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The culture of rejection in computer science publications

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Re: The culture of rejection in computer science publications

#41

Post by logisticseh »

krinchan wrote: post #39

The academic system is completely broken for Computer Science, and I don't really see a way to fix it. The economic realities of the field just make it too risky to allow an exceptionally gifted individual to remain out in the open publishing research that could potentially destroy your business model. Justifying these low acceptance rates as somehow prestigious is really just creating even more perverse incentives t…

> The "cream" rising to the top is often less genius and more politically savvy with the right connections on the PC.

I'm generally nauseated when I interact with American CS academics. Every time I attend a conference, PC, or NSF panel, I am so glad I chose industry. It's like IRL twitter.

(Europe seems to be better for some reason.)

> If you're smart enough to rise, you'll get an offer from the private sector you simply cannot refuse. It doesn't matter if your passion is Academia, they can and will buy you out and own whatever you're working on.

IME it's less about "offer you can't refuse" on the industry side and more about "offer you can't take" on the academic side.

After 6 years of deferred income I simply could not take a job that paid $80K-$100K in an HCoL area or $65K-$80K in an LCoL area. I had loans to pay back, no 401K, and not enough savings for a down payment.

If you want good people to stay in CS academia, I think a few things need to change:

1. First, and most importantly, the faculty culture. I don't really know how to describe the problem, but "the old folks are checked out and the young folks are Twitter personalities" is probably close. What's the point of being in academia if you have to be surrounded by the intellectual equivalent of used car salesmen, especially when you can go to industry and do interesting work without the BS?

2. Double the income of PhD students so that they aren't financially ruined by choosing the academic path. This isn't a super unreasonable request -- they'd still be paid less than their peers in industry while doing what's effectively a full time job.

3. Pay faculty more. Not a lot more... just, like, "at least what my undergrad students make at their first job after graduating".

I think if you solve items 2 and 3, then item 1 will take care of itself.

Re: The culture of rejection in computer science publications

#42

Post by kmmlng »

I think it's not surprising that conferences have to perform some selection. You need the right amount of participants and talks. If a high rejection rate achieves the right amount, it is hard to argue against it.

But why are publications tied to conference attendance anyways? Sure, there also journals, but submitting to a journal tends to be an especially slow process. If you are in a fast-paced field, submitting to a journal is a dangerous game.

Why can we not just upload our papers to something like arxiv and then give people the option to vote on papers analogous to reddit submissions, so that promising stuff organically rises to the top. That way it would at least be based on the opinions of a sizable number of judges, not just three preselected peers.

Oh no, but what about peer review. What about it? Is it difficult to get past peer review at a top conference? Yes. Is it difficult to get past peer review in general? No. You can publish anything you want already, you will just have to jump through senseless hoops to do it. Why not skip the hoops and just upload it somewhere? We can still have journals and conferences that select high quality material from the uploaded papers and it will be an honour to be featured in one of those. You can still use features at conferences and journals as a bad metric to judge the quality of researchers, but the actual publishing will be decoupled from these institutions.

Re: The culture of rejection in computer science publications

#43

Post by lioeters »

LunaSea wrote: post #16
mizzao wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically already happening in many Chinese departments and conferences, just without the AI yet, but of equivalent quality. (I'm ethnic Chinese and this is not meant to be a racially charged comment)

Could you give a bit more context about this? I'm not familiar with the subject.

I think they're just joking that some of the material presented at Chinese academic conferences are close to non-sense, might as well be produced by DALL-E.

Re: The culture of rejection in computer science publications

#44

Post by snickerbockers »

>Serving on a PC is a yeoman’s service, and the community owes them a debt of gratitude. However, I believe that a toxic culture has emerged. This blog is a call for PCs to change their priorities.

does that acronym not stand for what i think it does?

Re: The culture of rejection in computer science publications

#45

Post by DangitBobby »

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #36
malfist wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we really need to turn publishing into reddit?

Why not? You’re currently posting to a website that consistently curates high quality content via voting.

It can work well in conjunction with good and empowered moderators.

Re: The culture of rejection in computer science publications

#46

Post by qzx_pierri »

karpierz wrote: post #24
qzx_pierri wrote: post #19

It doesn't matter what color you are. It doesn't matter where you're from. If you create something like what Dijkstra created back in 56' (undeniable innovation), then no door will remain shut. That's the beauty of Math, CompSci, or STEM as a whole. Not to be too blunt, but I'd rather we keep this soft, "everyone should be accepted" nonsense out of CompSci. The cream will rise to the top. Anyone complaining just need…

The cream generally rises, sure. But at what rate? And how long will they stay in the game without recognition before giving up? And do those numbers differ based on your color or where you're from?

> But at what rate? And how long will they stay in the game without recognition before giving up? And do those numbers differ based on your color or where you're from?

If you provide that data, we can continue the conversation. However, the truths in my original post stand firm. STEM is an objective field. Sure, there may be issues with equality of opportunity, but that's outside the scope of my argument.

Equality of outcome will always be attainable through personal effort, intelligence, and innovation - But as I said in my original post, you'll need to be really good.

Not everyone will be like Hal Abelson, Margaret Hamilton, Dennis Ritchie, or Richard Stallman. Those people are built different. Those are the people I'm referring to. It is literally impossible for them to have ever not been noticed due to their next level talent and relentlessness.

Re: The culture of rejection in computer science publications

#47

Post by secondcoming »

snickerbockers wrote: post #44

>Serving on a PC is a yeoman’s service, and the community owes them a debt of gratitude. However, I believe that a toxic culture has emerged. This blog is a call for PCs to change their priorities. does that acronym not stand for what i think it does?

Probably not, but I don't know what it actually does stand for. It's definitely not Personal Computer

Re: The culture of rejection in computer science publications

#50

Post by parasubvert »

qzx_pierri wrote: post #46
karpierz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cream generally rises, sure. But at what rate? And how long will they stay in the game without recognition before giving up? And do those numbers differ based on your color or where you're from?

> But at what rate? And how long will they stay in the game without recognition before giving up? And do those numbers differ based on your color or where you're from? If you provide that data, we can continue the conversation. However, the truths in my original post stand firm. STEM is an objective field. Sure, there may be issues with equality of opportunity, but that's outside the scope of my argument. Equality of…

I think this is naive and a classic example of a poor argument, as your statements are unfalsifiable. They’re expressions of faith in the system and in individuals outside of time and circumstance.

From my perspective, we have seen a lot of evidence that STEM is far from an objective field, and has culturally excluded a lot of talent. I see little evidence that this sort of talent magically, consistently, will fight through the cultural barriers.

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