New author, independent research, scope of publishing

Question

I have done my masters in Computer Science, but did not receive much support in the masters program to get the final project published. I am presently working as a software developer in the industry while also trying to perform independent research on a few topics which I have in mind when out of the office.

I have recently completed some research ad derived new method for data clustering based on a heuristic which is novel idea as far as I can tell. I have shown it to work better with respect to only one metric with a few other algorithms which is of the closest type.

I have been allowed to use my employer's organization address and email for correspondence, but my organization has told that there should be a disclaimer that my organization has nothing to do with this research. If I do not use this address, I need to give my current address. I am not sure if I can give my university address at this point, as the entire research was done after I graduated. At the university I had access to journal subscriptions for which appropriate acknowledgments are given.

Previously I have not published any peer-reviewed work anywhere and I am the only author of this manuscript. I am not sure how shall I proceed. Submitting to journal such as Elsevier will be single blind, and as I am trying to publish as a new independent author, will my submission be subject to biases based on my lack of previous publications? Or shall I go for a conference with double blind review process? Also the 7 ~ 10 page mark for conference is difficult to maintain without removing vital components.

Some information about the work. The work was not complex, but is unique and it is shown to work on several well known data-sets. The main topic is data clustering.

How should I proceed with publication?

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Edit:

Adding information in reply to @Nahkk's comment.

I have no previous academic experience. I have shown this to one professor from a different research interest domain because none of the professors from the paper's domain were interested in this topic, surprisingly. I have also asked for suggestion from a person working in this field. One of them suggests to try for a journal and another suggests a conference first, then work and improve the algorithm do exhaustive tests and then go for a journal later.

Answer 1

I think there are many questions here;

Independent Publishing? It is possible to publish your work as an independent researcher. see this question "Does one need to be affiliated with a university to publish papers?". For further confirmation, I would suggest to directly contact the responsible personnel of the conference or journal.

Forums(Journal vs Conference)? Journals are usually assumed to be of high standard. However, this might not be true always.Some conferences have equal or higher standard than journals; they only accept high quality works. However, you should be able to find many conferences with a track record of accepting publications with varying qualities.

How to find the quality of a forum? If you want to find out the quality of a forum, check their previous publications and try judging their quality. You can also look for people who have published there, if they are expert in your field then it could be a high quality journal or conference.

What forum suits my work? You know the quality of your work therefore aiming for forums inline with the quality of your work will save you a lot of time. Otherwise, you can discuss with an expert (a professor or researcher in academia) who knows the forums and their qualities. If they can read your work that would make it easy to find the matching forum.

These are just my suggestions, rest you know what is best for you. Good luck!

Answer 2

You can try any of the options, and see what result occurs.

As a thought experiment, try submitting your paper to a journal of French historical literature. It will be rejected because (I am guessing) the paper has nothing to do with French historical literature, but it may also be rejected because it doesn't have French in it, or pay enough respect to history, or be written in an appropriate style used to criticize literature in an academic fashion.

More to your case, I would be surprised if, even after reading other papers and attempting to imitate their style, you were able to get your paper accepted at first try to a creditable journal without a large amount of outside coaching, because of issues even more subtle than I mention in the thought experiment above. The advice mentioned in the comments of working on the result to make it more robust and applicable and introducing it to many other people sounds like the right tack to me. In this fashion you will encounter the people who may be interested in your result, and have the experience to share with you on how to best present it, and help you raise its chances for being accepted by a journal. Since you don't have these experiences yet, you need to depend on the experiences of others or earn it on your own.

Of course, you can try submitting it to a journal first anyway, and see what feedback you get. That is a less gentle but still valid way of gaining experience in these matters.

(If you try the longer and more laborious route of introducing it to several people, I recommend leveraging the effort by researching these people and seeing if they can help you in other ways. With the right preparation, intent, and eye toward future goals, such as recommendation letters accompanying future grant proposals, the "extra" labor in taking this route may turn out to save a lot of work in the long run.)