Comment by heycosmo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by heycosmo | Hacker News Reader

I am an independent researcher currently funded by a part-time job and a very supportive spouse. I play with algorithms and have discovered a new fast Fourier transform and a neural network growth+training algorithm that doesn't use gradient descent. Ideally, some benefactor would pay me to publish my findings and code, for the good of public knowledge, but my attempts to find such funding have fallen flat. Kind of funny that researchers can get funding for future work (without guarantees) but I can't find funding for an interesting discovery that is already done (there are issues with verification of the work, but it seems like a short-term NDA would take care of that).

I have resorted to partnering with a law firm, who, for a large cut of any revenue, will do all the IP work and "marketing" (i.e. contacting legal departments at companies that might be interested in the algorithm). This is not ideal, but is so far the only path presented that may help me recoup wages lost by not working full-time for several years. I figure if I retain control of the IP (and make money through licensing), I can make sure scientists and researchers have free usage rights.

If the IP thing works, I can hopefully continue independent research. If it works well, I hope to self-fund more research without the IP shenanigans. Otherwise, it is back to full-time employment.

You know you can just publish on ArXiV, right?

Yes, of course. When I write "pay me to publish" I don't mean "cover the costs of publication", I mean "fund my work".

Wouldn't publishing results showing your methods offer benefit attract future funding?

Certainly. It also helps a resume. And if that is the only value to the work, then so be it. But there is a reason why R&D departments and universities publish AND protect generated IP. They want returns on investment. In my case, I invested in myself. Why shouldn't I play this game?

Universities don't do research. Individuals affiliated with the university do. The usual deal is that the individuals own the results. If they want to commercialize the results, then the university (and possibly the funders) get a share. But the vast majority of academics don't do that, because commercialization attempts mean certain bureaucracy and uncertain gains. Most just want to talk about their results freely. Many even talk about preliminary work and preliminary results openly to make it less likely that the eventual results will be patentable.

Out of curiosity, what level of $ amount are you talking about?

6-7 figures. IDK if this is realistic, but it seems reasonable to me considering the cost and risk involved in reproducing this work from scratch (salary/benefits/overhead for a research group or individual; no guarantee of success), and the impact of the work (admittedly I am biased to think it's important). I have seen 6- to 7-figure gov't grants for projects (in a similar space) that I guarantee are lower impact.

Usually funding agencies do not fund people with no track record of publishing. If you haven't published your results (or even any prior work) publicly before, why do you expect companies to fund you?

I have a history of publishing in computational physics. But that's beside the point. I have an exciting new result in digital signal processing and I would like to get retroactively funded for the work. If researchers can get funded for future work, why not award past work that comes with a guaranteed outcome?

Payments for making past discoveries public create terrible incentives. They encourage you to keep your discoveries secret until someone is willing to pay enough for them. If your discovery is not particularly valuable on its own, but someone else could make a breakthrough building on it, that breakthrough won't happen, because the other person does not know about your result.

Patents, while also terrible, are a better model. They at least require you to disclose the invention first, and then it's up to you if you can take advantage of your temporary monopoly. While practical impact may be lagging due to reduced commercial interested during the monopoly, the result is at least public, and other people can build on it.

Publishing on arXiv is now very difficult. You need someone to endorse you who has an account on arXiv and has three recent publications in the area of research you're trying to submit.

I just went through this and had prominent researchers willing to endorse me but unable to do so because of the now stringent requirements on arXiv.

FYI, I am an independent researcher.

Those rules for arXiv have existed for quite some time. It is one endorsement per domain. https://info.arxiv.org/help/endorsement.html

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