<p>It will be impossible to assess the quality of your work without sharing it with anyone. Chances are that your discovery may not be so startling after all. If you were able to provide some hints regarding the problem you have solved, this community may be able to say whether or not it has been solved (or whether it is even interesting).</p>

<p>You could write a paper about your discovery and submit the paper to a journal. But there are standards of <em>writing</em> and other matters of <em>presentation</em> that need to be attained, a level which typical undergraduates do not have, irrespective of how startling the discovery is. </p>

<p>In any case, if you were to submit it to a journal, the journal would not know that you were an undergraduate. But you would first need to make the presentation of your discovery convincing, and typically that requires quite some training and interaction with a supervisor.</p>

<p>Related question: <a href="https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/q/2966/77">What would you advise someone who wants to do research as a hobby?</a></p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-04-13T21:18:30.540Z
2011-04-13T21:28:44.210Z
2017-04-13T12:32:28.743Z
Dave Clarke
<p>If solving this problem is indeed of great interest to many people, ask one of them ! If you're afraid of your work being scooped, time stamp it on the arxiv.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-04-13T21:31:53.643Z
2011-04-13T21:31:53.643Z
Suresh Venkat
<p>I wouldn't worry about some one stealing your work,
or sharing your credit.
If they're sharing your credit then it can be clearly indicated their role.</p>

<p>As to stealing your work:
<em>In the Old traditions of accadimia, claiming something as your intellectual property (copy right, patent etc) was considered "Ungentlemanly".</em>
<br/>The first example of a patented accademic result that comes to mind is RSA, and they were  aggressive when it came to defending it. (I would suggest reading into it's history).
Though I'm sure there are plenty of counter examples, JɛﬀE suggests one such: Newton v. Leibniz?</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Most Australian universities still uphold the tradition that an
  academic's work is performed for the greater public good, and that it
  is therefore necessary to donate back at least the copyright in the
  academic's scholarly work to the academic, so that the work may be
  freely disseminated." <a href="http://deakin.edu.au/buslaw/law/dlr/docs/vol9-iss2/vol9-2-18.pdf" rel="nofollow">Source</a></p>
</blockquote>

<p>Source refereed to Australian Universities, but it is referencing to older international academic traditions.</p>

<p>I suggest talking over your work with a professor your on good terms with.
If your work is novel or interesting then they'll be able to tell you, 
and will help you get on the way to having it published.
You'll most likely have to credit them as checking your result, but honestly a paper getting published without having credited anyone with checking their result,
quiet likely has mistakes. (If I were a Journal editor, I wouldn't waste the time of the people I employ checking your work, if no one has checked it already. (would ask for resubmission once someone has validated it))</p>

<p>If you really must be paranoid, then my suggestion (and this is without any experience as to it's effectiveness)
is to attach a footer/appendix your paper, making it a statutory declaration,
declaring that it is your own work, as prepared by you alone by this date.
And then sign and date it in front of a valid witness under your countries law.
(The witness for stat dec normally include University Professors, doctors, post office workers, and about a dozen others, most of whom wouldn't be able to understand you paper.)
The purpose of the witness is not to validate the truth of your declaration, its to validate the <strong>date</strong> you declare it.
This can be done even if your work is incomplete or wrong, to prove the date of you having a partial solution.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-06-20T16:03:12.453Z
*As to stealing your work: In the Old traditions of accadimia, claiming something as your intellectual property (copyright, patent etc) was considered "Ungentlemanly".*  Really? Remember the fight Newton picked with Leibniz?
Jeffε
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-10-01T10:18:00.150Z
@JeffE: Not to mention the fight between Cardano and Tartaglia over the solution to the cubic equation.
Peter Shor 
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-06-20T10:18:21.043Z
2014-09-30T14:50:51.703Z
2014-09-30T14:50:51.703Z
Frames Catherine White
<p>If there is a corresponding integer sequence post it to OEIS. You get credit for the discovery if it is indeed novel, and if not you still get thanked for posting something interesting.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-07-09T19:54:57.277Z
2013-07-09T19:54:57.277Z
Chad Brewbaker
<p>several other answers have mentioned submitting to <a href="http://arxiv.org/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">arxiv</a> which is indeed a sometimes prestigious and elite site occasionally containing some work/papers submitted by undergraduates. you appear to be affiliated with a university. fyi this is a semiofficial requirement of arxiv submissions, sometimes [apparently] judged by your ".edu" on your email address. </p>

<p>if you are not "university affiliated", arxiv can be harder to submit to. it requires the support of one of the [unlisted] moderators.</p>

<p>generally it seems [speaking from experience] their acceptance policy is rather opaque and occasionally verging on arbitrary for borderline cases. if you submit a paper and you're in, great, but if its not accepted based on the sometimes sketchy criteria [which seems not to be published or clearly articulated anywhere on the site], you wont necessarily have a clear path to fix that. in other words the structure is not at all set up to encourage/help/coax borderline cases to make it in [it is somewhat similar to stackexchange in this way, but also maybe scientific journal submissions].</p>

<p>so fyi, a relatively new alternative that was recently created specifically/partially in protest of arxiv's opaque and not-fully-open submission policies is <a href="http://vixra.org/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">vixra</a> which seems to be stable and attracting a healthy dose of submissions. more details on their policy and contrast to arxiv can be found on the page <a href="http://vixra.org/why" rel="nofollow noreferrer">"why vixra"</a>. quoting from that:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Vixra is also an experiment to see what kind of scientific work is being excluded by the arXiv. But most of all it is a serious and permanent e-print archive for scientific work. Unlike arXiv.org it is truly open to scientists from all walks of life. You can support this project by submitting your articles.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>as to another reasonable suggestion by JF in the other answer:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Alternatively, you could just post it as a question here, asking if the result was previously known, or if anybody could point you to a good survey paper on the problem. You'd have a time stamp from the post time, so you wouldn't have to worry about that. If you got an encouraging response here (i.e. that it was not currently known), then you could consider how to proceed from there. If on the other hand, it was already known, or there was a flaw, then it wouldn't really matter.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>again, personal experience, I tried this to some degree here with some of my own ideas &amp; had some degree of success, but it was highly variable and unpredictable. however, dont really recommend the above in <em>this</em> forum (TCS.se) for several reasons. if your question is upvoted beyond a certain threshold, it is likely to stay here forever unmolested. </p>

<p>however in a borderline case (which frankly is the likely case here for an undergraduate attempting to accomplish a genuine research advance), the question could easily be closed and deleted, and on stackexchange, these questions are totally vaporized without trace (<em>all</em> comments, <em>all</em> answers, etc, <em>everything</em> is completely wiped out as if the question had never appeared in the 1<sup>st</sup> place) see <a href="https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/help/deleted-answers">why and how are some posts are deleted</a>. surely not what you intended, so much for "a time stamp from the post time, so you dont have to worry about that"...</p>

<p>another less severe but still problematic case here [from the POV of the originator] are questions that end up getting heavily edited via the collaborative editing, and get pushed away/drift significantly from your original intentions/meaning. see <a href="https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/help/editing">why can people edit my posts, how does editing work</a>.</p>

<p>you may have better luck starting out in <a href="https://cs.stackexchange.com/">cs.stackexchange</a>. occasionally very advanced questions there get migrated to this forum.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-07-08T16:37:41.550Z
Huh? arXiv is neither "prestigious" nor "elite."  From what I understand, its filters are minimal, and there are plenty of incorrect or bogus papers on it.
Lev Reyzin
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-07-08T17:45:52.140Z
"sometimes prestigious/elite" is meant to refer to the _users_ some of whom are from the highest echelons of scientific research/accomplishment, eg in physics, along with various others who are "not". there are also plenty of bogus and incorrect papers that are routinely _rejected_ although there are no public statistics on that. presence of bogus/incorrect papers does not indicate what is being rejected. ie "false positives vs false negatives" issue. the uneveness suggests that [as the vixra site emphasizes] some "fair-quality" but borderline submissions must routinely be getting rejected.
vzn
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-07-08T18:35:10.873Z
The ArXiv moderators for computer science are listed [here](http://arxiv.org/corr/subjectclasses); I'm listed twice.  Lev is correct.  The ArXiv carries absolutely no prestige, _because_ the barrier for submission is _very_ low.  You need (1) a university affiliation or the [endorsement](http://arxiv.org/help/endorsement) of another ArXiv user, and (2) a well-formed paper with an abstract, references, and reasonable English that actually fits one of the subject categories.  The few papers that I've rejected from ArXiv have been either out of scope or literal nonsense.
Jeffε
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-07-08T18:39:40.873Z
Also, the rant about stackexchange culture/policy is out of place here.
Jeffε
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-07-08T20:40:26.303Z
obviously not a "rant", just a clarification of some of the more obscure aspects of the stackexchange model. as for arxiv, once again, _some_ people who submit and archive papers there are prestigious and elite by any reasonable measure. _agreed_ the barrier for submission at arxiv is low but again, the vixra page discusses how this still excludes borderline cases. JeffE can speak as to his own cases but he cannot speak for other moderators, and in fact thats an indication of how the moderation policy is _unstated_ (ie _no official moderation policy_) and therefore moderator-specific...
vzn
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-07-09T00:00:27.777Z
Jeff may be speaking for his own cases but the policy he describes (off-topic papers get reclassified; on-topic but obviously-wrong papers are allowed; papers only get rejected for copyright violations or failure to be well-formed) covers all of the cs categories in arXiv. My understanding is that the math and physics parts of arXiv have a slightly more selective process in which papers that are on-topic but incorrect or cranky may be banished to catch-all categories like math.GM and gen-ph, and that Vixra is aimed at the authors who get offended by even that much filtering.
David Eppstein
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-07-09T02:13:20.533Z
imho there is room/a place for both sites, this answer is not really meant as a ringing (non)endorsement of either site, its more for informational purposes & to contrast vixra (the newer upstart site) with arxiv (long established). on the other hand at least vixra has a posted, clearcut single-page statement of policy and acceptance that is easily referred to. informal/offhand comments on stackexchange by insiders are surely not a good place to learn about arxiv policy/mechanics/dynamics, but maybe that is better than nothing.
vzn
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-07-09T04:44:52.580Z
vzn, your claim that arXiv:cs has no posted statement of policy is simply incorrect. From their FAQ at http://www.acm.org/corr/:

"Are submissions refereed?

Submissions are not refereed. They will be checked only for relatedness to the topic area, but not quality or novelty. Papers passing this simple check will appear in the repository within 24 hours."
David Eppstein
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-07-09T15:03:13.423Z
ok, thats something. however there appears to be a discrepancy or omission between that arxiv policy page and Vixra's analysis of arxiv (?). Vixra points out that sponsorship is sometimes required at arxiv and not always straightforward to obtain. the arxiv page you cite says nothing about sponsorship. as for arxiv's policy there are other criticisms floating around the net, eg ["My Struggle with Ginsparg (arXiv.org) and the Road to Cyberia: 
A ScientiÞc-Gulag in Cyberspace"](http://www.archivefreedom.org/freedom/Cyberia.html) by carlos castro. [the policies have probably shifted over time.]
vzn
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-07-09T15:27:17.110Z
now see that [wikipedia, arxiv peer review](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArXiv#Peer_review) summarizes some of the same points.
vzn
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-07-09T18:33:06.973Z
You are taking seriously someone who titles his work "My Struggle"? In any case that is more about the physics part of arxiv, which has different policies.
David Eppstein
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-07-09T22:44:36.617Z
it is possible as you say the arXiv:cs, relatively newer, has somewhat different moderation policy than physics, the origins of the site, (looser?) but there appears not to be a clear indication/documentation of that. as for the seriousness of all this, no, not really taking all of this totally seriously. =)
vzn
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-07-09T23:50:10.330Z
Please take this off-topic extended discussion to chat.
Jeffε
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-07-08T15:42:52.787Z
2013-07-08T15:49:54.130Z
2017-04-13T12:48:30.830Z
vzn
<p>Worrying about someone taking credit for your work is very common among amateurs and people just starting out, but in my experience is far less common with more experienced researchers. I'm not really sure exactly what the reason for this is, but I have encountered this phenomenon numerous times. I would venture that it is perhaps because those with more experience in the field know how uncommon it is for one person to essentially steal another's results. Most people are relatively good, or at worst benign, and wouldn't dream of taking credit for work they haven't contributed to. Couple that with the fact that being caught plagiarizing someone else's work would be career suicide, and you can be pretty confident that no one you talk to is likely to write up your idea and pass it off as their own.</p>

<p>As Suresh says, you could always upload it to the arxiv, but I would be inclined not to do this, as if it turns out that the work is not novel or there is a major error, then you cannot actually delete the paper, but rather will have to post a retraction, and the original will still be there for all to see. Even now, I still ask colleagues to check any paper I consider relatively important before uploading a manuscript.</p>

<p>If I were you, I would be inclined to talk to one of my lecturers in the first instance, as they can probably give you a feel for whether your solution is novel (and correct), and if it meets both of these criteria, they should be able to give you an idea of how best to proceed. Alternatively, you could just post it as a question here, asking if the result was previously known, or if anybody could point you to a good survey paper on the problem. You'd have a time stamp from the post time, so you wouldn't have to worry about that. If you got an encouraging response here (i.e. that it was not currently known), then you could consider how to proceed from there. If on the other hand, it was already known, or there was a flaw, then it wouldn't really matter.</p>

<p>Technically, you could also simply write it up and submit it to a journal. As Dave says, no one involved in the process will actually know your level (the first time, it's kind of a kick when you get the correspondence addressed to you as either Dr. or Professor), unless one of the reviewers happens to know you personally. However, I would not suggest doing so. You need to search the literature to make sure your idea is actually novel, and as Dave mentions, the writing of papers is an art in and of itself. You would probably need to read a lot of journal articles to even get the style right.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-04-14T03:43:42.037Z
I think the reason amateurs are often more worried about ownership is because of (a) a misperception of the true novelty of an idea and (b) not enough experience generating new ideas to realize what is really valuable.
Suresh Venkat
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-04-14T11:21:11.713Z
@Suresh: I agree with your comment, but because of that, I cannot understand why you suggest to post the work on the arXiv in your answer.
Tsuyoshi Ito
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-04-14T12:44:39.613Z
@Suresh: Yes, I think that is part of it, but I think there is another side to the coin. Imagine you solved some famous open problem (say you settle P vs NP or something of similar magnitude), would you be hesitant about discussing it with colleagues for fear that you would lose credit? If it was me, I'd want to get an opinion on the correctness from as many colleagues as possible before making anything publicly available. An arxiv upload would not be my first step. My point is that even for a result which is both novel and important, I doubt experienced researchers worry so much about credit.
Joe Fitzsimons
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-04-14T14:47:38.080Z
To all: an arxiv upload might assuage the fears about trusting a manuscript to another researcher. You're right that if trust exists to begin with, then an arxiv posting is unnecessary. But trust can't be built by an "because I say so"
Suresh Venkat
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-04-14T14:53:17.177Z
@Suresh: I wasn't criticising your suggestion, and I agree that it might indeed lay to rest fears about trusting others. I was just trying to say that my fear of uploading nonsense would significantly out weigh my fear of having someone else steal my work, even if this was a discussion with someone I had no prior personal relationship with. It just isn't very common for people to pass off someone elses research as their own.
Joe Fitzsimons
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-04-14T15:08:55.737Z
Oh no problem. I agree completely. But we are not the template for the OP, who clearly has an unreasonable amount of fear about the process.
Suresh Venkat
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-04-14T16:05:53.400Z
@Suresh: I know. My comments were more aimed at conveying to the OP that there really isn't too much to worry about on that front.
Joe Fitzsimons
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-04-14T16:07:56.673Z
@Suresh: An alternate solution for the more paranoid would be to sign a hash of the paper and then upload that all over the place!
Joe Fitzsimons
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-04-14T16:30:37.117Z
@Joe now that's a good idea :)
Suresh Venkat
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-04-14T19:26:49.950Z
@Suresh: I set up a simple website for anyone who might actually want to do that: http://priorart.jfitzsimons.org/
Joe Fitzsimons
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-04-14T20:24:38.247Z
that is neat ! and quick !
Suresh Venkat
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-04-15T06:41:32.327Z
Interesting discussion this has given rise to. I am sure it's just 'newbie jitters', but it's a whole new world to me, and one I hope to stay around in. Thank you all for your input! @Joe and that site is bookmarked!
justkris
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-04-15T09:49:37.207Z
@Joe: Nitpicking: Why 74 random bits? → Why 74 random characters?
Tsuyoshi Ito
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-04-15T11:24:35.490Z
@Tsuyoshi: it's not at all necessary, just for the uber paranoid. 74 random ASCII characters take exactly 518 bits to represent. The max length as a SHA-2 hash is 512 bits. Thus you can be confident that even a brute force search against the hash will not reveal your idea, since any other idea will likely yield the same hash for some other random end string.
Joe Fitzsimons
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-04-15T12:32:43.543Z
@Joe: What I meant is that the sentence “Why 74 random bits?” on your page is probably a typo for “Why 74 random characters?”.  You explanation on the page explained why the random addition is preferable (thanks!).
Tsuyoshi Ito
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-04-15T12:48:04.967Z
I've encountered a fair number of instances of intellectual misappropriation.  In all but two of the cases, the misappropriator was not many years off retirement age, and such older researchers are much less careful about attribution than younger researchers.  In one of the other two cases, I think the misappropriator had not realised it was a significant idea.  That leaves one case where I think there was knowing malfeasance.
Charles Stewart
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-04-15T18:07:27.803Z
@Tsuyoshi: yes, it's a typo, sorry. I'll fix it when I get home.
Joe Fitzsimons
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-04-14T00:25:56.187Z
2011-06-24T01:53:50.697Z
2011-06-24T01:53:50.697Z
Joe Fitzsimons
<p>I have come to a rather startling discovery in regards to a question that has been posed to me a number of times through my now almost 1 year of CS studies.</p>

<p>Solving this problem is of great interest to many people, and if I have indeed done so... What do I do?</p>

<p>I see a few options, but none seem to ensure that my work gets recognized as my own: I could stash away the notes till the time comes for my masters thesis. This would force me to share both work and credit with my supervisor, though. I could attempt to publish it... But who would want to take work from a 9 months old computer scientist?</p>

<p>I am at a loss - in attempting to solve a difficult problem I have only given rise to an even more difficult one!</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-04-14T03:59:41.030Z
I'm confused.  Why would exposing the work to your MS advisor necessarily force you to share credit with them?  Students publish work without of their advisors all the time!
Jeffε
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-04-14T11:23:23.333Z
@JɛﬀE: My guess is that the asker is an undergraduate student and does not have an advisor yet.
Tsuyoshi Ito
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-04-15T13:38:33.073Z
And I realized that actually he writes he is an undergrad.
Tsuyoshi Ito
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-04-17T07:24:19.017Z
Sure, but he also writes: “I could stash away the notes till the time comes for my masters thesis.  *This would force me to share both work and credit with my supervisor*, though.”  I'm wondering why he thinks that.
Jeffε
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-04-22T19:52:16.827Z
@JɛﬀE: Ah now I see.  Thanks for the explanation.
Tsuyoshi Ito
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-06-21T23:27:59.027Z
@Kris So are you going to tell us what problem you've solved?
Tyson Williams
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-07-05T05:03:22.377Z
"It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit." --Harry S Truman.
Mahdi Cheraghchi
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-07-08T15:54:52.607Z
suggest migrate to cs.se or perhaps even academia.se!
vzn
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-07-11T14:13:39.180Z
You could write your solution in a document that you keep safe on your computer or USB key, then compute the sha1 hash and put a timestamp from a recognized entity on the hash. That way, you don't take the risk of being ridiculous in case of solution failure, and you protect yourself against plagia because you can prove you wrote the document before.
Vincent
<soft-question><research-practice>
"The Solution Problem" - How to get credit for your work as an undergrad?
justkris
# "The Solution Problem" - How to get credit for your work as an undergrad?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2011-04-13)

I have come to a rather startling discovery in regards to a question that has been posed to me a number of times through my now almost 1 year of CS studies.

Solving this problem is of great interest to many people, and if I have indeed done so... What do I do?

I see a few options, but none seem to ensure that my work gets recognized as my own: I could stash away the notes till the time comes for my masters thesis. This would force me to share both work and credit with my supervisor, though. I could attempt to publish it... But who would want to take work from a 9 months old computer scientist?

I am at a loss - in attempting to solve a difficult problem I have only given rise to an even more difficult one!

**Tags:** soft-question, research-practice
> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: I'm confused.  Why would exposing the work to your MS advisor necessarily force you to share credit with them?  Students publish work without of their advisors all the time!  
> **username_2**: @JɛﬀE: My guess is that the asker is an undergraduate student and does not have an advisor yet.  
> **username_2**: And I realized that actually he writes he is an undergrad.  
> **username_1**: Sure, but he also writes: “I could stash away the notes till the time comes for my masters thesis.  *This would force me to share both work and credit with my supervisor*, though.”  I'm wondering why he thinks that.  
> **username_2**: @JɛﬀE: Ah now I see.  Thanks for the explanation.  
> **username_3**: @Kris So are you going to tell us what problem you've solved?  
> **username_4**: "It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit." --Harry S Truman.  
> **username_5**: suggest migrate to cs.se or perhaps even academia.se!  
> **username_6**: You could write your solution in a document that you keep safe on your computer or USB key, then compute the sha1 hash and put a timestamp from a recognized entity on the hash. That way, you don't take the risk of being ridiculous in case of solution failure, and you protect yourself against plagia because you can prove you wrote the document before.  

---

## 6 answers

### Answer by username_14 on 2011-04-14. Score: 38 | Accepted answer

Worrying about someone taking credit for your work is very common among amateurs and people just starting out, but in my experience is far less common with more experienced researchers. I'm not really sure exactly what the reason for this is, but I have encountered this phenomenon numerous times. I would venture that it is perhaps because those with more experience in the field know how uncommon it is for one person to essentially steal another's results. Most people are relatively good, or at worst benign, and wouldn't dream of taking credit for work they haven't contributed to. Couple that with the fact that being caught plagiarizing someone else's work would be career suicide, and you can be pretty confident that no one you talk to is likely to write up your idea and pass it off as their own.

As Suresh says, you could always upload it to the arxiv, but I would be inclined not to do this, as if it turns out that the work is not novel or there is a major error, then you cannot actually delete the paper, but rather will have to post a retraction, and the original will still be there for all to see. Even now, I still ask colleagues to check any paper I consider relatively important before uploading a manuscript.

If I were you, I would be inclined to talk to one of my lecturers in the first instance, as they can probably give you a feel for whether your solution is novel (and correct), and if it meets both of these criteria, they should be able to give you an idea of how best to proceed. Alternatively, you could just post it as a question here, asking if the result was previously known, or if anybody could point you to a good survey paper on the problem. You'd have a time stamp from the post time, so you wouldn't have to worry about that. If you got an encouraging response here (i.e. that it was not currently known), then you could consider how to proceed from there. If on the other hand, it was already known, or there was a flaw, then it wouldn't really matter.

Technically, you could also simply write it up and submit it to a journal. As Dave says, no one involved in the process will actually know your level (the first time, it's kind of a kick when you get the correspondence addressed to you as either Dr. or Professor), unless one of the reviewers happens to know you personally. However, I would not suggest doing so. You need to search the literature to make sure your idea is actually novel, and as Dave mentions, the writing of papers is an art in and of itself. You would probably need to read a lot of journal articles to even get the style right.

> **Comments:**
> **username_8**: I think the reason amateurs are often more worried about ownership is because of (a) a misperception of the true novelty of an idea and (b) not enough experience generating new ideas to realize what is really valuable.  
> **username_2**: @Suresh: I agree with your comment, but because of that, I cannot understand why you suggest to post the work on the arXiv in your answer.  
> **username_14**: @Suresh: Yes, I think that is part of it, but I think there is another side to the coin. Imagine you solved some famous open problem (say you settle P vs NP or something of similar magnitude), would you be hesitant about discussing it with colleagues for fear that you would lose credit? If it was me, I'd want to get an opinion on the correctness from as many colleagues as possible before making anything publicly available. An arxiv upload would not be my first step. My point is that even for a result which is both novel and important, I doubt experienced researchers worry so much about credit.  
> **username_8**: To all: an arxiv upload might assuage the fears about trusting a manuscript to another researcher. You're right that if trust exists to begin with, then an arxiv posting is unnecessary. But trust can't be built by an "because I say so"  
> **username_14**: @Suresh: I wasn't criticising your suggestion, and I agree that it might indeed lay to rest fears about trusting others. I was just trying to say that my fear of uploading nonsense would significantly out weigh my fear of having someone else steal my work, even if this was a discussion with someone I had no prior personal relationship with. It just isn't very common for people to pass off someone elses research as their own.  
> **username_8**: Oh no problem. I agree completely. But we are not the template for the OP, who clearly has an unreasonable amount of fear about the process.  
> **username_14**: @Suresh: I know. My comments were more aimed at conveying to the OP that there really isn't too much to worry about on that front.  
> **username_14**: @Suresh: An alternate solution for the more paranoid would be to sign a hash of the paper and then upload that all over the place!  
> **username_8**: @Joe now that's a good idea :)  
> **username_14**: @Suresh: I set up a simple website for anyone who might actually want to do that: http://priorart.jfitzsimons.org/  
> **username_8**: that is neat ! and quick !  
> **username_0**: Interesting discussion this has given rise to. I am sure it's just 'newbie jitters', but it's a whole new world to me, and one I hope to stay around in. Thank you all for your input! @Joe and that site is bookmarked!  
> **username_2**: @Joe: Nitpicking: Why 74 random bits? → Why 74 random characters?  
> **username_14**: @Tsuyoshi: it's not at all necessary, just for the uber paranoid. 74 random ASCII characters take exactly 518 bits to represent. The max length as a SHA-2 hash is 512 bits. Thus you can be confident that even a brute force search against the hash will not reveal your idea, since any other idea will likely yield the same hash for some other random end string.  
> **username_2**: @Joe: What I meant is that the sentence “Why 74 random bits?” on your page is probably a typo for “Why 74 random characters?”.  You explanation on the page explained why the random addition is preferable (thanks!).  
> **username_15**: I've encountered a fair number of instances of intellectual misappropriation.  In all but two of the cases, the misappropriator was not many years off retirement age, and such older researchers are much less careful about attribution than younger researchers.  In one of the other two cases, I think the misappropriator had not realised it was a significant idea.  That leaves one case where I think there was knowing malfeasance.  
> **username_14**: @Tsuyoshi: yes, it's a typo, sorry. I'll fix it when I get home.  

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### Answer by username_7 on 2011-04-13. Score: 19

It will be impossible to assess the quality of your work without sharing it with anyone. Chances are that your discovery may not be so startling after all. If you were able to provide some hints regarding the problem you have solved, this community may be able to say whether or not it has been solved (or whether it is even interesting).

You could write a paper about your discovery and submit the paper to a journal. But there are standards of *writing* and other matters of *presentation* that need to be attained, a level which typical undergraduates do not have, irrespective of how startling the discovery is.

In any case, if you were to submit it to a journal, the journal would not know that you were an undergraduate. But you would first need to make the presentation of your discovery convincing, and typically that requires quite some training and interaction with a supervisor.

Related question: [What would you advise someone who wants to do research as a hobby?](https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/q/2966/77)


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### Answer by username_8 on 2011-04-13. Score: 11

If solving this problem is indeed of great interest to many people, ask one of them ! If you're afraid of your work being scooped, time stamp it on the arxiv.


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### Answer by username_9 on 2011-06-20. Score: 3

I wouldn't worry about some one stealing your work,
or sharing your credit.
If they're sharing your credit then it can be clearly indicated their role.

As to stealing your work:
*In the Old traditions of accadimia, claiming something as your intellectual property (copy right, patent etc) was considered "Ungentlemanly".*
  
The first example of a patented accademic result that comes to mind is RSA, and they were aggressive when it came to defending it. (I would suggest reading into it's history).
Though I'm sure there are plenty of counter examples, JɛﬀE suggests one such: Newton v. Leibniz?

> Most Australian universities still uphold the tradition that an
> academic's work is performed for the greater public good, and that it
> is therefore necessary to donate back at least the copyright in the
> academic's scholarly work to the academic, so that the work may be
> freely disseminated." [Source](http://deakin.edu.au/buslaw/law/dlr/docs/vol9-iss2/vol9-2-18.pdf)

Source refereed to Australian Universities, but it is referencing to older international academic traditions.

I suggest talking over your work with a professor your on good terms with.
If your work is novel or interesting then they'll be able to tell you,
and will help you get on the way to having it published.
You'll most likely have to credit them as checking your result, but honestly a paper getting published without having credited anyone with checking their result,
quiet likely has mistakes. (If I were a Journal editor, I wouldn't waste the time of the people I employ checking your work, if no one has checked it already. (would ask for resubmission once someone has validated it))

If you really must be paranoid, then my suggestion (and this is without any experience as to it's effectiveness)
is to attach a footer/appendix your paper, making it a statutory declaration,
declaring that it is your own work, as prepared by you alone by this date.
And then sign and date it in front of a valid witness under your countries law.
(The witness for stat dec normally include University Professors, doctors, post office workers, and about a dozen others, most of whom wouldn't be able to understand you paper.)
The purpose of the witness is not to validate the truth of your declaration, its to validate the **date** you declare it.
This can be done even if your work is incomplete or wrong, to prove the date of you having a partial solution.

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: *As to stealing your work: In the Old traditions of accadimia, claiming something as your intellectual property (copyright, patent etc) was considered "Ungentlemanly".*  Really? Remember the fight Newton picked with Leibniz?  
> **username_10**: @JeffE: Not to mention the fight between Cardano and Tartaglia over the solution to the cubic equation.  

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### Answer by username_11 on 2013-07-09. Score: 2

If there is a corresponding integer sequence post it to OEIS. You get credit for the discovery if it is indeed novel, and if not you still get thanked for posting something interesting.


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### Answer by username_5 on 2013-07-08. Score: -8

several other answers have mentioned submitting to [arxiv](http://arxiv.org/) which is indeed a sometimes prestigious and elite site occasionally containing some work/papers submitted by undergraduates. you appear to be affiliated with a university. fyi this is a semiofficial requirement of arxiv submissions, sometimes [apparently] judged by your ".edu" on your email address.

if you are not "university affiliated", arxiv can be harder to submit to. it requires the support of one of the [unlisted] moderators.

generally it seems [speaking from experience] their acceptance policy is rather opaque and occasionally verging on arbitrary for borderline cases. if you submit a paper and you're in, great, but if its not accepted based on the sometimes sketchy criteria [which seems not to be published or clearly articulated anywhere on the site], you wont necessarily have a clear path to fix that. in other words the structure is not at all set up to encourage/help/coax borderline cases to make it in [it is somewhat similar to stackexchange in this way, but also maybe scientific journal submissions].

so fyi, a relatively new alternative that was recently created specifically/partially in protest of arxiv's opaque and not-fully-open submission policies is [vixra](http://vixra.org/) which seems to be stable and attracting a healthy dose of submissions. more details on their policy and contrast to arxiv can be found on the page ["why vixra"](http://vixra.org/why). quoting from that:

> Vixra is also an experiment to see what kind of scientific work is being excluded by the arXiv. But most of all it is a serious and permanent e-print archive for scientific work. Unlike arXiv.org it is truly open to scientists from all walks of life. You can support this project by submitting your articles.

as to another reasonable suggestion by JF in the other answer:

> Alternatively, you could just post it as a question here, asking if the result was previously known, or if anybody could point you to a good survey paper on the problem. You'd have a time stamp from the post time, so you wouldn't have to worry about that. If you got an encouraging response here (i.e. that it was not currently known), then you could consider how to proceed from there. If on the other hand, it was already known, or there was a flaw, then it wouldn't really matter.

again, personal experience, I tried this to some degree here with some of my own ideas & had some degree of success, but it was highly variable and unpredictable. however, dont really recommend the above in *this* forum (TCS.se) for several reasons. if your question is upvoted beyond a certain threshold, it is likely to stay here forever unmolested.

however in a borderline case (which frankly is the likely case here for an undergraduate attempting to accomplish a genuine research advance), the question could easily be closed and deleted, and on stackexchange, these questions are totally vaporized without trace (*all* comments, *all* answers, etc, *everything* is completely wiped out as if the question had never appeared in the 1st place) see [why and how are some posts are deleted](https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/help/deleted-answers). surely not what you intended, so much for "a time stamp from the post time, so you dont have to worry about that"...

another less severe but still problematic case here [from the POV of the originator] are questions that end up getting heavily edited via the collaborative editing, and get pushed away/drift significantly from your original intentions/meaning. see [why can people edit my posts, how does editing work](https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/help/editing).

you may have better luck starting out in [cs.stackexchange](https://cs.stackexchange.com/). occasionally very advanced questions there get migrated to this forum.

> **Comments:**
> **username_12**: Huh? arXiv is neither "prestigious" nor "elite."  From what I understand, its filters are minimal, and there are plenty of incorrect or bogus papers on it.  
> **username_5**: "sometimes prestigious/elite" is meant to refer to the _users_ some of whom are from the highest echelons of scientific research/accomplishment, eg in physics, along with various others who are "not". there are also plenty of bogus and incorrect papers that are routinely _rejected_ although there are no public statistics on that. presence of bogus/incorrect papers does not indicate what is being rejected. ie "false positives vs false negatives" issue. the uneveness suggests that [as the vixra site emphasizes] some "fair-quality" but borderline submissions must routinely be getting rejected.  
> **username_1**: The ArXiv moderators for computer science are listed [here](http://arxiv.org/corr/subjectclasses); I'm listed twice.  Lev is correct.  The ArXiv carries absolutely no prestige, _because_ the barrier for submission is _very_ low.  You need (1) a university affiliation or the [endorsement](http://arxiv.org/help/endorsement) of another ArXiv user, and (2) a well-formed paper with an abstract, references, and reasonable English that actually fits one of the subject categories.  The few papers that I've rejected from ArXiv have been either out of scope or literal nonsense.  
> **username_1**: Also, the rant about stackexchange culture/policy is out of place here.  
> **username_5**: obviously not a "rant", just a clarification of some of the more obscure aspects of the stackexchange model. as for arxiv, once again, _some_ people who submit and archive papers there are prestigious and elite by any reasonable measure. _agreed_ the barrier for submission at arxiv is low but again, the vixra page discusses how this still excludes borderline cases. JeffE can speak as to his own cases but he cannot speak for other moderators, and in fact thats an indication of how the moderation policy is _unstated_ (ie _no official moderation policy_) and therefore moderator-specific...  
> **username_13**: Jeff may be speaking for his own cases but the policy he describes (off-topic papers get reclassified; on-topic but obviously-wrong papers are allowed; papers only get rejected for copyright violations or failure to be well-formed) covers all of the cs categories in arXiv. My understanding is that the math and physics parts of arXiv have a slightly more selective process in which papers that are on-topic but incorrect or cranky may be banished to catch-all categories like math.GM and gen-ph, and that Vixra is aimed at the authors who get offended by even that much filtering.  
> **username_5**: imho there is room/a place for both sites, this answer is not really meant as a ringing (non)endorsement of either site, its more for informational purposes & to contrast vixra (the newer upstart site) with arxiv (long established). on the other hand at least vixra has a posted, clearcut single-page statement of policy and acceptance that is easily referred to. informal/offhand comments on stackexchange by insiders are surely not a good place to learn about arxiv policy/mechanics/dynamics, but maybe that is better than nothing.  
> **username_13**: vzn, your claim that arXiv:cs has no posted statement of policy is simply incorrect. From their FAQ at http://www.acm.org/corr/:  "Are submissions refereed?  Submissions are not refereed. They will be checked only for relatedness to the topic area, but not quality or novelty. Papers passing this simple check will appear in the repository within 24 hours."  
> **username_5**: ok, thats something. however there appears to be a discrepancy or omission between that arxiv policy page and Vixra's analysis of arxiv (?). Vixra points out that sponsorship is sometimes required at arxiv and not always straightforward to obtain. the arxiv page you cite says nothing about sponsorship. as for arxiv's policy there are other criticisms floating around the net, eg ["My Struggle with Ginsparg (arXiv.org) and the Road to Cyberia:  A ScientiÞc-Gulag in Cyberspace"](http://www.archivefreedom.org/freedom/Cyberia.html) by carlos castro. [the policies have probably shifted over time.]  
> **username_5**: now see that [wikipedia, arxiv peer review](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArXiv#Peer_review) summarizes some of the same points.  
> **username_13**: You are taking seriously someone who titles his work "My Struggle"? In any case that is more about the physics part of arxiv, which has different policies.  
> **username_5**: it is possible as you say the arXiv:cs, relatively newer, has somewhat different moderation policy than physics, the origins of the site, (looser?) but there appears not to be a clear indication/documentation of that. as for the seriousness of all this, no, not really taking all of this totally seriously. =)  
> **username_1**: Please take this off-topic extended discussion to chat.  

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