things it begs the question: how to gather the information. I could email everyone in the graduate student mailing list an online poll asking them how many times have they taught and their race,ethnicity, gender etc. But is this the best approach? I can see at least a couple of ways where this becomes counterproductive.

In my view, the answer of ObscureOwl gives a good analysis and reaches a proper conclusion. The key point there, I think, was that the balance between goods needs to be properly defined. Providing the best education for students is one good. Providing a teaching experience for graduate students is also good.
But I think there is a deeper issue that requires an orthogonal approach. One of the reasons that, for example, "white male students" seem to favor "white male teachers" in evaluation is (leaving sexism aside), partly due to the fact that there is likely to be a close match in language and idiom and pronunciation, etc, between the student an the instructor. It isn't perfect, of course. One of my very worst course experiences was taught by a Swedish visiting professor (even whiter than I am) who spoke English only very poorly. The course was basically lecture-exam based and there were too many students for any effective communication. I shared a cultural/racial/gender background with the prof, but not language, or at least not accent.
So, my orthogonal suggestion is that you ask about the entire system of course delivery in a diverse environment. Is it appropriate or does it, at base, make assumptions about learning in that environment that may be invalid. In particular, people seem to have a hard time understanding those who have a different accent, even if they come from the same country (Brooklyn, vs Georgia). So, if I can't understand a lecture, how do I evaluate the lecturer? They may be wonderful in what and how they present, but I just can't grok the words.
But, this is primarily, I think, a case of lecture being overused in education. And especially situations in which a course is lecture combined with high risk exams and little continuous feedback to students is bad for everyone. Even small difficulties get magnified.
So, my advice is to try to start a conversation within the department about what constitutes effective education so that more people can do it effectively, both as a student and as an educator. It may have little to do with ethnic difference, and a lot to do with ineffective methodology in a diverse world.
And don't lose track of the fact that all beginners are pretty terrible at most everything. This is no different for educators than for olympics-aspiring swimmers. Find ways for the novice teachers to be effective while they learn to do better.

This is an interesting point, thanks for the perspective. I agree that active learning techniques are probably a good work around the possible barriers with the students. Funny thing is we have to take a term-long class on teaching before we're allowed to teach. Although it is an interesting course, teaching is probably a skill that needs to be trained while doing it and with the help of peers.

Don’t just analyze the problem - offer a solution.
Pointing fingers and telling people “you’re doing it wrong” is likely to be a lot more grating and put the people you’re talking to much more on the defensive (probably leading them to deny that there is any problem that even needs to be addressed) than if you were to frame your approach as a positive, constructive one where you make concrete, actionable suggestions for what kind of TA evaluation system will result in fairer outcomes. In fact, you don’t necessarily need to even say there is currently a problem with the system at all; a positively-focused approach where you say “I have some ideas for how to make the process better” may end up being the most effective one.
Speaking of making the process better, I really think you need to give this some significant thought before you try talking to anyone in authority. Even assuming that your premise is true (and I am agnostic about whether that’s the case or not), it’s a real head-scratcher to come up with good ways to measure teaching effectiveness, particularly ones that eliminate the sort of biases you and other people here have mentioned - this is a notorious problem that basically no one knows how to solve, which is why teaching evaluations are used as much as they are: even though they are a pretty noisy signal, they have the advantage of being something that can actually be measured. So I wonder, and I’m sure the people you’ll be talking to will be wondering: what would you use instead?
It’s also worth keeping in mind that some solutions to this problem of hidden biases that people come up with, notably affirmative action-type solutions that simply impose an artificial racial diversity that plays down the role of merit (or a best attempt at measuring it) are highly controversial, possibly illegal, and are seen by many people as being no less problematic than the original problem they are trying to address. So again, when you approach decision-makers at your department to discuss this issue, you would do well to show that you have given substantial thought to this issue, done some appropriate research, and come up with actionable, reasonable suggestions — preferably ones that stay away from any highly controversial, politicized approaches. That would be my advice at least. Anyway, good luck.

I believe you are describing "affirmative-action type solutions" incorrectly. Do you know of any recent examples where outright quotas are being used? The objective nowadays is usually to contextualize and compensate for known biases in how "merit" is measured.

@ElizabethHenning I didn’t use the word “quotas”. It’s my impression that some attempts at increasing diversity indeed play down the role of merit. But as I said, if there are other solutions that genuinely manage to reduce or eliminate biases in a way that results in a more accurate measurement of merit, OP (and you and anyone else) is welcome to propose them, and hopefully people at their department will consider those solutions with an open mind.

even though they are a pretty noisy signal, they have the advantage of being something that can actually be measured — See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy and/or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect

@JeffE nice, but what we really need is for xkcd to do a proper job explaining these ideas.

Thanks, @DanRomik. I don't think this addresses all of my questions (and I don't think you were aiming to do it), but +1 for the good advice!


text:
Correct form to tell and write the degrees I hold
If I have a bachelor degree in Physics, how should I write it in a CV?
What is the correct form between the two:

Bachelor of Physics
or
Bachelor in Physics?

The same thing goes for the master degree, right now I have written master of science in physics of materials, is this correct or should be better to just write master in  physics of materials?

What do your diploma certificate and your university transcript say?

Most likely, nobody cares.

What country? The vast vast majority of degrees in the US are Bachelor's of Arts in X, Bachelor's of Science in X, and perhaps Bachelors of Engineering.

@ThomassupportsMonica I have it in Italian, which is my county and says the title in Italian, like Laurea triennale in fisica

I added the Italy tag. Hopefully that will summon Massimo

@AzorAhai but what difference does it make? It's a statement in english, there should be a correct way to say it, regardless of my nationality.

Because in US English, degrees are usually "Bachelor's of  in ." I am not as familiar with UK versions of degrees, and since your degree is named in Italian, there may be a best way to translate it I'm not familiar with. A BA in math and a BS in math imply different coursework, so I'll leave it up to someone familiar with the Italian system to answer

@AzorAhai thank you for clarification

I certainly hope that @user111388 is right and nobody cares, because my C.V. just says "B.S. (Physics)" and "Ph.D. (Mathematics)" (with the universities and dates).

If this is for formal use then state it exactly as it appears from your university and give any translation that is logically correct. But BS in Physics or BSc (Physics) or Bachelor of Science (Physics) or similar would all be universally recognized in the English speaking world.
For informal usage (i.e. no legal implications whatever) then either of your suggestions would be fine or something such as I wrote above.
For extremely formal situations, use what the university uses and let the reader translate it. Probably name the university, as well.

As Buffy's answer says, BSc in Physics, or its variants, are OK.
However, if you want to have an official English equivalence of your title, ask to the student's office the Diploma Supplement, which is a bilingual document (Italian and English) aimed at better describing your academic qualifications in an international context, explaining also some details of the local educational system.
For instance, for a master's degree in engineering (sorry, I don't have one for a bachelor's), a diploma supplement from my university reports:

Master's of science—level of the Bologna process in Electronic
  Engineering

None of my first three (UK) degrees formally name the subject at all: Bachelor of Arts, Master of Science, Master of Arts. And in due course, I hope, my Doctor of Philosophy degree will be similarly silent (and I think it should be: why should research degrees be shoehorned into some librarian's classification system?).
You just have to explain in your CV what is was you actually studied.

Note that in some countries applications require to specify the subject. For instance, we have positions for MSc's in Physics or Electronic Engineering, but not Mechanical Engineering. Those with a degree not falling within a certain class would be automatically excluded.

In my day as an undergraduate at Cambridge degrees were not necessarily awarded in particular subjects. One obtained a degree by passing two Parts of the University examinations, but there was no requirement for those two parts to be in the same, or even in related subjects. Almost everyone did in fact follow the same subject for all three years, but it was quite possible to  mix and match one's own degree, Part I mathematics followed by Part II law was quite feasible.

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

sort: votes


text:
How to discuss a women's college mission while applying for a job there?
I'm applying for a job at an elite women's liberal arts college, which is part of a co-ed group of liberal arts colleges where students can easily take classes at any of these colleges (in the humanities, if that's helpful).
I assume it'd be pretty essential to address the fact that the job is at a women's college - but what can I possibly say that isn't trite (despite being true)? Of course, it'd be a joy to teach intelligent women and help them develop their academic interests in this unique setting - who wouldn't think so? What can I say?
If anyone has any experience of teaching at a women's liberal arts college: what made it special for you? (regardless of whether it would be useful for the job application)

Are women underrepresented in your field?  Is there anything about your particular area of interest that is especially relevant to women or to gender issues?

"it'd be a joy to teach intelligent women" I would throw away your CV right away. If anything, it is a joy to teach intelligent pupils. Anyway the "harsh" reality is faced is that it is easy to teach intelligent and demanding pupils, it is rewarding to see  average pupils blossom. But you are describing an elite school, so just be ready to have curious and intelligent kids, and some demanding parents (demanding in the sense that for 10 good demanding parent, there is 1 non-sensical demanding parent that will mess up with you... )

Why should the gender of the students matter at all? For a good instructor the gender of the students should be irrelevant and all students should be treated equally independent of their gender. Working at a school whith students of only one* gender should not change your approach to teaching, otherwise you have been biased before or are still biased thinking women* require something else than a coed course. *of course a purely dual gender vision is not reflective of reality.

I wasn't suggesting that I would teach them any differently based on gender - I was simply asking if, since this is a women's college, they would expect me to say something about the fact that it is a women's college (e.g. the environment/opportunities this creates or the mission and how that fits into my teaching). (Nor does the label 'woman' necessarily suggest a dual gender vision - and I am aware that the college I'm applying to admits trans and non-binary students.)

While in graduate school, I adjuncted at Scripps College (an elite women's college which is part of a consortium of interconnected liberal arts colleges).  I treated the job application the same way I treated every other application---the fact that it is a women's college shouldn't really be relevant.  Much more relevant is the fact that it is a small, elite, private liberal arts institution.

@EarlGrey The poster is asking about a liberal arts college.  Parents should not be involved.

@XanderHenderson the parents shouldn't be involved as most students are (formally) adults, but the sad and often embarrassing truth is that they often do try to excert influence. It is often not possible to ignore especially the nonsensical demanding parent. So it is something you have to deal with when teaching at a college.

@MaartenBuis I have had parents try to interfere in my classes.  My universal response is "FERPA forbids me from talking to you.  Take it up with the dean."  This is a US-sepcific answer, but a college instructor should not be talking to parents.  And that goes for the dual-enrolled high school students I teach, too.

@Sursula: Hmm, while I completely agree with your point that the gender of the students shouldn't matter at all, I'm not so sure whether that's the right approach for the OP. I'm inclined to believe that, if gender doesn't matter, it's not very reasonable to run a college where only students of a particular gender can attend. Doesn't this indicate that the gender of the students does matter for the college and for some of the students (namely for those who deliberately chose to attend a women's college rather than attending this college for other reasons only)?

Absolutely not anything approaching an "answer", but: so far as I have seen, there are gender biases (and corresponding micro-aggressions)... which may be avoided at a women's college... ? I don't know. But I do have a firm impression that pretending that there's no issue (like with pretending that "black/white is invisible") is hypocritical. Considering reality... But/and, yes, these words have varying meanings...

@DanielHatton Ouch.  That sounds... fun.

You have two questions, so I'll answer separately:

What can I possibly say that isn't trite (despite being true)? There are as many criteria for evaluating application essays are there are faculty sitting in those committees. I've sat in many faculty search committees, and chaired a good portion of them, and my general feel is that these questions on the application materials are there to answer two issues: (1) Are you not crazy?, and (2) Did you do your homework? In other words, the essays are there to screen bad candidates, not to select the good ones. I've never seen a committee make an offer to a candidate based on the essay. Any well written answer, with no grammatical errors, that addresses the type of university we are (e.g. research vs. teaching; small vs. large; residential vs. commuter; elite vs. open admissions, etc.) gets the pass.

What made it special for you? (regardless of whether it would be useful for the job application). I have not taught at an elite women's college, but I have several colleagues who have, and some who still are teaching there as full tenured professors. I do have experience teaching at small and large elite universities. If you get the job, what you might find is that these colleges are in many ways, just like everywhere else in academia. Just because the faculty are proportionally more women than men, does not diminish the petty fights, the political positioning, the social climbing, the backstabbing, etc. normal in similar co-ed institutions. Based on the stories from the friends who taught and still teach there, it seems that the level of student entitlement is above average (read: immense pressure on professors to just give As to everybody resulting in ridiculous levels of grade inflation, impossible to bring a disciplinary case against a student, US culture wars stuff, etc.) On the bright side, they also have all the benefits of elite institutions, like good funding, job security, respect for the liberal arts, etc.

Your job application is about why they should hire you.  It is not about what you enjoy.
My field has poorly served female students.  There are evidence-based methods of helping female students learn (they also work for other students).  If you are working in my field, you might describe how you use those methods.  This would apply to any faculty job application at a coed college too.
A faculty member who taught physics at a women's college said teaching there is the same - that seems very logical.
Do mention the other aspects of the college that are unique and why your skills contribute to them.

(+1) for the second paragraph.  If you want a buzz word for it (which will make a lot of small, private, liberal arts college hiring committees happy):  "universal design for learning".  Things that are good for students with physical handicaps are often good for students without those handicaps.  Things that are good for black and hispanic students turn out to be good for white and asian students, too.  Things that are good for women can be good for men, as well.

While I haven't taught at such a college, my daughter attended one. I don't think you need to specifically address that it is a women's college, but rather that you are qualified to teach great, hard working, demanding students.
Such colleges, like other elite colleges, are small enough that they can demand excellence from their faculty. The focus is on teaching, but research, especially that open to undergraduates is also highly valued.
What makes elite women's colleges "special" is that there isn't a lot of sexist BS that occurs in the greater world and tries to "put women in their place". These students know their "place" and it isn't at the bottom (or the kitchen, unless they really choose that). The college will likely be a highly supportive environment in which the students (some of which are trans women these days) can find their own path to excellence.

I have some experience as a visitor at an elite college, though it was co-ed. The students are very demanding of high quality instruction and accepting of hard work. They come in smart and eager. You need to support that. I'd suggest that is where you put your focus in an application. They will be more interested in beginning research opportunities than the typical college student. Many of their parents will be academics. Very high standards.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
How does one go about writing papers as a nobody?
To begin with, I have no credentials, no degrees, no references, and no certificates. I haven't even started university.
However, I still want to write a paper, for two main reasons.

The people reviewing my college application will see something nice if they happen to search for my name.
Bragging rights.

Is this at all a possibility or just a pipe dream? If it's a possibility, where do I get started? I had a look at a few papers from a few different fields, and I don't think I have nearly enough knowledge to make serious contributions to mathematics, and obviously, I can't do experimental research. I have been considering meta-analysis; I just need a little bit of statistics knowledge for that, right?
I'm also not sure where I would publish my paper in the end. Would journals even accept a publication from a nobody, and if not, is publishing it on arXiv sufficient?

It seems unlikely that you will be able to do this, given that you don't even seem to have a field in mind. Meta-analysis of what? And do you have enough statistics knowledge to do meta-analysis to a publishable standard? Journals do accept papers from "independent researchers" so that is not a problem. Publishing on Arxiv might impress someone but you will have to be "endorsed" by someone before you can do that.

You should find something you enjoy and want to tell other people about, pick up a Writers Market book, pick your audience, write an article, and submit it.  Repeat until in press.  This may or may not be an academic work.

Regrettably you have been misled about the merits of what you propose. Nobody will mistake you for some undiscovered genius, they will roll their eyes and ignore what is largely a "cringey" contribution. Why? Because there is now a market for vanity publications which have managed to convince high school students that they need a publication to get into college, or that somehow that looks good. It really does not. Do not fall prey to it. The world does not need more low-quality vanity literature that does nothing but line the pockets of low quality, non-academic publishers.

Consider https://vixra.org, which has much less stringent requirements than https://arxiv.org. And first see https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/189900/ for more detailed discussion of vixra versus arxiv. Googling vixra will also cough up a variety of such discussions.

"I just need a little bit of statistics knowledge for that, right?" well, if an "achievement" is trivial, you wouldn't get any credit for the "achievement" to begin with. I feel like you're motivated by all the wrong things here.

More a suggestion than an answer but .... most of us usually who were in that situation went for co-authorship, or credit, with someone of slightly higher standing, rather than trying to get published directly on our own merit.

With all due respect, you seem to have it backwards: The general order is to have something to contribute first (an idea, a result), and then publish that.

@eigengrau Even if the OP wants a publication for the wrong reasons, using vixra is a terrible suggestion. Stickynotememo, vixra exists for publications that can't make it through arxiv's stringent peer review...in spite of the fact that arxiv doesn't have peer review. Vixra is only for crackpots and people who have been duped into thinking it's not just for crackpots (and real scientists who just want to read something hilariously bad (e.g. 1, 2)). Don't be either of those people.

It is bad enough that current academic culture makes academics publish at a rate that is dictated by metrics used for career advancement rather than by what they have to say. Don’t add to that.

@eigengrau I second Ray's comment on vixra. For OP: similar to predatory journals, vixra has a reputation where including it can be detrimental to the appearance of your competence. And for context, the two papers linked to are so bad that it is hard for me not to believe they are parodies of bad papers.

Think of it like this: If just was easy or just a little bit of statistics knowledge was enough everyone could do it, if everyone could do it probably a lot of people would and if a lot of people did it than why would someone by impressed by it? It would be like "having bragging rights" for being able to whistle, sure many people can't do it but it's not really something worth bragging about since quite a lot can anyway

Are you in high school or have you graduated, @stickynotememo? If you're in high school, you may have opportunities you could take advantage of; science fairs are a good way to demonstrate an understanding of the research process without publishing. (And if your research is, indeed, journal quality, you could make connections who could help you publish.) And there may be some summer research programs you could apply to, or you may be able to get in contact with local professors who might be interested. (If you've graduated, there may be opportunities to demonstrate research in the workplace.)

Many top tier computer science conferences have adopted a double blind review process. So, being a 'nobody' shouldn't be a problem

When I was in high school I spent a year working in a neuroscience lab. We ultimately published something in NIPS and I was one of the authors. My advice is to understand where your passion lies, find a professor at a university nearby to work with, and you might be able to publish with them. I'm not commenting on the  motivation being purely for the sake of admissions, just suggesting how the outcome can be achieved.

If what you put on arXiv is worthless to scholars then no, it won't be sufficient. And you need an account there first and that, I believe, still requires an endorser from academia.
Before you write a paper you need something to write about. Before that can reasonably happen you need the background in the topic that will make it feasible. Unlike fiction, where imagination and some writing skill may be enough, academic publishing requires (usually) deep understanding of some topic, even a very narrow topic.
To get the background in the topic you probably need the guidance that a good education should (hopefully) provide. Some, but few, of us can do without that guidance.
You shouldn't even try to publish dreck. It won't do you any good and the response from reviewers will be humbling.
I suggest that you get yourself into a good university, work hard, and pay attention there. One "trick" you might employ is to keep a notebook of ideas that you  think are worth following up on later. Periodically review and update your notebook as you learn more. If you are persistent, and lucky, something might emerge from your efforts. But it takes effort, not just hope. Good luck.
And note that it isn't so much that you are a "nobody", but that you currently lack sufficient background and knowledge to do a good job. Everyone (nearly) starts out as a nobody. You become "somebody" by doing a good job.

Yes, do keep a notebook (paper or electronic) of ideas...

I largely agree with Buffy's answer, but I want to emphasize something else. The OP writes that they want "bragging rights" and to make their college application look better. This is exactly the kind of situation that predatory journals (sometimes called "vanity press") prey on. The OP (and other readers) should be aware of a few things:

When you are just starting out, it's hard to tell if a journal is predatory or not (see: 1, 2, 3, 4)

Such journals will publish your work (for a fee) even if it's crummy. This might give you bragging rights, but only to people who don't know the difference between predatory and reputable journals. Similarly, it gives you a line on your application/resume, and might convince an undergrad admissions officer (though, I think that's unlikely, as very few high school students publish research papers), but you would regret it later.

Having published in a predatory journal looks bad forever. The long-term negatives far outweigh any short term positives.

The nature of academia is to do things the right way, even if it's painful and takes a long time. Academics who take shady shortcuts (like, falsifying their data) even when facing strong external pressures, do not succeed. It's essential to resist the temptation to take such a path. You'll feel better about yourself and your successes if publications are actually earned, which means starting out with years of study, as Buffy recommended.

Although I agree largely with this, in agreement with the accepted answer to the linked question I don't think having published in a predatory journal seriously hurts a CV or a person's reputation. There are just too many legitimate researchers who do this before collecting more experience. (It's not much to brag about either, though.)

@Christian Hennig: Also, if the OP is applying to a U.S. university (to begin undergraduate work), it's very likely that no one looking over the application would know the difference between a cited publication in Annals of Mathematics and a cited publication in a predatory journal, nor will anyone have the slightest understanding of what the paper deals with (unless it deals with some sort of "generalist topic"). Instead, the significance of having a publication would be what letters of recommendation and other supporting documents say about the paper.

The linked answer to 3. States the exact opposite of what you are citing it for.

"Academics who take shady shortcuts (like, falsifying their data) even when facing strong external pressures, do not succeed." - is obviously incorrect. There are so many cases of people being considered great scientists for decades based on full-on fraudulent work that it is basically certain that many people get away with shady practices for their entire career (likely some not even realizing the shadiness, because "that's how we do it here"). It is a bad thing to do and likely does not lead to happy life, but it can definitely lead to "success" by academia's standards.

"I want to make a film. I never made a movie, directed a play, managed people and have no idea what to make the movie about" - this would be the analogy of what you talk about.
Most filmmakers may have, before they studied, had a history of playing with cameras, experimented with settings or staged miniature plays etc. They might have an idea what they would like their first film and story to be about. Their first attempt may not be fully professional, but it has the hallmark of individual energetic enthusiasm about it.
And thus is it with academia. Don't just write a paper. A paper is the end result of something you want to understand and pursue. It does not have to be deep or complicated, but it should be something you are deeply interested in investigating with purpose. The paper is just the documentation of this work and your communication to others about it.
Do not write papers as frivolous exercise. There is enough useless text to go around. Write a paper because you have something to say.
Unless that condition holds, you are wasting your and the readers' time. If doing the above is not what makes your heart beat faster, do employ your time more profitably.

Nice analogy. The history of toying around and collecting experience that way is apparent in Spielberg's The Fabelmans. Something else is also apparent: An irrepressible, visceral drive to make films. That can be observed in many great artists (there is the story of Gillian Lynne as told by Ken Robinson in the most famous TED talk...)

I like the analogy, but there is maybe a caveat on this answer, which is that with social media like youtube and tiktok, an untrained high school student plausibly could make a successful video on their own. It would definitely take an unusual amount of drive and a very good idea. But, I would argue that even an unusually high amount of drive and a good idea plus access to an internet distribution venue like arxiv is not enough for a beginner to write a good academic paper.

@Andrew Even with a video, OP needs to have an idea what they want to do. Otherwise, yes, there are lots of novel media on offer to be used.

The short answer to your question (as the other fine answer already say) is basically, no, this is not feasible unless you are a prodigy genius on the order of Mozart or Orson Welles or Terence Tao.  And, statistically, you're not.  I don't say that to be mean, or discouraging-- factually, neither am I.  Those people are really rare.
I do want to emphasize things a little differently, though.
You're sort of putting the cart before the horse, here.
Academia-- meaning, a somewhat traditional passage through an undergraduate degree, maybe a masters degree, maybe some years in industry, and then a PhD-- is one path by which people learn to do the research activities that lead to scholarly papers.
Those activities are skills.  They can be taught and they can be learned, but they depend (in this context) on a broad and deep base of existing knowledge that typically takes years of intense guided study to acquire.  Usually by years of study or experience.
What you're trying to do is invert the process and turn the act of writing a scholarly paper into part of the admissions process to the very place you will start to acquire that knowledge and those skills.
I don't want you to feel bad about this misapprehension.  Other answers are absolutely correct that there are little predatory outfits pitching these ideas, preying on insecurities and egos.  (Indeed, one of the things you learn in postgraduate education is how to recognize these outfits, and as a senior PhD candidate I had to guide several masters students through that process myself.)
But I also don't want you to labor under this misapprehension, either.
This just isn't something you're expected to do, because it isn't really within your grasp.
Yet.

Given the content of your posting, I am going to assume that you are currently attending high school or some equivalent thereof. It is certainly possible for high school students to write scientific papers, but it is rare; writing a scientific paper requires producing some novel findings in some academic field, which requires knowing what has been done before on that subject. High school students mostly simply have not had enough time to reach that stage, and to gain the additional experience that is needed to then find something new. Additionally, writing a scientific paper is a lot of work even when the scientific work has been done. In the context of your posting, I don't think "bragging rights" provide the required intrinsic motivation; but I could be wrong about that. Ideally, scientific work starts with a question that you intrinsically want to see answered and that nobody can as yet answer.
If one sets the bar a bit lower than fully professional-level research, then it is perfectly possible for a small publication to emerge naturally from something at the level of a very well executed high school science competition project. There are some journals that publish specifically research at that level. While the concern raised in other answers about predatory publishers is valid, I disagree with those answers when they claim that it is difficult to recognize predatory publishers at that level. Predatory publishers will charge a significant fee for publishing, whereas non-predatory journals won't; in addition, they'll be backed by institutions with serious research involvement and some link to the cause of fostering research at the high school level. In the German language area, for instance the journal "Junge Wissenschaft" comes to mind (which has links to a national high-school level science competition and backing by the National Metrology Institute). I'm confident similar journals exist in other relatively large countries as well; a teacher and/or a language model of your choice may help you find them. Looking at projects published in such a venue could give you some inspiration for what a project that you could feasibly start yourself might look like (and will also give you a sense of the work factor such projects entail).
I don't think that you are correct in your assumption that doing interesting experimental work is out of reach of high school students in principle. With support from a mentor (for instance, a teacher, or ideally a teacher who in turn is liaising with a researcher) it is quite feasible for an intelligent, motivated and tenacious high school student to run for instance computational experiments or local (e.g. historical or environmental) research that could be of some interest to professionals. However, help by a mentor and/or some suitable organisational scaffolding (for instance, doing the work as part of a science competition) would be very beneficial for such a project, and of the aforementioned qualities of the student, I would rate tenacity the highest.

Open-access journals charge "a significant fee" - it may be hard for a high schooler to distinguish these based on your heuristic.

Yes, that's true. But as far as I can tell, it's not true for non-predatory journals aimed at publishing student research. I think using common sense and some public resources, a high schooler can recognize those reliably.

Your description of your academic stature indicates that you have no education or achievements at a high enough level to write anything at all which would be taken seriously by anyone. You really don't want to start writing papers at this level because you won't impress anyone. In any case, the function of a paper is not to impress people but to extend the mass of knowledge already available to the world (you will soon be found out if you try to do it without knowledge, because there are an awful lot of people out there who know much more than you do, on any given topic). Work hard to win a university place. When you have one, work hard again to gain a high-level degree (a mere pass for turning up won't do it). Then work hard to gain a Masters and then a Doctorate (or skip the Masters if you're good enough). By then, you should have gained enough knowledge and experience in your chosen field to have the kind of ideas which can be developed into a paper. Remember that an academic paper is not simply a matter of regurgitating other people's ideas. Neither is it a matter of pure opinion; you'll need a lot of hard learning at your fingertips in order to construct a credible piece of writing. You need to know your topic inside out so that you can read and defend your paper(s) at conferences, etc (the ability to defend what you write is absolutely essential if you are to avoid humiliation). You have a long row to hoe in front of you. Good luck.

Is this at all a possibility or just a pipe dream? If it's a possibility, where do I get started?

Here’s some advice geared towards the practical side of your question. To publish research you need to have some new knowledge to contribute beyond what is currently known. And to discover new knowledge, you necessarily need to bring your own state of knowledge to the edge of what is known. It is only from the edge of knowledge that new knowledge can be discovered. Just like in the age of geographical exploration, a would-be explorer could not hope to “publish” new geographical discoveries by sitting in their home town in some European country where every inch of land has been thoroughly mapped and known for centuries. Explorers literally had to venture to the edge of the known physical world and then step beyond that.
So, if you want to publish, go in some direction that will take you to the edge of knowledge. Once you get there, look beyond the edge.
Fortunately, with knowledge, there are many more “directions” one can go in to reach the edge than in the world of physical exploration. Any intellectual area of thought or study is a suitable direction: e.g., 18th century poets; the mating behavior of butterflies; or almost anything else you can think of.
Since you are interested in mathematics, even in that discipline there are almost unlimited directions you can go in to reach the edge of knowledge, including some relatively young and unexplored ones where one does not have to go very far to reach the edge of what is known. But even for those areas, typically at least 1-3 years of concentrated study (relative to the state of knowledge of a high school graduate) are probably needed to reach the edge of knowledge. Form a plan of action for how you will study enough to get to the edge of knowledge, and then carry it out. A university degree (and in some cases a graduate degree after that) is probably the most standard route to get there, but reading books on your own, even watching YouTube videos or using other educational media that are freely available out there, can work for some people or at least get you part of the way there.
Good luck, and happy exploring!

Go for it - with a few adjustments.
University admissions are difficult because they are faced with a lot of indistinguishable candidates who are not people yet, may become people one day or may not. The traditional method of “take all the applications to the fourth floor, throw them into the stairwell, and accept the ones that land on the second floor” is as reliable as any other procedure, and faster.
Given that, it is good to aim for non-indistinguishability. At the very least it will give them something to talk to you about at interview.
Completely abandon any idea of advancing the course of human knowledge. Or of Getting Published as a kind of endorsement. As other answerers have said, that only leads to fake journals.
Here is what to do.
Start a blog. This can be done free on many platforms, from Wordpress to blogger to I don’t know what.
Aim for an audience of 1 - you. Write posts that you want to read. Do not seek or hope for approval from anyone else.
You will not add to the sum of human knowledge, so don’t try.
What you can do is find topics from a field that interests you. Not even necessarily one you are planning to study. Let’s say it’s astronomy. Let’s say that you are interested in the way that planets are said to “capture” satellites, which (you think) doesn’t make sense because the way orbits work, “whatever falls inwards is going to fall outwards again just as fast”.
You now have curiosity. And you have a puzzle. Look into it on SE and elsewhere. Write an article which summarises what you see as the problem - whether you think people are addressing or ignoring it - what approaches you have seen - whether they seem to fit together or make sense at all - what advances you as a spectator would hope to see in, say, 5 years.
Expository writing is a very valuable skill. Moreover you can tell yourself that if you aren’t advancing human knowledge, you are advancing human understanding… which is better.
Your main audience is you, now, and the satisfaction you get from reading it. Your second audience is you, in five years’ time. Your third audience is anyone else who happens to see what you have written.
In terms of university entrance, you will have

Shown a body of work not a freak article.
Shown you are able to work persistently and long term.
Shown that you are interested without being told to be interested.
Shown that you are into a subject because of the subject and not because someone wrote it into a syllabus.
Shown that as a student you will not just sit there saying “tell me what to think now”.
Shown that you have matured beyond thinking that the task of the scholar is to “get the right answer.”

Plus - if you end up writing intelligently enough, you will be able to write to researchers and ask them questions about their work. They love answering.
Above all, you will get practice in writing papers.
Go for it - and post a link here!

The other answers are directly answering your question about writing a paper. I just want to say I agree, but also suggest there are ways of accomplishing your underlying goal of standing out on a college application without writing a paper. I am assuming you are a high school student, and are located in the US, mainly because that is the system I have the most experience with.
First, make sure you have excellent grades and recommendations from your teachers. If you do not have those, generally I think your time would be better spent working toward those goals, then extracurricular academics.
Second, many subjects have academic competitions. For example, in math there are Mathletes or the Olympiad. Competing and doing well in those is a way to prove your mathematical ability. Or there may be science fairs.
Third, if your school has an option to do a senior project or thesis, take that option. Work with your teacher to stretch your project a little bit beyond what a typical high schooler would do, but not so much that you can't do a good job.
For example, I worked with a high school student who wrote a short review of evidence for dark matter and summarized some modern research. Was it a publishable academic article? No. If I were to judge it as a research review article, I would say it cherry picked the literature, misunderstood some issues, and did not give a comprehensive survey of a coherent part of the field. But was it an impressive job for a high schooler working mostly independently? Absolutely. And it showed passion for the subject that has great potential to develop with formal education. This kind of work can seep into your resume, personal statement, recommendations, ... So it is worthwhile and shows you are passionate.
Now, life isn't fair, so not everyone will be able to do point three. However, you can take advantage of the resources you have. If you are in a situation where you can contact a professor and have them give you a small project as a high school thesis, that can look really cool! Even though it almost certainly will not lead to a paper. But even if you aren't, you can do a lot of very cool projects on your own with limited funding. Get a raspberry pi and put one a drone and see what you can get it to do. One impressive high school science fair project I judged created a phased array of microphones by sending signals to off-the-shelf speakers with a laptop running Matlab.
Finally, due to social media, with youtube, and TikTok, and so on, there actually are ways to show off and publicize your ideas/inventions, even if they aren't publishable by strict, academic standards. Making a youtube video about the self-flying drone you built could be a really cool way to show off your skills in science and communication and would be a doable-if-difficult project for a high schooler.
To summarize, what I'm saying is that there are developmentally appropriate ways to show your creativity and stand out on a college application, that are accessible even if you don't have access to a research lab (but if you do have access to a research lab, you can use that kind of connection as well). You don't need to write a paper, and trying to do so will almost certainly backfire, because you need a lot of education and training to reach the point where you can do that. Work with your teachers, pick something more manageable, and you can absolutely find a way to show off your passion in a way that goes beyond a standard high school curriculum.

As with all other answers, you don't have the capacity to do research yet. Generally the research required for a paper will take several months of (about) full time work, followed by a number of months of writing the work up. If this is done independently this is following about a decade of full time learning after completing high school to reach this competency. If this is done with a supervisor, it generally requires about a completed undergraduate degree (and this can still be closer to answering an assignment sheet than doing real research).
Regarding meta-analysis, that might actually be harder that doing original research. Its a lot of statistics, yes, but it also requires you to be able to read all the papers you put into the analysis and understand them, where their limitations are, are they comparable to other papers in the field. If you don't know the field well enough to answer those questions, your results would be less informative than reading just one of the papers used in the meta-analysis.
You seem to be avoiding non-flashy fundamentals for flashy auxiliaries. Non-crackpot researchers have learnt all the fundamentals through their undergraduate/masters level coursework. Focus on the fundamentals first, do you have the education to be enrolled at the university. Then ask yourself: what excites you? And use that to decide on any flashy additions you want to add. These shouldn't be things just to get into a university (external motivation), but something that you would be driven to do (intrinsic motivation). Your question suggests your motivation for doing research is the first and not the second. So I'd suggest, ask yourself what you want to do/what you enjoy doing and find a way to leverage that drive into something productive that could be added to any applications you put together.

I don't like the discouraging answers here, so I am taking a different tack. I think you should find a place where you want to submit a paper, and download their template on overleaf, or similar tool. Read some papers in your chosen field to narrow down your scope, and start experimenting.
The key for you is to understand how to conduct scientific analysis and research, and the expected format of publishing in conferences or journals.
Many high school students have published, so it is not out of the ordinary. Usually, their parents or someone else in their lives helps connect them to a mentor at an institution where they can get some kind of directed guidance. However, don't fret if you don't have that kind of connection. It will make it harder, but not impossible.
If all else fails, take your findings and publish them in a blog post and share widely. Once you have some blog post, you can even use that to reach out to a professor or scientist who you think might be interested.
Update--I'll make some amendments based on the comments on this reply. I think the commenters are wrong because it's not their place to decide what someone can do, only OP can decide that. OP simply asked for advice on where to start. My comment didn't really answer that well either, so I hope OP or someone similar can find the follow up more helpful.
Per my experience, a reasonable place to start is by reading other papers and finding an interesting question or two to form hypotheses around. You can also just read technical blog posts, and start asking yourself "what if" questions. Then you start experimenting by exploring your "what if" questions.
Maybe make a small slide deck of your experiments and observations to keep track of your activities. You'll go back and forth in this process because it's never a straight line. But that's no reason to be discouraged, unless what you're doing is fundamentally wrong or foolish. This is where it helps to have someone more experienced than you have a look at what you're doing.
I'll state more explicitly that your goal really shouldn't be publishing, but learning how to conduct scientific investigations. The goal of publishing is to share knowledge and findings in a standard way so others can build off what you've found. If you're just starting out, then learn how to carry out and appreciate the scientific process.
But more importantly, learn to respectfully disagree with people who disagree with you. It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks you can do, what matters is what you think.
To the commenters who are being discouraging to a young person, I'll say simply this--please, don't. It's the domain of the young to be impractical. I think you can just guide someone as best as you can, but never actually say no unless that person is doing something fundamentally wrong.

Actually, high school students publishing is rather dramatically "out of the ordinary". Few do so. And, when they do, we usually consider it "extraordinary".

@Buffy you have to be a bit careful about that. I've seen at least the following report on companies that are trying to cheese that idea for undergrad admissions. https://www.propublica.org/article/college-high-school-research-peer-review-publications

If all else fails, take your findings and publish them in a blog post and share widely. What makes this answer unhelpful is that OP has no “findings”, nor any idea how to find findings - that’s kind of exactly what the question is about (“where do I get started?”). But you haven’t addressed that at all, instead basing your answer on the premise that OP has the ability to do research and just needs to get it published.

"Download a template from Overleaf" as the first step is very odd advice. -1


text:
How do I cite a Reddit dialog in APA style?
How do I cite this screenshot in APA format? It's a screenshot of the process of posting. Also what URL would I provide?

Currently, I have:

r/DMAcademy. (n.d.). Screenshot of Flairs and Tags [Screenshot]. reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/submit/?type=TEXT

Does this count as a dialogue? If anything I would think it's the process of setting up the dialogue.

@Michael I think that whether it is a "dialog" or not is rather immaterial; but feel free to edit. My point was to highlight that it's an interactive button-clicky bit, not a webpage you are citing for the information.

That's kind of what I was asking. Do I credit the community, no date, and link to the page that lets you create a post.

I would call this a "dialog box" in UI terms rather than a dialog in interpersonal terms. Are you aware of the different meanings?

Not at all actually @Brian. This is my first time really having to use APA and the past month I've gotten points docked for messing it up.


text:
Will a journal reject my paper just because a grad student is the sole author?
I have been working on a topic(numerical analysis) for several years, and I discovered something new which can be verified by numerical experiments. But my supervisor doesn't allow me to publish it, though he does admit that my research is worth publishing.
So is it possible to publish my research without my supervisor? I have done the research all by myself, the idea, the numerical experiment is original and without any help from my supervisor, but I am still a student. Will the journal reject my paper just because I submit the paper while I am still a student and without any co-author?
As many people are wondering why my supervisor will not allow me to publish, I give my own explanation below:

He has a strong desire to control all the research in my lab, I am afraid he is the only person who is doing research in my lab, all the students who have published just wrote the articles, all the ideas are from my supervisor. All the ideas by the students usually will be abandoned.
I am an international student here, although I don't think that the relation with my supervisor is totally broken, I'm afraid he wants to postpone my graduation, so that he still have a PHD student in the next year. (Here is East-Asia, he can do like this without any opposition, it is not abnormal here as far as I know)

As someone suggested, my real problem may far beyond the simple question of the title. However, I do want to know if it is possible to publish a paper by a student solely. Of course any advice on whether I should or not publish my research is also appreciated.

my supervisor doesn't allow me to publish it, though he does admit that my research worth publish I think you need to either tell us more or ask for more details on that because it's unclear why someone wouldn't "allow" publishing something while finding worthy of publishing. What are the reasons? Not mature? Out of her/his field?

It sounds like you have bigger problems with your advisor. Is whether or not the paper will be rejected by the journal really your main concern?

@ff524 You are right, I do have a big problem with my advisor. But if I can publish solely, at least I will have a paper, I'm not hoping a phd degree right now, it's simply impossible. But as a graduate student, I have the duty to publish my work, so I do concern if I can publish it solely or not.

I am no expert in your field. This is just a comment. I just found an article Pseudospectral Least Squares Method for Stokes--Darcy Equations By Hessari, P on SIAM Journal on Numerical Analysis. It is a single author paper.

@scaaahu Thanks for your comment, but I'm afraid that author is not a student. He holds a PHD degree. I see a lot of papers by sole author, but they are all faculties of any organisation, I am a student, I want to know if I can publish a paper solely.

Why would the reviewers of the journal care if the author is a student if the quality of the paper is excellent?

@BenCrowell Maybe my description was a little confusing, I revised the description, I hope now it's more clear.

Aside: discovered something new which can be proven by numerical experiments sounds iffy.  I do accept that some proofs may involve numerical calculations performed by a computer, but the word "experiment" makes me suspicious here.  Perhaps you have "done numerical experiments which support your discovery", but not proved anything?  Maybe your supervisor thinks the discovery is worth publishing somewhere but disagrees with the choice of journal?

+1 for the comments above- this question isn't about whether a PhD student can publish alone.  (A Google search would tell you immediately the answer to that is yes!)

@P.Windridge The word is misleading, I will change the "prove" to "verify". At first I just wanted to publish my research by myself, I searched Google but I didn't find the answer, maybe my keyword was not appropriate. So I asked, people here are very kind and beside telling me yes, they also suggest my real problem is the relation with my supervisor. I didn't expect to get the solution of that because I thought it's too late, but Phil, and other guys suggest if I do publish it will cause problem, so now I'm giving up on publishing.

The question is not clear to me. What kind of "lab", in particular, are you talking about? Are you a PhD student in mathematics, or in some other discipline?

@P.Windridge Some Journal editors will reject my paper for saving their backs, as is suggested by Schultz Hartmut, and my supervisor will be very angry. It seems simple that the answer of if student can publish solely is a Yes, but if you consider all the problems, I'm afraid the answer is close to a No.

@OswaldVeblen I'm a PHD student in a university's lab, my research area is numerical analysis.

@OswaldVeblen The OP's field is numerical analysis. I suspect he would need resources such as super computers to conduct experiments. Of course, resources only does not give the supervisor the right to be a co-author.

I am in the same trouble and I have got all my solo papers rejected, even they were in good shape. The reviewers don't spend time and read papers prepared by students alone.

You want to publish, so you have a paper for your thesis, don't you? When your advisor does not "allow" you to publish the paper, do you think he will admit it to be part of your thesis? He probably will find all kinds of reasons, why the paper cannot be used for your thesis. As others already said: The problem is not a sole author paper, but the problem is the relationship to your advisor.

As long as the article is good, it can be accepted, no matter how many authors are on the paper or whether you are a grad student or not.  However, if your advisor does not want you to publish the paper, there might be some reasons. First, perhaps that the advisor is funding your research and that this research direction is not his priority. He perhaps think that other problem should be investigated. If you are paid by your advisor, then the advisor may need to do research related to that funding source.  Second, although the idea may seem good, the advisor may see some problems in your idea and may think that it is not the most promising idea and that you should spend your time on something else. Writting a journal paper can take quite a lot of time.
Finally, I would recommend to not publish a paper by yourself while you are working under a specific supervisor. Your supervisor may be very angry if you do that, especially if you do that during time where you are paid by his funding or using the resources of his lab. I know several professors who were very angry when their student decide to submit papers without letting them know.  A student should always ask the permission of his supervisor to submit a paper.

Thanks for your comment. I think your suggestion is very reasonable, my supervisor will be extremely angry, and I do be using the resources of his lab. I'm considering to not publish, thank you very much.

@user2173276 I agree with this answer except the last sentence - "A student should always ask the permission of his supervisor to submit a paper.". Why the student needs the permission? I would agree you need the consultation from your supervisor. I am from East Asia. I think "permission" is overwhelmed. Hence, no upvote.

In mathematics, at least, I have never heard of the idea that a supervisor must approve for a student to publish a paper. Only a small percentage of mathematics PhD students publish independent papers while they are still earning a PhD, but the ones who do don't usually ask for permission, in my experience. (I suspect there is more going in with the question than just permission, however.)

It thus seems that it may depend on the field/institutation/country.

Publishing paper does not necessarily need co-author and supervisor. However, it is strongly recommended. Having experienced co-author (not another unexperienced author) with couple of publications like your supervisor has several benefits, including:

Your co-author reads paper and puts effort to make it more professional and  mature for publication. He/she checks to ensure there is no mistake in technicality, presentation, and English.
It gives more confidence to reviewers to ensure that what you did is scientifically correct and is also producible. Though rejection of papers with several experienced authors is also a very common issue.

In research, there are several small hints and tiny things to consider that can impact on the final results/outcomes of the research. If you submit without your supervisor/advisor's, particularly without his help and actual supervision, it is very likely to have those error.
In reality, research is very much complex, though it might look very simple. There are many many things to consider before undertaking research, reporting it, and even trying to submit it. Thus, your idea might not be yet ready for publication yet. Your supervisor may want to help you do not get a quick rejection that discourages you.
I don't think that exist any supervisor on the earth that avoid publishing paper unless there is either threat to its credit or the work is premature. Your supervisor may exaggerate on the quality of your work/paper though it is not yet mature enough to encourage you. So, if he admit that your paper is good, it is not 100% sure that your paper is ready to publish at the moment. Remember that your supervisor can see lots of other things that you cannot see in this stage.
So the bottom-line is that, try to further work on your idea and convince your supervisor that the paper is good and he -as a normal humankind- should be more than happy to co-author the paper with you since publication is one of the main KPIs for academicians across the globe.

Thank you so much for your detailed comments! I understand that usually supervisor will not do such things, but as I can understand, it happens on me(I think he doesn't need so many papers anymore, he had published a breakthrough). I am afraid he will not co-author with me, however good my article is. So again the question: can I publish it solely?

I have never thought, when reviewing a mathematics paper, that it was strange not to see a supervisor's name on the paper.

That is the beauty of human diversity and educational background I guess which is absolutely fine. I add "May" before my sentence to generalise it.

You welcome. I tend not to agree with you due to your supervisor's passion to publish. I guess academician's thirst for paper never quenches. I recommend to talk to him/her and let him/her know that you are determined and have faith in it. To be honest, you can publish your paper without him. However, it is very much important 1-to EiC 2- to the reviewer. There is no rule to reject papers based on authors merit. But it can and may psychologically impacting some reviewer's decision. I came a cross this kind of papers once and was curious to know why no supervisor and so put more effort on it.

Also depends on how powerful is your supervisor. In my field, editors would be wary that a PhD student does a paper without PI supervision, and would avoid accepting to save their backs. Also this way they can prevent their students sending papers to others and getting an independent publication.  Since

research all by myself, the idea, the experiment is original and without any help from my supervisor

Are you sure you were legally allowed to those experiments?
Your PI may claim later this experiment or organism (like bacterial sequence or gene) was not declared in the list of approved experiments.
Even the mere fact that he/she funded the resources and consumables for the experiment gives your PI right towards claiming authorship.
Since research faculties are filled with people with enough pride (and ego) your PI may also be very annoyed with her/his standing in your institution.
Finally, if you are looking for a postdoc/academic position later in your life - just do NOT do it. They will make it impossible.

Thank you for your comment, it's really helpful. My research is about numerical analysis, so if the new equation is reasonable and can be matched with numerical experiment, it should be a new discover, and as the research is actually about mathematics, there should be no problem on legacy. But as you pointed out in point 3, he may have funded me(I can't remember), he has the right to be a co-author, though I think he won't care to be the co-author. And in your point 4, I think he will be very annoyed. I will consider my publish much seriously because of your point 5: maybe I should not publish

@ChrisWhite, there are a lot of academic cultures/fields where the PI of a grant that supported the work is included as an author on every publication that comes out of it. In those cultures it might be considered unethical not to include them. Authorship norms are just that, cultural norms. Grant PIs are expected by most agencies to be publishing about their funded work, and so the agencies expect them to be authors as well. There's more to this that a professor forcing you to accept them as an author on a paper where from your perspective the did nothing.

There is something strange happening with the question. Mathematics is not normally a "lab based" science; getting funding in mathematics does not normally mean that your supervisor has any particular claim over your work.

@BillBarth This is true, but the PI is also expected to advise their grad students and help them with questions and valuable input on their work. And this input and feedback may be worth the coauthorship, even when he did not write a single line of the article.

A journal worthy of being deemed scholarly should consider an article on its merits, be it from a postgraduate, a university academic already holding a PhD, or an independent scholar.
If you are concerned about an editor being dismissive because sole-authored articles by postgraduates were not the norm in your field, my recommendation is to submit to a journal that employs double-blind peer-review (i.e.: reviewers do not know identity of the author and the author does not know identity of reviewers). One reason for double-blind peer review is to ensure that the reviewers are evaluating the content and scholarly argument of the article, and not taking into account the reputation (or lack thereof) of its author.
In my field (which is in the arts & humanities), it is common for postgraduates to publish sole-authored journal articles or book chapters (I am a postgraduate who is currently working on a sole-authored book chapter for a collected volume; incidentally, my supervisor happens to be working on a separate sole-authored book chapter for the same volume but on a different topic).

As stated before, the problem is not the acceptance of a publication (optimally double blind peer review, anyway).
It is a power play between the supervisor who needs the students work, and the student who needs the position (money / signature on dissertation).
It is sad, but the truth is that many supervisors are just like ticks exploiting the work of their students for their own benefit.
There are cases:

... where the supervisor has many ideas (perhaps not the best) and uses the students solely for means of getting his ideas implemented
... where the supervisor doesn't even have the ideas, just does some (possibly annyoing) editing in the end to justify his name on the publication
... where the supervisor does not do anything and still puts his name on the publication
... where the student is not particularly qualified and actually requires a strong guidance
... where both the supervisor and the student are qualified and actually work together hand in hand

At first, I have had case (1), then quit. Then I could do my own research because there was no supervisor and had 2/2 publications at top tier conferences. Now I am back in an official PhD position and it comes to case (2). From what I see around me, I do not think I am very unlucky. It is sadly the norm.
From my experience, many/most supervisors cannot really teach the student anything new. They pass over some (arbitrary) literature to read and 'teach' the students how to succeed in a corrupt system. The students are younger and more focused, while the supervisor is trying to do ten things at the same time, is caught up in bureaucratics, etc. One can tell from  the long list of their publications just how much actual contribution they could have had.
Two points that bother me in the above comments:

It is not necessarily true that the supervisor knows how to do things better. He does not own the truth. For example his editing might well make things worth.
The supervisor does not fund the research, usually the tax payer does, or perhaps the paying students of a private university (or wherever they get their money).

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
How can I evaluate the chances of my paper being accepted by a journal?
I have been making an integrated approach and its program on modelling the joint distribution of wind speed and direction (https://github.com/cqcn1991/Wind-Speed-Analysis). And I'm trying to publish a paper to get more attention on it.
However, my supervisor is not very familiar with the field I'm in, and I want some realistic and honest feedback on my work and whether it will be accepted by my target submitting papers. And if not, how can I improve my work to increase the chance.
One way I can think of is contacting the authors of papers I cited, and ask their feedback. But most of them are established professors and I'm afraid I can't get too much help in this aspect. Is there any other alternatives? I truly believe I have made something useful, but getting them published is a really tiring process.

You can select the journal by looking at most of the papers you have read and you cite in your work. Also, you can compare your work with other papers in the field and determine where to publish. You should also trust your work and aim high. Most of good journals have a relatively fast peer review(compared with other journals where it takes years to publish), so in 2-3 months you will know your chances for the paper.

@MikeyMike yes, I'm thinking about submiting the journals I cited. I think this would be a good startpoint.

If your supervisor is not very familiar with your topic, it could be nice to establish some connection to someone who is. Why not contact a couple of those professors, and perhaps you could even start collaborating with one of them? If it works out well, and you have funding, perhaps you could pay them a visit?

I don't know your field, but at least the GitHub page looks nice. Perhaps you could also consider the Journal of Open Source Software: https://joss.theoj.org. Others would try to run your code, so make sure to test it on varios versions of python (you could use TravisCI or CircleCI), etc. and that it is properly documented. It's not a full-fledged paper per se, but it counts as a peer-reviewed publication.

However, my supervisor is not very familiar with the field I'm in

This may not necessarily be a bad thing. Having your article read by someone who's an expert in this specific field can give you another valuable point of view.

One way I can think of is contacting the authors of papers I cited, and ask their feedback. But most of them are established professors and I'm afraid I can't get too much help in this aspect.

Wrong wrong wrong! Many PhD students suspect that established professors will not care about their work, which is a symptom of the impostor syndrome. If you work is relevant and important in the field, they would be delighted to see it. Talking to established professors is an excellent way for experts in the field to read your work and give valuable feedback. If your program really solves a problem they have, they will use, cite it, and promote your own career.

Is there any other alternatives? I truly believe I have made something
  useful, but getting them published is a really tiring process

Submit the work. If you think it's good enough, go for it. It will go through peer review where it will be assessed by knowledgeable people in the field, providing feedback (both positive and negative). You should have no fear that someone will steal your work because it's already out there on GitHub.
.

You can ask the editor.  It's called a pre-submission inquiry.

Didn't thought of this, I'll try it later. Thanks a million!

many journals provide an acceptance rate somewhere on their website. this statistic can provide insight into how many people who submit actually make it into the journal. this one way to know how you may fair in addition to other strategies.

Do note that the acceptance rate will be both field and journal-type specific. Some fields (like astronomy IIRC) have very high acceptance rates. And some very prestigious journals, especially of the type "Advances in X" or "Annual Review of X" also have very high acceptance rates just because people know better than to send them mediocre or out of scope papers.

But what would be a good accepte rate? Also, a lot of the journal I don't know where to look at the accepetance data. I know that there is  journalinsights for elsevier, but for other publisher, like wiley, I don't know where to look for the data.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
Do academics/researchers benefit from permanent access to conference paper abstracts?
Generally, abstracts for papers to be presented at conferences are published, prior to and during such conferences, in online and printed program books. However, in many cases, such abstracts are no longer available after the meeting is over. Would academics/researchers benefit from permanent access to conference paper abstracts?

Please clarify: Currently, the question sounds like you are referring to a field where papers are presented on conferences, and only on these conferences, and those papers disappear later on (or else, the abstracts could be obtained along with the published, and thus permanently available papers - based upon the paywalled sites that I know, the abstracts are usually even accessible without having access to the full paper). Is that what you are referring to?

Sorry for the confusion. The possibilities for what eventually happens to papers presented at these conferences are not limited. Some form of them may or may not be published in a journal, and they may or may not be presented at other conferences. My guess would be that the majority of such presentations are never published and never presented elsewhere, but I could be mistaken. The societies that I'm affiliated with do not publish conference papers in a proceedings volume.

There's a huge range of conference formats.  At one extreme are conferences at which presentations are given with an abstract but without any associated paper.  These presentations might be associated with journal papers published at a later date.  At the other extreme are conferences in which every presentation corresponds to a paper in a published conference proceedings volume and those papers will not appear later as journal papers (or perhaps only extended versions of the papers will be published in journals.)
In cases where there are only abstracts, these abstracts might be published in a printed program of abstracts or (more commonly these days) might just be available on a conference web site.  Some people do cite such abstracts, so it's a generally a good idea to keep them in some permanent form.
As an example, look at the AGU meetings abstract database.  These abstracts describe presentations that were made at AGU meetings, but in many cases the presentation never gets turned into a journal paper.  These abstracts are sometimes cited by other authors.  The AGU has maintained this database over the years.
https://meetings.agu.org/abstract_db/


text:
Is there an actual, physical event associated with predatory conferences?
I occasionally receive emails inviting me to present in a predatory conference. These are usually easy to identify, given that they call me a "Dr" or a "Prof" (only a PhD student at the moment), never heard of them (6th conference on something.. What were the first 5?), weird English, bizarre locations, organised by an organisation outside the field, etc.
When you're publishing a predatory journal I guess it's not too hard to actually publish the journal eventually. Just put some PDFs on a website. What about conferences? Organising a conference is harder: you have to arrange a venue, audio/video gear, food and a bunch of other things. Let's say that I do end up submitting and paying the abstract fees. Is there an actual conference happening somewhere?
EDIT - let me focus this a bit..

Is it possible that one signs up to such a conference, arrives, and then there is nothing on site?
Are the (sometimes famous) keynote speakers aware they they are listed? Do they show up to the conference?

If there is an actual conference, and people end up attending it, what is predatory about it? Eventually, it's a meeting of people discussing science about a particular topic.

And especially: I receive a lot of conference spam from a certain Stefania; does Stefania attend all the conferences she advertise? :-)

Sure. The creators of scigen did it to expose a fake conference, and they actually attended it and gave a computer generated talk on their computer generated paper in a fake session there. (A fake session, because at this stage they had gotten enough publicity that they were no longer welcome at the official conference sessions, so they booked an adjacent conference room in the same hotel.) You can see a video of it here.

@ff524 that's a funny video indeed! However, in their case there was an actual conference and you might say they were the "illegitimate" ones. Besides, no one showed up to theirs. This was 11 years ago, and the situation is different now.

@Michael The point of my comment is that there was an actual physical event associated with the "fake" conference they were trying to expose.

@ff524 point taken. However, I think that this issue is becoming worse with time, so something from 11 years ago may not represent what's happening now.

So far as I can tell, and have read online, predatory conferences typically are associated with an actual event.
To my mind, this seems to be a key difference between "predatory" and "fraudulent."  If a conference takes your money and no event is organized, then there is clearly false advertising and grounds for legal action, perhaps even criminal charges.  If a conference takes your money and organizes a horrible, worthless, CV-staining joke of an event, on the other hand, there is no regulatory body that you can complain to: scientific quality is considered to be a matter of judgement, and there is no way to easily distinguish between an honest-but-poor-quality conference and a intentionally predatory conference.

Yes, in these cases the event is organized but the quality is poor, since no one important in the field goes to that conference. An example from this website with scam conferences to be avoided.
From here:

"waset are a known predatory publisher, run by a former science
  teacher in Turkey (and his family). Readers have complained to this
  site about their fradulent behaviour, inclduing Kim Guan Saw, who
  wrote:
"I would also like to alert you that this particular organization has been using my name as their conference committee
  member. I am not involved at all with this organization and their
  conferences and have not consented for my name to be used. My
  university legal office has been informed and is looking into the
  matter. I hope you will inform your colleagues if they happen to
  associate me with these conferences."—2 April 2015
See the comments at the end of this post for other experiences; or this warning. Comments from the former include:

"In 2012 I
  organised an international conference ... our list of working group
  titles has just been copied and pasted for a WASET conference (15–16
  May 2013)"
"The conference is a complete scam. I know I have been on
  several hiring committees and if we see someone list a paper published
  at WASET on their CV we immediately stop evaluating their
  application."
"I went to a WASET conference and it was a complete
  joke. There were virtually no people there in my field, and the talks
  were completely unrelated to each other. Basically each person got up
  and spoke about their work to a completely unrelated audience. For
  example, the person before me talked about boat design, I talked about
  quantum mechanics, and the person after talked about Halal meat!"

Somehow I find imagining the quantum physicist talking to Halal-meat amateur audience incredibly funny. This could be the basis for a tragic comedy movie. Maybe Iñárritu should direct it. :P