Paper Uploading Strategy
"Wow~ There's even a place like this? So sin-gi-ha-dang! The AC is blasting~! Daddy, look here! They have free staplers and clips too!"
I wandered around the shop, my eyes sparkling brightly.
"Really? Is this A-yeon's first time? There weren't places like this back when I was Ijun?"
The place we were visiting right now was a 24-hour unmanned print cafe. We'd come here to print a whopping 125-page paper.
"First time ever! At least five years ago, when Shin Ijun was alive, there was nothing like this! Daddy, don't you remember? Back when we were in college, to submit reports, we'd go to the copy room uncle and beg him to print them for us."
"Oh, yeah~ That's right. What a nostalgic memory."
"Right? And you remember that time you brought coffee to the copy room and accidentally spilled it, soaking the keyboard? The copy room uncle was like, 'Student! Can't you see drinks are prohibited here?' and he was suuuper mad!"
"Ahem! A-yeon... you know way too much about me."
As I brought up his dark history, Dad cleared his throat awkwardly and covered his face with his hand.
"Ni-hi-hi. I remember everything from Daddy's grades to his class enrollment history!"
"...?" "...Huh?"
At our utterly ordinary conversation, the people around us started giving us strange looks.
From afar, it might look like normal father-daughter chit-chat, but up close, it was the bizarre tale of a daughter who'd gone through college life right alongside her dad.
Whoops!
"Shh-."
Noticing the weird vibe, Dad and I clamped our hands over our mouths and shrank down like clams.
'We talked so normally at home, I didn't think we'd run into trouble like this...!'
Still, they'd probably just feel a slight sense of dissonance and assume Dad was playing along with his daughter's pretend game.
They wouldn't reach the truth: that the daughter was actually the reincarnation of Dad's friend!
Eye contact—.
'Let's just print quietly and get out...'
We exchanged glances with that meaning and decided to stay silent.
'70 won per black-and-white page... 125 pages is 8,750 won.'
Spending this much at a print cafe? We're practically VIPs now. The manager should come out and treat me to some strawberry milk!
Dad skillfully pressed the buttons to pay, and printing began.
Whiiiir—.Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud—. With 125 pages to print, the printer started overheating, getting all toasty.
'Sorry, printer... hang in there just a bit longer...!'
Pat-pat. I stroked the side of the printer while cheering it on in my mind.
Midway through, we had to refill the A4 paper due to a jam, but finally, the printed paper was done. I carefully flipped through the steaming-hot 125 pages, fresh out like bread from the oven.
1st Author: A-YEON YU
2nd Author: SEOL-AE HAN
Satisfied—.
Everything was to my liking overall, but the first author's name prominently on the first page pleased me most.
"Woo-he-heng."
Who am I? IQ 160 genius, former iPhone owner, and first author on the Riemann Hypothesis proof paper.
I'm the first author~ I'm the first author~ All you normies who never wrote a paper, attention!
"Wanna see, Daddy?"
I offered the paper with good intentions, but Dad shook his head vigorously with a pale face, waving me off.
"Give it a look for me, A-yeon. I spent every break at work for a week hunting typos till my eyes bled—now even seeing letters makes me nauseous."
"Muu-. Daddy's so weak."
I pouted my lips.
"A-yeon's the amazing one."
"Heu-heung. I am pretty amazing!"
Back to smug in no time.
"A-yeon, now that the paper's done, how are you gonna publish it?"
Back home, as I hummed and checked the paper, Mom asked casually.
"Can't you just upload it to that paper site you mentioned before? No review process or anything."
Dad, the normie who'd never written a paper, asked.
arXiv. A site for uploading pre-peer-reviewed papers. A place to post raw drafts without even peer evaluation.
I shook my head at Dad-normie's question.
"Nuh-uh. You can't just upload anything. Even though arXiv allows un-reviewed papers, it's not open to everyone. For fields like math or physics, an existing registered researcher has to endorse you, like 'This person's okay to post.' That's the endorsement system."
"Endorsement?"
"You need a guarantor to upload. That guarantor's called an Endorser."
"What? Why only math and physics? My engineering buddies just upload freely."
"Math and physics take forever to verify logically... and there are too many half-baked papers that just look formatted. So they use endorsements from peers in the field as a filter: 'This isn't nonsense at least.' Without it, it'd be a troll playground. Engineering has endorsements too, but they're looser. Bigger researcher pool means easier to find endorsers, and trends move fast, so 'upload first, check later' vibe."
Though lately, with low-quality AI papers flooding by hundreds weekly, maybe engineering needs stricter endorsements too...
Mom tilted her head at my explanation.
"So A-yeon, you just need to find an endorser?"
Shake-shake—. I shook my head at Mom-normie's question too. Do-ri-do-ri double combo.
"Nuh-uh. That's not all. arXiv gets thousands of papers daily from scholars worldwide. Even with endorsement, unless you're lucky, views might not hit double digits before it gets buried."
Endorsers just skim to check if it's gibberish. They don't guarantee 'This is worth reading.'
So even if I claim to prove the Riemann Hypothesis, odds are no one cares.
Like posting in a gallery 'I solved Riemann lol'—no one believes fake geniuses 'cause there are too many.
Dad pondered, then asked.
"But a paper claiming to solve one of the seven riddles? Worth a look, right? Oh yeah! Last time, that Korean lab claimed room-temp superconductor at ambient pressure. Even unverified, the world paid attention."
"Ah... LK-99. Yeah, that got attention from an arXiv paper alone. But it was huge clickbait—room-temp superconductor—and the paper looked plausible at a glance, went viral online. More normies than scholars noticed; irregular case."
I'm sure my paper would pass if it got enough eyes. But attention like that? Still luck.
'I slaved two years over this paper—I won't leave its fate to chance!'
So, first step for surefire attention: connections. So-called backing.
"Backing?"
"Yeah. Need someone who'll endorse and recommend it publicly as worth reading. If a big-name prof reads it first and says it's good out loud, game changes. And also..."
"Also?"
"After arXiv, submit to proper journals with peer review. Connections matter there too."
Dad, clueless about academia, frowned.
"Isn't that unfair? Should judge by content alone."
"Ideally, yes... but reality ain't pretty."
If academia ran purely on merit, how nice. But anywhere people gather, it's similar.
People and papers both need networks for good eval.
No—in academia, communication with peers is crucial. Ignore it, and ruthless thieves steal your work.
Gregory Perelman, who proved the Poincaré conjecture—one of the seven riddles—nearly had his achievement snatched by a Chinese guy. 'Cause his network power sucked.
Mid-explanation, chills ran down my spine.
"Heeek!"
"A-yeon, what's wrong?"
"N-nothing... just had a scary thought..."
Imagining some shady Chinese prof stealing my blood-sweat Riemann proof like Perelman uncle? Horrifying. Him stealing my applause...? Oh my god! Better bite my tongue and die again!
'But biting tongue hurts like hell... no, anyway, Mom, Dad, and A-rin would be sad, so no dying...'
No no, what am I thinking, Yoo A-yeon! Don't go off-track!
Anyway, to prevent disaster, yeah, need backing—networks.
In scheming academia, I'm just a powerless 5-year-old girl. Fragile wild bunny kit. Need strong allies to survive.
Family meeting fell quiet. Mom stared into space, deep in thought.
"Never worried about this in grad school."
"Really?"
Dad replied.
"Professor Shin Ijun handled everything—contacted journal editors, fixed peer review issues, endorsed me. I just focused on research."
Mom added, looking at me.
"Took it for granted... but Professor made it all possible."
"Heu-heung. My past life's power was pretty strong!"
Puff~ I puffed my chest proudly.
Past-life me, with three top-tier papers, could strut anywhere in academia!
Of course, now? Just squishy little girl.
"So A-yeon, who're you asking for backing?"
"Person coming to mind right now... Professor Park Moo-yeol, maybe."
"Professor Park Moo-yeol? The one I know?"
"Yep!"
Professor Park Moo-yeol. The guy who'd willingly tried decoding my research notes' awful handwriting, then gave up and posted them online.