How do I go about publishing a paper without a university affiliation? I graduated with a B.S. degree and I have been working in industry for a few years as a software engineer. I am very interested in reinforcement learning, a sub-field of machine learning, and I am interested in performing research and publishing a paper on that topic.

The problem is, in my city there are no professors working in this field (or related fields) who could help me. I contacted other professors in different cities and they rejected my help request for a variety of reasons (such as I am not their student, they don't know me, they are busy, etc.).

Still, I want to perform research and publish a paper. I can't attend school as a full time student and my collaboration requests were not successful. Given all that, how can I publish by myself?


How to choose a research topic?
Should I read all the papers on this field?
How to decide which problem to work on or which is not obsolete? I don't want to work on something which no one is interested in.
Should I read and study all the prerequisite material, or fill in the gaps during research efforts?
Is it possible to publish a paper without a Professor?


Sure.  Nobody gives a rat's patootie about the academic ranks of paper authors (at least in my field).  I published sole-author papers as a graduate student.  I have colleagues who published as undergraduates, and others who published with no university (or research lab, or corporate) affiliation at all.


  How to choose a research topic?


Choose something you're good at, that you're passionate about, and that other people will care about.  If you're not good at it, you'll never get anywhere.  If you're not passionate about it, you won't put in enough effort to succeed.  If nobody cares, then, well, nobody cares.


  Should I read all the papers on this field?


No.  Reading all the papers in any field is simply not possible.  But you should read a lot.  A few hundred papers should get you started (ha ha only serious).


  How to decide which problem to work on or which is not obsolete? I don't want to work on something which no one is interested in.


Read lots of papers; talk to lots of people; go to seminars/conferences and listen to talks.  Or decide that the topics that you care about are so fascinating and your results are so compelling that you'll make other people interested (but be prepared for disappointment).  Or—my personal favorite—just make up something cool out of thin air.


  Should I read and study all the prerequisite material, or fill in the gaps during research efforts?


Yes.  Both.  (Except not all the prerequisite material; that's impossible.)