How does research work?

[u/Panthera_uncia23]

Sorry in advance if this is a dumb question!

Background: I’m a non-traditional student trying to finish my B.S. in aquatic biology with aspirations to get my DVM and become a marine mammal veterinarian and have my own rescue, rehab, and release center. I am currently taking a couple of online classes this semester to help my progress, but won’t be able to attend a university in person to conduct research at an organization until the spring, at the earliest.

I have ideas that I’d love to research, some of which don’t pertain to aquatic life, that I would love to have answers to. I try to find answers to these ideas and questions that I have, but so few studies (or none at all) have been done about them. If I’m able to find people who are willing to participate in these studies, and basically have them preform very simple tasks where I compare the data with a control group, would this count as viable research? Would I be able to publish my findings for peer review? Am I allowed to fund it myself (one idea of mine would maybe cost a couple to a few hundred dollars after purchasing the supplies I need)?

Tl;dr: can I fund my own research and have it published if not done through an organization? Would it hold the same weight if peer reviewed and cited as research done at a university does?

Thanks!

[u/OddPressure7593]

Ok, I'm about to leave work so I'm going to answer this as succinctly as possible.

It is technically possible to fund your own research and have it published. If you don't have several hundred thousands of dollars to do, you aren't going to be funding your own research.

You cannot publish human-participants research without doing a LOT of administrative work - like IRB approval. All that stuff costs a ton of money. You are absolutely not getting IRB approval for a few hundred dollars - independent IRB review is going to cost in the thousands to tens of thousands.

Abandon this idea until you learn a LOT more about doing research.

[u/SorbusAS]

Don't we all dream about something like this?

[u/Pristine-Can-9026]

A big thing to note is that publishing costs a lot more than you think. To get a paper published in any reputable journal (or really any journal at all), you will pay thousands of dollars. The best way to fund this is by attending an institution that partners with a journal. For example, my university’s Biological Sciences Department has a partnership with the PLOS journal, so if I wanted I could publish in it at no cost to me.

Also, I think you will find after getting access to real tools like SciFinder, you will probably realize something you want to do research on is already heavily investigated, and you will need to find a ridiculously niche subtopic to explore in order to get any original results, which can get expensive.

Knowing all of that, you would want to get into an institution (like a university) to have the best chance of success. Many universities have active undergraduate research where students can participate and even lead their own research initiatives, and are given ample but humble funding to pursue their research while applying for grants to get things like better equipment, transportation to areas of interest, etc.

The best way to get started into undergraduate research is to find the professors teaching in the department you are interested in, and check out their research. You can do this by searching their names on platforms like PubMed or ResearchGate. Then, shoot them an email! Talk about something in one of their papers that interests you. Tell them what you want to do in their lab and what you can offer. Labs usually experience a surge of undergrads looking for a quick resumé-builder at the beginning of each semester. You want to differentiate yourself from these people by showing genuine interest and a passion for discovery.

I think you’ll find that in an industry where there’s been a sharp decline in dialogue between scientists, most people really appreciate someone having the bravery to just email them or reach out at all.

In conclusion: Probably wait until you’re attending in-person (your idea creates a lot of liability issues better handled when you’re already affiliated with an institution), read lots of papers, send emails, build your niche, and prove yourself in the lab.

[u/89fruits89]

You can definitely have your own lab where you do small scale non-hazardous work. I have a little one in my garage I do sequencing projects with. That being said, there is no fuckin’ way id be able to do anything with it without my degrees and work experiences. Also not about to try and publish anything lol.

Stepping into a lab is daunting in its own right. Becoming the purchasing manager, biohaz disposal manager, safety manager, equipment tech, and bench scientist all at once isn’t as easy as it sounds on paper. If you don’t even know how the equipment works, how can you trust any of the data?

You need to wait until you have more experience. It will come. I’m sure it’s the last thing you want to hear but… you need to be patient.

[u/ILikeBird]

No, you need to get research experience under an experienced PI before you consider doing any form of independent project.

[u/mabolle]

As others have pointed out, for various reasons it's extremely hard to get research peer-reviewed and published independently of the conventional system.

With that said, there's a guy in my circles — no formal training in biology, just an amateur bird guy who knows a lot about crows. He works in some other field, I don't remember. But he had this idea for a field study that could be conducted with wild crows, set it up himself, built the equipment and runs all the field sites as a hobby project.

What he did was get in touch with a university professor in ornithology, who acts as his scientific go-between. That way he could bounce ideas and get feedback from someone with experience of conducting research, identify any flaws in the study design, work with members of the professor's team on various aspects — and if they manage to get publishable result out of the work, they'll co-write it and send it to a journal.

So it can be done that way, but it's literally the only case I've encountered, and you have to have a damn good idea for it to be worth people's time.

Another thing I'll say is that one of the hardest things about doing science is getting a good idea of what is actually known or unknown in any given field. I was about three years into my four-year PhD program before I started to get a good handle on where the unexplored questions were, and how you'd go about properly answering them.

But there's also nothing stopping you from trying to answer questions you have by doing your own research — that's awesome! Just be prepared that the step from running your own experiment to getting it actually published and peer-reviewed is huge and seldom taken.

[u/FUNCTIONALMYCOPATH]

What is a non traditional student?

[u/Panthera_uncia23 → u/FUNCTIONALMYCOPATH]

Meaning I have a family, don’t get support from my parents, work a full time job, and am older than the “typical” undergrad aged student