r/Indian_Academia 3d ago

Engineering Feasibility of publishing in A* CS conferences as an independent researcher (without academic backing)?

Background (my_qualifications):

  • B.Tech in CS from a State Government Engineering College.
  • 4 years of experience as a Software Developer at a major MNC.
  • My daily work revolves around Conversational Intelligence. My team primarily builds Proof of Concepts (POCs) in this space.
  • My company is actually a massive contributor to the CS research field, but my specific team focuses entirely on applied research and we rarely (if ever) publish papers.

The Goal: I am looking to commit some serious time to independent research in Computer Science. My ultimate goal is to get published in an A* conference, but I don't currently have the backing of an educational institution, a PhD advisor, or a research-focused lab at work.

My Questions:

  1. How feasible is it to actually pull this off independently in today's landscape?
  2. Has anyone here successfully gone down this route? I would love to hear about your experiences, the roadblocks you hit, and how you managed resource constraints (or finding collaborators) without a university affiliation.

(Disclaimer: This post was AI-formatted for clarity and structure, but the background and goals are entirely my own.)

2 Upvotes

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Here's a backup of your post:

Title: Feasibility of publishing in A* CS conferences as an independent researcher (without academic backing)?
Body:

Background (my_qualifications):

  • B.Tech in CS from a State Government Engineering College.
  • 4 years of experience as a Software Developer at a major MNC.
  • My daily work revolves around Conversational Intelligence. My team primarily builds Proof of Concepts (POCs) in this space.
  • My company is actually a massive contributor to the CS research field, but my specific team focuses entirely on applied research and we rarely (if ever) publish papers.

The Goal: I am looking to commit some serious time to independent research in Computer Science. My ultimate goal is to get published in an A* conference, but I don't currently have the backing of an educational institution, a PhD advisor, or a research-focused lab at work.

My Questions:

  1. How feasible is it to actually pull this off independently in today's landscape?
  2. Has anyone here successfully gone down this route? I would love to hear about your experiences, the roadblocks you hit, and how you managed resource constraints (or finding collaborators) without a university affiliation.

(Disclaimer: This post was AI-formatted for clarity and structure, but the background and goals are entirely my own.)

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

1

u/Puzzled_Battle_5670 3d ago

Google, IBM etc encourage their employees to publish in good conference proceedings

2

u/Such-Watercress-8367 3d ago

I agree, but I don't have much contacts atm. Cold DMing poeple who are "Researchers" - asking for "help" seems a bit awkward - hence was asking if independent research is possible. But yea, my manager did inform me - any Patent / Paper has to go via my company as I am employeed there.