Nearly three times the number of papers published by Claudine Gay. Why isn't he President of Harvard?
I downvoted this comment because it is not pertinent to this topic and just flamebait.
Behind the scenes: the struggle for each paper (2021)
41–47 of 47 posts
Re: Behind the scenes: the struggle for each paper (2021)
#42What a great resource, both for self-reflection and for a student who wanted to chase a similar career. I should really do something similar for my history of paid work. It’s not like I have a crazy illustrious career or anything, but it can feel like kind of a blur, just a rollercoaster that led inexorably towards the present, which couldn’t be further from the truth; I would love to be able to reflect on my success…
I have started to at least write 4-5 bullet points per month of my job in my personal notes as a reminder of what stuff I have done. I find I will remember a lot of details as long as I have notes that remind me that a project even existed or an event happened. That has been enough for me.
That's a great idea, I think I'll start doing that. Sounds super worthwhile for very little effort.
Re: Behind the scenes: the struggle for each paper (2021)
#43Nearly three times the number of papers published by Claudine Gay. Why isn't he President of Harvard?
I downvoted this comment because it is not pertinent to this topic and just flamebait.
The tone is probably flamebait, but the content is on topic imho. 15 papers before getting a phd?! Being a phd myself and having serious issues with a lot of the academic practices, reading the title i thought i would identify with the author and situations, which i didn't. I don't think this kind of experience is representative with the common "struggle with papers" among young researchers i have seen around me.
Re: Behind the scenes: the struggle for each paper (2021)
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Page limits force you to focus. As a researcher, you are often expected to communicate your ideas in 1 page, 3 pages, 10 pages, or 30 pages, for various purposes. If a journal asks for a 10-page paper, you write a 10-page paper. If a conference asks for a 1-page abstract, you write a 1-page abstract. Most people reading a paper are not interested in going through all the details, and those details should usually not…
> Page limits force you to focus. This can be solved in better ways, which is, in fact, reviewers. I'm okay with a soft requirement but a standardization is what I'm getting at as being problematic. Some papers are noisy because they should be 3 pages but are 10. Some papers are noisy because they are 10 pages and should be 30. There is no universal rule, and that's what I'm getting at. > It's also easier to find rev…
If the paper does not fit reasonably within the page limit, you should submit it to another venue. If you can't write a meaningful 10-page version of a 30-page paper, you probably can't give a meaningful 25-minute talk on it either. You should submit it directly to a journal that accepts long papers.
Some conferences also have special tracks for short papers, and some journals publish "letters" instead of or in addition to full-length papers.
Re: Behind the scenes: the struggle for each paper (2021)
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Theses at my time were about 200 pages long. A friend of mine wrote two tomes . I clearly stated that I would not waste my time and the reviewers are free to provide comments and we will see during the defense. I found out that a lot of these "rules" are traditions that one can challenge and suddenly they are not traditions anymore.
Yes, the only hard rule in my department is having a minimum of 50 pages, the idea that 100 pages is not enough came from the scientists applying their own experiences from years ago. Technically there was nothing they could do about her thesis having fewer pages, but as inexperienced students, it's obviously a little scary when people you look up to sound concerned (since academia is full of all sorts of unproductiv…
> his thesis ended up being just a collection of his publications
We have in France the concept of "thesis on publications" where you write an intro, an outro/conclusion, and bind your articles in the middle. This is very helpful when you have already published everything that builds your thesis.
Re: Behind the scenes: the struggle for each paper (2021)
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Page limits force you to focus. This can be solved in better ways, which is, in fact, reviewers. I'm okay with a soft requirement but a standardization is what I'm getting at as being problematic. Some papers are noisy because they should be 3 pages but are 10. Some papers are noisy because they are 10 pages and should be 30. There is no universal rule, and that's what I'm getting at. > It's also easier to find rev…
If the paper does not fit reasonably within the page limit, you should submit it to another venue. If you can't write a meaningful 10-page version of a 30-page paper, you probably can't give a meaningful 25-minute talk on it either. You should submit it directly to a journal that accepts long papers. Some conferences also have special tracks for short papers, and some journals publish "letters" instead of or in addit…
> If you can't write a meaningful 10-page version of a 30-page paper, you probably can't give a meaningful 25-minute talk on it either.
I can't really tell what's going on here anymore but I don't think we're having a conversation. You're just describing something that's not in good faith here. You're letting "meaningful" do the heavy lifting here. Yes, of course everyone can distill a paper, but not every paper can be distilled and then accepted into publication. Frankly, because reviewers act like exactly this and place weird arbitrary bars on what it means to be good work forgetting that all works are incomplete and thus encouraging embellishing and lying and setting continually new absurd bars.
Stop doing gymnastics to protect a system or just respond to my actual critiques. There's no perfect system so you can even say my critiques are valid yet not enough of a concern to abandon or modify our current system. It's not an all or nothing situation here. But I don't need to be lectured on something this silly as "if you can't do it in 10 pages, you aren't doing it right." My claim was that there isn't a one size fits all standard. I stand buy that. You can respond to what I wrote but there's not a good "teaching moment" here.
If you just want to tell me how I'm wrong without listening to my actual concern then don't comment. You're creating noise and just an angrier internet. If you think I have failed to consider something and that thing is important, do lay it out. But communicate what that actually is rather than just saying "dumb." Give a real critique. The same goes for when you review. Don't be reviewer 2. Reviewer 2 just holds back science.
Re: Behind the scenes: the struggle for each paper (2021)
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the paper does not fit reasonably within the page limit, you should submit it to another venue. If you can't write a meaningful 10-page version of a 30-page paper, you probably can't give a meaningful 25-minute talk on it either. You should submit it directly to a journal that accepts long papers. Some conferences also have special tracks for short papers, and some journals publish "letters" instead of or in addit…
> If you can't write a meaningful 10-page version of a 30-page paper, you probably can't give a meaningful 25-minute talk on it either. I can't really tell what's going on here anymore but I don't think we're having a conversation. You're just describing something that's not in good faith here. You're letting "meaningful" do the heavy lifting here. Yes, of course everyone can distill a paper, but not every paper can…
My point was that if a paper needs 30 pages, don't submit it to a conference. That makes as little sense as submitting an algorithms paper to a zoology journal. Conferences are centered around talks, and you can't present a long paper adequately in a short talk.
Journals can be more flexible than conferences. They don't need page limits, because they don't have the physical constraints imposed by conference dates and the number of parallel tracks. But journals also have audiences, and audience expectations are more important than your paper. You should take those expectations into account when choosing the journal. Don't send an algorithms paper to a zoology journal, and don't send a long paper to a journal that focuses on short papers.
Write the paper first, and then choose a journal or a conference that publishes papers like that. Just as there is no single page limit that fits all papers, there is no single venue that publishes papers of all lengths.