Where to "Publish" Research Papers

There are several routes to "publish" a research paper.

Journal

These are peer-reviewed publishers that will feature a set of articles in each edition or issue of their journal. Be sure to make sure the journal you publish in is not a "scam" (some organizations have low quality journals that recruit hundreds of authors each month and charge hefty article processing fees) by checking the list of predatory journals by Beall and ensuring the journal is established/at least somewhat credible.

2. Preprint

There are online preprint servers such as Arxiv, Medrxiv, Biorxiv, Techrxiv, etc. that allow you to share your work before the peer review process. The point of this is to create "open science" (anyone can access article without paying) and for people to share high impact research so that others can refer to it before, let's say, a 1 year publication time.

3. Conferences

There are "symposiums" and "conferences" that invite groups of researchers around a focus area to present their work. Sometimes, these conferences involve poster presentations. Other times, however, abstracts and/or papers are published through the conference. These are generally less rigorous than journals, however, there are many exceptions. In fact, in AI/ML research, certain conferences can often be more prestigious than top journals!

4. You don't

This is completely okay for students! Oftentimes, your first research paper is not going to be good (my first was in 6th grade and it certainly wasn't) and shouldn't be put out online forever. Don't worry - start working on the next project :-)

I hope this quick breakdown is helpful to some research newbies here!

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