<p>This question is about placing a footnote acknowledgement in an academic paper that some idea (or the seed of the idea) was based on some stackexchange question that I asked. I ended up doing this for my thesis on a particular topic because I got some decent advice. Preferably, in future projects I would like to avoid doing this, because readers of the journal might wonder why I couldn't figure something like this out myself and it might look bad in 10+ years that I would need help on such a simple thing. Thus, I want to know the acceptable amount of help that I can get/questions I can ask without being required ethically to acknowledge StackExchange (users).</p>

<p>Consider <a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/15900/which-robust-correlation-methods-are-actually-used">this question</a>. If the author of this question then went to use <em>transformations</em> and <em>adjustment/deletion of outliers</em> in his study, and that's what was mentioned in the best answer to that question, should he acknowledge StackExchange/SE-users in his/her paper?</p>

<p>Or, consider the problem of implementing estimator $X$. It is an empirical paper, and I need to build $X$ into <code>R</code>. However, I do not understand one of the equations that constitute the implementation of $X$ so I ask CV what the equation means and how I'm supposed to implement it and I get the answer. Do I acknowledge this in the paper?</p>
