As the era of open-access publication and even open-notebooks continues to develop I would like to know how researchers and journals will respond to the “lay” person writing articles. Does this already happen in any appreciable quantity? Can I put my home as my institution?
We already know you don’t have to be a scientist to write science fiction, “amateur” astronomers already find/identify and are credited with stars or comets, and even a person at the patent office can figure stuff out. So would you care about the background of the author or does it not mater as long as the article is properly annotated and well written (unlike my blog posts)?
Well, it happens. I occasionally see a paper with a private address and a gmail address for the author (that’s in theoretical physics). It doesn’t necessarily meant it’s a lay person. My husband eg, he has a PhD in physics, but is now working as an editor for a scientific publisher. But, you know how it goes, he is still in contact with his earlier colleagues and thinking about writing a paper. Now if he does so, he probably won’t put his work address on the paper, after all his employer has nothing to do with his after-work interests. We’ve been wondering though if we shouldn’t better put the address of his former institute, simply because I wouldn’t want our home address to be public.
I’ve seen it occasionally, too. Sometimes contributions also come from former professional researchers who are retired. When I have seen that and there are two authors, they tend to put the address for correspondence as that of the one with a more professional-looking affiliation. Perhaps a P.O. Box might come across better (and more private) than a 377 Cherry Street, though I have definitely seen a personal address at least once in recent memory. But I don’t think that it would matter much, if the paper itself is worth reading.
Some reviewer may be influenced by the lack of an institutional address but the work should of course stand or fall on its own merits.
Although this is not quite the same thing, I was always very impressed that Linus Pauling’s last professional address was “The Linus Pauling Institute” (which is still going). That’s when you know you’ve really made it big!
I’m thinking of changing the name of my house…
More specifically now I wonder when the first peer-reviewed publication will come from a DIYbio group. I agree that there are many articles available by retired or emeritus faculty. What I want are the “rogue” publications.