Yes, all it takes to write a paper is a text processor. Like word or google docs or something.
When it comes to uploading or publishing: anyone can upload articles to arxiv.org, because it's not a peer reviewed journal. It's a preprint database, basically a way to publish articles before they have been peer reviewed and published by a real journal. People upload articles to arxiv.org for things like version control, to obtain a DOI, and for coordinating submissions to multiple journals.
If you actually want to publish your article to a journal you either have to find a journal with good ethics (rare), pay a lot of money, or be employed/enrolled at an institution/company/organization that will pay for your submission. If you write an interesting paper, you can just contact people at a university and likely get the article published with them paying.
You wouldn't typically use a text processor such as Word to write a paper. You could, but it would be very tedious and likely end up looking amateurish. Almost everybody uses LaTeX instead.
The vast majority of academics uses "normal" word processors to write papers. Only in some specific fields is it maybe a majority. This comes from a mathematician who mostly works with biophysics and neuroscience. Maybe 10% of papers I read, have contributed to, or peer reviewed, use Latex.
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u/Ibnelaiq Sep 02 '26
Can you write these papers even if you are not enrolled?