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Getting a paper accepted

maxwellforbes.com

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Re: Getting a paper accepted

#121

Post by ke88y »

ModernMech wrote: post #113
ke88y wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all: we’re pretty far off topic now and I don’t think this particular point is at all relevant to the main thesis of this thread. That said, even if we accept the general premise of your post, which I don’t, you’re still drawing the wrong conclusion. To wit: citing something does not imply that the cited thing is “foundational” to the work from which it is cited. One can cite work for any number of reasons.…

> citing something does not imply that the cited thing is “foundational” to the work from which it is cited. I neither wrote nor implied that. Sure there are many reasons to cite papers, but in saying "citing the research as foundational", meaning that their foundation is the reason for their citation. You were so eager to write all those words you didn't stop to actually read mine. Therefore, I think that's all I ha…

Yes. My original post is about what people choose to cite, some small subset of which is ever cited as “foundational”. Why would you make this distinction then back track on it? Right: because it’s irrelevant point.

Pedantic and profoundly wrong but always in some ridiculous lens always wiggling enough to never let truth get on the way of Being Smart And Right. Peak .edu and the reason it’s so damn hard to justify science spending to the actually hard working tax payers patronizing this stuff.

Re: Getting a paper accepted

#122

Post by ke88y »

bonoboTP wrote: post #114
ke88y wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, you’re building a thing you can sell to others for a reasonable price, because it actually works. This won’t get you a Stanford professorship. That’s something you can cry about from your mountain chalet or beachfront vacation home.

Sure, but many people who go for a PhD aren't the entrepreneur type. And in a corporation there are also "games", where building things that actually work may not be your best strategy. You need to work on visible, flashy, new things that looks good in a performance review and can get you a promotion. You have to deliver legible value.

Yes, that’s all correct. There’s always a meta-game.

Part of the meta-game of academia is that feedback timelines are long enough that you can play the “wrong” meta-game and still come out ahead. If you don’t want a professorship — or are willing to settle for a super cushy “professor of practice” as an early retirement non-profit thing to keep ya out of the house — then a PhD can be a good place to do hard tech pre-seed work.

Re: Getting a paper accepted

#123

Post by ke88y »

jltsiren wrote: post #115
ke88y wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, you’re totally correct! It’s important to point out that US professors are sometimes able to go without public patronage, but that this is very much an anomaly. The US private sector funds A LOT of R&D relative to other countries, and the US attracts an outsized amount of FDI targeted at R&D. As a result, in the USA there are occasionally rare instances where professors can mostly fund labs without government…

I think it's actually the opposite. American universities receive less research funding from external private sources than universities in the European countries I'm familiar with. The difference is probably due to the culture of charitable donations. Europe has a tradition of private foundations funding arts and sciences, while Americans make donations to universities. In 2021, academic R&D spending in the US was ~$…

You’re making a comparison then quoting only one side of that comparison, which is deeply confusing.

I’m pretty damn sure you’re wrong about Europe on a relative basis. The percentages in most of Europe are MUCH higher. Eg Germany is closer to 80% than 50% gov funded.

(Earmarked gifts to an endowment with some level of direction/advice vs a foundation is a real cultural and tax policy difference, but the end effect is what matters and that’s not as simple as you’re suggesting.)

And not to be too flippant, but the question about the world outside of America applies also to the world outside the West ;)

Re: Getting a paper accepted

#124

Post by jltsiren »

ke88y wrote: post #123
jltsiren wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's actually the opposite. American universities receive less research funding from external private sources than universities in the European countries I'm familiar with. The difference is probably due to the culture of charitable donations. Europe has a tradition of private foundations funding arts and sciences, while Americans make donations to universities. In 2021, academic R&D spending in the US was ~$…

You’re making a comparison then quoting only one side of that comparison, which is deeply confusing. I’m pretty damn sure you’re wrong about Europe on a relative basis. The percentages in most of Europe are MUCH higher. Eg Germany is closer to 80% than 50% gov funded. (Earmarked gifts to an endowment with some level of direction/advice vs a foundation is a real cultural and tax policy difference, but the end effect i…

I didn't provide numbers for the other side, as the numbers you can easily find are almost certainly not comparable. International comparisons require a lot of work if you want to do them properly, as there are too many differences in institutions and accounting principles.

We could take the University of Helsinki (Finland) as a singular example. 56% of the external research funding comes from the national government and 14% from the EU. 16% is from private foundations, 9% from businesses, and the remaining 5% from other sources. The 16% figure from foundations is lower than it would be under the American model, as many private grants (particularly fellowships for PhD students) are awarded directly to the individual and therefore not included in the figures for the university. Overall, 70% of the external research funding is from the government, 25% from private institutions, and 5% from other sources.

I didn't include the share of research funding from the university itself, because I don't know what is included under it by American standards. If you adjust the American figures to exclude that, you get 80% from the government, 16% from private institutions, and 4% from other sources.

It's good to remember that Europe is not a continent of social democratic welfare states but a continent of warmongers and old money that happens to be quiet for the moment. A lot of that old money went into foundations that fund prestigious things such as arts and science. European private donors don't like funding education, as they consider it a government responsibility. American donors on the other hand often give money to universities, which then use it primarily for education, buildings, and infrastructure.

Re: Getting a paper accepted

#125

Post by techas »

dagw wrote: post #75
nicce wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought that blind peer-reviews solved this?

My wife works in a fairly niche field and can often guess at the very least which university or research group a blind paper is from, and quite often the author (or in the case of a PhD student, the authors supervisor).

True. But that opens the game of writing a paper “with the style of” someone known and get accepted. Its a gamble game… for authors and reviewers.

Re: Getting a paper accepted

#126

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

ke88y wrote: post #100
rcxdude wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without permission, yeah. But many companies do publish scientific papers. In both worlds, there's usually a game of publishing enough to give people confidence that the results are good, without actually giving away enough details to actually lose any competitive advantage (this is perhaps even more so in academia). In basically every field there will be things that everyone talks about and things that no-one talks…

Also, to state the ultra-obvious given our venue: you can find patrons outside of mega companies that require NDAs.

NDAs are standard even in small businesses. Any company developing technology will require them for technical staff because not doing so can cause the company to lose protection for its IP, even if none of the staff actually leak any technical secrets. Patent applications can be invalidated on the ground that the technology had been disclosed to individuals outside of an NDA, and trade secret protections forfeited for not taking reasonable precautions.

I have only worked with one business that did not require NDAs, and that was because it was built around an open-source sharing philosophy. Every other client, even very small organic-growth businesses and pre-seed startups, required an NDA, and if they hadn't I would have advised them that they should.

Re: Getting a paper accepted

#127

Post by nicce »

2dvisio wrote: post #118
techas wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still many many journals don’t apply double blind reviews. There is no advantage of don’t doing it. There is no extra work in doing it. So I assume that it is not done to keep outsiders out of your garden… Honestly, I don’t find any other reason to don’t apply it.

There’s tons of extra work in double blind (for the author mostly, but also for peer reviewers and editors/chairs). Speaking from direct experience as author, reviewer, and chair at conferences. And generally the benefit is totally lost as you can easily circumvent it especially if you have already published in the field by just citing your previous work.

I don't see the extra work for author - how exactly?

Re: Getting a paper accepted

#128

Post by rocqua »

eeeeeeehio wrote: post #92
rocqua wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of a paper isn't "I had this idea" nor is it "I have this evidence". It is "I had this idea, and it turned out to work! (btw here's the evidence I found that convinced me it works). The value lies in getting true ideas in front of your eyeballs. So communicating the idea clearly is crucial to making the value available.

I agree with you. But what part of the blog post, or the peer review process in general, do you think ensures that only true ideas get in front of eyeballs? I can write anything I want in the paper, but at the end of the day my experiments could do something slightly (or completely) different. Where are reviewers going to catch this?

As the Article said, the first page gets a paper accepted. The remaining pages serve to not get the paper rejected. That includes actually backing up the claims on the first page.

Wrong things definitely still make it through, both mistakes and fraud. But it is a pretty strong filter.

Re: Getting a paper accepted

#129

Post by eeeeeeehio »

rocqua wrote: post #128
eeeeeeehio wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. But what part of the blog post, or the peer review process in general, do you think ensures that only true ideas get in front of eyeballs? I can write anything I want in the paper, but at the end of the day my experiments could do something slightly (or completely) different. Where are reviewers going to catch this?

As the Article said, the first page gets a paper accepted. The remaining pages serve to not get the paper rejected. That includes actually backing up the claims on the first page. Wrong things definitely still make it through, both mistakes and fraud. But it is a pretty strong filter.

I agree that peer review can be a strong filter, but it's a filter for claims and evidence that sound true. CS papers can and do hide important details in the code (details which, I argue, would get a paper rejected if they were stated in the paper).

Regardless of the strength of the filter, if the filter's inputs are just "the paper", but the claims depend on the details in another artifact (i.e. the code), how can we argue that peer review filters for the truth?

Re: Getting a paper accepted

#130

Post by teleforce »

Most of these are great advises including the other posts in PhD metagame series.

Max should publish this in a book and it will probably sell by truckloads.

If I've to choose by ranking in usefulness, it will probably topic no. 4 is the best part "Don't Make Things Actually Work". Topic no. 3 is the second. This particular topic no. 5 is the third. Topic no.1 is the fourth. The topic no. 2 is the fifth ranking in usefulness but overall great advises nonetheless.

Perhaps the last one for the topic is when and how to wrap up the PhD research since research is a never ending endeavor.

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