> But... You don't need academic credentials to submit to arXiv. Well... sure, that's true in the strictest possible sense. But in practice, arXiv does do a me

> But... You don't need academic credentials to submit to arXiv. Well... sure, that's true in the strictest possible sense. But in practice, arXiv does do a measure of gatekeeping that's heavily based around academic affiliation as a criterion. It's just that it's possible with some effort to work around that and submit as someone who is outside of formal academia. Or at least they say it is[1]. I've never tried the process myself and I've heard mixed stories from others who have, about how (easy|hard) it is to get endorsed in such a case. arXiv requires that users be endorsed before submitting their first paper to a category. <snip> arXiv may give some people automatic endorsements based on subject area, topic, previous submissions, and academic affiliation. In most cases, automatic endorsement is given to authors from known academic institutions and research facilities. arXiv submitters are therefore encouraged to associate an institutional email address, if they have one, with their arXiv account (see author registration help). This will expedite the endorsement process. <snip> If you need to be endorsed by someone, it is best for you to find an endorser who you know personally and is knowledgeable in the subject area of your paper. A good choice for graduate students would be your thesis advisor or another professor in your department/institution working in your field. So yeah, you can see that their whole setup is really heavily oriented towards members of formal academia. That said, they do explicitly acknowledge the need to occasionally reach out and solicit endorsements from people you don't know. So I assume this does happen. Alternatively this is the recommended way to proceed. Start by finding related articles in your field. Your preprint surely has cited works that are already posted in the arXiv, some of these works will be particularly relevant. Bring up these abstracts from the arXiv page. You can find somebody qualified to endorse by clicking on the link titled "Which of these authors are endorsers?" at the bottom of every abstract page. Using that information, you can then find the email address of the submitter on the abstract page just under the "Submission history" heading. But, again, I've heard mixed stories from people who have tried. I can't help but think there ought to be some mechanism that's a little more deterministic, but while keeping the overall spirit of arXiv in place, and keeping cranks out. But I'll admit I don't know exactly what form that would take off the top of my head. [1]: https://info.arxiv.org/help/endorsement.html https://info.arxiv.org/help/endorsement.html