Hey there,
I am an International student (India) , currently in 11th grade(junior year) of my school.Recently , Our school took the initiative to establish a modern Robotics and Science lab in the building.I had been interested in getting into research for a past year or so , but I didn’t really have the knowledge , lab skills or equipment , which I now do.Taking the benefit , I have independently done some research on some physics-Chemistry interrelated topics(absorption spectra of various substances, cherenkov radiation etc.).Although it is nothing ground breaking or world-changing , I had put quite a bit of my time into it.Is there any way for me to get them certified/recognized/publish?I have read some websites , but they say that the research needs to be on current topics,needs new findings/discoveries.So , will my paper even be considered,if its not exactly helping to solve the current problem?
Bump?
Published research is rarely “ground breaking” or “world changing,” but it does, at least incrementally, advance the state of the art. Even if your research does fit that description, it is highly unlikely that it would be accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, unless you have a mentor with some evident stature, such as a university professor.
For publication in a respected journal, you do need to be coming up with new information. Have you read any of the journals in your fields of interest? How many of those articles were you readily able to understand? Is any of your work in that range? If not, it simply isn’t publishable in that category of journal.
Is there a university near you thathas a research group working on topics that interest you? Go have a chat with the head of that group, and find out if anyone there would take an interest in you. Perhaps you are ready to participate in more advanced work there.
If you dig around a bit more, you might hit on a journal that is specifically devoted to student scientists or to citizen science. There you might be able to report on your work. This isn’t necessarily ground-breaking stuff, but more of a venue for students to practice drafting research articles - sort of a paper version of a science fair presentation.
@whatisyourquest thanks for the input… Appreciate it
@happymomof1 Thanks for the reply.I’ve read some individual research papers by grads and PhDs , some of them were very basic and clear(the reason for making me think the research doesn’t need to be 100% novel and such) , some were way too advanced for me to even understand a sentence, and most were somewhere in between… I’ll definitely try to get in touch with univs around me , Though here in India most of the times education=rote learning and cramming up stuff in your mind and no one really cares about practicality of learning.(can do a whole rant on this)
You need to contact specific research teams within the universities - not the universities in general. If the university has a list of faculty members, do a little Google, and find those professor’s own web pages or lists of oublications. scholar.google.com is your friend here.
The other thing about is using high school level science contests to get recognition for your work. It may be a more appropriate outlet than a scientific journal. I do not know what is available in India, but there are definitely other ones besides ISEF-related ones in the states.