I hope you read the many great responses to your question. I learnt quite a bit by reading them. The key to having your work published is to know the field wi

I hope you read the many great responses to your question. I learnt quite a bit by reading them. The key to having your work published is to know the field within which you are publishing very well, cite the other papers concisely and accurately and make a contribution to that body of work. This, in a nutshell, is the process of working to gain a PhD. As a general rule most journal papers evolve from conference papers. Most conferences in CS/SE welcome "industry papers" aka non-academic contributions. You could join the IEEE and/or ACM and subscribe to journals that match your area of expertise. Once you read widely you will identify who the key contributors in your field are. You could contact them with a synopsis of your proposed contribution and ask whether they might be interested or know of somebody who could be. In this way you could connect with people who will collaborate with you to increase the quality of your articles.