Hello! I want to publish a research paper in the field of privacy / anonymity, but I have been unsuccessful to find a starting point so I decided to write this post. If anybody can show me the way it would be great. Thank you!
What kind of starting advice do you need? Is it about finding a research topic, about formatting the paper, about finding an appropriate venue, about how the submission and peer review process works?
If you already have a topic in mind, I recommend that you post an outline of what you plan to write about (or what you have already written), and your main observations. Then someone can help show you what parts are missing and what your next steps are.
If you are interested in publishing a research paper in the field of privacy and anonymity, the best way to begin is by narrowing down your focus to a specific problem. The field is broad, covering areas such as privacy-preserving technologies, anonymity systems like Tor, privacy in machine learning, blockchain-based anonymity, and even the social or legal aspects of online privacy. A good starting point is to review recent literature from top conferences and journals to understand what has already been explored and where the gaps remain. Once you identify a gap, you can decide how you want to contribute — whether by proposing a new method, improving an existing system, conducting an empirical study, or writing a systematic survey of recent work. From there, draft your paper following the standard structure (introduction, related work, methodology, results, discussion, and conclusion) and aim for an appropriate venue such as the Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS) or IEEE Security & Privacy. Even if you are new, beginning with a survey paper is often a practical approach, as it helps you build expertise and can still be valuable to the research community.