I mostly agree.
> In general people in the ecosystem of peer reviewed journals is not looking for more work. By design it is not inclusive of lay people.
I prefer to say that whay people that publish in peer review journals have a different definition of what is "interesting". Is this benchmark "interesting" for a peer review journal? Is this benchmark "interesting" for lay people? Only God knows which definition of "interesting" is the correct one.
> From a practical standpoint the fastest way to get reliable access to the peer reviewed ecosystem is probably a graduate degree (PhD preferred).
A PhD is not good enough (or necesary). It must be someone that is already publishing if peer review journals. It's important to choose a journal has a definition of "interesting" that include this benchmark, and know all the nasty internal details like how to discuss with the editors and reviewers, and dot all the i and cross all the t. The style is weird, usualy very short, too short, and there are a few expected parts, and ...
Sometimes the conferences have a less restrictive criteria to present works, and sometimes the work get published with light peer review, and the OP may connect with someone reseraching in the topic.
Also, it's important to know that there are predatory journals that will publish your work for money, but they publish all kind of crap, so nobody cares about them.
joke: For $1000 I'll pubhlish the work in my "peer review journal" (should I at leat make a webpage?), for $2000 the reviewer will be a real person instead of a sock puppet.
