text:
Registering for a math conference with no publication record in this field
I’m pretty sure that I’ve solved a certain open problem in mathematics. My solution is currently in its third week of peer-review at some journal that is known for rejecting cranky papers within five days of submission.
I’m currently searching for the next relevant conferences where I can present my paper. The thing is I’m not yet a famous person in the math community, hence it might not be easy to convince the conference organisers. Can someone kindly advice me on how I can go about it?

Could you make your question more specific? What would you like to know about this process? As it is, I would simply answer "There's no need to do anything special, just submit your abstract, and keep fingers crossed."

Also, if you managed to convince an editor and two referees that you are not a complete crank, you have good chances to convince the conference organizers, too. In math, conferences do not automatically produce publications, and on average they are not as selective as in many other fields.

Do you have connections in the mathematics community at all?  Do you have a successful publication record?  Are you affiliated with an academic institution or other established research organization?  These are not necessary, but if they apply to you, an answer could discuss how to take advantage of them.

Why not just put up your manuscript on ArXiv and email it to specific experts. If the proof you have is solving an important open problem as you say, it's bound to get traction.

@FunIsMath. Please don't put your words into the OP's mouth. If you're the OP, please merge your two accounts. Please read Merge accounts.

I think in recent years poster sessions have also become more common. This might be an option if you do not get a talk. A poster might not get you the same size of audience, but you are more likely to get into a direct conversation with people who are actually interested, which might be beneficial if you want to continue working on similar topics. But do try to spend some time designing a nice poster and preparing a short pitch, like you would spend time on preparing a talk. Some people just pin a printout of the paper on the wall and wonder why no one wants to talk with them...

Does your next step have to be presenting at a conference? An alternative: there are probably several experienced experts who would be interested in your paper and discussing with you. Likely they could give advice and if they think it's ready, pull strings to help you get a talk.

I’ll assume the open problem you solved is in pure mathematics. What you should know is that in most areas of pure mathematics, conferences do not have a formal paper submission mechanism, nor do they publish a proceedings volume as they typically do in other areas. One does not go to a conference to “present a paper” but rather one will get invited to “give a talk”, whose contents may be somewhat correlated with the contents of one’s most recent paper, but could also be about a less recent paper or about a still unfinished work, or some combination of such things; that’s entirely up to the speaker.
My suggestion is that you try to find a conference in an area of math related to the open problem.  Once you find one, you’ll have the option to register to attend (not to give a talk, which is by invitation only). Except for very large events, there is usually no registration fee, and although they may ask about your affiliation, it’s likely that most conferences will not use that as a basis for deciding whether to let you register, so don’t worry too much if you don’t work at a university.
Now, as I said in order to give a talk you’ll need to be invited to speak by the organizers. They usually select speakers with a proven record of publishing interesting results in the field of the conference. But one thing you could do is email them in parallel with registering, tell them about your paper with the solution of the open problem and ask if you could give a talk about it. I don’t think your chances are too high, but it’s worth a try. Your chances will be higher if your paper is available to download online from a place like arXiv, and if it’s written in a professional way that makes it clear it comes from a mathematician with a good level of experience and formal training. If you don’t want to make your paper publicly available just yet, you can send it to the organizers directly, but it will likely be viewed with suspicion and lower your chances of being invited to speak. (And if you don’t make the paper viewable at all, no one will take you seriously and the chances are essentially zero.)
Even if you are not invited to give a talk at the conference you found, it may still be a good idea to attend it, since there you will have a chance to talk to experts informally, tell them about your solution and get some valuable feedback about your approach.
Good luck!

If you do attend, you should work out and rehearse an elevator pitch. It should convey, in minimal time, what problem you are working on, and the key ideas that make your approach to it successful and different from previous failed attempts.

Depending on the topic of the paper, there are certainly conferences which support contributed talks, which require no invitation and do require some sort of application.

If your solution falls in the domain of applied math, the answer above applies except that you can submit a talk to the conference; you don't have to be invited.

@PatriciaShanahan, for solving an open problem, the elevator pitch pretty much writes itself: "I've got an elegant proof of Fermat's Last Theorem".

@Mark I think the goal is to have a pitch that doesn't result in the other person thinking, "Oh god, I'm stuck in an elevator with a crank."

@Mark That pitch misses the really important, but difficult, part. It is essential to explain, clearly but succinctly, why the OP's approach works, and how it differs from failed attempts. The objective is to get an expert to want to hear more, not to have them walk away as soon as they can.

@Mark "I've got an elegant proof of Fermat's Last Theorem"...but this elevator ride is too short to describe it.

"My solution is currently in its third week of peer-review at some journal that is known for rejecting cranky papers within 5 days of submission"...
There is a lot of space between "cranky" and "acceptable right away"...not all papers that are not acceptable are cranky and not all papers that are not cranky, are acceptable.
The peer review outcome is not just about acceptance, but what you get is a good, professional feedback on your work, which could be very helpful. (No where else you will get this kind of feedback, certainly not for a conference talk).
Mathematics, especially at research level, should best be communicated, via well written papers than giving a talk. Talk only happens when your work is accepted after a peer review and it stood some test of time, and also has been read by people who are attending the talk. Otherwise you will probably be wasting valuable time of the audience of the talk.
So advice is : Wait for peer review report.
PS : I have not given any special consideration for the fact that the paper is about a famous problem. My answer is for all cases and not just about open problems.

+! For Wait for peer review report. To the OP, what's the point to present your solution to the open problem to a conference if solution is wrong? A problem is an open problem for reasons. The peer review report can convince people that your solution is for real. Then, and it is only then, you present it to the math community. Before then, what you can do is to upload it to arXiv and then wait for the peer review report.

Talk only happens when work is accepted after peer review?  Tell that to all the "preliminary report" talks in AMS abstracts e.g. click on a few abstracts at https://www.ams.org/meetings/sectional/2259_progfull.html ... naturally in this special case waiting for peer review might be helpful to avoid egg on the face.  But people give talks before being publication-ready all the time in math.

@kcrisman : They belong to two categories, 1. Applied Math with experimental results (for this its generally safe to give talk pre-publication, but post experimentation) 2. The cases where the authors have already published and established, and now they are talking about pre-published work on  improving the results incrementally (like for example, improving estimates, getting tighter bounds, or proving consequential theorems) . It would make sense only in rarest of the rare cases, to give a  talk without publication, about something that you have pulled out of the blue, from nowhere!

I suppose that may be your experience, and I don't have experience with 1., but all I can say is that this is not my experience in pure mathematics.  In fact I think it is fairly typical for people extending other researchers' work, e.g. graduate students.

...it could embarass the audience, whether correct or wrong

Plus (and this is an important point) mathematics publishing is very slow by other scientific standards.  So to wait for publication would be pretty crippling!

Re: embarrass, of course that is the case, but here we are talking about the OP's situation, which is highly unusual.  In a normal case it would be someone giving a few examples and some lemmas (all of which the speaker is confident about) toward a more general theory (which the speaker isn't yet confident about).  Not enough to publish, but enough to give a talk about in a small session with a dozen or two people in the same field, likely students of the same three advisors, who know each other.  I don't think anyone is suggesting a plenary session at the ICM here.

@kcrisman FWIW my experience (in pure maths) is a lot closer to what Rajesh has described, but I admit that I have no experience of AMS sectional meetings

The other answers already cover several issues.
One that has not been mentioned is that it would be slightly weird for someone who has never attended a math conference to give a talk. With few exceptions, people give their first talk after having attended many talks at their own university and at some conferences; and for their first talk they get significant help from their advisor and other PhD. students.
Also, it would be very unusual to present mathematical work that you have never discussed with any other mathematician, at least informally.
Without the above, I find it unlikely that you can give an engaging talk. I would suggest that you wait on two things:

Wait for the referee report, to see what objections/issues/praise come back
Try to engage with experts informally, before standing in front of an audience to convey your ideas.
Try to attend talks/conferences in related topics to your work, to get acquainted with the people, the results, the presentation style.

I disagree, at least with respect to applied math.  I gave a talk at the first math conference I attended and so did many people I know.  I do agree that you should practice by giving a presentation to your advisor or research group beforehand.

If you had an advisor or a research group, you had at least attended many seminars. And you likely got advice on your presentation.

Yes, definitely.  I was disagreeing with your second sentence.

I disagree in principle.  If the OP has no experience giving technical talks, well, that is one thing.  How else is one supposed to get experience?  I do agree that it might be unwise to give a technical talk in a special session of a conference in that scenario, but I have definitely seen reasonable talks given by non-mathematicians in more general sessions.

I also disagree. You are assuming that OP’s goal is to give an “engaging” talk, but that’s hardly the point. I’ve seen famous, experienced mathematicians give talks about theirs solutions to important open problems, that were far less than engaging in their delivery. Did anybody in the audience care? No, we were very impressed anyway.

This question is vague and has some loaded terminology ("not yet a famous person"?), but the question overall is good, so I will answer a closely related question, which is:

Where is a good place to present new mathematical results if I am unknown to the broader mathematical community?

I'll write about the US context, since that is what I know about.
In that context, I'm surprised that no one has suggested simply registering for the next AMS Sectional Meeting near you and submitting an abstract for the general contributed paper session.  While it is not super likely that an "expert" in the result will attend your talk, it is a good chance to give a (short!) talk about your result in a low-stress environment.  And the Sectionals are pretty cheap.  My view is that simply gaining experience giving a concise talk is more valuable than trying to get big press for something.  The publication, should things work out, would be how to get cognoscenti to pay attention.  But writing a good paper and giving a good talk are quite different skills.
If you are fortunate and your area is one of several that often have people outside of "professional mathematics" contribute, you could also submit an abstract to one of their sessions at a Sectional (or the Joint Meetings), though here there is not always room.  But there are certainly some subfields, especially some interdisciplinary ones, that encourage these submissions.  Be aware that here the issues raised in the other answers will definitely come into play if it is clear you aren't fairly immersed in the literature.
Finally, in some areas (especially of "recreational math") the Math Association of America meetings will have sessions that are more research-focused and open to newcomers.
If you are not based in North America, I'm less sure whether there are similar events.  Perhaps there might be joint meetings between 'advanced-high-school' and 'beginning postsecondary' studies folks?  In any event, I would recommend the local equivalent of a regional conference that has at least one 'no-rules' generalist session and costs less than the PPP equivalent of $100 to attend.

Naturally, it's always caveat lector when it comes to "solving famous problems", so one has to be careful in the situation posed by the poster.  Don't present a solution to the Goldbach Conjecture publicly without having someone who knows what they are doing vet it!  Instead, give a talk about the GC and its history, and then in the second five minutes (yes, it could be that short) say, "here is a new approach that shows promise".  Maybe someone in the talk will point out an obvious error.  Or maybe it will turn out it really is a promising new approach.  Or maybe you already solved it.  But you won't have claimed to prove the GC and then have to retreat.

+1 for the last part. I think it's very unlikely that anyone could present a solution to any reasonably interesting unsolved problem in 10 or 15 minutes --- the eyes of all but two or three true experts on the topic will glaze over if too much technical detail is presented (and those experts likely might skip the talk anyway, thinking it's not worth their time), and I don't see how those watching are going to notice errors unless the errors are so glaring that the talk never should have happened. A talk comes AFTER the result has been mostly vetted, and would be an overview of the approach.

I'm still mystified by how many people think a talk comes after a result is mostly refereed (in math).  I've seen plenty of talks where people are pretty open about "here are some partial results, and I think the following argument works but it's not ready for publication yet".  But yes, if the OP is really doing as claimed, it's quite unlikely that any experts at all will be there wherever a first talk is given; the goal would be to get enough experience to give a good talk once said experts recognize the validity of the approach (again, assuming said proof is more or less correct).

@kcrisman I think this depends a lot on the area of math(s) and the mathematical generation involved. In the conferences I go to, talks have mostly been on work that is either submitted or accepted for publication, but I acknowledge you do get talks of the form you describe, and I have perpetrated some of those myself :)

How would your answer translate to someone who isn't based in the USA, who doesn't have funds to travel, etc?

I'm still mystified by how many people think a talk comes after a result is mostly refereed (in math). --- I don't know whether this is thought of by a lot of people, but I've certainly heard many talks and have read even more talk abstracts that were well in advance of formal paper refereeing. I tried to soften my language by using "mostly vetted", but even that sounds a bit too strong when I look at it the next day, especially since the phrase was applied to "the result" rather than "the approach". Perhaps better stated, my point is that surely if the result is more than (continued)

an epsilon-tweaking of a known result that someone conjectured in a paper (thus making it an "open problem" I suppose), then there would have been some discussion with others about aspects of it (normally I'm thinking of office conversations, but when outside of academia (as I am, incidentally), then by email), such as asking whether anyone has tried XYZ approach or what do you think of my PQR argument, which proves the delta = 0 special case but involves a questionable limit interchange when applied to the neighborhood of 0 case I want, or something if the result is remotely significant.

Yes, that is true about discussions.  I will say that I have known of instances where the fear of impostor syndrome kept people from even those "easy" interactions.  I don't have an answer for that; maybe it seems easier emotionally to give a talk about something and hope someone comes than to cold-call (cold-email?) someone who seems very eminent.  And I will admit that occasionally such eminent people are not very nice about such things, though in general I find them to be quite welcoming.

@DavidRicherby good point, I forget this because so many of the questions I read seem to have that implicit assumption.  If I edit my response appropriately, hopefully you can rescind that :)

@YemonChoi well that is a harder question (funds), but it is somewhat orthogonal because that would apply whether or not other people knew about your result; going to conferences is always expensive.  An advantage to the AMS Sectional system is that you are usually within driving distance of one within a year or two; an MAA Section Meeting would be even closer.  I do not know whether there is something analogous in other countries.

From your post, I'm assuming you are not affiliated with a university.  I wouldn't read to much into how long accept/reject takes.  Conferences change this process year to year based on feedback and how busy the editor is.
Here is the process your paper will go through
1) The editor will quickly review it (maybe) before sending it on to reviewers.
2) There will be several reviewers (5 seems to be a popular number).  Each reviewer will give it a rating that will map to Reject/Accept with revisions/Accept.
3) You'll be informed of the decision at some point in the future.
Now to your question...

The thing is i'm not yet a famous person in the math community, hence it might not be easy to convince the conference organisers.

Lots of non-famous mathematicians publish regularly.  I'm not sure what being famous has to do with it.  You'll convince organizers of the paper's worthiness for inclusion by doing a rigorous proof and explaining your ideas clearly.
From your post, I'm guessing you're not affiliated with a research institute or university.  This puts you at a serious disadvantage for several reasons.
1) You don't know the current state of the art in the field.  Math has several sub-fields.  In order to get published, you'll need to know which conferences cater to each sub field.
2) A university has faculty to guide your work and lots of great resources from classes you can audit to undergraduates you can hire for pay or grade to do grunt work.
3) Independent researchers don't have the best track record.  "Famous" physicists/mathematicians regularly get contacted with some pretty wild (and wrong) ideas.  This has happened enough there is a Crackpot Index online to help rate unsolicited papers.

Most conferences in pure math don’t have any paper submission mechanism like the one you’re describing. Your answer would apply for certain areas of applied math, and for computer science and lots of other disciplines of course, and for a very small number of pure math conferences. I’ve posted an answer covering the scenario of the typical pure math conference.

From my experience this answer does neither fit to practices in pure mathematics and applied mathematics.

"There will be several reviewers (5 seems to be a popular number)" I'd say two or three is normal; more than three would be surprising. And this isn't how mathematics conferences work, anyway. "A university has faculty to guide your work and lots of great resources from classes you can audit to undergraduates you can hire for pay or grade to do grunt work." That has nothing to do with writing papers in mathematics.

In pure mathematics I have never seen more than two reports and most of the time it seems to be one report only.

Try submitting your paper to a preprint site like arXiv.
Solicit comments, preferably from experts of the field.
Try to email some known professor working is currently active in the area of the problem. Note that most mathematicians regularly receive dozens of irretrievably flawed papers claiming to be proving some famous problem like the RH, Goldbach, FLT etc. It is your duty to convince this mathematician that your case is different. Chances are high that you're not going to receive any response, but this shouldn't discourage you.
You might be finding it difficult to find endorsement for posting on arXiv. If so, then your very last option would probably to post on viXra. This is a site where anyone can post anything, so you're not likely going to gain much by posting there.

Note that my answer is suggesting that you strive to make your paper get public attention (by posting on public sites like arXiv and viXra, especially the former). If you do succeed in getting the attention, then probably it's the conference organisers that would be looking for you!
Anyway, good luck, it would be nice if you let us know the result of the review process!

I'd say that posting to Vixra is actively harmful. The quality there is so low that people are very likely to say, "Oh, it's on Vixra. It's garbage." without even looking at the text.


text:
Official Transcripts From Indian University
Most of the US graduate programs I'm applying to require official transcripts sent in a sealed envelope from the issuing university itself and not by the candidate. I visited my registrar office and they are willing to provide sealed envelopes containing official transcripts to me but they do not post these envelopes on their own. Will the US universities accept the envelope sent by the candidate instead by the university address?
I have written to the concerned office/graduate officer in the universities, but I think due to Thanksgiving, I have not yet received a response. Also they get thousands of emails so I’m not sure how soon I will get a response from them.
And timing is crucial because my university is in different state altogether which is a day’s journey from my place by train. And Indian universities don’t do well with telephonic or email support, so things have to be tackled in person. Apart from the cost issues.

How would the US University work out the sender identity? Go ahead please.

In India, The sender's information is mentioned on the envelope so the receiver knows from where the post has arrived. Hence the dilemma of sending sealed envelope on your own or through one's Alma Mater.

I'm in the US, graduated from US university. I've personally send sealed transcripts. If they don't do this normally, ask the university to use an official stamp and place it across the seal of the envelope. That provides proof that the transcript hasn't been tampered with.
This link to a PDF from University of Rhode Island shows several examples of properly sealed transcripts.

You have to do it yourself. I have faced the same issue with UPTU where they just provided me with sealed transcript and I had to post them by Fedex

During applications, US graduate programs generally make do with unofficial transcripts - you don't need to fedex them, just upload a scanned pdf. Check out if that is the case.
However, once you're admitted, you need to verify credentials. Generally universities do electronic verification. Many Indian universities  provide that, for example: https://academics.iitd.ac.in/content/transcripts-degree-verification
You can also contact the graduate admissions office of your target university, for example: https://grad.illinois.edu/units, they're generally helpful, more so on calls than email.

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text:
My collaborator has asked to be only acknowledged in a paper. Should I make him a co-author?
I am writing a paper in mathematics. It relies heavily on a result from a different topic that I phrased, felt that it should be true, but I did not know how to prove that result. I asked someone who works on this different topic to help me with the proof, and he has found a proof for the desired result. Let’s call him Bob.
I would like to thank this person and ask him if he wants to:

be a co-author in the paper,
just be acknowledged in the paper:

The author wishes to thank Bob for generously allowing him to use his proof of [result].

At the beginning of the proof of the result it will be mentioned that:

The proof is due to Bob.

Bob says that he would be happy to be acknowledged and does not think that he should be a co-author (unless he can further contribute to the paper). He also mentions that he is not working on my topic and hence not enough familiar with what the paper deals with.
My question is: Which of the two options (1 or 2) should be chosen?
It should be emphasized that the result I have been helped with is critical for the existence of the paper. Moreover, is it okay to submit the paper to a journal as a single author, and ask the editor to have the opinion of the referees on whether Bob should be a co-author or not?
I read Should all authors on a paper be comfortable explaining every aspect of the paper?, I guess that there are differences between mathematics and other topics, aren't they? For example, in brain research people from different topics collaborate and we do not expect that one will understand what exactly the other did, but in a math paper I would expect that every author will understand what his friend did. Or perhaps I am wrong?

@Wrzlpmft, thank you for your beneficial edit.

The answer depends on how firmly Y has declined authorship.  I don't think it's appropriate to ask the referees to decide on authorship.

You cannot list Y as an author without his consent.  If he has firmly refused to be an author, that is the end of it.
If Y has simply indicated that acknowledgment is a sufficient form of credit, but left the door open to being an author then it's up to you.  I have responded in this way sometimes when I felt my contribution was sufficient for authorship but I didn't want to step on anybody's toes.  I try to err on the side of being generous with credit, so I would say to him

"I feel that your contribution warrants authorship.  Are you willing to be listed as an author?"

If he still says no, then just acknowledge him.  You can include the statement of how critical his part was in the acknowledgment.
In the comments, there is a suggestion to state in the paper that Y has declined authorship.  I don't think this is wise; it needlessly draws attention and may make people speculate as to why.  If I were Y I would not want that statement in the paper.

Thank you for your answer. I will again discuss co-authorship with him. Perhaps the decision of being a co-author or not, strongly depends on the level of the proof of result R. Since result R is in topic S, which I am not enough familiar with, I do not know what the level of the proof is. Anyway, I will leave the decision of being a co-author or not to him.

@NicHartley, thanks for your comment; I will consider what you have suggested, though I am not promising that eventually I will add that line. I guess that there are two main reasons why Y declined co-authorship: (1) Perhaps his contribution is not enough; his contribution may not be trivial for me, but trivial for researches in topic S. (2) It seems that his main area of research is not mathematics (although he seems good at it), so it is not so important for him to publish a math paper.

Of course there may exist other/additional reasons: (3) He is afraid that my paper contains errors and does not like that his name will appear on such a paper. (4) He is just a very generous person.

@NicHartley, ok, thanks for the clarification. (As I commented above, I will consider adding the line you suggested).

I would consider adding "Y has declined co-authorship" in some form — I think this is a bad idea, because it risks suggesting to the reader that Y thinks the paper is bad.

No.  Indeed a co-author could have provided invaluable input with a single insight/subresult to the paper or a part of the paper.  I don’t think an editor can evaluate the contribution of any co-author.
If both of you feel the contribution is enough (and novel) then your other party should be a co-author.

Thanks for your answer. The insight was mine, but most of the proof of that insight was his (I was too lazy to try to complete the proof myself, so asked for help, and he proved it). Anyway, I will later (after my paper will be ready) again discuss this with Y.

(I did not mean that the editor will evaluate the contribution of Y; I meant that the referees will)

@user237522 from your comments this person should definitely be co-author.

Could you please be more specific? Which comments exactly? (I agree that I feel that he should be a co-author. It is my problem that I was too lazy to complete the proof myself).

@user237522   Actually proving a result, even if the proof is guided or dependent from someone else’s insight, is IMO sufficient to be granted co-author status, unless the proof is quite trivial (undergraduate level).   If really the proof was that trivial to complete, you would likely have done this yourself irrespective of your degree of laziness.

I almost have not thought how to prove it myself. He very quickly sent me his proof. However, it is 'my fault' that I have asked him how to prove my insight and not tried to prove it myself. I do not claim that the proof is trivial (maybe it is quite easy for someone working on topic S). Anyway, I do not mind that he will be a co-author. (Please, what is IMO?).

It really depends on the relationship of the two people. If its student prof the person may want his student to have the recognition. He may just be humble. It wouldn't be too disrespectful to add him as either but definitely add him as one.

Disagree that it wouldn't be too disrespectful to add him as either. If he has not explicitly given permission to be included as a co-author, then it would be very disrespectful to include his name on the author list (there might be reasons for it you don't know about), and you are likely in breach of journal guidelines when you submit the paper and tick the box that all co-authors agree to the submission of the paper, etc.

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text:
Which is the better scheme for a poster: “tell a story” or “important first”?
In an attempt to make a poster of my work, I search for tips on the internet and books and I meet two opinions that conflict with each other:
Tell a story:

Why do we choose this (Objective)
How do we do? (Experiment, simulation, etc)
What do we find? (Result/Conclusion)
What can we do more? (Future work)
Reference

Important first:

Result/Conclusion
Objective
Experiment, simulation, etc
Future work
Reference

In my opinion, I will choose tell a story if the audience is not in my field, and important first if the audience has a good knowledge on what I do. But I am still confused if this is right. And should I apply this to my paper work?

This is probably field-dependant, and if this poster is for a conferance, chances are that they have guidelines to follow. It is also a matter of opinion. What does your advisor say?

Well, my adviser also doesn't which is better. The guidelines of the conference I'll attend only requires the important parts, not the order of them.

read these, assimilate, refine: http://betterposters.blogspot.co.uk/

@EnergyNumbers: very very interesting site. Thank you so much. Can I ask you do you have any sites like this?

Posters are hard to get right. They require design skills and knowing what the core message of your paper is. Presenting them requires people skills. Aside from this, different areas seem to have different criteria and norms when it comes to this so if you want to fit in you should try to follow those.

But in general, most scientific posters I've seen are really terrible in terms of tools for communication: they have far too much text and get into far too much technical detail. For example, on this site posted in the comments on the question, there's some nice visuals but all of the posters have, in my opinion, far too much text.
One excuse for a lot of text on a poster I often hear is that people will can read them on their own between sessions or whatever. In my own area and experience, I don't buy this argument: that's what the paper is for and I rarely see anyone reading these literal walls of text in their spare time.
The advice you've gotten from the internet seems to follow that thinking: the thinking of printing a full paper on a poster in bullet form. An A0/A1 wall of text is not the best way to sell your work, nor is a boring traditional narrative of introduction, methodology, results, related work, conclusion or whatever.
I say this from the perspective of someone who's gone to too many poster sessions and gotten trapped at a poster where someone for some reason decided I would be interested in spending 20 minutes silently listening to them recite the slightly abridged version of the paper that they had for some reason decided to printed on their poster. One guy even seemed to expect me to leave after he was done. After he had finished reading the conclusions at me he had a look on his face that said "who's next?".
Okay so that's one extreme.

For me, the secret to a good poster presentation is two-fold: the poster and the person in front of it.
In terms of a poster session, people will probably have some food with them, people might even have some drinks, you should not assume to take more than 5 minutes of their time, they're probably not going to get all the technical details and they're definitely not going to read a wall of text. At least one would hope that they wouldn't read it because that would imply that you'd be talking to yourself since they cannot read text and listen to you at the same time (unless you're reading aloud the text that is).
When I was working with students on posters, I would always advise them to dispose of the idea that they can or should communicate the full technical depth of a work on a poster to a passer-by in five minutes.
Their goal should be to motivate and communicate enough of the core ideas of the work to convince people passing by their poster that the paper would be worth taking the time to read and to teach them something cool.
In terms of that goal, I would bring the student to a white-board and tell them to pretend I was a conference-goer who knew nothing of the work but we met at a coffee break and I asked them to tell me about the work. They can use the board or ... if really needed ... they can point to something in the paper. While presenting, they should appear enthusiastic (without overselling) and emphasise why the work is important ... why I should care, and what the main results were.
They should also listen to what I say ... it should be a conversation. They should make sure that the person they're talking to is following them ... that they don't just launch into a 10 minute soliloquy at the first person that looks in their direction but that there's an element of interaction.
After that exercise whatever they were trying to represent on the board or whatever they needed to point at in the paper: that and pretty much only that is what goes on the poster ... diagrams, examples, main results ... things they can point to help them explain verbally what the work is about.
Then we'd sketch out a poster and try make it visually appealing ... try to tell a visual story with it ... try to make it attractive for people to come over and ask what it's about.
Not that the end result is always perfect, but the approach does lead to a better result in terms of a communication tool than the wall-of-text approach that seems so bizarre to me in the world of scientific posters.

Thank you for your answer, it's very informative. Would you mind if I ask to show me some of your students' posters that you are satisfied with their design? Thank you.

http://aidanhogan.com/docs/sparql-ep-poster-final-big.pdf http://aidanhogan.com/docs/poster_60x90cm-2-ah.pptx http://aidanhogan.com/docs/dyldo-poster-draft.ppt http://aidanhogan.com/docs/DRETa-poster.pdf ... can't say that I'm satisfied with their visual design per se, but at least I'm satisfied that they served as good tools for presenting in a poster session. ;) The second one won best poster at its conference, but I think that was as much to do with the student who presented it.

Thanks for that. However, I'm afraid that I don't have many images in my research. And I'm afraid that without any text, reader will find hard to get what it presents when I'm not there. I think this poster is quite good. Also, I have asked another question about trimming the references. Have a look if you want ^^

I think the poster you link to is reasonable for something you leave up on a wall somewhere for people to read (which they might since it's an attractive poster). I think it's terrible for a poster session ... in fact, I think that no poster might be better since people might try to read the tiny text and not listen to the presenter.

Good thinking. I am thinking about making a poster like that, just afraid that it won't give enough information

This may be field dependent, but anyway, I'll tell you my (hopefully educated) opinion.
The conclusion should be at the end. It's sometimes criticized that some research starts with a conclusion and then start doing some p-fishing and other unethical practices to support that conclusion. You may present the question that you are trying to answer and as a "spoiler" the answer to that question, as it is not infrequent in the abstract, but that doesn't eliminate the need to present the conclusion in the end, explaining how do you get to that conclusion from everything else, in a very (straight)forward way.
In short, wrt to your question, you may (or may not) introduce the results at the beginning, but the conclusion should be at the end in any case, explaining how do you get to it.
Additionally to your question, it's nice (not required, but definitively good) to explain why the objective set in the first place is important. This may not be needed in some cases, e.g. curing cancer, obviously everybody thinks finding a cure for cancer is important. However, if your objective is deciding whether plastic bottles should be taller or wider then maybe you should explain the impact that a shape change could imply in terms of sustainability, before explaining what are you trying to do (e.g. reduce the amount of plastic needed).

Thanks for your answer. But, when I look at your answer, exclude the first line that contain disclaimer, the first sentence is your... conclusion

The conclusion is after "In short".

I think the conclusion is "The conclusion should be at the end". Your answer is well written: conclusion -> explanation -> conclude again -> more information. Most of good answers in SE are followed this recipe.

I'd say that's a "spoiler" of the conclusion. A conclusion is not a statement, but the result of considering several facts and deriving (concluding) from them something that is a fact or at least very likely. Had I stopped after the first sentence, then there would be no conclusion at all, but only a unjustified claim.

I'm about to think that let objective be the first, then result is the second. What do you think?

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


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Overleaf template for IEEE journals
The Overleaf website has a LaTeX template IEEE Transactions. Does it fully support the format as desired by IEEE?

Actually i am preparing a research paper for IEEE jounral. I used overleaf online tool which enables to generate Latex documents. A predefined templates is given there. I just want to know does it follow the guidelines given IEEE for document format.

Which is faster? a) download the template from the IEEE; b) find the template somewhere else, ask on Stack Exchange if it's the right one, wait for a reply?

@ David Richerby, Overleaf provides simultaneous editing amoung co-authors. I just wanted to conform about its format. Now I got to know that one may directly upload his manuscripts from Overleaf to ScholarOne sumbmission website. You may check it at ScholarOne website. Now you tell, which is faster and better? ;)

These are the templates tagged as IEEE Official: https://www.overleaf.com/gallery/tagged/ieee-official, but I also recommend to download the latest LaTeX template from IEEE's website and upload it to Overleaf as a zip.

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


text:
Term for reverse lookup of concepts
Suppose I have envisioned a concept that I am fairly certain has been explored before. I can describe its nature and its characteristics, but I do not know the formal name of the concept, nor its history and prior development. My objective is to formalize my research by identifying the concept’s formal name and basing my research on its preexisting foundations. (My research may or may not elaborate/extend the current state of research; it could simply be a search for an existing concept I want to investigate). What would be the name (ie. the definiendum) of the process of finding both an existing concept and porting your notions of that concept onto the formalisms previously established for that concept?
Up to now, I have been informally using the terms rebasing and porting, as in

rebasing/porting my own informal understanding of the concept onto its formal foundations

If no such word exists for what I’ve described, I do offer rebasing and porting as self-descriptive definiendums.
Perhaps the first part of my definition, i.e., finding an existing concept, can be considered optional as it is well-described by reverse lookup; however, the latter part is key.
To make it more clear what it is I am after, here is an example: Alice is studying networks, and exploring how to permit communication between any two nodes using the fewest connections possible. As she develops this concept, she suspects it might have already been fleshed out in academia, so she searches for the name of the concept and finds spanning trees. Now that she knows what it is she has conceived, she can explore the concept further. She can also translate (port, “rebase”, etc) her personal, informal language, notations, conventions, and concepts onto their corresponding formal equivalents previously established in academia. What is the name of the translation/porting/rebasing/etc process described in italics in the previous sentence?

This question sounds better for the "English Language & Usage" site. -- http://english.stackexchange.com/

@DanielR.Collins This question is extremely domain specific; it's not as if the word would appear in an unabridged English dictionary. Therefore, I kindly reject the suggestion that it should go onto the English Language & Usage site.

Actually, "reverse lookup" is probably the best term...

I hereby define porting, in the context of conducting research, to be the process of adapting one's notions of a concept onto previously established theories, terminology, and conventions for that concept.1

I'm not sure that any such specialized term exists, or at least I have never heard of such.  The process, however, is quite familiar to me.  I find it most interesting when I discover that several different subjects have all approached the same topic from different directions, each typically having invented its own largely unrelated terminology.
As for what to call it? I would typically refer to it simply as searching for related work and then connecting my work to the prior results.  It might be a fun target for a neologism, though!

I agree this might require a neologism. I feel the term porting best reflects existing usage from the domain of software development, in which we adapt a well-conceived application (ie. the 'concept') onto a new platform (ie. the previously established 'jargon'). 'Rebasing', while self-descriptive (in a sense), does not accurately reflect current usage in IT/Computer Science, and thus might only serve to confuse.

I don't have a name for the two elements you describe, but I do have names for each distinct step:

"What would be the name (ie. the definiendum) of the process of finding ... an existing concept ...": I call this "search for concepts". I have an article that describes this in some detail, but in brief, there are two main components: first search past literature for the concept along with all the synonyms that you are aware of; second, identify new synonyms for the concepts from the studies that you identify and then search for those synonyms in the literature. You continue this process iteratively until you've satisfactorily identified the concept and all its synonyms.
"What would be the name (ie. the definiendum) of the process of ... porting your notions of that concept onto the formalisms previously established for that concept?": I would simply call this a redefinition or clarification of a concept. For me, it's that simple, but please note my following comments.

It seems that in your search for a new name for this process you place a lot of weight in the novelty of the fact that you are incorporating your own notions or insights into the new and improved version of the concept. However, this is what every researcher does if they define a concept. They are not simply repeating prior definitions, or else they would just quote "So et al (2015) defined it as 'la la la'". By offering a definition in their own words, they are always incorporating "personal, informal language, notations, conventions, and concepts onto their corresponding formal equivalents previously established in academia". I don't see any need to coin a new term (such as "rebase" or "port") for something that is nothing more to me than offering a new definition of an existing thing ("redefinition") or "clarifying" a previously ambinguous definition.
One thing you did not mention, though, which I consider extremely important if you offer your own new definition of an existing concept: You should very clearly explain why the past definitions are unsatisfactory for your purpose. Why are you multiplying definitions for the same general thing? You don't need to say that past definitions are bad; you only need to demonstrate that your purpose is different in an important way, and that past definitions do not do it justice. If you cannot clearly justify this, then it is best to rather pick the best of the existing definitions you have found (and explain why the one you picked is best for your purposes).
Also, please note that my answer applies strictly to dealing with existing concepts, not to new concepts that you have discovered or invented; my answer would be different for defining a brand new concept.

I very much appreciate the thought and consideration you put into this answer. I must have miscommunication what I was after: the least important, strictly optional part is incorporating innovative concepts; the focus is on finding the previously established names/conventions for a well-conceived concept. There is no need to 'search for the concept', only search for its name. For the same reason, 'redefinition' and 'clarification' is inapplicable as clarity has largely been attained, only the domain-specific jargon is missing. (I haven't read your article yet, but I plan to ASAP,)

I'm not quite sure if I understand your clarification here, but if I understand you correctly, then I would disagree that "There is no need to 'search for the concept', only search for its name". In fact, the same concept might go by multiple names, and so what needs to be searched for is the concept itself, not just one name for it. My linked article explains this in more detail, but if you reread my answer, that is what I mean by searching for synonyms.

Please allow me to re-clarify: Yes, searching for concepts is necessary; that is not being challenged, but it's also unrelated to my question. What I am after is a name for the process in which one looks for the name and conventions (ie. the academic/industry jargon) for/of an existing concept. That is, "I have a concept in my head; I'm sure someone else has come up with it before. I want to find the name for this concept so I can begin researching it formally". What is the name of the process in which I look for the name of a preexisting concept? That is the question.

Well, that was one of the questions anyways. "Reverse concept search" is satisfactory. As for the other, far more important question... I think I've settled on porting as per my comments to @jakebeal above. Of course, I'm still very much receptive to feedback or an even better alternative.


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Bad style to start text in subsection?
Is it considered bad style if I have a section with multiple subsections and start my text only in the subsection (no text below the section heading)?

1. Section
1.1 First subsection
This is where the text starts …
1.2 Next subsection
This is where the text goes on …

That depends on the styleguide/venue. I have come across both recommendations in different styleguides, I think, with and without an introductory text.

I don't see why.  Many papers start without text before the first section, which seems no different.  (Though having only 1 section would be weird.)

@Kimball: The crucial point is that sometimes, having two consecutive numbered headlines without any text in between is considered "ugly".

@O.R.Mapper Maybe I've just seen it so often that I don't think it's ugly.  I suppose also it may look worse in certain document styles.

I asked my supervisor the exact same question while writing my master thesis. He said that it is a matter of style, he preferred putting an introductory text under each heading. I looked over some articles in my field as well, and they were pretty divided on it.
If you have a style guide from your university/publisher, or if you have examples available, I would say, follow those. Otherwise it's up to you.
I found it good practice, because those are the places where you write a short summary/introduction for that chapter, which could help you organize your thoughts.

"those are the places where you write a short summary/introduction for that chapter" - true, although it can quickly become very repetitive if you are like me and tend to subdivide texts into finely-grained, deeply nested subsections.

I guess a general answer will be opinion based (not a vote to close), but one general suggestion I would give is: ask your supervisor or a conference chair. (but last of them could be not responding, busy ppl. you know)
I had different supervisors during B.Sc. M.Sc.-Thesis and paper writings. Some of them were okay with headings and subheadings without "glue" text between, some really made a mass of it, that it would be the ugliest writing style they could imagine.
I have the habit to write those introducing glue paragraphs between headings (as @mwormser suggests too) just telling the reader what will come in the following subsections. But I would always ask a supervisor for what he/she likes more. In case of anonymous blind reviews you may chance 50/50 with the likes of the reviewers. Maybe the journal/conference/etc. offers a style guideline that makes suggestions to this question too, just have a look at the submission pages.
Anyway an introduction paragraph that has no "hard-fact / result / discussion" content - but is only a meta-text about what to come - should be short. Give the reader the chance to decide at this point if he/she is in need to deep-read the next (sub)sections or if he/she is familiar enough (eg. obligatory method describing intro chapters of a thesis) with their content.
Another solution I also saw was use of epigraphs (quotes, jokes etc.) to fill this gaps between headlines. This makes the glue paragraphs less repetitive, but I would be careful with this and (if that) only spread them very rarely.

I think there is no black and white answer here. I think in books it is uncommon to have no text below chapters and start directly with sections/subsections. Typically you will find this:

1. Book chapter
Here goes some introductory text. [...]
1.1 Section
This is a section blabla [...]
1.1.1 Subsection
More text here

I believe a thesis should roughly keep to that structure, too. While I initially preferred to start with the text in the hierarchically lowest section, I became accustomed with the above layout and prefer it over my old habit now.
Regarding articles and similar publications you should keep to the journal’s style guide, which usually prescribes the layout very strictly.
TL;DR: I don’t think it is considered bad style, it depends on the type of text and the place you publish it.


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How widespread is the practice of delegating LoR writing to the applicant?
At least two questions (1, 2) on this site indicate that in more than a few isolated cases at least, letters of recommendation are in fact written by the applicant and only signed off (or perhaps rephrased somewhat) by the recommender, who would actually be responsible for writing the letter.
Is there any evidence about the prevalence of this practice that goes beyond anecdotes? I realize that cross-country (cultural) difference may play a role.

I assume that it would be hard to prove that someone is not the author of a letter. That being said, anecdotally, I have "heard" about many such cases (mostly for undergrad applications and some even for graduate school).

I have good resources for this topic, it is pity topic is open only in 6 days, I cannot write now about this topic, bcs application for one very hge scholarship and fellowship call will be closed soon, results are posted in December, if you ready to wait @henning until december, thing is very huge

@SSimon too bad, I would love to read your answer. I can't retract the bounty after it's been offered, however. I'm not sure, but perhaps it's possible to put up another bounty.

Well hello, downvoter. What can I do to improve this question?

it is not isolated case and both parties are involved, host and sending institutions, who follows applications know which one is it. wait for december to get answer from me

@henning I also find this practice fascinating! I would love to see a survey on this from the Chronicle or AAUP...

The official data on this question seem sparse. Judging by Google Scholar results, there are little to no academic publications related to the topic. One web source claims that, according to their poll, 79% of respondents have been asked to write their own letter of recommendation at some point in their lives, but the page doesn't even refer back to the original poll.
However, we can also probe the question indirectly. A Google search with the "write your own letter of recommendation" query returns 14.8 mln results, while a simple "ask for a letter of recommendation" returns 48.8 mln. A StackExchange response to a related question contains excerpts from some of those 15 mln websites, and many refer to such requests as "common" and "not unusual" (with regards to both job-related and academia-related situations). There is even a Wikihow page on writing your own letter. So, overall, it does look like a solid portion of LoR requests results in students writing the letter draft themselves.

There's a spectrum of "writing your own LoR. " As a faculty member, for example, I might correspond with the student:

Asking for bullet points that the letter should hit
Asking for a few sentences or paragraphs of the highlights that the letter should address
Asking for an entire first draft that is then revised
A complete letter that is copy/pasted in its entirety

In principle, I write all of my LoRs myself. However, with students in large lecture courses or that I don't know that well (for example, those who have left for a couple of years, and suddenly need an LoR out of the blue), I might ask for a variation of #1 or #2. I always rewrite whatever they give me so that it is in my own words.
I especially ask for higlights for students who are going into industry since I've never been on the hiring side for industry (only academia) and don't know what should be accentuated .
From the student's perspective, though, when they get a #1 or #2 request - they might mistake it for a #3 request.
I've never asked for a #4 type letter and although there are rumors of faculty that do, I don't see how they serve either faculty or student purposes. Faculty who are lazy tend to also be risk adverse and signing your name to someone else's LoR is risky. It doesn't serve the student either as students don't know the genre of letter writing and are unlikely to be able to write a strong letter for themselves. So while I won't presume that in the entire universe of universities, such a case has existed, I would think the actually prevalence is quite low and the reality is #2 and #3 type requests that are misunderstood by the student to be #4s.

I think you miss one point, and this has happened to me on some occasions: The faculty does not have enough time, maybe because the student's LoR request came late. This has happened to me as a student more than once (shame on me!). I won't go into details, I'd just say that I don't think the faculty gave me a false or unjustified recommendation based on my draft of the letter as (1) they read it through probably and (2) I wouldn't ever write a false LoR on myself.

Did you see the final letter? Your prof may have edited since you submitted it, which turns a #4 into a #3 type request.

I don't say it was #4, I more stress that short time plays a role, which is a point you don't mention.

i think the best you'll get is anecdotes.  however, my observation has been that folks typically write their own letters of recommendation and collaboration at the faculty/post-doc level.  it is less common for students to have to write their own LoRs.


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Is it acceptable to have a research paper with no references?
I (an undergrad) and 2 other profs from my department have been working on something and we were thinking of submitting our work to a conference (a pretty well known one) this week. The fact is there is no related work that has been done on the problem we are solving and therefore there is no paper which we can cite as a starting point for our work. The only existing things that we make use of are trivial definitions from mathematics (like Riemann Integral) and also definitions that are pretty well known in my area (CS). So again, we do not think there is a need to cite any particular papers for that.
Now my question as stated was - is it acceptable to have a paper with no references? Or do you think we should just mention some papers (we never had to use them) where those definitions were actually proposed?
PS: I'm sure some of you might suggest me to ask those profs. But quite frankly none of them have much experience as far as publishing papers is concerned. So it would be great if some one could give me a good advice and help me out.
Edit: Thanks everyone for the answers. Of course somewhere a little sarcastic and ridiculing, but I can understand since this is a little weird. Actually yes, I had the notion that a paper wasn't worth citing unless I use some results from it (say an algo or some theorem). But I guess that isn't the only reason why I should be referencing as many seem to suggest here. The fact is we had seen quite a few survey papers before we started this out and I was under the impression that there wasn't a need to cite them since anyone could find them. But now, things are bit more clear and I guess I should cite them and I will :)

You're trying to say that you are working with professors that "do not have much experience in publishing papers"?? How... did they become professors then?

Your department has professors who “[don't] have much experience as far as publishing papers is concerned”? Run!

@penelope  F'x,  okay just to clear things up, when I say that they do not have "much" experience what I intend to convey is that they aren't very active when it comes to publishing papers. Maybe just 1 or max 2 in a year in somewhat-well-known conferences/journals.

I don't know what specific topic you're working on, but "1 or 2 papers a year in somewhat well-known [venues]" is pretty darn prolific for someone in my subfield!

Incredulous that no references would enhance/support your paper.  Just formatting your paper properly for submission is a quite a task if you've never done it before.  Look for author resources at the conference website and get moving!

Nobody ever gets in trouble for too many citations.

What did the first research paper ever written reference?

Unless everything in your paper is built from scratch and all is from your mind, you should include references-otherwise it is plagiarism!

Indeed "anyone can find them", but without a citation, they will not know about the materials to even begin looking!

@Kaz, you cannot support every word with reference.

@penelope Just a remark: For some professorships experience in industry is more important than publishing papers. Having a PhD is mandatory, though.

What about citing a well-known textbook to underscore the wide-spread acceptance of the definitions?

Though I don't think there's any hard rule against having a paper with no reference, it seems pretty weird. Note that references are not only for citing other people's results (theorems, algorithms, etc.) which you have used, but more broadly to recognize other's scientific contribution. For example:

Has the problem never been discussed before? Who first realized it was a problem, stated it, formalized it?
You probably put the problem into the broader context of your field. And if you don't, you probably should. This sure requires citations on recent work on related problems, even if nothing was ever done on the one problem you're addressing.
For example, is your problem a specific case of another problem, or does it have generalization?
What are the consequences of your results/findings? They probably have some impact on other related problems, or practical consequences on real-life issues.
Didn't you or your co-authors ever do any prior work on this issue?

Finally, let's see it another way: you have solved a problem, that no one else has solved, worked on, or more generally discussed. And you did so using only elementary techniques, which have been known for so long that they do not require citation. Stated like that, it may sound like either you're a genius opening an entire field of mathematics, or you're working on a useless problem that nobody cares about. You probably don't want the reviewer to be thinking that way!

There is third possibility: the problem is solved, just under different name, on different notation, or is in fact a simple consequence of a more general thing. If you consulted it with no-who is proficient in your field, the third option may be very likely.

@F'x this helped me. Actually when I said there was none worth mentioning I just meant that we hadn't used any previous results (algo, theorem etc.) But yes, there were quite a few survey papers we read before we started on this one and so I think I will mention those at least in the introduction.

@anon.computerscientist Yes, if you read review articles on this, be sure to cite them!

^ This. IMO, this the main use case for citations. Your job as author is to allow a reader to understand how your argument is constructed and to be able to conduct external validation of that argument based on the body of knowledge that informed it.

@anon.computerscientist In that way, it is not uncommon to have a paper that does not directly use any non-trivial non-textbook theorem; yet, the context matters a lot.

I know of exactly one published paper in my field with no references whatsoever.

Mark H. Overmars and Emo Welzl.  The complexity of cutting paper. Proc. [1st] Symposium on Computational Geometry, 316–321, 1985.

The "References" section reads, in its entirety:

No references on this topic seem to exist and no useful results could be found.

Presumably you have read the original print? If not it is entirely possible the references are inline and/or foot prints. Digitization of old papers is pretty bad in some cases.

Nice example! However, with respect to references, one may expect less from an "extended abstract" than a regular publication.

@PiotrMigdal not necessarily in CS, conference papers are a unit of publication there and for top conference the demands are as for good journals in other disciplines.

@ArtemKaznatcheev I know that in CS conferences play the role of journals. But is there "extended abstract" == "(regular) publication"?

Unless someone publishes in a journal, pretty much.

This is in fact a full paper; it was peer-reviewed; I have read the original print; there are no inline references; and I have confirmed personally with both authors that they were unable to find anything relevant to cite.

I think that in 1985, CS was still a new enough field that you have solved a problem, that no one else has solved, worked on, or more generally discussed from @F'x's answer is an could have really been the case.

In principle there is nothing wrong with that. But, I have a hard time seeing that there is nothing published whatsoever on anything that forms the basis of what your research concerns. The problem must have some origin and there is probably literature that forms the basis for your work by for example indicating that your problem is a gap in knowledge. So even if it would theoretically be possible to publish a paper with no references, it seems so unlikely that the problem should be sought elsewhere, such as indicated by the comments.
The result of submitting such a paper would probably lead to rejection, even if your work in itself is sound.

Yes, this is one of those things that is not technically against any rules, but the circumstances giving rise to it are so vanishingly unlikely that one is unlikely to ever truly have literally nothing they can cite.

I've actually been working on a project which is similar in that nobody seems to have done any work that is directly comparable in the area of application. The work uses standard Bayesian techniques (this is an applied statistics paper), but these techniques are not at all used in the area in question in the way I've done it.
However, I still had a bunch of references. If you are using people's data they like you to cite it. I had a couple of cites for the Bayesian techniques which I'm using - they aren't trivial. The broader area has been much worked on, but much more by biologists than statisticians, and their approaches are very different, though their aims are similar. So, I cited a couple of these papers, out of very very many possibilities. They weren't particularly relevant to the paper at hand, but I couldn't think of anything better. (I actually thought of posting here, but wasn't sure what specific suggestions a non-specialist could give, and I'd already tried asking specialists with no useful result.)
Additionally, I used some quasi-mathematical derivations which I also had a cite for. So, generally these things do pile up.
So, I suggest backing up a step, considering the more general problem which you are trying to solve, and perhaps give some references to papers that have worked on that more general problem. Then you could say these papers are examples of the more general/related problem.
Other people have, I think, adequately addressed the issue that not being able to find relevant papers to cite means there might be a problem with the project. I.e. it is something nobody has worked on because nobody cares about the problem. This isn't necessarily the case, but I agree that you should look into that as a possible issue.
Doing novel work isn't necessarily a bad thing. I was offered a chapter in a book for a paper just published, not because the work was particularly good, but because, as the editor put it, "not much work has been done in that area". And apparently he thought the area was worth representing in the book.

Although my context is mathematics rather than computer science, this seems like an absolute no-brainer: "No". A paper without citations is a crank paper. Basically immediately and irretrievably rejected.
First, ultra-practically, referees will not easily believe either that your work occurs in a vacuum, or that there was no "prior art".
Second, if you think there was no prior art, I'd bet against long odds that you are mistaken. The referee may know the specifics ... and then you look awfully bad.
Third, unless you can explain why anyone should care about what you've done, that is, give references to give context, why should anyone care?
Citations are by far not just about what one thinks one's work "depends on", ... and even that should not be appraised naively.
I am shocked that "professors" would contemplate letting a paper out the door with no citations at all, ...
(And it would benefit you to refine your perceptions of their "publication rate" and/or "research activity". I realize it is hard for a beginner to appraise these things, but your description seemed very strange, as evidenced by some of the comments...)

Let me add my two cents in there: the main point of the references is to give context to your work (as suggested by multiple answers already). It's also about justifying the validity of techniques you used and justifying the evaluation process you used for your results.
There's several "different" references you usually want to include in your paper (and while I do admit that sometimes you don't have many in some of the "reference groups", I think it's impossible to have none at all):

general references about your (sub)field
This would be used in the introduction, to set a broader context for the paper, especially if you're submitting to a general conference in your field instead of a small subfield-focused conference.
As an example, I work in Mathematical Morphology, which is often used to perform image segmentation, object detection and image filtering, and belongs to the field of computer vision and/or image processing. So, when I submit to an CV or IP conference, I have to put it in the context because not all the referees/attendees will be experts in Mathematical Morphology and some general references will be useful here.
general references about your problem
This is actually very similar to the previous, and would be put in the introduction as well. It stems from the same reasoning: not everybody will know that what you are attempting to solve is even a problem.
Again a personal example: in my field of Mathematical Morphology, there are hierarchical structures used to hold information about an image in a tree structure. I recently published a paper about reducing the size of those trees. Why should anybody care? Unless I give good motivation, nobody will. I had to give references to various applications of the tree structures I was working on (including a tiny bit of motivation for using them at all in the first place), and then give references and elaborate why the size is an important factor and what applications will benefit from my proposed technique.
Oh, and the "core" of the paper was using something I used in advanced high-school programming papers: DFS. I still had to give context as to why my specific application was interesting.
references about the structures/techniques you used (even if they're simple or not common for your field)
I guess this would go somewhere between Introduction and Related work. But, it's important to justify the validity of what you're using, and you're not going to prove it from scratch in your paper. Maybe it's also interesting to _ elaborate on the connections and similarities_ between the standard usage of the technique and common usage.
I'll give two examples here: There was a recent paper in my field presenting powerful but simple techniques based on Kruskal's minimum spanning tree algorithm. Of course Kruskal was cited (even if most computer scientists learn about that in their high-school mathematics / undergrad algorithms courses). Also, there was an older paper in Computer Vision about image-by-image search applying techniques from text processing. It was explained in quite some detail how parallels can be drawn while processing an image as a text document, e.g. what is the equivalent of "words" in an image.
specific references about your problem and possible previous solutions
Who attempted to solve it before? Maybe somebody attempted to solve a partial problem? A similar problem? The same problem in a different context? Who was the first one to pose it as a problem? This would go to Related work.
Even if your contribution is not directly based on any of those, you have to put your solution in to context. If there's a previous partial solution that's justification that your contribution is important. If there's a similar problem solved, comparing similarities and differences might help somebody to one day make a generalized solution. Maybe somebody got results that are as good (as fast, as complex, as precise...) as yours using different techniques? Good, compare pros and cons!
references about the testing framework/techniques you used
How did you evaluate your approach? How will you justify your evaluation to the reviewers? Why are the statistics you presented actually relevant to evaluate the validity/impact of your contribution? Discussion/Results section.
For a lot of things you can produce a lot of useless statistics. You have to justify your choice of how to present your results. Is the testing framework widely used? Cite it! Is it new or an upgrade on an existing framework? Cite pros and cons related to the "standard testing approach" and argue why your approach is better suited to represent the pros of your contribution.
references about the data you used
Similarly for the testing framework. Why this particular dataset? When did it first appear? What makes it suited for your problem? Where was it used before, and how does that justify your choice?
references supporting your claims about the importance of your contribution
In addition to giving motivation, you should once more emphasize the impact your paper will make, and the potential applications of your contribution.
This is definitely different from "what you based your paper on". It's almost the opposite: you're listing papers/authors that might benefit from your work and base their future, extended work on your paper.

See, it's not just about citing the mathematical/algorithmic bases of your work. It's about proving that you did your proper background research, giving motivation for your problem, explaining the benefits, and convincing everybody that your work is unique, awesome and useful. And, sorry to say, if your supervisors couldn't tell you most of this, you should think about changing them (especially if you have an interest in academia).

No.
You say that your work is entirely new. How do you know this? Have you read any survey papers? If you have, cite them. If you haven't, go read some.
Has there been any other work on related problems? Cite it. Explain why their problem is different from yours.
Why should I care about your work? Has anyone expressed a need for someone to do what you're doing? Cite them.

Thanks for that. I was initially thinking there was no need to cite the survey papers I had read. But I guess you're right. I should and now I just did :D

Your work needs to be self-contained. That means your idea needs to be built, first and foremost, on a solid foundation. You reference other people's work to establish that foundation. With one sentence (and reference) you can establish all the knowledge that your work AND paper is based on; including the language you use.
For example; pick any recent paper in your field. Now examine its references, and pick the oldest paper there; continue doing that and you'll eventually get to papers written in Latin that establish the very basic ideas of things you might take for granted as being fact.
When you reference a recent paper (which in turn references other papers), you are including that full body of knowledge of hundreds of years of work.
So I would say the answer is No, unless you're willing to dedicate thousands of pages to reinvent and reestablish everything your work is based upon.
Any notion that your work and ideas are unconnected or non-derived from any previous research endeavor is delusion.

Solid argument. Though, particularly for an undergrad Sophomore, rather than delusion, the notion is a lack of or mis- understanding of what references are actually used for.

Certainly, but if the author's supervisor (professor or assistant-professor) is saying this, there is no denying it is odd.

Certainly. A charge of delusion on the part of the professors may certainly be warranted, I just meant specifically the OP.

No, it isn't acceptable, and is probably a sign that you should back up a bit and make sure your result really is completely unrelated to other results. If you think that you have something totally unrelated, which you obtained from elementary-ish mathematics, it probably:

Is considered trivial or irrelevant by others in the field. For example, I could very well write a paper on the derivation of the drag of a Batman Curve-shaped object. This uses basic principles and doesn't need to call upon advanced prior results. But it's not too useful, and is probably not considered a worthy topic for research. This, of course, was an exaggerated example, but you may be in a less pronounced situation. Make sure that your paper is something that constitutes publishable work.
Has already been published before, just with different terminology. Usually, the simpler things get snapped up first; if you feel this is the case then you should dig deeper; and possibly show your results to other researchers in the field asking if they know of similar results.
The third possibility is that you have truly made a breakthrough or opened up a new avenue of research or done something radically new. Such results are very rare, especially when they build from basic concepts only.

Either way, one way to beef up the references is via the introduction. I've noticed that a some physics papers have a lot of references in the introduction, and they skimp on references in the rest of the paper because the mathematics may be straightforward or otherwise not worth referencing.
If your paper is publishable research, there probably is some motivation behind it. And some ideas you may have built upon (If not, you can always find similar ideas to "pretend" to build upon). Write an introduction detailing the motivation, and cite papers there. Look at the introductions of other papers in your field to get a better idea of how to write one and what sort of references are at home there.

I guess that even for Batman Curve, in principle it could be made into a publication (given it is not just a single example, but something more general (=reusable)). But then, appropriate references are still needed - in this case not much pure math, but things related to vector graphics, image compression, graphical object rendering, etc.

I published a paper regarding a new technique for printing iron microparticles. In my research I found a long list of printing methods, but ultimately the technique I invented was unique in the field (that's according to the reviewers). Yet the references I used, although they were not directly related to what I was exactly doing, helped me devise the final idea. I think that probably you can put some references, just to give some context on something that might be related somehow, rather than risk yourself to appear as an amateur. In today's world, where there are papers and inventions in the millions, there should be something related to your idea. Or maybe you are like Einstein who published with no references, but even he was exploring and ultimately refining Newtonian physics. So strictly speaking he should have cited Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica.

Einstein's "ON THE ELECTRODYNAMICS OF MOVING BODIES" does not have formal references but it is more a question of style. He does refer to earlier work. He says "as shown by Mr. Planck" at least once!

I have always imagined that the reason for citing references in a paper is not to give credit, but to keep all research grounded in other research. Something like, if someone cannot understand the result in your paper, or what motivated it, then either the result is wrong, or that person did not understand the result of one of the references, or what motivated it.
If you are working on a specific problem, for example, you should reference other papers which also work on the problem. If you are using a specific tool, you want to reference some other papers that have used that tool, and certainly the result for which the tool was developed.
It's about giving your research context, and by extension, giving other peoples research context, which is why results are published in the first place, instead of kept secret.

Feynman's Forces in Molecules has no reference and was published on Phys. Rev.
http://www.cce.ufes.br/jair/mq2grad/PhysRev.56.340_Feynman_Forces_in_Molecules.pdf

As for Einstein's work, Feynman is a historical example which is not entirely suitable for comparison with modern expectations in academic publications :)

I agree with the general consensus here: find relevant work and cite it. You can cite textbooks or reviews for well-known things. You can also cite vaguely related problems or just the most exciting problem in the field. (This takes some experience, which you lack, but try your best.)
However note, that 'conference paper' means different things to different people in different fields. A regular paper (article or letter in scientific journal) never goes without References, never. However, depending on the field, some conferences call for abstracts or summaries. Those are much shorter (between 1 paragraph and 2 pages) and can include some references, but not as many as in the full paper due to space constraints. You can probably submit a 1-page abstract without References if the topic is interesting and clear.

References help make your work discoverable
Apart from the many intrinsic reasons that have already been mentioned, there is one selfish reason why it's good to cite all the relevant previous works in the field, and it's that citing those works will make it easier for people who read them and want to find the latest research on the topic. In the same way that you should chase up all the papers that cite the reviews you mention, to make sure that the problem is in fact still open, citing those reviews ensures that your paper will appear in the Citing Articles section of those reviews.
Even better, in many fields it is common for researchers to have citation alerts on such papers, in which case they will receive a specific notification of your paper. Depending on the system, this will often include the authors of those works, so this becomes a non-intrusive way to 'push' your paper to people who might find it interesting.

This is an excellent point.

Here is a paper with no references:
Fisher, R. A. (1950). "The Significance of Deviations From Expectation in a Poisson Series". Biometrics. 6: 17–24. https://doi.org/10.2307/3001420
This is a famous researcher and a good journal, so it shows that at least in 1950 it was sometimes acceptable to have no references.

Recommend clarifying how this answers the question. I assume the relation is something like: this paper was well-received without references, so it is at least occasionally acceptable to do so.

I would say even if Newton was going to write a research article related to "law of universal gravitation" would have found related work. Related work gives a broader view of research topic e.g, if newton was going to write article related to "law of universal gravitation" might have given a reference to Aristotle who believed that there is no effect or motion without a cause.
Now science and technology is so advanced you must find related work. Or might be you are genius invented new field in science and technology.

I'm referee for various IEEE and other Journals, generally speaking citations give me the idea of the behavior of the article, it is really not acceptable for me few citations (7-10 at least for conference); despite, my view could be rought, other referees may finalize the same conclusion.
I suggest to add at least 7 citations (at least on the introduction and conclusion) in order to deceive superficial people like me.
You can refer to book, manual and technical worksheet.

This seems like terrible reasoning. "Add 7, just to make it look like you tried" sounds like a strategy a high school student might employ.

I would imagine most (like me) look for specific references to important papers, rather than the quantity.

Given the large amount of publications it is very difficult to accept no references. Anyway, journals provide to referees and editor tool to check related paper using keyword and references, in order to find plagiarism or related works. When the editor cannot find related paper he cannot contact appropriate referee and may reject the paper as "not interesting". ... the system is not perfect but that is all.

You can all criticize all you want, but this is how the publishing world works. Devoting time to reviewing literature is in part placing your work in context, in part showing familiarity with the field (proving you're not a crank and have done reading) and in part genuflecting and ego-boosting the incumbents in the field. Whether the world should be like this is entirely another matter.

There are no general formal rules for this but some conferences may have such constraints and most reviewers will probably sort out papers with few citations anyway. As it is regarded as good academic writing style to cite from primary sources, it might be a good idea to cite from the original papers of the definitions you use [i.e. (Riemann, 1868)].

If someone cites a 19th Century paper, unless for a very specific reason way beyond a definition, it tells me that the person is not aware of the state of the art.

It depends from the behavior: on medicine context is a common practice to cite old article (Yarbus 1969) as must

Most of the papers in quantum cryptogoloy (or more precicely QKD) I read cite Einstein or Heisenberg for explaining the basic principles (and so do I). These papers are from the 20ies to 50ies of the last century. The principles simply do not really change, much like the Riemann integral, so these papers are still state of the art. For me, it seems suitable to cite from the original papers instead of derived works. Of course there should be newer references, except the work does not use any other sources than fundamental works.

It's not a problem, you can submit your work with no references if nothing related to your work is done before. You and your team may get a Nobel Prize for the work you guys are trying to do, so keep it up and do great things.
References are used when we are going to extend the work which has already been done or we want to do something related to that. In your case if you have no references, then you can go for that Conference.


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Should I still try to publish this paper I wrote after it getting rejected?
I had submitted this paper of mine to a reputed springer journal some time back. There are reasons for me to believe it is a good journal although it has an impact factor of only 0.941 since most of the original work on the problem ( I will describe that in detail below) I'm working on was published in that journal. A few days back I received a decision from them which said that they wouldn't be considering it for publication and this was the reviewer's comment - "I am afraid i do not see a contribution by this paper valuable enough for publication in the Journal. Neither regarding the problem setting nor regarding the solution method any new insights are provided".
Now, I do admit that my work isn't something path breaking or completely novel (I shall give a detailed description in the end). What I have essentially done is that I have used existing algorithms and techniques and have applied the same on the specific problem I was working on and have got significant results (please see the complete detail of the problem in the end).
So post rejection I have actually been in a complete dilemma on whether I should actually try publishing my work again with some other journals and I have also begun to wonder if journals actually accept such work. The problem is that I have no prior experience of publishing papers and I'm an undergraduate student. So it would be really nice if someone could help me with this.

More on the Problem:
The problem I have been working on is the Traveling Tournament Problem. So what I have done here is that I have taken existing techniques and algorithms for this problem and I have applied it to a very popular sports league in order to schedule it. And doing so has actually given me some "significant"(?) results like reduction in the travel distance in this league.
I am also pretty sure no one has actually worked on this particular league before, so this would be the first instance of the same.

@CharlesMorisset My adviser certainly believes that it is something that can be/ ought to be published but the problem, quite sadly, is that she hasn't been much of a help. She has only been pushing me to actually publish in journals where the review time is minimum paying no heed to how good or bad the journal is and so, I'm somewhere in the crossroads unable to find something suitable and good.

@CharlesMorisset you are not @JeffE. It is his type of answer to any question ;)

@NPcompleteUser: My work here is done.

As far as I understand your description of what you achieved, I would say that you should contact the organization of the sport league (or other that should be interested): they are probably the most interested in what you did.

@BenoîtKloeckner I almost never thought of something like that. Maybe I guess I should try writing to them as you say. Thanks anyway :)

In publishing there is a phenomena called "me too" publications (see for example Day & Gastel: How to write and Publish A Scientific Paper) where one takes existing methods and apply them to a new area, data set, whatever context is applicable. Although not wrong, these types of studies usually do not contribute much new knowledge except resulting in the understandng that the method(s) work in (yet) another circumstance.
What can then be done? As I alluded to initially, there is nothing really wrong with such studies. What is necessary is to convince the editors and reviewers that by applying the method(s) to the new area, you have actually achieved something new (in the sense of scientific discovery). For example, applying a formula to a new set of numbers is not a discovery unless the new numbers themselves contain something that can be set apart from what has been done before. So it boils down to what might sloppily be called "packaging"; you need to package your study so that it is evident what new discovery is achieved. It is not sufficient to just say that it is a new data set but you need to convince that applying the method(s) to the new data set shows results that expand our horizon beyond the obvious and also be explicit why one, for example, would not expect the result you obtained (or equivalent).
I have deliberately kept this answer as general as I can because the issue you bring up applies to many if not all fields. I would give the manuscript a hard work over and really think about what truly scientifically (intelectually) new aspects you bring forth. It may be that your writing has not been clear enough to bring the message through. It may be that you are too involved to see the bigger picture that needs to be explained to others. Or, in the worst case, it may be that your study is too trivial. Avoid falling into the "me too" trap, it easily happens and the remedy is usually to make sure the perspectives of the study are re-written carefully to highlight the core research problem to be solved.
So to answer, yes you should try again unless you find you are stuck in "me too" land.

Thank you so much for the ref and the "me too" type of publications. They are legions in some areas, and I had yet to find a way to name them.

Peter Janssons answer is good.  I would like to add something specifically on the venue.
If you develop or apply a new method, submit to a journal that focus on methods.
If you apply an existing method to a field where it hasn't before, submit to a journal that focuses on the application.  This can be very enriching, perhaps nobody in this field thought of using this method before, maybe they didn't know it existed.  Such a paper can be rather short and won't be prize-winning, but can certainly be publishable.
So, perhaps all you need to do is sit with your advisor and reconsider the venue where you're publishing, in addition to some packaging as Peter Jansson describes.

First of all thank you for the response.
While my adviser certainly believes that it is something that can be/ ought to be published, I must say that quite sadly she hasn't been much of a help. The problem is that she has been pushing me to actually publish in journals where the review time is minimum (maybe because she too lacks much research experience) paying no heed to how good or bad the journal is and so I'm somewhere in the crossroads unable to find something suitable and good.


text:
Should I do a thesis, no thesis, or a capstone project in a master's in statistics?
I intend to work in industry after finishing my Masters in Statistics and am considering some universities in the United States. How will a Masters in Statistics with thesis, no thesis or with capstone project impact my career prospects? I've read that having written a thesis that is relevant to the employer's business  would be beneficial. But how does that compare to a capstone project? It sounds to me that a capstone project and thesis mean the same thing as both involve research.

Not a perfect comparison, but I was told on multiple occasions that the senior project at my undergraduate university was a significant advantage (compensating for a less prestigious school) over other candidates, as it shows that you can actually complete useful work.

Related: Things to consider about masters programs in statistics

In my experience, the only time your academic credentials matter very much (if you go to work in industry, which I did) is at the very beginning of your career.  At that point, it's more or less all the company has to go on.  One or two jobs in, they are only looking at your past experience.
One thing to consider, though, is for those first jobs, it is quite possible that the person doing the interviewing/screening is going to be knowledgable in your academic field, and they will know the difference between a project and a thesis.
Another thing to consider is that a thesis is a real commitment with a bunch of picky requirements and you should be sure you really believe in its value before deciding on that course.
I would, at the very least, talk to some people in industry who hire people with master's degrees like the one you are considering and see if it matters to them (this would help inform the decision that shane describes regarding whether your time might be better spent focusing on finding a good internship.
Tim's comment on your original post is a good thing to consider, and I've heard other people say things along that line as well--completing a thesis is proof that you can actually complete a substantial project.  If they are looking at a dozen recent master's' resumes, that could make yours stand out and be a selling point for you.