In theory it should be possible, in practice it is rare. At most top conferences industry track papers are somewhat more likely to be accepted from non-academi

In theory it should be possible, in practice it is rare. At most top conferences industry track papers are somewhat more likely to be accepted from non-academic contributors. The following is based on my decades of industry experience as well as recently completing a PhD in software engineering. PhD candidates are effectively doing an apprenticeship to become proficient academic researchers. It takes smart, determined individuals anything from 3 to 10 years to graduate with a PhD. Over half who start drop out. Most candidates have one or more supervisors who guide, mentor and co-author papers. Academic papers need to reference prior work. In most areas the credible references are mostly behind pay-walled repositories for which you either have to pay thousands to access or use your academic institutions access to them. The raises two issues: Firstly, if you are not up to speed with the state-of-the-art, then you can't tell whether your research is yielding paper worthy results. Secondly, you lack suitable referencing of prior-work. All academically credible journals and conferences have a peer review process. Even experienced researchers get more rejections than acceptances. The big secret is that you need to cite "the right papers" in your background / prior-work section, in order for reviewers to take your submission seriously. It has been said that some reviewers flick to the biblio and if their papers are cited then they are more in favour of an accept decision. Since you are asking your question on HN, perhaps you already are a member of IEEE or ACM. As a minimum you could peruse some of their publications or even attend a conference in an area that is of interest to you. That will give you a far clearer picture of the standard and areas of current research. Of course, such conferences are an excellent networking opportunity which will allow you to ask your question of people who are currently active in your field of interest.