I asked a question, got no answer, then worked it out and published it in a paper (not as the main result). Do I need to/should I cite the paper?

Question

Bit of a weird question. A while ago I asked a question on Cross Validated and received no answers. I worked through the problem myself. This was part of some research I was doing which I then published in a paper: the "solution" is included in the paper. It's published in an astrophysics journal, not a statistics one, and the solution wasn't the main aim of the paper (though perhaps if other people in the field use the solution in their own work, which is very possible and in fact they probably should, it could turn out to be more useful than the main result).

I'm going to answer my question on CV now, but can I include a link/citation of the paper (or in fact, is this something I would actually need to do)?

It's not some profound result, but I thought it was interesting, and if this is a question that occurred to me it could certainly occur to someone else too.

Another thing: I was a bit surprised that I couldn't find the answer somewhere, as it seems like a problem that someone else should have come up against and solved. I would even assume that it's probably been done many times before, I probably just couldn't find whichever papers had the answer. Do I need to first try and do another search for papers that may have done something similar before or do I just put mine for now?

Answer 1

It's entirely in order to cite your own published work in answers on CV. That is very often helpful. I can't think of any good reason for suppressing a reference you know about -- beyond not giving authorities for utterly standard results, evidently not the case in this instance.

I don't think you're obliged to look for yet other papers. You've put some effort into an answer already. In any case one of the pluses here is that other people will know the literature of their own fields.

Perhaps your diffidence is based partly on an understanding of Wikipedia's principles about original research, but their rules and expectations are not ours in this respect.

I wouldn't over-interpret the lack of answers. Many of us keep an eye largely on what's new and it's easy -- given work and sleep and other commitments -- to miss a good question on which you have something to say.

I look forward to your posting.