How I published a fake paper, and why it is the fault of our education system • Hacker News Board

Re: How I published a fake paper, and why it is the fault of our education system

#81

Post by Yuioup » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 4:00 PM UTC

gphilip wrote: post #63

Yuioup wrote: post #53

I don't know how conferences work but isn't it the purpose of a conference to discuss a certain paper? Aren't sessions planned in which a paper is taken and dissected? I can very well imagine that papers like this would be quickly discovered and discredited. Sure, it may not happen before the conference starts but at some point either before or after everybody sits down to discuss the paper it should be glaringly obv…

> isn't it the purpose of a conference to discuss a certain paper? No. The purpose of a conference [1] is to have researchers present their results. The timing guidelines for a typical conference talk would look like: 15 minutes for the talk, 5 minutes for questions and comments, and 5 minutes for setting up the next talk. As you can imagine, this doesn't give much time for discussions; dissecting a paper is not part…

Thanks for clearing it up.

So basically there is a lack of pre-conference peer review.

Re: How I published a fake paper, and why it is the fault of our education system

#82

Post by mathattack » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 4:33 PM UTC

ngkabra wrote: post #56

mathattack wrote: post #54

Accepting almost half of undergrad papers seems like a very weak accomplishment.

They claimed that they accepted almost half. My guess is that they accepted 100% of the submissions they received. Because if there was any process for rejection, both my papers should have been rejected.

Almost half is effectively the same as 100%. You're buying a credential. It's like paying $350 for a weekend project management certification that has no test, and then complaining that you didn't learn anything.

Yes, technically they're lying. Yes, technically it should be a higher standard.

But if it's an obvious scam, it's silly to get so angry that you can't see or write straight. Sure it's worth sharing to the world that there are scam artists out there, but to get so worked up about it?

Re: How I published a fake paper, and why it is the fault of our education system

#83

Post by analog31 » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 4:42 PM UTC

Any time you have a metric driven reward system, you will find an entire industry built upon gaming the metric.

Re: How I published a fake paper, and why it is the fault of our education system

#84

Post by ngkabra » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 4:46 PM UTC

mathattack wrote: post #82

ngkabra wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They claimed that they accepted almost half. My guess is that they accepted 100% of the submissions they received. Because if there was any process for rejection, both my papers should have been rejected.

Almost half is effectively the same as 100%. You're buying a credential. It's like paying $350 for a weekend project management certification that has no test, and then complaining that you didn't learn anything. Yes, technically they're lying. Yes, technically it should be a higher standard. But if it's an obvious scam, it's silly to get so angry that you can't see or write straight. Sure it's worth sharing to the w…

Actually, I did not get worked up about the existence of such conferences. My main gripe is against the education system and the ridiculous requirement that makes it mandatory for all post-graduate students to have 2 published papers before they are granted their degree. Given the current state of research and higher education in India, the inevitable result of this requirement would be that students will be forced to pay to publish at such conferences.

Re: How I published a fake paper, and why it is the fault of our education system

#85

Post by kaitai » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 4:58 PM UTC

astrowizicist wrote: post #41

ngkabra wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Original author here. The two things you pointed out were exactly the two things that first caused me to get suspicious of this conference. However, as notthetup points out, there are lots of people in the Indian education system who don't know this. And the statement I made: Seems like an impressive conference, and getting a paper published in this conference should be a big achievement on any student’s resume, righ…

No, it's not. As an academic myself, we get spam emails advertising conferences just like this. It is not an achievement (of any sort), and what you're doing poorly represents both the academic system, and yourself.

What the OP has done certainly does present a poor representation of the academic system, as a corrupt shakedown system that's milking students for easy cash. Is this incorrect? No. As you said, we get spam emails for conferences like this -- but if students think it's a requirement to publish in order to graduate, why not answer that spam?

Corruption is a huge factor in academic publishing, which relatively well-off and well-connected academics in the UK and US may not realize. A lot of countries trying to increase the visibility and prestige of their academic programs have stupid publishing quotas set by bureaucrats that make less-connected or less-knowledgeable academics ripe targets for these scams. Even in Italy, an EU country with a long academic history in mathematics, rules put in place to combat nepotism favor publication rates that are at best simply orthogonal to measuring the quality of a mathematician's output. India has tons of new colleges and universities and many young academics trying to prove themselves, as well as a recent influx of state funding. The OP's post is an important expose of some of the shenanigans occurring in this new ecosystem.

Re: How I published a fake paper, and why it is the fault of our education system

#86

Post by ngkabra » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 4:59 PM UTC

lyndonh wrote: post #67

This isn't news. There are plenty of poor quality conferences and publications willing to take your money and publish without checking. Even the good quality conferences send out batches of papers to be reviewed and then the reviewers forward them to their students and colleagues without properly checking the feedback before passing them back to the section chairs. Just be thankful that you didn't have a good quality…

> The problem is more like not teaching the students how to find a reputable path to publication and not weighing the quality of the venue.

Actually, in my opinion, most of the students couldn't care less about publications. They just want their degree, but the system refuses to let them have it without the publication. Hence they're forced to publish at conferences that publish without checking.

The problem is indeed with the system that requires publications, and then accepts publications in dodgy conferences. What else can be expected of the students in this situation?

Re: How I published a fake paper, and why it is the fault of our education system

#87

Post by Daniel_Newby » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 5:11 PM UTC

h0cked wrote: post #71

ngkabra wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. I've updated the intro of the post to make this clearer. The PhD applications problem is a different issue. We're churning out a million engineers every year, and a good fraction of them are convinced that getting into a Masters/PhD program in the US is the gateway to riches and a better life. A few of these students are smart enough to know where to apply and how to apply, but most of them are clueless enoug…

Well, I do agree that students can have different quality, and we shouldn't discriminate Indian students. But the problem is that enough Indian students have made bad reputation for all Indian students here (U.S), and to avoid future loss (time and effort of the faculties), we just start to reject any Indian students (at least in my own circle).

Have you tried putting a test in your CV web page? For example, "I welcome inquiries from prospective students. I get a lot of advertising email, so include the phrase 'brown M&Ms' in the subject line so I will know you are a real person." That should weed out a lot of the email blast applicants.

Re: How I published a fake paper, and why it is the fault of our education system

#88

Post by ngkabra » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 5:21 PM UTC

Yuioup wrote: post #81

gphilip wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> isn't it the purpose of a conference to discuss a certain paper? No. The purpose of a conference [1] is to have researchers present their results. The timing guidelines for a typical conference talk would look like: 15 minutes for the talk, 5 minutes for questions and comments, and 5 minutes for setting up the next talk. As you can imagine, this doesn't give much time for discussions; dissecting a paper is not part…

Thanks for clearing it up. So basically there is a lack of pre-conference peer review.

Right. In fact, in my opinion, the most important thing a conference provides is the quality of the peer-review and the selection process. So a conference that claims peer-review, but does not provide it, is really taking your money and not providing value for it.

Re: How I published a fake paper, and why it is the fault of our education system

#89

Post by jrochkind1 » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 6:02 PM UTC

fat0wl wrote: post #78

jrochkind1 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't you submit to such a conference? Because you don't know if it's legit or not? I don't think the students care if it's legit or not. They care about getting papers published so they can graduate. And apparently their schools don't care if the conferences are legit or not either. So everyone is happy, we all win!

the only actual beneficiary i can think of is the people charging students to publish without even having to deal with the overhead of hiring someone to read the damn thing

I was being somewhat sarcastic, but I'd suggest that students and professors get some self-interested benefit from the system, or it wouldn't have come to exist.

The schools get to make it look like they are producing high-quality students with publications, without the professors actually having to do much work to make this true.

The students get to graduate, and get a publication credit, regardless of the quality of their work, so long as they can pay.

Re: How I published a fake paper, and why it is the fault of our education system

#90

Post by fat0wl » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 6:38 PM UTC

jrochkind1 wrote: post #89

fat0wl wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the only actual beneficiary i can think of is the people charging students to publish without even having to deal with the overhead of hiring someone to read the damn thing

I was being somewhat sarcastic, but I'd suggest that students and professors get some self-interested benefit from the system, or it wouldn't have come to exist. The schools get to make it look like they are producing high-quality students with publications, without the professors actually having to do much work to make this true. The students get to graduate, and get a publication credit, regardless of the quality o…

heh i know u were. i get what youre saying here but my issue with that is it just leads to like watered-down pseudo-journals of questionable reputation.

it almost feels like a better alternative would be for the students to run their own informal conferences & publish through an open publishing network (a lot of these are emerging in academia to subvert all the licensing BS from the journals)