[f1notformula1]

Replying here because this matched my train of thought well.

I'm actually really curious to know if anyone has first-hand knowledge of a tinkerer (by this blog's definition) getting their work published.

As the GP said, understanding the rules is one thing, but demonstrating their understanding is another. And as you said, matching the style seems to be more important than the value of work that is demonstrated.

I see the value in matching terms, jargon, style etc just so the reviewers can standardize their thought processes. But as someone who's been a tinkerer for ages now it's hard to change styles for no immediate benefit.

Maybe some examples will inspire me to try :)

[ggm]

So my first attempt was 'this is what we do' -a descriptive paper, documenting a technique. The reviews that came back were basically a mixture of 'so what' and 'what does it show' and 'show something of significance' -I had tried to write it as the ur-paper, to establish a technique, and only described in general terms its applicability. They wanted a lot more demonstrable outcomes. I walked away. I found peer review very upsetting. It felt like nobody actually cared about what I was trying to say.

My second attempt was 'this is a specific thing it can do' combined with a much more rigorous academic 'this is the analytical technique' and 'this is a polemic about lack of statistical rigour in results, here is our data, you repeat it' -Which interestingly got panned as 'too much tutorial, too much argument, more results' -which of course this time, we addressed instead of walking away. Result? we didn't get in the first journal/conference, we made the second. I'm reasonably content, but this feels like 'learn the rules of the game' a lot more than 'say something of merit you find personally interesting'

Oh, and 'this technique is interesting' doesn't seem to cut it as a paper subject.

[throwaway287391]

Sorry if this comes across as harsh but I'm really not understanding your grievance.

> They wanted a lot more demonstrable outcomes. I walked away. I found peer review very upsetting. It felt like nobody actually cared about what I was trying to say.

> Oh, and 'this technique is interesting' doesn't seem to cut it as a paper subject.

Well, yeah? To invoke an HN cliche, "ideas are cheap". Why should anyone else care about your idea if you can't be bothered to show it actually does something interesting on some specific problem(s) or even motivate why it might be expected to do something interesting in light of what's already out there? Without any expectation of experimental validation, conferences would basically be giant circle-jerks filled with completely inconsequential "interesting ideas".

And it sounds like you took the feedback from your first round of peer review and revised your work in light of those critiques and got your resubmission accepted. That seems like a pretty good experience to me, knowing many academics with multiple experiences of resubmitting work 3+ times (with new results and revisions each iteration) before acceptance. I'm not saying that any peer review process is perfect by any means, but it's a very important filter and in this case it honestly sounds like the criticism you got when your paper rejected was pretty fair...

[scott_s]

Assuming you're talking about academic computer science papers, you're right that it is not "say something of merit you find personally interesting". It is more "convince the reader that something you find personally interesting has merit."