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How do I prove my contribution is actually used?

Key answer

Contribution collapses without impact evidence: you need letters from companies and experts confirming your technology or method is actually used, publications describing it, citations. The community has seen RFEs demolish even rich cases precisely for lack of adoption proof. Build the chain: what existed before - what changed after.

Community answers

The answers below are translated from the original Russian - the language of the community chats.

  • Contribution - a flexible criterion: you can write about your development in your article, make a scientific publication describing the approach, and confirm through recommendation letters that the solution has influenced the market.

  • In our RFE, the contribution was completely demolished during a strong examination: Hirsch index, a thousand citations, patents, grants. It was all not enough - there were no actual implementations.

  • For the RFE on O-1, I added a letter from a specialist at a large tech company, a letter from a startup, a book describing my work, articles where my method is directly used, and an explanation of why a large number of citations counts as a contribution.

The answers are anonymized community experience from the public chats, not legal advice. Officers may decide similar cases differently.

Why "Original contribution" gets refused

Accepted in 4% of challenged petitions (9 of 209); not an approval rate.

Influence on the field as a whole is not shown. Adoption inside one company reads to the officer as a benefit to the employer, not a contribution to the field.

All refusal grounds and the sample

Sources

All questions on: Original contributionAll questions on: IT professionalsAll questions on: Scientists

Related on this site

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A reference page built from community experience, not legal advice. Requirements and practice change - verify on uscis.gov.

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