Wanting to self-publish science whitepapers – somewhere

June 30, 2024 6:54 PM

I want to write some whitepapers and put them up somewhere, and then be able to point people to them for discussion, to use during my own more ad-hoc presentations, or to send a link when I meet someone etc. And hopefully where I can get some feedback and engagement, but where is that?

These are ideas that do not scale (or monetise well, beyond an individual consultant), and are mainly science (hydrology, plants, acoustics & geotechnical) and would be produced/solved on a case-by-case basis.

I am a one person company with one employee so I am never going to be able to claim to be a research organisation - and this removes platforms like ResearchGate (which has a discussion layer).

Ideally it is where broadly similar content is also published:
SSRN looks very attractive, some content in my interest areas, although it doesn't seem to support discussions.
ArXiv has very little content in my interest areas.
ICE Virtual Library, sems to have a lot of contect in my areas, but I've only just found it.

I am aware that these platforms exist as a gateway to the peoper being eventually formally published.

I have seen some individual blogs with the paper formatted to look exactly like a multi-page document, and with attached discussion but that is beyond my capabilities. But it would still only be a tiny walled garden and I need to be in a larger garden.

I don't particularly want to use Medium, Substack or anything like that as much of my content will be about real mining - and so many platforms are saturated with bitcoin rubbish. I could use my wordpress blog but I want to put up papers that look like papers, that download as .pdf (what I would expect to be uploading them as). To me blog posts don't look formal enough for this.

So ... is it to be SSRN, or something else? What do you use for self-publishing blue-sky ideas?

posted by unearthed to Writing & Language (4 answers total)

Have you also looked at bioRxiv?

For what it's worth, I think it's ok to put it in a place with a policy and accessibility that you like, even if there's not a lot directly adjacent to your work. Put in some time to get good keywords or tags for the repository/venue and you can still attract attention as well as encourage others with similar work to put it into that system.
posted by SaltySalticid at 7:13 PM on June 30

The general term for such cites is preprint repository. Wikipedia has a list that you could check to see if there are others that target your subject areas.
posted by kbuxton at 7:53 PM on June 30

Probably not the ideal approach for you, but in my industry most white papers are hosted on the website of specific companies. If they are looking to support comments, they'd add a blog post (also on their site) the says there's a new whitepaper. (I assume they'd also frequently announce and link to the post on LinkedIn and possibly other social media sites.)

There seem to be at least a few white papers on ArXiv, but bioRxiv specifically excludes white papers from the list of appropriate submissions.
posted by mark k at 8:59 PM on June 30 [2 favorites]

Just one point: On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog not a Research Institute. I went to grad school in Boston. It was only after I arrived that I discovered the Carnivore Genetics Research Center was my gaffer's basement and I would be expected to staple up the quarterly copies of the Carnivore Genetics Newsletter. I am now the DSE Director and Sole Employee of the Fáinne-chloch Institiúid Smaointeoireachta Éabhlóideach = The Ringstone Institute for Evolutionary Thinking.

You might investigate getting an Adjunct affiliation with a nearby Third Level College that would tick a box to allow you to publish in the mainstream literature. You could give an occasional talk about your findings.
posted by BobTheScientist at 2:04 AM on July 1 [1 favorite]