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In the U.S. academia, why do many institutes never send rejection letters for postdoc positions (to save the hassling of inquiries from applicants)?
As far as I know, many, if not most institutes in United States never send rejection letters for postdoc positions. As a result, applicants have to keep asking them to update the status. Is there a reason why they are not willing to send rejections but okay with replying to the inquiries?
If they are not sure whether someone will accept their offer, then they could simply send rejections to people outside of their shortlist.
I am from math community but feel free to share your experience/understanding from other communities.

Update: Please allow me to explain why asking for updates from job positions is NOT a "pointless thing to do": In mathematics, most applicants, who are not super-strong candidates on the market, who do not receive top offers from schools like Harvard/MIT/Princeton in their first round of searching, will likely get into the following situation: An applicant, say James, will probably receive an offer from institute A, which is less favorable and inferior to his ideal places, say B,C,D,E,F....(Many applicants on math job market may apply to dozens and even 100+ positions). But institute A only gives him two weeks to decide whether to accept the offer. What would you do if you were James in this situation? During the first week after James got his first offer, he probably could wait. But if in the second week he still heard no update from B,C,D,E,F, he would be very anxious really want to know if he could have a chance for B,C,D,E,F... which are better than A to him. At this point, the most common advice he could receive from his friends/adivsors/professors is to send emails to your favorite places and ask for updates from them.
For many early career mathematicians (especially those who work in small areas where postdoc/tenure-track positions are few), there could be another situation: they do not receive any offers at all in the first few weeks. Many of them want to consider applying for industrial jobs but still love math and hope they could have a chance to continue their career in academia. In such scenarios, it is especially important for them to get early response to estimate their survival chance in academia. It is turns out he could not survive in academia, then early rejections will help him transfer to industrial career earlier.
I thought this is the mental journey for most of the people on academic job market until I saw some comments and answers below.

What is your evidence for that? I can understand not sending them until someone is hired rather when the (initial) short list is complete. It might take months to get a letter, of course, even when they are sent.

"As a result, applicants have to keep asking them to update the status" - not sure that's true. Another option would be to not ask for the status, and keep applying to or working other jobs.

@Buffy My evidence is my own and my colleague's experiences, who applied to 100+ positions.

I think that support/clerical staff is much reduced in recent years.

@Buffy Unlike graduate school application, I believe usually letters of rejection or offer is sent by the chair of searching committee, a regular faculty member (not the secretary/staff) of a math department.

@BryanKrause I am not sure if you have experiences with math job applications. Usually almost every applicant (who are not super-strong and able to get the best offer from the very beginning) has to keep sending emails to the department they want to work for for updates...

@NoOne I don't have experiences with math job applications. I am telling you that people who do not get the job do not need to keep sending emails to the department; they do not need to send any emails at all. They do not need updates. They should keep applying for jobs until they have an offer. Once they have an offer, it might make sense to reach out to other preferred options for an update so they can decide whether to accept that offer, or ask for more time to consider other offers, etc.

@BryanKrause First of all I had a grammatical mistake in "sending emails to the department". Only ONE email for ONE department. I don't think any applicant dares to hassle the department where they want a position. Doing so only makes them less favored. But people do need updates for the jobs they applied to, no matter whether they already have an offer or not.

Why? What will it change?

@BryanKrause: There’s both a marginal rational reason to want updates — your success-estimate for your current applications affects how much time it’s worth putting into further applications — and a big emotional reason — uncertainty adds to one’s general mental load, which for postdocs on job search is a huge stressor.  When I was a postdoc on job search, I always wanted to know and was happier knowing; as a faculty member corresponding with applicants, they often (not all, but many) ask for status updates.

@PLL I understand the urge and emotion, I question whether it actually has value. I disagree that there is a useful "success estimate" that you're going to get from inquiring about the status of applications. If you're going to stop applying after N failures, you should just apply to N jobs. Knowing how many rejections you have before you get to N applications doesn't change N.

@BryanKrause: Sure, that’s one model under which the information is not useful; it’s easy to give other models under which it is.  Personally I reckon the value is non-negligible, but not huge.  But even putting that entirely aside, the stress effect (whether or not it’s rationally justified) is very real and seems sufficient to justify the small effort of an email.

I think the fact that rejection emails general ARE sent in many countries suggests that this is neither an impossible problem to solve, nor a where not sending emails is obviously the correct answer.

The professors have a huge opportunity cost for sending such letters. The support staff are paid to answer these type of phone/mail enquiries.

@PLL I'd be really curious what those models are. I think Dan Romik's answer addresses the "small effort" part a bit.

Regarding your update: I recognise the issue, but in most cases it really cannot be helped. If a candidate is still under consideration at B,C,D,E,F but the process is still running, there isn't much more than "we are seriously considering you, but no promises" can be said. They might tell you if you already fell out in one of the pre filtering rounds, but honestly the kinds of candidates who have that problem aren't the ones that get eliminated early. And if they do, they normally know that this specific position was a stretch.

It takes almost zero effort [^1] to acknowledge every single application and to send a polite rejection letter to every single non-selected applicant once the process is complete. In between the first step and the last, it is even possible to send a letter along the lines of: "I regret to inform you that you have not been selected for a first-round interview. If you are selected for a second-round interview, we will let you know before [insert date]. If not, we will notify you when the selection process has come to an end." I know how trivial this is to do. It is the only way that my institution has ever done things.
Most academic authors would find totally unaccetble the idea that a journal editor could throw their submitted paper in the trash without actually informing the author that it had been rejected. Yet they seem unbothered by their own institution's abhorrent and demeaning treatment of postdocs.
The idea that "most applicants understand that the only time they will hear from a department [is] if they are being offered an interview or a job" might be true. However,  I strongly believe that if it is true (and I'm unconvinced that this is the understanding of most postdocs) it is because they have been beaten into submission and have finally gotten used to being treated appallingly by selectors. In other words, the idea might be true, but that it started out as a self-serving lie by selection teams.
[^1] Automated proforma emails are an amazing invention but knowledge of their existence has not penetrated all corners of the known world ... nor all parts of the academic domain.
Issues raised by comments

"It is standard-practice not to notify post-doctoral applicants that their applications for a position were unsuccessful , and it is therefore meet and proper to behave this way." David Hume articulated this issue as the "is-ought problem" in moral philosophy. It is unnecessary to say more.

"What country are you [i.e., am I] in?". I suspect that this question is to lay the ground for an argument that my country is different from your country and in my country the behavior is standard. Not so. Suffice to say that most institutions in my country behave in exactly the way described; that is, it is "standard" not to notify postdoctoral applicants who were unsuccessful. See point (1)

"It is not useful to you to ask about the progress of your application because it would provide you with no useful information. You should be pursuing all possible avenues." Translated, I read this as, I know better than you do what is in your best interests. This argument is egregiously self-serving. I think that a more honest statement would be along the lines of: "It is not useful to my institution to tell you about the progress of your application. The cost of sending out emails [as I have suggested earlier in the body of this answer] is close to zero but nonetheless positive and non-zero. And we would gain no benefit from that cost."

"I and my academic-staff colleagues are not responsible for this behavior. My hands are tied. It is institutonal policy and it is put into effect by the administration and administrative staff." Yes, I accept that it is possible to think this way.

This answer reads as if this situation is up to the academic staff (especially the currently third paragraph). This doesn’t match at all what I am used to from several European universities - the formalities of applications are largely handled by administrative staff. The hard facts (who is actually out, if and when a new round starts, etc.) aren’t transparent upfront for academic staff either, and they may not even be allowed to share their knowledge unofficially.

@MisterMiyagi point taken. I have inserted a single word ... "insitution's". I have also reordered the paragraphs so MisterMiyagi's reference to the "third paragraph" should now be taken to apply to the 2nd

A weakness of that comparison is that there is a rather significant difference between job applications and paper submissions in how "dual submissions" are perceived. Were applicants not supposed/allowed to apply to another job until they receive a final response, there would presumably be a lot more pressure to change how they are treated.

I'm not sure if the OP was asking about the US, but he certainly is asking from that perspective. Could you please tell us the country your institution is in, or otherwise somehow indicate a rough location? What is possible, and what is common practice, seem to vary based on the locale

Your footnote about how automated systems aren't universal really buries the lede. It's not about the amount of effort it takes for an automated system to send a rejection email it's about the effort it takes to setup an automated system. And the employer's have zero reason to undertake that effort. Developer's time is expensive and a justification would have to be made to use it to add automated rejection letters to the workflow when an open position is closed.  If an institution is having trouble filling positions, then I could see benefits to the rejection letter but it's not the case.

Your assumption that "applicants have to keep asking them to update the status" is false. While it is true that some applicants ask for updates, that is a pointless thing to do, and most applicants understand that the only time they will hear from a department if they are being offered an interview or a job, and that if they ask for an update, the only thing a department will be able to tell them is "we are currently considering all job applications, and we will contact you to let you know if we want to discuss your application further."
From the department's point of view, there is nothing to "update" a job candidate about until the department wants to discuss offering the candidate a job or an interview, or until all positions have been filled and the search is closed. (Even then, in many cases the search is never officially "closed" since departments may hope to be able to opportunistically hire additional people later, e.g., if more funding becomes available.)
This state of affairs is perhaps frustrating for job candidates, but it is a fairly standard feature of the job market and far from unique to academia.
Edit: I see a discussion in the comments about whether not sending rejection letters is rude or not. Clearly it is perceived as rude by some people.
Here is my perspective: I was a department chair and heavily involved in hiring for a few years. I always did my best to handle the touchy and anxiety-inducing aspects of the hiring process as kindly and tactfully as possible, and felt strongly that job candidates deserve to be treated with respect and civility.
Despite this, my department back when I was chair, and still today as far as I am aware, does not send out rejection letters to job candidates unless they were interviewed (and when people contacted me for "status updates", I replied politely but I suspect most of them didn't think I was being very helpful because I didn't give then the sort of information they were hoping to get).
So why not send rejection letters? There are many reasons, but ultimately I would say it comes down to efficiency and practicality. Those saying it's easy simply do not understand what a typical day in the life of a department chair looks like, and the sheer number of "easy" things the chair and other administrators have to deal with. They also do not understand what kind of complicated considerations a chair (in a US-based, large R1 university department at least) needs to factor in to any decision they make about even seemingly innocuous interactions.
I think the complainers also don't understand something else that's a bit counter-intuitive, which is that job candidates often want to know things that aren't necessarily helpful for them to know. From the job candidate's side you always think you want maximal transparency; from the perspective of an employer who watches the process play out many times and sees its effects on the well-being of the candidates themselves and all kinds of mental traps and pitfalls they tend to fall into, you learn that sometimes silence conveys the most useful information, despite the risk that it may be perceived as rude. (See some related thoughts of mine here.) Note that this is a general principle and does not necessarily apply to rejection letters as much as it does to other things. But I think it's relevant in connection with more fine-grained updates, such as telling candidates "I regret to inform you that you have not been selected for a first-round interview" as advocated for in @CrimsonDark's answer.
Sorry if this sounds patronizing (or "rude"), I expect that some people will still disagree with what I wrote and will insist that not sending rejection letters is an abominable practice, but that's my perspective for what it's worth.

This is effectively the right answer to my mind. I'll comment, however, that this isn't just how postdoc applications work. It's all applications, including tenure track!

As standard as the practice of not sending rejection letters is, does not take away from the fact how rude this practice is.

The second paragraph is a very flimsy excuse for the standard.  In my experience, 19 times out of 20 a dept has clear transitions from “all applications are under consideration” to “we are inviting a shortlist to interview” to “we have now filled the position(s)” (sometimes without the middle step).  The department certainly has something to update the rejected candidates on.  If the rejection isn’t absolutely final, this can be reflected in the wording — “We do not expect to hire any further candidates from this search” — and it is still very helpful for candidates to be informed.

@TimRias I wonder, do people really care about getting a form "you have not been selected" letter? I have applied to many positions, for some I (eventually) got notified that I have not been selected and oftentimes I simply never heard back from them. I can't say that I feel any different about either of these cases. If you get notified, it's always at a time when it is already 100% clear that I was not selected (1+ year after submission).

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Same reason why most employers don't send rejection letters. It's more of a hassle to send the rejections than it is to deal with the inquiries from applicants.
Remember, you might get as many as 100+ applicants per position. That's 99 rejection emails you have to send, a number that's likely larger than the number of responses to inquiries that you have to compose.
From the perspective of the applicant, it's better to get rejection letters, but from the perspective of the institution, it's more convenient to not send them. You can see this effect everywhere: it's why a large number of job postings say "We regret that only shortlisted candidates will be notified".

This answer makes no sense. Rejection emails can be sent in bulk by mail merge. On the other hand, enquiry emails have to be read and responded to manually. Which is objectively more work.

@MJeffryes - Mail merge is great if the application system (generally on-line now I presume) allows it. I'm certainly not going to go back and trawl through 100 resumes to copy/paste the email address. And the interface at my institution is frankly horrible, requiring if anything even more work to have it 'automatically' send notifications. A personal response to a job application has not been standard for the nearly 50 years that I've been applying for jobs.

@JonCuster yes, obviously I am assuming here that you have all the candidates email addresses, which I perhaps wrongly assumed would be normal in 2024. A mail merge is not a 'personal' response, it is by definition the opposite.

@MJeffryes: Unfortunately, I can confirm JonCuster’s experience — often job searches are handled through badly-designed software portals, which may not offer any good way to send form rejection letters or export applicants’ details in a tractable format.  So as an individual member of a search committee, sending these isn’t as easy as it should be.  But of course, that’s not a good excuse for the standard — it means we need to push back and get the software improved.

Ghosting unsuccessful job applicants (even after multiple interviews) is standard practice these days, inside or outside academia. It's abhorrent, but it's literally what HR people are trained to do.

In this answer I address OP's additional questions posted after their original question. (Posting this as a separate answer because my first answer is already quite long, and these thoughts are only tangentially related to what I wrote there.)

Update: Please allow me to explain why asking for updates from job positions is NOT a "pointless thing to do":
In mathematics, most applicants, who are not super-strong candidates on the market, who do not receive top offers from schools like Harvard/MIT/Princeton in their first round of searching, will likely get into the following situation: An applicant, say James, will probably receive an offer from institute A, which is less favorable and inferior to his ideal places, say B,C,D,E,F....(Many applicants on math job market may apply to dozens and even 100+ positions). But institute A only gives him two weeks to decide whether to accept the offer. What would you do if you were James in this situation?

In this situation I might indeed contact other institutions where I applied. It's not 100% pointless and could provide some benefit, particularly in situations where I already have reason to believe those institutions may be interested in me, where I have friendly contacts, and/or where I have reason to believe that the knowledge that I have a pending offer with a deadline may prompt those institutions to either speed up their decision-making process (unlikely) or to at least provide me some information about their timeline for making a decision.
In the end however, it is extremely unlikely that such emails will lead anyone at the receiving end to tell you anything about "your chances" or get them to officially tell you that you were "rejected". If that is the sort of "status update" you are hoping to get, then the email is indeed pointless. The simple truth is that the situation facing James in your example is unpleasant, and quite common, and most people in that situation will simply be forced to accept that that is how things are and try to make the best decision they can given the information they have.

For many early career mathematicians (especially those who work in small areas where postdoc/tenure-track positions are few), there could be another situation: they do not receive any offers at all in the first few weeks. Many of them want to consider applying for industrial jobs but still love math and hope they could have a chance to continue their career in academia. In such scenarios, it is especially important for them to get early response to estimate their survival chance in academia. It is turns out he could not survive in academia, then early rejections will help him transfer to industrial career earlier.

It may be that the knowledge that you were rejected can indeed be helpful to you in some situations. However, we can't always get what we want in life. I think when you say that asking for updates is not a pointless thing to do, you really mean that you wish it wasn't pointless. But, for better or for worse, it (for the most part) is.
As I said in my other answer, I recognize this is a frustrating state of affairs for many people. But in my opinion it is better to recognize that this is how things work and focus one's energies on finding effective strategies to deal with this type of situation, rather than to blame institutions for being heartless and rude.

Having had nearly the experience detailed in the last section (interrupted by a fairly late TT interview and job offer): I was already gathering and about to send off my industry application packets. Unless you're so in-demand that you've been flown out multiple times by January, you really should starting pivoting in late January (US).

Yes, this is indeed the case. I'm a PhD student, and I have seen many of my seniors —from various countries and across disciplines— apply for postdoc positions and then wait for months and months, sometimes more than a year, and even then not receive any updates despite well-timed polite queries from the students. So this phenomenon is not specific to the US universities alone, at least to the best of my knowledge. I'd also like to note that this has been my experience while I was applying for PhD positions as well; however, in my case, it's been some of the European universities that have ceased communication with me after I had submitted the applications. While there were certainly delays and lack of communications from American universities as well, they by and large seemed more responsive, especially when contacted directly.
There was an especially egregious case where I had applied for a position in a lab whose PI was a friend of my then supervisor, and I myself had interviewed and built a decent rapport with the PI, was told that I was an excellent fit, and that the application was but a formality. After I had put in my application, which even included a very detailed research proposal, the university and the lab basically went AWOL on me. Despite numerous attempts to reach out and communicate with them, I never got any responses. What's worse, because I was basically guaranteed the position, I didn't look for positions elsewhere, and instead focused on my work. Big mistake. After more than 6 months, I was able to get in touch with one of the members from that lab, and was then informed by them that the position was filled by the supervisor with a different student. Till date, I don't know what had gone on behind the scenes, and why I wasn't even told about the lack of offer, either by the university or the lab. The frustrating thing was that this was much later after the application deadlines for most universities worldwide. So I basically had to wait for the next application cycle, thereby losing an entire year. The maddening aspect of this whole affair, and also a slew of other experiences in academia, is the usual nonchalant way that professors, supervisors, PIs, chairs etc., expect the students to just accept it and move on. There's always the usual drivel of "oh, we also had to go through it back in our days", but I'm not entirely sure if the scale and scope of the experiences can be compared, given how much more competitive and opaque the academic selection processes have become over the decades. The whole thing has the same energy as boomers complaining about 'these darn lazy kids' of this generation who're unable to find jobs and buy homes. I'm sorry if this response doesn't strictly adhere to the standards of the academia stack-exchange answering guidelines, but I believe it is necessary to speak out more about these things, or otherwise a majority of student researchers will never realize that they're not alone in their experiences. Heck, I thought I was crazy when I started applying for PhD positions. No one tells you these things, at least not in the polite company of other academics; everything is so hush-hush.
If all my years of dealing with American universities, or organizations in general, have taught me anything, it is that if you want to know what's going on or would like to get something done, you better meet the people in person, or second-best, call them and talk to them, then follow up that conversation with an email.
While I'd sympathize with the predicament of departments chairs, and more or less have always done so in my career, one thing I never really understood was why despite having massive administrations, the chairs and indeed upper-level faculty with access to administrative help are not able to delegate the peripheral tasks. I mean, it happens to some extent already, yet the excuse that somehow replying to applicants when they're not selected is too much to ask, doesn't seem quite reasonable. Remember, PhD applicants for almost all the US universities even have to pay for the privilege of being able to apply to those programs. And they're extremely strict about the various requirements and documents needed for the application. One small mistake, and the application is ignored or discarded, without so much as a courtesy call/email to the applicant, most of the time. I know this because I've had this experience with some US universities. Now I ask you, should this also be just par for the course for the applicants? Should the same universities, departments and the chairs at these places, who lecture us students about responsibility, accountability, rigor and transparency, be not held to better standards than the current ones, if not the same standards as they expect the students to follow?
I don't know how or when lack of accountability has become acceptable and fairly standard. Even if we were to assume that they're fairly standard, why isn't there more transparency about it? For an institution of society such as the academia, that supposedly prides itself on educating and opening the minds of students, why is its administration so closed even to the ones dealing with it directly? If you want to claim that it's not unique to academia, then at least have the courage to start increasing awareness about it in academic community. The usual cop-outs of "oh, it's common knowledge" or "just talk to others" don't work. For an institution that prides itself on rigor, why are the responsibilities of its administration so mushy and hand-wavy? I once again want to point out that they'd never accept even a fraction of this lax attitude from the students.
Experiences may vary, but at least in my life, I never had to wait for months on end to hear back from a job application in industry. It's always the universities that made me wait the longest, months or year(s). If we're talking about fairly standard expectations, this is what it would be: that the wait time to hear back from industry job applications are on average way shorter than academic applications. See, if it is just a matter of delay, I'd not be this annoyed; but it's the fact that academia makes you jump through hoops and asks you to follow these seemingly vague procedures that somehow all applicants are supposed to take extremely seriously and not get one single thing wrong while applying. There's this air of extreme haughtiness about them, and yet they fail miserably when even the smallest courtesy is expected of them. That's what frustrates me.
Anyway, in addition to the countless other reasons for the now-fast decline of the institution of academia, be it the falling standards, or the inevitable substitution of lecturers with AI, or the increasing academic fraud and a concomitant disillusionment of the public in academia as a whole, the mismanagement and the lack of competence of its administration just adds another unhappy flavor to its current state. The institution of academia as we know it, or at least the version we've seen so far, feels like it's about to go the way of the dodo bird; and to be honest I'm not exactly unhappy about it. Ciao!

Welcome to Academia.SE. This seems more like a rant than an answer. Moreover, the question was "why do they do it?" (as in: wouldn't it be better for the universities if they batch-informed all candidates rather than responding to a million mails), not "do they do it?".

I've already mentioned in my answer as to why I thought a response like this is needed, even if it doesn't 100% adhere to the answering guidelines. Young researchers need the assurance that they're not alone in their bad experiences. I say this from rather painful experiences in my own career. Besides, my so-called rant here raises multiple reasons as to why this is the case. Just because they're 2 or 3 steps away from being directly connected to the problem, doesn't mean that they're not crucial. I just hope that I've let the OP know that he/she is not alone in their experience.

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Appropriate/smart ways to decline students' requests of "begging for better grades" at the end of the semester without being too hurtful
Normally at the end of semester, there are always a couple of students begging for better grades. Let me just list a few sample cases:
Case 1: I worked really hard during the semester. I attended all lectures and recitations and did all homework assignments and practice exam problems. I just failed to do well in the exam because of my anxiety.
Case 2: I had some health/family issues in this semester, feeling depressed for a while.
Case 3: I need XXX GPA in order to maintain my financial support. If my grade falls below XXX then I will lose my financial support and have to drop out of school.
Because letter grades are used in United States and there is a little bit grey area of upgrading one's letter grade if their percentage grade are really close to that. But certainly there are students whose grade is 87% but want to get A (with percentage grade cutoff being 90%) or whose grade is 57% but still want to pass this class (60%).
When they describe their situation in a very miserable way like in the case 2 and 3 above, it is very difficult for me to simply say "No" although this is a common practice for most professors. Moreover, some students will keep emailing you or telling you in face about their situation, with an intention to give professor some sort of ``pressure". If one says NO before the teaching evaluation due, then it seems that they are really going to write a bad comment.
So, as experience teachers, what are your appropriate/smart ways (without being too hurtful to them) to decline students' requests of "begging for better grades" at the end of the semester?
I am an instructor in mathematics where there is little grey area in grading, but please feel free to talk about your teaching areas.

As an uncommon practice, one of my colleagues wrote in their syllabus for the course they taught explicitly something like "Please DO NOT ask me questions on how the grades will be curved or ask for better grades at the end of the semester. Your grades are determined by your demonstrated performance not your self-claimed effort". However, he cares less about teaching and is not a popular professor.

If one says NO before the teaching evaluation due - Are you saying student evaluations are not due till after they see their final exam grades?

Do you have university/department/course policies you can fall back on?  Grading should be explained clearly in the syllabus, and for many courses this is set at a department level.

"You can't get extra points just because you're a good negotiator.  That's not fair to the bad negotiators in the class who also worked really hard."

@Kimball Evaluations are due before final exam as always. I was saying student may ask this before the final grade and final evaluation and that gives me the pressure that if I say no then they are going to write something bad. Of course, they can always write bad things on ratemyprofessors.

@Kimball university/department/course policies will not write anything clearly in such a grey area (nothing like "an instructor is allowed to upgrade 89.12 to A but 88.71 has to be a B+"). A lot of professors would curve the grade. No one tells them and no one (senior faculty) wants to be told how they should curve the grades.

@Kimball  guess you meant I should choose to say NO after the evaluations are due? Students would hate me anyway

@NoOne Well it's important to have a clear grading policy, and explain it in advance.  This is not to say it can't have flexibility, but, could be something like: for students on the borderline, I will bump up students who performed well on the final exam, or had good attendance, or whatever you think is important.  Personally, what I (may) do now is lower the letter grade cutoffs after final exams based on the distribution of final percentage scores to try to match up with natural gaps in grades.

#1 seems like a potentially valid problem, but it seems like something the student may need to get accommodations for via your university's student disability services office (e.g. to give them extra time on tests). The same might be true of #2; it would also presumably be something the student brings up earlier in the semester, and in any case, the disability services office is probably best suited to advise you on the matter. #3 might be true, but is in no way a reason to adjust their grade – the fact that their grades are important is not a reason to change them.

I'm also an instructor of mathematics (at a community college with constantly high failure rates). I call this period of the semester, about a week or two after final exams, "purgradtory". It must be considered a standard part of the job -- and like everything in academia, you need to manage your time wisely. Here's my rough protocol:

On the first contact, I take the opportunity to warmly-professionally engage with the student, try to think about what didn't work out, and what their steps going forward will be. In some cases this is the only time the student has been open to engaging with me, so I want to make use of this learning opportunity. I try to keep this to maybe a paragraph or two at most.

On the second contact, if it's still phrased as a dispute (which it usually is), then I get very curt. Many of my students have language and/or reading comprehension problems, and I can't afford to have any confusion at this point (e.g., I had issues with that as a new instructor). My response here is likely to be, "The listed grade is final. Feel free to double check with the formula shown in the syllabus".

On the third or further contact, I don't respond.

It's this last item that I've clarified in my repertoire fairly recently. In some cases, students will be willing to cycle with you endlessly, hoping that at some point you'll capitulate from fatigue (and surely they've had success with that approach in the past). The key observation of late is that I don't need to persuade the student that my judgement is correct. All I can do is give the fairest and most transparent assessment I can, and if a certain student is dissatisfied with that, then I can't engage in an open-ended debate about it.
As a side point, I'll observe that the level of interaction I do provide here is discouraged, and considered administratively risky, by my department -- their official advice is to not respond at any point on grade disputes. I think I'm fairly careful in my responses and haven't had a problem with it to date. I keep in mind that anything I write could potentially be submitted to an advisor or dean as part of a complaint -- so when writing any responses, I imagine that I'm writing for both these audiences, and give appropriate context to make the situation clear to a third party.

their official advice is to not respond at any point on grade disputes — that's interesting, because people who grade are fallible. I've had exams returned where a grading error worked in my disadvantage (tutor overlooked that my answer continued on the next page), and my grade increased on revision. It seems unfair that no such "second opinion" is offered under any circumstances.

@gerrit - The best rules tend to have the best exceptions.  Please notice the following excellent point in this answer: "Feel free to double check with the formula shown in the syllabus"  I'm 100% sure that a clerical error would end up corrected even if pointed out clearly enough only in the fourth message from the student.  There's a difference between reading what the student wrote, and re-explaining why the grade will stand (if it will).

As an additional point in the second letter, I'd explicitly state that "I won't be able to discuss your grade further unless there has been a mistake in the grading". This informs the student that they should not expect any further "egging" to work and saves them an additional email.

@gerrit I agree, morevover, I would expect at least a generic "sorry, the grade is final unless grading errors were made" response to be issued. No reason leaving the student in doubt for weeks, hoping for a reply that will never come.

@gerrit what's also unfair is that students waste instructors' valuable time by trying to get their grades boosted for no good reason. So blame those leeches, not the instructors.

@IanKemp The instructor has a responsibility to communicate with the students and respond to concerns. It's not a waste of their time but doing their work. Also, a generic negative response takes about 2 mins to write, surely the instructor has that much time to spare. Students are also human.

@gerrit I read "...grade disputes" in both the context of the question and the answer to refer to the final cumulative grades assigned at the end of the course. I doubt it was referring to the grades of specific assignments or exams.

I've been taking a "Love and Logic" parenting class this fall, and this advice is very similar to how they suggest dealing with your kids whining, except that, because it's based on face-to-face and not email interaction, instead of ignoring the kid completely, you repeat a phrase like "I know". It's basically the same idea--refuse to keep arguing.

It is important to recognize - and I tell this to students in the situation you describe - that you are judging the academic value of the work they submitted, not the student as a person, or the personal circumstances of this student.  It is also important to avoid making this “personal”, i.e. about the specific student.
You can sympathize with difficulties due to personal situations, but it still does not change the final outcome - however hard they worked - which is that the student underperformed compared with their expectations, or that the student has not mastered the material sufficiently well compared to your expectations to merit an increase in letter grade.  After all, if you were to bump the grades of all students disappointed with their performance, everyone would give themselves an A.
Moreover, by bumping this student, you are penalizing those students who made the strategic decision to invest more time to study this material rather than the material in other courses.  Finally, if this is just a one-off instance of an underperformance, this will be nullified by a one-off instance of an over performance: on average a disappointing result will be offset by a surprisingly good performance.
Dealing with students with very legitimate difficulties is not pleasant, but your job is to assess how well they know the material.
Finally, remember that students take more than one course so blaming “your course” for not maintaining a GPA is not much of an argument.
If you present your decision as professional, and avoid discussing or commenting on personal issues, you will not only hold the line in this instance, but you will earn a reputation as a fair marker: this will likely decrease the number of students pleading for grades in the future.

"Moreover, by bumping this student, you are penalizing those students who made the strategic decision to invest more time to study this material rather than the material in other courses." That sounds unfair. One's achievements and grades should depend solely on one's own effort and not the actions of others.

@Vilx- I disagree.  The final grade is very rarely only about the achievements of students, but almost always about the achievements of students given some  reasonable common constraints.  Assessments have deadlines or time limits, and you cannot choose to selectively ignore those constraints for some students but enforce these constraints for other without being unfair.

@Vilx- "One's achievements and grades should depend solely on one's own effort" What about competence?

@user76284 Allright, competence too. I mean... the goal is to verify that the student has learned what the teacher has taught. Tests and assessments are only means to this end. Some effort will be needed to learn, but this will vary by person, of course. What I mean to say is - if your grading scheme somehow lowers the score of some people, if others perform exceptionally well, then it's not fair.

@ZeroTheHero - Constraints too are only means to an end. They either help to verify that the student has actually learned the material (hence no open books or whatever), or place some sane limits of how much of the examiner's time the whole test will take (examiners are only people too and want to go home). Giving second chances to some students however does not invalidate the results of other students. Nor is it unfair - everyone's allowed to ask for a second chance (and should get it too, I believe).

Although, to be honest, the more I think about it, the more I cannot see any truly "fair" way of testing. Do what you will, there's flaws in everything.

@Vilx- I agree with you there. I have seen plenty of students underperform for personal reasons, and plenty of students overperform because they somehow "got lucky".  Students will self-assess themselves at a higher level than they are, and instructors will also assess students at a higher level (witness the mess in the UK during COVID) unless the playing field is level, and that the best an instructor can do.

@ZeroTheHero Also, the students who accepted their marks and don't beg may have had the very same circumstances the begging student had. It would indeed be really unjust to bump someone who complained, and leave those who didn't. IMO this is the strongest argument againist "circumstancial grading". Everyone has issues, especially in university.

@Vilx I don't know much about the grading frameworks in USA, but the ones I know in EU all mandated a possibility to redo at least one failed exam (or final test) per course. I think this should qualify as "second chance" in itself, implemented in the very system; and there's no exceptation on the professor for a third chance outside of the rules.

@Neinstein I had not heard the expression "circumstantial marking" but it's spot on.  At the end, however flawed the evaluation is and however hard students worked, the assessment methodology is the one that was agreed at the start of the course and changing this to suit individual circumstances is not right.  It is sometimes regrettable for students that this is so, but it is so.

I don't know if universities in the US have similar principles, but where I studied (in the UK) health issues would come under a "mitigating circumstances" protocol, which is administered not by individual lecturers but by the department. So for your (1) and (2) examples (anxiety and health/family issues) I think an appropriate position to take would be to say that they should make use of the typical processes for these situations, which normally have specified thresholds and levels of support. This ensures that the support they get will be proportionate and available to everyone who has the same situation, and doesn't put you in the tough spot of having to evaluate their situation.
NB: this might result in an outcome different to what you asked (you asked how to decline them, but in some instances support will be warranted).

In the US, instructors are usually expected to make "reasonable accommodations" health issues etc, but without clear guidance and they should handle it themselves. (Disability/severe anxiety is a bit different, but depends on school.)  However, students should also not wait until the end of the course to bring up these issues if they have been ongoing.

@Kimball I'll be honest:  I don't make accommodations for health, deaths in the family, etc.  I do not want to be responsible for arbitrating "acceptable" reasons for missing work and "unacceptable" reasons.  So my syllabus is set up in such a way that students can miss a few assignments, and it isn't the end of the world.  If they have a more severe problem, it is likely that they are going to need accommodations in all of their classes, hence it is the responsibility of the dean or the director of the office if accessibility and inclusion to tell me what to do.

@XanderHenderson Maybe this is a difference in our universities.  I agree about accessibility issues, but if they are sick/injured/etc and have to miss an exam, I believe our dean wants us to handle it ourselves.  If we do nothing, and the student complains to the department chair or dean, then usually our chair/dean is unhappy with us.

@Kimball As I said, I try to structure my courses so that a student missing a couple of assignments isn't going to be a problem, so that I don't have to adjudicate "excused" vs "unexcused" absences.  The only "must do" assignment is the final, and in a desperate situation, a student could take an "Incomplete" and finish the class in the following semester.  And the more severe kind of circumstance I am thinking of (which would involve a dean) is a student needing to make accommodations for all of their classes---my dean would very much like to know about such a circumstance.

(But I work at a very small, rural community college, so YMMV).  :)

One advantage of deferring to the department is the student probably has to make the same application for multiple courses happening in parallel, so this allows for a consistent and more in depth approach (eg ask for a doctor's letter), as well as being less work for the student, and the committee (who the student may not know personally) can decide on the basis of the facts.

TL;DR: I have checked the marking of your work, and can confirm the mark you received is correct.

In the first two of your cases, the student has some condition or circumstance which might need to be taken into account during an assessment, but these can't be used to adjust a mark that has already been given. In these cases the student should be told that they need to inform the department about such things before they take the assessment. In rare cases a student might not be able to do this due to e.g. not receiving a diagnosis soon enough; then the university might have a policy for invalidating the mark and allowing the student to retake the assessment (and have this treated as their first attempt).
The key here is that these cases should be handled by somebody else who is responsible for implementing the relevant policy; so your response should direct the student towards the appropriate somebody-else.

The only reason a student's mark should be changed after the assessment has already been marked, is if a mistake was made in the marking. However, this is a possibility. We are all human, and if you mark a few thousand pieces of student work over several years then you're bound to make a handful of mistakes that don't get caught at some point between the initial marking and the release of marks to students.
It would be very surprising if a mistake in the marking scheme itself went unnoticed during marking, and typically the grader will not make subject-matter mistakes; but procedural mistakes can happen, like leaving a page on an exam script unmarked (especially if the student left some blank pages before it), arithmetic mistakes when adding up the raw marks or converting to a percentage, or mis-entering a mark into the computer. The most likely mistakes are the trivial ones, and it's fairly quick to check for them.
So, whenever a student has contacted me to question their grade, I've taken a look at the work and how it was marked, to see if a mistake was made. In almost all cases, there is no mistake; but then I could honestly respond to the student to say: I have checked the marking of your work, and can confirm the mark you received is correct.
This response tells the student that you've taken their concern seriously, rather than outright dismissing the possibility that their mark could be incorrect. It also gets across that a mark can't be changed for any reason other than a marking error, without having to imply that the student was asking for special treatment.

A final note: if you receive many requests like this, it's possible that some other member of staff has agreed to change marks (e.g. out of pity), and that word of this practice has spread to other students, who then figure it's worth trying for themselves. Ask your colleagues if they receive similar requests, and how they handle them.

None of those are valid reasons to change a grade. Especially at the end of the semester when it is unlikely that you can have them do something additional to earn a few marks. (see below for a direct answer)
Longer term, however, you can make the grading scheme both transparent and "correctable" with some changes. And this can lessen the possibility of bad comments. It is called cumulative grading.
My scheme was to make a course worth 1000 points with a number of activities, including exams, each worth a known number of points. The points required for each grade was advertised, say 900 for an A. I had exams as about 30% of the total, but that can be as you like. A student could simply add up the points they had earned to know exactly where they are.
On graded work other than exams, they were allowed to resubmit work after grading to get back a few of the lost points, but not all of them. I was pretty generous in this since I consider rework to be a valid learning experience - reinforcement.
With this scheme you are unlikely to get complaints, especially at the end of the course. They had plenty of chances along the way to improve their totals if they chose.
A potential downside, however, is that if someone earns, say 700 points, and is satisfied with a C, they don't need to do anything more in the course. For non-majors this might be acceptable (or not).
One additional feature of this was that at the end of the course I looked over the grades and asked myself whether I thought they represented fairly what students had learned. If the grades seemed low, I might boost everyone a bit. Also, the boundaries were always a bit "fuzzy" at the end, with nobody missing the next grade by just a few out of 1000 points. The rationale for fuzziness is that I couldn't be sure that my grading was perfectly (perfectly) accurate in every case. So, the benefit went to the student in marginal cases. They didn't need to ask and might, on occasion, been pleasantly surprised. That isn't a bad thing.
I used this for several years. I was considered "tough but fair".

But for a more direct answer to your question, ask them how your grading has been unfair along the way. If they don't have a good answer for that, they have little to complain about. They need to learn that they need to be responsible for their own behavior. Gifting them isn't going to help.
And, to emphasize, if a student has medical conditions, like anxiety or depression, accommodations can be made, but not after just claiming them at the end of the course. There are procedures for that and they need to be implemented throughout the course. A last minute claim is likely just an excuse. If you think otherwise, refer them to the office for such things and take the advice you get from there.

I'm confused what grading system your suggestion stands in opposite to. This is how every course I've ever heard of is graded in the US and Canada.

@AzorAhai-him- I think it's more about the strategy of having students "accumulate" points toward some goal; more often, it's framed as "averaging" with some weights on different assignments. The end result is exactly the same.

Gian-Carlo Rota graded a class in probability  I took from him at MIT in the late 60’s by strictly summing points. It was unique in that the available points during the semester added up to much more than required for an A. He stated that he might include a question on a problem set that was previously unsolved. All it to took to get a A was solve just one. Getting enough for a C and not continuing was a feature not a bug. A very inspiring teacher.

@GeorgeWhite, I generally advertised to my students that there would be one very difficult problem on the final, though not an unsolved one.

@BryanKrause Hm I suppose. Never thought of it that way

I have encountered similar cases, to varying degrees, in my own teaching.  I am actually very open to requests to review assessment items and grades and I make it a habit to allocate time for this after each assessment item is graded.  I like to establish a dynamic where students feel free to come to me with grading queries and concerns, and I want them to be able to confirm that the grades they are awarded are objective, consistent, and fair.  While I am certainly open to any query about my grading, I do not countenance requests for unearned increases in grades based on extraneous factors.  In such cases, I recommend you try to gently but firmly explain the following:

The purpose of university grading is to make an estimate of the present level of mastery of the subject by the student.  This is for both diagnostic and accreditation purposes.  The grade is not an estimate or reflection of their level of effort or any other virtues they may have as a person, and it is not a method to secure them some extraneous benefit.  Nor does their grade reflect any permanent assessment of their competence; a student might get a poor or mediocre grade in a subject but go on to master that subject later in life.

While there can be adverse life consequences from bad grades, being a university lecturer requires us to be fair to all the students in our courses, not just the ones who may suffer advere effects from a bad grade.  Giving a student a higher grade than is reflective of their present mastery of the subject, on the basis of some extraneous consideration, is unfair to other students in the course and it dilutes the value of the grades that they have legitimately earned.  Bumping up a grade on an extraneous basis is a betrayal of other students in the course and it is immoral.

This doesn't specifically answer your question as stated and might be more of a comment but I'd like to write out a bit more than a comment can fit.
I'm not an instructor but I've spent plenty of time being a student.  Undergrad, graduate, full-time, part-time.  When I have an assignment or an exam, I stay up late or take time off work as necessary to do the work.  If it's not enough and I get a bad grade, I get what I get and I move on.  There are students that cheat, complain that exams aren't fair, ask for more time after the original assignment period.  I find this natural and shrug it off.  What does make me angry is when instructors do cute stuff like give more time for a take-home exam at the 11th hour, forgive cheating, weigh down assignments that were initially promised to be a larger portion of the final grade.  An instructor that does this may think they're being nice but they are screwing over students that put in effort and planning into the course work.
Fudging people's grades because they asked for it is in the same vein.
Set a syllabus, clearly let the students know what's expected, follow the plan.  Grade on a curve (or not so long as it's known ahead of time).  Grade true and fair, not higher for people that come to you with a sob-story.
If a student truly has circumstances outside their control, that should certainly be addressed but not by the instructor.  As for what to tell the students that try to have their grade raised, it sounds like you have plenty of examples around you, you just don't like them because you feel they are harsh.  I might only suggest saying something to the effect of "it would not be fair to the other students" and directing them to whatever authority can help them if they have a legitimate problem.

I do get Case I and Case II sometimes, different variations of both. I usually ask students to approach me and discuss their grade, so I actually encourage it.
However, I did find that when I wanted to say "NO" without saying it directly, the argument of "fairness" to other students usually worked.
I am arguing that I cannot do this because it will be unfair to other students who also made the effort!

You can symphathize with the student without allowing room for bending the marks. You are a person with feelings, but you are also a teacher with obligations. So that's what I would say:

As a person, I understand your issues, and I symphatize with you.
However, as a teacher, I also have obligations to adhere to. Being consistent with the grading is an important one of these. As such,
the mark can only be influenced by the presented knowledge of the
course material at the time of the exam, and nothing else, as written
in the syllabus; and I am unable to consider any personal
circumstances in the grading. If you believe there has been a mistake,
and the grade does not correspond to what's in the syllabus of the
course, please let me know; but if the grade is correct, unfortunately
I am unable to discuss it any further.

At my institution, the matter is dealt with easily. Begging does no good. An assessor is not permitted to change the grade. If the student thinks that they haven't been dealt with fairly, they can appeal ... a fact of which I'd ensure they were aware. Few do.
Ad hoc approaches to dealing with begging strike me as inherently unfair to almost everyone involved including to those students who did not beg, or did not phrase their begging in a suitably emotive way.

The assumption that students would hate you is not necessarily true. I know of students who laugh about examiners who give in to such requests. Such students may lose all respect if you do it. With those you'll have a better standing if you don't. Most students understand that grades are about the quality of the delivered work; the probability is not too low that this even holds for those who complain but "one can always try".

Grades are not a reward for doing the work. They're feedback on how well you learned the material. In particular, they let the students know whether they're ready to take courses for which this course is a prerequisite (and at the end, whether they're ready to do work in their field of study). If you inflate the grades, you're telling them that they're ready when they aren't, which isn't helpful.  If their poor performance was due to external factors, that's reason to be sympathetic, but it doesn't change how well they understand the material that was covered.
Of the excuses you listed, (3) (loss of funding due to low GPA) is the only excuse that is somewhat valid, since it doesn't do much good to know they need to retake a course if they can't afford to do so ("You don't know enough, therefore we will prevent you from learning more!"). In such a case, you might advise them to talk to the financial aid office to see what alternative sources of funding might be available. The options will vary from country to country, but it may be possible to take out student loans so as to finish their degree even if they lose a scholarship.

As was pointed out in one of the responses above, the last one is probably the LEAST valid of them all. If one's GPA is too low, it's the result of many low grades that were averaged into this GPA. I mean, that the student indeed has a low GPA and is facing loss of financial aid may well be true (although I've had students lying about that too), but it's NEVER just because of this one math course.

@zipirovich I consider it most valid entirely because of the consequences. The other excuses don't prevent them from retaking the course. Note that I don't suggest giving them a better grade in this or any class because of it, but rather that they should seek help from the financial aid office so they can retake the course.  For the other excuses, there's nothing currently stopping them from retaking the course, so the solution is to just do that.

@Ray If one faces financial loss due to their low GPA, and cannot retake the course, that's not on the teachers. It is the system working as intended, filtering out poorly performing students. All students have the same framework of rules, and this student would have had to study better and earn a higher mark and not lose the scholarship. As ziprovich said, GPA is an average. Their failure preventing them from retaking the course is on their hand, and not caused by a single teacher or a single course. So yeah, it's indeed the least valid excuse.

@Neinstein All of those statements are true, but I don't accept that your conclusion follows. My stance is that the goal of university is the acquisition of knowledge, and our decisions should be in support of that goal. If there are a limited amount of funds available, I'm fine with the scholarships going to the smart kids. But if there's a chance for them to get funding without taking it from someone else, which with loans, there is, then I want the dumb kids to have a chance to become smart kids by retaking courses until they understand the material. (continued...)

(...continued) I don't care if they performed poorly because they were anxious (who isn't?), because didn't study enough, or because they were depressed because they watched their parents get eaten alive by bears. All that matters is that they be given a chance to try to learn the material again if they want to. (Unless they cheated. Then I favor the firing squad, first offense.)  (continued...)

(...continued) We should never give them a grade that doesn't reflect their abilities for any reason, but if we can help them find a way to try again, we should do that. Not because it's our fault they failed or because it's our formal responsibility to point them to financial aid, but because it's a helpful thing to do and we're nice people who want the students to learn.

@Ray I somewhat agree with the spirit, but if there are limited funds availlable, the distribution of those funds have to be optimized. (Whether the funds are actually limited is a different topic.) Furthermore, my point was not whether to allow the child to retake the course or not, but that failing the scholarship requirements has nothing to do whatsoever with the course in question, and therefore should not influence the grade at all. The rules may be cruel, but when the student accepted the scholarship, they agreed to play by them. Failure is not on the hand of the professor.

@Ray To put it frankly - yes, a poor grade has consequences, they always had, and no, the consequences should not affect the grading, as they have nothing to do with the demonstrated knowledge at all.

@Neinstein Are we actually disagreeing on any points currently? You're saying the grade shouldn't change and we shouldn't let them keep the scholarship.  I'm saying that the grade shouldn't change and the student should get a loan to replace the scholarship after they lose it. (The loan then gives them the financial ability to retake the class.)  The only difference seems to be that I'm saying we should take a moment to point them to the financial aid/loan office after refusing to give them an incorrect grade.

As a professor for over 20 years, I want to point out an important issue.  If students are given power over your professional evaluations, you need to make an informed decision about your circumstances.  Is the stress worth the position that you have?  Usually, end of course evaluations are given 1) to appease the students and 2) as a means of getting rid of unwanted faculty.  There truly is no middle ground here.  My advice is to let the evaluations be "like water on a duck's back" where it simply rolls off.  It is much better to "schmooze" the decision makers as they are the end game in the first place!

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text:
up-to-date database of open access policies *and* publication fees?
Sherpa Romeo does a good job aggregating open access policies for a large number of academic journals. This lets me see what OA options (self-archiving of various kinds, full 'diamond' OA with fee, etc.) are available for a given journal. However, it doesn't include information about overall article processing charges (APCs)/OA fees for different routes (e.g., what are the page charges or OA fees for a given journal?)
The Eigenfactor index of Open Access fees has some information, but seems to be out of date.  The web page says it's "Powered by Eigenfactor.org and journalprices.com" but going to journalprices.com and clicking "get started" takes you to an old, slightly broken web page; the original Excel sheet can be retrieved from the Wayback machine, but was last modified in 2013.
Academic accelerator has some information: information seems uneven (is it crowd-sourced?), and the site looks sketchy/ad-heavy/ugly.
Obviously keeping such a database up to date would represent a lot of effort, but I'm curious what the best current set of resources is (an ideal version would have open access to the database and would allow easy comparison of journals within a (sub)field ...)

The DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) contains curated data about APCs, but only for open access journals.
Here is an example showing a journal without any charges ("Diamond OA") and one with APCs ("Gold OA"):


text:
Justifying the small size of a dataset due to collection difficulties
I'm working in an empirical field and have recently had a paper about a data collection effort and subsequent analysis thereof which was provisionally accepted, conditional on revisions. The negative remark most difficult to address is that the dataset I acquired was considered relatively small; How can I justify the small size of the dataset in a sound manner due to practical difficulties in acquiring data?
It is not possible for me to collect any more data in terms of money, manpower or even time... which all add up to more or less to "research capital". I have seen other datasets used which are not much bigger, but there are also corpora which are bigger by a significant margin. Likewise, some datasets are quite similar while others are completely unrelated to mine. Finally, while some corpora are freely available, for the majority of the papers in my field, it is quite rare for publications to explicitly state how one can acquire the data for their own purposes, and so the actual ability to even aquire data second-hand seems to be spotty.
Basically, I would need to reformulate the paragraph above into some form which I can put into the paper which needs revision; What can I do?

@Roland no, none of the reviewers rejected the paper, but there were many remarks about things I have to address. Most are not a problem, but this is the one which I really "can't do much about" except, as you recommended, to prove that at least the results for this specific study are significant. However, the paper was primarily about the dataset itself, so if it's not resuable then it's a huge black mark against it.

Could it be that the reviewer want you to acknowledge and discuss the problems of small sample size, i.e. that an underpowered study could result in overestimated effect sizes, and thus, a false positive?

@Mark yes, possibly-- I hadn't thought about that. The comments were not directives like "add exact p-values and describe how you defined confidence intervals" but rather actual "comments", e.g. "the dataset is quite small..."

@Roland yes, my point exactly: I've spoken with other people doing similar research and collecting data is extremely difficult, hence me hoping there was an academic way of "proving" this difficulty.

This answer will expand on some of the notes in the comments and OldDoc's answer. I would suggest three things:

In the data section, acknowledge that the sample size is relatively small. Note that this is in line with other published work addressing the question, and that data acquisition related to this question faces challenges A, B, C... Explain that the analysis and discussion will address the relatively small sample size.
In the analysis/results section, make sure to report the p-values and confidence intervals. The goal is to account for the small sample in the statistical analyses.
In the discussion, explain how having a small sample size affects the power of/your confidence in your results and the generalization of the conclusions. Help the reader understand in what ways a small sample is a limitation for your work without selling it short.

As has been said, a satistical analysis of your data set will clarify with how much confidence and accuracy you can  conclude your findings. This an essential part of the scentific process
In the natural sciences particularly, data collection can be problematic and limited by time and budget,  but the community are aware of this, as should be your reviewer.
All that is required is that you report your findings appropriately  even if you don't necessarily like the answer! In extreme circumstances you may have data sets that are so scant or varied you simply do need more work. It happens.
Science progresses with knowledge which includes less than optimal data,  as does helping those that come after you do better by explaining in your paper how you could improve your own approach.
I agree the reviewer is probably asking for this kind of analysis and not why you were unable to do as much work as you would have liked

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Is it ok as a junior PhD student to review ranked conference papers?
I am a Ph.D. student in computer science and still in my first year. My professor just assigned a review task of a A-ranked conference to me in order to review research papers submitted by original authors (almost 8 papers).
So far, he wants me to take over the coordination with my fellow Ph.D. colleagues in my department to finish this task asap. So I have to distribute the papers with the right colleague according to his/her research interest and experience.
But, since I am still in the first year (even I am doing well 'as my colleagues say' and published two research paper in peer-reviewed conferences), I want to ask if is it common and normal thing in academia to let junior researchers review high-quality A-ranked conferences research papers, and whether the conference editorial chairs know about this conduct from assigned committee members as external reviewers.

In my academic field of information systems, this would be fishy. But in computer science, where there are maybe at least 10 times as many researchers (and maybe 10 times as many article submissions), instititutional pressures might make this more acceptable, with professoral oversight on the final submitted reviews. I don't know; I'm speculating.

Yes, this is pretty normal. Many conferences even have a "sub-reviewer" field in the submission form where the professor can note which of their students actually did the review.
The professor should conduct some quality assurance however. In my previous group we had a meeting to talk over our reviews, in my current group the professor takes our comments and checks them over before submitting them himself.

Professors appointing PhD students as sub-reviewers is normal, indeed. The specifics of OP's situation sound a little extreme, though: 8 papers, first-year student, A conference.

I thought OP was given the task of distributing some of these 8 papers among their colleagues as well, not reviewing all 8 themselves? That would be a lot. OP has already published 2 papers, so I would assume that they have a decent grasp of the field even if it's still their first year.

I think you did not do a review from what I read in your question. you just classify the papers based on the reviewers' interest. However, there is no risk in your task because if you classify the paper incorrectly that mean you did not understand the topic so the reviewer will return it back for a second shot. Definitely, you will get benefit by helping your colleagues with the revision process.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
Decision Pending | Send a Reminder?
I am a 2nd year PhD student (starting my third year soon). For the past 7 months, I've been struggling with finding an appropriate journal for my (hopefully) first article. I had to deal with many journal desk-rejections, in which 90% of those were out-scope rejections. However, one journal suggested that we need to improve the paper. Of course, we followed the advice (+1 month on the same manuscript).
Now a journal has accepted to review our paper, and here are the status of the paper:

"Under review" 43 days
"Ready for Decision" 6 days
"Decision Pending" 13 Days

I don't know if I should send the Editorial Team a polite reminder, because I have read many similar threads that say I should wait a little longer and I know 43 days of review is fast, but considering my circumstances (the context that I've described earlier), I feel that I've wasted a lot of time on this one project.
Thank you for your suggestions.
Bests,

I think there is little reason to write. They haven't lost your paper behind a filing cabinet somewhere. They are likely busy, maybe due to the time of year or pending deadlines on publication of other issues. Having to respond will just add to their load.
It is frustrating, I know, when you have a lot riding on a paper, but there is no need to panic. You can and should both relax a bit and also work a bit more on your research.
Two weeks in the queue isn't very long, really. It may even be that a key person in the decision process is off on a late vacation.

On the other hand, once I was waiting for the editor to make a decision (the review came back from the referee 2 weeks before), and I wrote a short email asking if everything was fine (from my experience with that journal, it takes about a day to hear from the editor after the referees reply). My paper was accepted within a day. Short version : it depends on the journal, for some 2 weeks is a long time to reply, for other it might not be.

I know, I hope this frustration journey will end by accepting the paper as well, in that case, it totally worth it. Thank you for the feedback.

@Adam, based on what OP has described, I would not recommend sending a reminder before one month from "Decision pending". The article is unlikely to be accepted on the first round, and it's best for OP not to give the editor an early sense that they are impatient authors. In my field, I don't send any reminders until at least 3 months have passed since my submission (or resubmission); a 3-4 month delay is considered quite normal. (Yes, I know; it is terrible what we've come to expect as normal. :-( )

@Buffy of course it is to the OP to figure this out depending on his field and journal. In physics, at least in the journal I publish in, I usually get a reply after a few days. I understood *decision pending" as "we got all referees' reports", but I guess you're right that it could mean that the editor is pondering his reply for a few month (!). (I'm new to academia stack exchange, and I find it quite confusing that the field is usually not given, as the answers seems to depend quite a lot on the discipline. )

@Adam, it is always ok here to ask the OP for clarifications if needed before answering. Field of study and country are often not stated, but important. We are a worldwide community here. Welcome to the party.

Well Decision Pending in Elsevier means that "at least one editor has made a decision but no letter has yet been sent". So in my case, the editor has sent a recommendation to the Editor in Chief who should now make a decision. I do understand that editors are busy people, and these things simply take time due too many factors. But if the referees' report are there with a recommendation decision, and the authors know that's the case, then editors should expect after few days reminders from authors (especially from young researchers like me :)). I'll wait for two more weeks. Thank you.


text:
What is the most effective and efficient method of searching multiple journals for multiple keywords?
My goal is to find articles related to invasive species management on a monthly basis. I have a list of species for my region (i.e keywords) and a list of journals. Although I enjoy combing through new issues of each journal, I'm wondering if there is a more automated, and less time consuming method.
I've tried using Boolean operators in Google Scholar, but this limits the search to 2019 (not monthly) and isn't journal specific. I have also explored some programs (e.g. Stork), with limited results.
Any insight is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

In case the journals are indexed by PubMed ( biomedical literature) and you're not afraid to do a bit of programming, you might want to explore the tools proposed here. You can even download the full Medline database (see here) and search through it locally, in case that's more convenient.

As far as I know you can only limit Google Scholar searches by year, not by month. This might still be fine for a specific enough search, as you can just tell from a glance what's new or not*. To keep it specific, you might want to do several search queries for different keywords instead of chaining the keywords together using Boolean operators. What will really help you, however, is to use the source qualifier to limit results to a specific journal. You can also search in several specified journals using a query like

"invasive species management" OR "biological invasion" (source:"ecology letters" OR source:"ecological economics")

In case the journals you're interested in have names that overlap with other journals, see this question.
*If not, you could presumably automate the queries, and compare the results to a cached version from the previous run. Would certainly be more involved than just a search query though.

If you know on which website the journal is located:
"invasive species management" OR "biological invasion" + site:eprints.gla.ac.uk

To get exact result use + instead of OR: <keyword> + <keyword> + <source> OR <source>:
"invasive species management" + "biological invasion" + source:"ecology letters"

If you are okay with the programmatic approach, you can use Python and Google Scholar Organic Results API from SerpApi. Check out the playground.
It's a paid API with a free plan that bypasses blocks from Google and does all the hard lifting parts so the end-user only needs to think about what data to extract.
SerpApi also supports Ruby, Node.js, Go, PHP, Java, Dotnet, and Google Spreadsheets.
Code and example in the online IDE to extract data from all pages:
import os, json
from serpapi import GoogleSearch
from urllib.parse import urlsplit, parse_qsl

params = {
    # os.getenv(): https://docs.python.org/3/library/os.html#os.getenv
    "api_key": os.getenv("API_KEY"),  # Your Serpapi API key
    "engine": "google_scholar",       # search engine
    #  search query
    "q": '"invasive species management" OR "biological invasion" source:"ecology letters" OR source:"ecological economics"',
    "hl": "en",                       # language
    # "as_ylo": "2017",               # from 2017
    # "as_yhi": "2021",               # to 2021
    "start": "0"                      # first page
    }

search = GoogleSearch(params)         # where data extraction happens

organic_results_data = []

papers_is_present = True
while papers_is_present:
    results = search.get_dict()      # JSON -> Python dictionary

    print(f"Currently extracting page №{results.get('serpapi_pagination', {}).get('current')}..")

    for result in results["organic_results"]:
        position = result["position"]
        title = result["title"]
        publication_info_summary = result["publication_info"]["summary"]
        result_id = result["result_id"]
        link = result.get("link")
        result_type = result.get("type")
        snippet = result.get("snippet")

        organic_results_data.append({
            "page_number": results.get("serpapi_pagination", {}).get("current"),
            "position": position + 1,
            "result_type": result_type,
            "title": title,
            "link": link,
            "result_id": result_id,
            "publication_info_summary": publication_info_summary,
            "snippet": snippet,
            })

        if "next" in results.get("serpapi_pagination", {}):
            search.params_dict.update(dict(parse_qsl(urlsplit(results["serpapi_pagination"]["next"]).query)))
        else:
            papers_is_present = False

print(json.dumps(organic_results_data, indent=2, ensure_ascii=False))

Output:
[
  {
    "page_number": 1,
    "position": 1,
    "result_type": null,
    "title": "Evidence of climatic niche shift during biological invasion",
    "link": "https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1461-0248.2007.01060.x",
    "result_id": "UXttzv_h5ScJ",
    "publication_info_summary": "O Broennimann, UA Treier, H Müller‐Schärer… - Ecology …, 2007 - Wiley Online Library",
    "snippet": "… Our results report, for the first time, a climatic niche shift during biological invasion, and thus support the hypothesis that species can spread into new habitats never been used before by …"
  }, ... other results
  {
    "page_number": 15,
    "position": 10,
    "result_type": null,
    "title": "Forest-attacking invasive species and infant health: evidence from the invasive emerald ash borer",
    "link": "https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800918300314",
    "result_id": "yQkNkX9CTXsJ",
    "publication_info_summary": "BA Jones - Ecological Economics, 2018 - Elsevier",
    "snippet": "… This research could also be admissible evidence into benefit-cost analyses of invasive species management decisions, where the indirect health costs of degradations to environmental …"
  }
]

Disclaimer, I work for SerpApi.


text:
Should I correct a mistake for the camera-ready version even though the reviewers missed that mistake?
So the mistake is not a major bug, the contributions of the paper remain the same, but still, I feel it was a silly statistical error. Can I correct it, even if the reviewers missed catching it?

That depends on the exact nature of the mistake. When it's "not a major bug" what is it, exactly? In my view, every word below depends on that exposition. I see "bugs", here, as obvious typographical errors. Do you see this instance as something else?

Yes, you should if you can. Presumably the reviewers are not the last people who will be reading  the text.

The sooner corrections are made the better.

While the answer by markvs already tells you the right course of action, I think the following addendum is important:
The phrase "even if the reviewers missed catching it" indicates that you might have an inaccurate impression of the peer review process and should maybe change your perspective on it:

As an important part of scientific quality ensurance, peer review serves several purposes. One purpose is to decrease the probability that a published paper contains errors. It is not a guarantee that a published paper does not contain any errors.

It is not among the purposes of peer review to partially relieve the authors of their responsibility for the correctness of their results. If your readers find a mistake in your paper, they will blame you for it, not the reviewers.

Given these two points, it is clear that you should take all necessary measures to make your paper as correct as you possibly can, also if the reviewers overlooked a mistake.
Important note. If you make non-trivial changes after the completion of the peer review process, I strongly recommend to inform the handling editor of these changes - the editor then has the opportunity to approve (or, sometimes maybe, disapprove) the changes; and if they think that the changes are also in need of peer review, they then also have the opportunity to send the revised file to the reviewers once again. (EDIT: As pointed out by Danica in a comment, in some fields and for some publication venues this last paragraph does not apply.)

This! You should be clear that if there is a mistake in the paper, that is your mistake. It's your paper, your mistakes, everything in the paper is yours. Everything. Everyone else just "helps" you and may set a minimum quality standard to allow you publication, but it's up to you - and attributed to you - to publish great or bad stuff.
One point to maybe add: make sure to record the change in a changelog, mention it somewhere.

Or perhaps the impression was that it might not be OK to change a reviewed paper, because that would mean publishing something that has not fully been reviewed (pedantic, but technically true). If so, the question is asking whether changing it is "allowed" despite this. (yes, and encouraged even)

@Mayou36: Thanks for your comment! Yes, indeed, I should have added that one should mention post peer review changes (if they are not trivial, such as typos or small language issues) to the handling editor. I edited my answer to include this.

@tjalling: Yes, that might also be an intended meaning of the question. The last paragraph that I now added hopefully clarifies for the OP what they can do to ensure that the changes are allowed.

For [tag:conference] publications, at least in CS, it is usually the case that there is not a way to communicate with the "handling editor" after acceptance (generally called an "area chair" or "meta-reviewer" in my area), and there is absolutely no expectation that one do so. In the case of extremely-major changes, you should perhaps communicate with the program chairs. For relatively small changes (even on the scale of, say, swapping out a nontrivial section of a proof), this is not needed, and you should just do your very best to ensure that your correction is itself correct.

The last paragraph is important: Don't dismiss the possibility of your "fix" being erroneous itself. Maybe your fix makes the paper worse, so you should definitely inform and make sure it is approved.

@Jochen Glueck Don't you think far from "that might also be an intended meaning of the question…" it was at least the main, if not the only point?
I think the way you explained what "even if the reviewers missed catching it" meant, indicates it's you, not def anonymous, who might have an inaccurate impression of the peer review process and should maybe change your perspective on it.

@Falco Other than suggesting that all of us should always think twice, how was "The last paragraph is important: Don't dismiss the possibility of your "fix" being erroneous itself. Maybe your fix makes the paper worse, so you should definitely inform and make sure it is approved" helpful? Would you mind explaining what "camera ready" means to you, or how anything else could matter; preferably both?

@Danica: Thanks a lot for your comment! I included a remark at the end where your point is now mentioned.

@RobbieGoodwin: Sorry, I'm not sure I understand your point. Could you clarify with which part of my perspective on the peer review process you disagree?

@JochenGlueck Don't you think far from a potential "intended meaning of the question…" it was at least the main, and prolly the only point? Can you follow that much?

@RobbieGoodwin: Yes, I understood from the first sentence of your comment that you interpreted the question differently than I did. What I do not (yet) understand is the second sentence of your (first) comment.

@JochenGlueck If you haven't time to cite the second sentence of my first comment, why expect me to look it up? It's good that you see you interpreted the question differently, and would you like to build something useful on that, or try to make it into an argument or what?

@RobbieGoodwin: I am not interested in an argument, I am interested in understanding your point. You wrote "[...] indicates it's you, not def anonymous, who might have an inaccurate impression of the peer review process and should maybe change your perspective on it." As I said before: Could you clarify with which part of my perspective on the peer review process you disagree?

@RobbieGoodwin I suggest you should not change something on the paper without letting at least a second pair of eyes see and vet your change. In the review process the reviewers should be informed about your change and have a chance to review it as well (no matter how sure you are by yourself your fix is making the paper better)

@Jochen Glueck We’re being called to account for extended discussion, so this is my last Post here, apart from the Question all of us should have Asked at the top.
As before, what interest d’you think peer-reviewers have in camera readiness?
Markvs was correct but your addendum seemed to confuse the roles of peer reviewer and copy editor, as witness that odd "even if the reviewers missed catching it"
More…

Further… Of course the editor’s job is to disapprove changes, or refer again to the reviewers… and the point of camera-readiness is that this Question is either past the stage you’re thinking of or so obscure, there’s prolly no hope.
Did you not notice, the idea that one purpose of peer review is to decrease the probability of errors is almost a direct contradiction of how it’s not to partially relieve authors of responsibility?
More…

Further… Who would not take all measures to make a paper correct? Crucially, what use had “also if the reviewers overlooked a mistake…” if not to say that the author should sometimes proceed alone with a late correction?
Important note: before any slightest change at any stage, I insist the editor be consulted, doubly so if an author who’s already reached camera-readiness needs the duties of an editor explaining.

It is your responsibility to ensure that the text is correct.
It is not the responsibility of the reviewers.  The reviewers only act as gatekeepers to offer an expert opinion and state that the paper looks to be correct and interesting.  They will not check every detail (necessarily) and will likely not see small mistakes and errors.

The Question isn't really clear but if, from another perspective, you're Asking whether the fact that there are reviewers absolves you of responsibility for accuracy then no; of course it never could.
When I worked in publishing everyone, at every level, knew that if anyone - specifically including the telephone sanitisers - questioned anything, the correct procedure was to amend the wording of that thing.
Of course right there and then, I could give the sanitiser an explanation, and so what?
What explanation could I give to 50-100,000 readers, after publication?

Sorry but this does not answer the question from an academic perspective, and it clearly misrepresents the role of the reviewers.

@Massimo. Sorry but if that's your view then you have no idea either what publishing involves, or what the role of reviewers is. If you don't follow that, look above mine at Tom's Answer.

I think your first paragraph technically offers an answer to the question, even if it adds nothing to Tom's answer (so, I will decline the "not an answer" flags). That said: I found the remaining three paragraphs very hard to follow. Moreover: I think there may be some confusion about the distinction between academic reviewers and other types of publishing (e.g., for undergraduate textbooks) -- proofreaders in the latter may indeed spend months polishing every word, but reviewers for the former do not tend to do much polishing at all.

@cag51 The Question still isn't clear and if you looked at it in other ways, could you still see no difference between conceptual problems and simple factual errors?
Don't you see that the mention of "camera-ready" moves the Question outside the range of review, or any responsibility of reviewers, and despite your experience, should show it it to be about publishing in general, not in any way specific to academia?
Try it, why not?

Sorry, I don't understand. This is the academia site, so all questions (and answers) are assumed to be about academia; otherwise, they would be off-topic (for questions) or non-responsive (for answers). Further, if one feels that the question is not clear, we should seek clarification in the comments rather than posting answers (in any case, this question mentions "papers" not "books"). As for the substantive issues: I'm not sure that we're understanding one another, but that's okay, we don't need to agree. Cheers!

@cag51 To put it another way, what possible interest could reviewers have in camera-ready anything?


text:
I'm publishing a paper without an affiliation and cannot afford article processing charges. Suggestions?
I am a retired scientist looking to publish a viewpoint/review article on radiation and cancer. I do not have an affiliation (university or industry) and cannot afford high article processing fees charged by most journals. I would be grateful for suggestions on any journals that are likely to fit my needs. The journal does not have to be open access.

Many journals offer the option to request waiving publication fees. Ask the editor.

Would the department you retired from be willing to pitch in?

@Azhor Ahai, no it has been many years since I retired. The department will not be interested.

I would check the author information for journals you might consider publishing in. Things have changed over the last decade or so, partly because of open access, partly because of the switch to mostly on-line access (cheaper than actually printing and sending issues). As two examples,
Physical Review:

APCs are waived for authors from developing countries that APS offers free online access to

(APC = applicable publication charges, APS = American Physical Society).
Applied Physics Letters:

AIP Publishing does not require page or color charges for Applied Physics Letters.

(AIP = American Institute of Physics).
So, review the author information and see who is doing what these days. Furthermore, you could consider directly asking the editor if they would waive any applicable fees for you, given that you are retired and not supported by a department or grants.

thank you. It's been a while since I published, and was wondering what my chances are for a good journal that will look kindly upon an author without an affiliation AND who cannot afford APCs!

I don't think most journals care whether someone has/doesn't have an affiliation. The quality of the paper matters.

@WolfgangBangerth - indeed, the affiliation really doesn't matter, department support ($$$ for reprints) is the bigger stumbling block it would seem.

That's good to hear (affiliation doesn't matter). I have enough expertise to write well. I guess it's a matter of finding a fitting journal then. Thank you.

There are also pre-print Servers now like BioRxiv, MedRxiv or even only aRxiv. Given, those are not journals per-se, however, if you just would like to put your paper out this could also be a good place to start. Usually this still allows publishing the paper in a journal later as well, however some journals (especially in the Biological/Medical Sciences) still have policies which do not allow preprints, so keep this in mind if you feel this would be a viable option for you.