This article reminds me of the book "How to get a PhD" by E. Phillips and D. Pugh.
A PhD program is a training process on how to become and independent researcher.
* Just like the word "theory", the word "research" has different meanings in academic and non-academic settings. A research work in academia is an original contribution to a specific field that meets certain criteria of: writing and technical rigor, objectivity and completeness. It is the community of that field who judges your work on these criteria.
* What constitutes a research question is a hard problem (you need to compute your cost of opportunity: time, complexity, resources and impact) that only comes with experience. Choose badly and you might end up empty-handed after many years of work. At the beginning you rely on your advisor for guidance on this but with time you begin to smell the low hanging fruits and proceed with certain "independence".
Regarding the article, it is not clear whether the OP made a comprehensive review on the relevant and related literature. Without that, no research question can even begin to be formulated. No research is completely isolated from what has been already done and it is the job of the student to identify where it "fits". If it is really a completely novel subject then I would strongly discourage the OP from working on it if she were to do it in the context of a PhD program, for her own good and sanity.
Of course, this is not to say that her work has no value (it might have even more value that what she could have done in academia) but that is not the point. It does not mean either that academics are the only people who can do research. It means that you cannot obtain a PhD without the guidance of someone who has gone through the process of obtaining a PhD and has many years of independent research experience.
A PhD program is a training process on how to become and independent researcher. * Just like the word "theory", the word "research" has different meanings in academic and non-academic settings. A research work in academia is an original contribution to a specific field that meets certain criteria of: writing and technical rigor, objectivity and completeness. It is the community of that field who judges your work on these criteria. * What constitutes a research question is a hard problem (you need to compute your cost of opportunity: time, complexity, resources and impact) that only comes with experience. Choose badly and you might end up empty-handed after many years of work. At the beginning you rely on your advisor for guidance on this but with time you begin to smell the low hanging fruits and proceed with certain "independence".
Regarding the article, it is not clear whether the OP made a comprehensive review on the relevant and related literature. Without that, no research question can even begin to be formulated. No research is completely isolated from what has been already done and it is the job of the student to identify where it "fits". If it is really a completely novel subject then I would strongly discourage the OP from working on it if she were to do it in the context of a PhD program, for her own good and sanity.
Of course, this is not to say that her work has no value (it might have even more value that what she could have done in academia) but that is not the point. It does not mean either that academics are the only people who can do research. It means that you cannot obtain a PhD without the guidance of someone who has gone through the process of obtaining a PhD and has many years of independent research experience.