Doing/publishing research if you're not associated with a university?

LondonR

Hi,

I'm working for a sports NGB and I feel like a lot of the work I'm doing could be producing some cool research if I made a little bit of effort to formalise it. I'd like to get my foot on the publishing ladder and I see this as an opportunity. My colleague and I both have MSc qualifications and we're trying to figure out how you go about doing research, getting ethical approval etc. if you're not in a university. We're not looking for any funding or anything, just a pathways to publish research that we're pretty much doing already through our jobs.

Can anyone give me advice?

Tom Dunne

The organisation you are associated with/working for will have to give ethical approval. Chances are, from what you have said, they may not have a research policy, so at a guess, I would suggest detailing what the research entails and getting approval from whatever governing body they may have.

In terms of getting the research published, you do not have to be associated with a university. The only thing is that you would need to find out what journals are relevant to your area, read up on what is going on in your field (no pun intended) and what the publishing norms are in that area. I would suggest you have an academic in your field review not only the proposal, but the methodology and methods, just to be sure that it is of a suitable standard. Hit your contacts to see if you can find someone, or, off the top of my head, look at the likes of Athlone IT that have a strong sporting tradition - you most likely will get somebody interested there.

Agree with Tom. One alternative you may wish to explore, after obtaining your employer's permission to publish studies and results that have occurred in their organisation, is to seek a collaboration with one or more university lecturers or professors to co-author your scholarly manuscripts. Most universities are publish or perish for tenure or promotion, consequently it would be in their mutual interest to share publications with you (in their discipline). In this way you may increase the likelihood of publication by gaining their university affiliation for your article, while at the same time sharing their expertise to improve content. This has occurred at my past and present universities.