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Getting a paper accepted

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Re: Getting a paper accepted

#21

Post by Fomite »

whatshisface wrote: post #12
abetusk wrote: post #7

I think the professional sciences has, for a long time, been a social game of building ones career but it does feel like it's metastasized into something that's swallowed academia. From the first article in the series [0]: > Insiders ... understand that a research paper serves ... in increasing importance ... Currency, An advertisement, Brand marketing ... in contrast to what outsiders .. believe, which is ... to sha…

This is an article about ML research, and the emphasis on branding and marketing your paper wouldn't fly in any of the fields people think of as scientific. Could you imagine someone saying, "be sure that the graphic for the molecule in figure 1 is 3D and has bright colors?" The most disturbing thing about it is the way advice to forget about science and optimize for the process is mixed with standard tips for good c…

I have definitely said that people can't resist a network diagram, and "people love a good map", and I'm not in ML research. There are things that appeal to people.

This tends to not manifest as "We need one of these" but "If we have one of these, lets be sure to use it."

Re: Getting a paper accepted

#23

Post by Fomite »

rrr_oh_man wrote: post #14
whatshisface wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an article about ML research, and the emphasis on branding and marketing your paper wouldn't fly in any of the fields people think of as scientific. Could you imagine someone saying, "be sure that the graphic for the molecule in figure 1 is 3D and has bright colors?" The most disturbing thing about it is the way advice to forget about science and optimize for the process is mixed with standard tips for good c…

> This is an article about ML research, and the emphasis on branding and marketing your paper wouldn't fly in any of the fields people think of as scientific The number of accepted papers is absolutely currency and measure of worth in academia.

Interestingly, one of the pieces of advice, about having a punchy title, is a double edged sword. There's some data suggesting papers with "clever" titles have an easier time getting published, but accumulate fewer lifetime citations.

Both of which are currency.

Re: Getting a paper accepted

#25

Post by whatshisface »

Fomite wrote: post #21
whatshisface wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an article about ML research, and the emphasis on branding and marketing your paper wouldn't fly in any of the fields people think of as scientific. Could you imagine someone saying, "be sure that the graphic for the molecule in figure 1 is 3D and has bright colors?" The most disturbing thing about it is the way advice to forget about science and optimize for the process is mixed with standard tips for good c…

I have definitely said that people can't resist a network diagram, and "people love a good map", and I'm not in ML research. There are things that appeal to people. This tends to not manifest as "We need one of these" but "If we have one of these, lets be sure to use it."

People like witty epigraphs underneath chapter titles too, and that's great. Now imagine saying, "the difference between this paper getting accepted or rejected is the presence or absence of a network diagram..."

Re: Getting a paper accepted

#26

Post by chneu »

whatshisface wrote: post #12
abetusk wrote: post #7

I think the professional sciences has, for a long time, been a social game of building ones career but it does feel like it's metastasized into something that's swallowed academia. From the first article in the series [0]: > Insiders ... understand that a research paper serves ... in increasing importance ... Currency, An advertisement, Brand marketing ... in contrast to what outsiders .. believe, which is ... to sha…

This is an article about ML research, and the emphasis on branding and marketing your paper wouldn't fly in any of the fields people think of as scientific. Could you imagine someone saying, "be sure that the graphic for the molecule in figure 1 is 3D and has bright colors?" The most disturbing thing about it is the way advice to forget about science and optimize for the process is mixed with standard tips for good c…

my spouse works in academia and publishes regularly.

This article is spot on. what are you talking about? have you ever published a research paper and gone through peer review?

Re: Getting a paper accepted

#27

Post by eeeeeeehio »

Academics seem to have this fixation on "ideas":

> And it’s not just a pace thing, there’s a threshold of clarity that divides learned nothing from got at least one new idea.

But these days, ideas are quite cheap: in my experience, most researchers have more ideas than students to work on them. Many papers can fit their "core idea" in a tweet or two, and in many cases someone has already tweeted the idea in one form or another. Some ideas are better than others, but there's a lot of "reasonable" ideas out there.

Any of these ideas can be a paper, but what makes it science can't just be the fact that it was communicated clearly. It wouldn't be science unless you perform experiments (that accurately implement the "idea") and faithfully report the results. (Reviewers may add an additional constraint: that the results must look "good".)

So what does science have to do with reviewers' fixation on clarity and presentation? I claim: absolutely nothing. You can pretty much say whatever you want as long as it sounds reasonable and is communicated clearly (and of course the results look good). Even if the over-worked PhD student screws up the evaluation script a bit and the results are in their favor (oops!), the reviewers are not going to notice so long as the ideas are presented clearly.

Clear communication is important, but science cannot just be communicating ideas.

Re: Getting a paper accepted

#28

Post by whatshisface »

chneu wrote: post #26
whatshisface wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an article about ML research, and the emphasis on branding and marketing your paper wouldn't fly in any of the fields people think of as scientific. Could you imagine someone saying, "be sure that the graphic for the molecule in figure 1 is 3D and has bright colors?" The most disturbing thing about it is the way advice to forget about science and optimize for the process is mixed with standard tips for good c…

my spouse works in academia and publishes regularly. This article is spot on. what are you talking about? have you ever published a research paper and gone through peer review?

I think a lot of people are reading the presentation advice and thinking "yeah, I work hard for good presentation too," without realizing that the reason content hasn't even been mentioned is that the author really is describing ML accurately.

I think it's ultimately due to a lack of theory, which creates the expectation that the results from trying an idea will be a random draw. From that point, you get the behaviors of trying as much as possible and taking each attempt as a fixed object to then go try and get over the threshold.

Re: Getting a paper accepted

#29

Post by whatshisface »

0xfffafaCrash wrote: post #17
whatshisface wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an article about ML research, and the emphasis on branding and marketing your paper wouldn't fly in any of the fields people think of as scientific. Could you imagine someone saying, "be sure that the graphic for the molecule in figure 1 is 3D and has bright colors?" The most disturbing thing about it is the way advice to forget about science and optimize for the process is mixed with standard tips for good c…

Strongly disagree here. While I haven’t published e.g. particle physics work, I have authored/coauthored a number of peer-reviewed papers in other topics generally considered hard science (and published in ”high impact factor” scientific journals). This article and series is just as accurate about how ”Science 2” works outside of ML in my experiences. Branding and marketing is a very major factor in everything from g…

There's a used car sales line somewhere and you just have to be careful to not cross it. Yes, there are rewards to good communication but if it becomes the sole purpose (communicating "read me") that's too far.

Re: Getting a paper accepted

#30

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

eeeeeeehio wrote: post #27

Academics seem to have this fixation on "ideas": > And it’s not just a pace thing, there’s a threshold of clarity that divides learned nothing from got at least one new idea. But these days, ideas are quite cheap: in my experience, most researchers have more ideas than students to work on them. Many papers can fit their "core idea" in a tweet or two, and in many cases someone has already tweeted the idea in one form…

Clarity is and should be absolutely crucial, though.

As an academic I need to be up to date in my discipline, which means skimming hundreds of titles, dozens of abstracts and papers, and thoroughly reading several papers a week, in the context of a job that needs many other things done.

Papers that require 5x the time to read because they're unnecessarily unclear and I need to jump around deciphering what the authors mean are wasting me and many others' time (as are those with misleading titles or abstracts), and probably won't be read unless absolutely needed. They are better caught at the peer review stage. And lack of clarity can also often cause lack of reproducibility when some minor but necessary detail is left ambiguous.

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