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How to tell speakers that their English is terrible?
I just had a lecture from someone who has been a senior scientist (and has completed a PhD, post-doc) at a hospital for already 15 years. So I'm assuming this person is experienced in giving talks in English. However, almost one out of three words was completely unintelligible because of a very strong Spanish accent where every word gets morphed into a Spanish-English hybrid word.
I spoke to two people after the lecture and they both said they couldn't follow along because of the strong accent. The questions after the talk were also not about the lecture but about the speaker's field. My impression is that the talk was a waste of time for the two dozen people present.
Now I wonder if the speaker is aware of this problem, my guess is no and as such I feel the need to bring this to the speaker's attention. If it was me I'd very much like to know that I have a problem communicating because I feel like a lack of communication skills can be a very serious barrier to being a good scientist but I don't know if she feels the same way.
My plan is to use an anonymous email address to send this feedback, sandwiched between two compliments to avoid coming off as a negative person.

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This answer of mine to a similar question would fit perfectly well here. One of my cleverest colleagues has an impenetrable accent. If this person has been successful despite their communication issues, it's probably worth your while for you to figure out what they have to say.

You don't. Don't speak, write more. Let all your works be presented on your website. You can edit it even after ages and are open to constructive comments from the viewers ;)

@stanri it sounds like you have good insight into the situation of the speaker. Given your perspective, what is your view about OP's question?

FWIW sometimes after three or four lectures you may start to intuitively understand and not even notice the heavy accent as you did at first.  In my experience both frequency and duration of exposure to any, er, "dialect", have an effect on one's ability to comprehend.  Although, depending on how severe it is, an hour or two a week may or may not be enough.  Perhaps you could watch some youtube videos of other people with similar speech patterns? (I think that really may have some effectiveness despite striking me as an almost silly thing to suggest)

Just tell them. I am going to guess that you are from the US; compared to other western cultures, American is unusually non-confrontative. In many other cultures giving constructive criticism is entirely OK, even if you don't spend half an hour making up fake praises first. (Making it clear that you are trying to help and not just being mean is a good idea though.) As a non-native speaker who has spent a lot of time stressing over whether I am being understood, honest feedback is quite helpful. Even more so if you can give some specifics (too silent, too fast etc).

This might be productive in a direct conversation, if you are able to establish rapport, and if you can steer the conversation in a productive direction.  You could start by asking her to clarify some key point you were interested in.  Stop her as soon as there's something you don't understand, and if necessary ask her to spell the word you don't understand.  The goal at this point is to succeed in communicating with each other.
If you are able to accomplish that, then you could say

Thanks for clarifying that point. That is really interesting for me.  I didn't understand what you said on that point during the lecture -- to tell you the truth, I was only able to get the meaning of some of what you said, and that made it hard for me to follow the arc of the presentation.  I'm not very good at understanding nonstandard unfamiliar accents.  So I have to rely heavily on the visual with a lot of speakers.  Your slides about (topic B) helped me a lot, because they had a lot of detail.

That is a conclusion that helps the speaker move forward in a positive direction.

Additional notes.
Often one needs to crank up the belief in oneself in order to get through the PhD and other hurdles in academia.  This sometimes leads one to a slightly Aspergeresque attitude of "I can find the words I need to express myself; mission accomplished; I'm not interested in how well other people are understanding me."  Step one is to establish rapport.
Sometimes this rapport can result in the stronger English speaker having some influence over the other.  Sometimes it results in the stronger English speaker getting tuned into the other's speech patterns better, and perhaps also developing empathy for what has led the other to his or her current state of mediocre English.  This happened to me with respect to my advisor.  For the most part I'm one of those people who finds horrible English, or horrible French, or horrible Spanish, excruciating, like chalk going the wrong way on a blackboard; and it continues to torment me later like a stuck song (ear worm).  Once my empathy with my advisor was established, certain patterns, such as his tendency to omit words, got a lot less on my nerves.

Today I had a brainwave.  If the speaker's English is that bad, the hosting department should provide an interpreter.

Maybe - "I'm not very good at understanding certain accents"?

Agreed, "nonstandard" is not a great way to describe it

Is there a particular reason you've assumed they are a woman? The OP does not gender the person in the question or follow up comments

@TomJNowell Actually, OP did : see the last line of the third paragraph ("... if she feels the same way."

@TomJNowell - Thanks, but I'm rolling back because: I'd support your removal of the feminine pronouns if OP had not indicated the speaker's gender; "his or her" and "their" both being acceptable ungendered approaches, as the author of the answer, I get to choose.  If you were the copyeditor and I were the journal contributor, you'd get to choose.

@camden_kid - Can you explain what bothers you about "nonstandard"?

@neuranna - See above.

I'm uncomfortable with the suggestion that people with Asperger's don't care whether other people understand them. I think that people with Asperger's are more concerned. Neurotypicals just take it for granted that they can phrase things however they want and people will understand them. Saying that people with Asprerger's don't care about being understood is bit like saying that people with cerebral palsy aren't interested in walking.

@Mike Haskel: But "this accent is less likely to be understood" is exactly what "nonstandard" means. Are we discussing how the OP should inform a speaker that the way the speaker talks makes it difficult for the OP to understand her, or we discussing how the OP should inform a speaker that there are aspects of how she talks that make it harder for people in general to understand her? If the latter, then "nonstandard" absolutely is appropriate. If we're going to pretend that the OP's accent is no better than the speaker's, then what is the point of this discussion?

Use of "nonstandard accent" implies there is a "standard accent". Is there? Which is it? Does most everybody agree on it being the standard? If the answer to any of those questions is "no", and if you care about not offending other people (however irrelevant the offending point might seem), then I agree that alternatives like "certain" or maybe "unfamiliar" are more neutral and so would serve a better purpose in establishing that rapport you very appropriately talked about.

Just for the record: today, saying that there is such a thing as a "Spanish standard accent" would be fairly offensive to 90% of Spanish speakers. Sure, some accents are understood better by some people, some accents are seen as more "intellectual" etc. -- but to put one above the other would be disrespectful. There is a fair agreement over all Spanish academies, that every Spanish variant is as Spanish as any other. I'm sure any Mexican would be as mad if I told them their accent was "nonstandard" as I would if they told me the same. I can only guess that the same applies to English speakers.

about your chalk sound: there are combinations of languages which work wonders and are cute. Others are unbereable. On top of this it is often dependent on the speaker. I am French and like to speak English with Germans. I find it clear and understandable. When I hear my compatriotes speaking English (when the vocabulary and grammar are OK but the accent is French) I feel pain for the audience. I can barely understand Chinese and japanese speaking English even though I worked with Asians for years.

@Acccumulation - I am no expert on Asperger's!  And I only have one data point to go on -- and that data point doesn't even have an official diagnosis.  All I know is that there is someone close to me (well, as close to me as this person's differences permit getting close to people) who drives me nuts, with an obliviousness and lack of interest in the reception part of the communication process.

Re whether the use of the word "nonstandard" bumps up the potential offensiveness of the approach I suggested in my answer here, see ELU question: https://english.stackexchange.com/q/412704/112436.

@camden_kid - I edited my answer, hopefully it comes across more neutral now.

I think that your plan is based on number of possibly wrong premises. And even if they were mostly right, I doubt such a plan could have any reasonable success. Let's see my reasons.

I just had a lecture from someone who has been a senior scientist (and has completed a PhD, post-doc) at a hospital for already 15 years.So I'm assuming this person is experienced in giving talks in English.

I've met along the years many senior researchers, even native English speakers, who where definitely not experienced in giving talks, at all. If academic researchers are frequently experienced speakers because, at least, they have teaching duties, some researchers from research institutes are really "lab rats" who rarely deliver talks. To give you an example, a few years ago I was attending a poster session in a conference and I told one of the presenters (a native English speaker) that I was surprised that his work had been accepted as poster presentation and not as an oral one. He told me that it was actually accepted as oral presentation, but he asked for a poster one because he doesn't like to deliver talks.

My impression is that the talk was a waste of time for the two dozen people present.

Talks can be a waste of time for other reasons than terrible language: slides with unreadable results, talk targeted to the wrong audience etc. I certainly attended many talks that could be considered a waste of time for almost anyone in the rooms, and a large fraction of these talks were delivered by allegedly experienced speakers.

Now I wonder if the speaker is aware of this problem, my guess is no

In my experience among non-native speakers of English, most of the people is well aware of their level of English and of their pronunciation: your guess is likely wrong.

I feel the need to bring this to the speaker's attention.

Would you feel the same need if the talk were a waste of time for any other reason? And note that preparing readable slides is usually much easier than fixing pronunciation. And are you planning to do such an action for all the useless talks you will attend in your life?

I feel the need to bring this to the speaker's attention.

As I said, the speaker is probably well aware of this issue, but can you offer any solution that the speaker is not already aware of?
Improving pronunciation is not something that can be done easily, especially if one is not keen on languages. The speaker might have had good reasons for not having been able to improve pronunciation more than that. Time and money can be two of them. I don't know how many languages you speak -- you speak more than one, right? I speak Italian, my native language, English and French. My level of English is decent, but my level of French is basic. I cannot make great conversations in French, just short sentences, and sometimes I've been misunderstood (e.g., I once asked for a book called Rue des Maléfices and the clerk searched for Roue des Maléfices). I'd love to improve my French pronunciation because I spend most of my vacations there but, guess what, I really cannot find the time to do this. Or I'd like to learn German, because I have many German colleagues and I also found some nice physics book in German that I'd like to read without Google translator. Again, I cannot find enough time to learn German even at a basic level.
To conclude, don't.

"Would you feel the same need if the talk were a waste of time for any other reason?" I would. "And are you planning to do such an action for all the useless talks you will attend in your life?" within certain limits, yeah. In the vein of "all that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good people to stand by and do nothing" I feel that people have a moral duty to improve the world around them.

@Plumpie most of us (Massimo included, I'm sure) try to improve the world around them every day, I feel that's beside the point. The real question is whether your anonymous email will in fact improve the world. I think there's a significant risk that it won't, and may actually do real harm. Lots of experienced people here (who are just as moral and well-meaning as you) are telling you not to send the email. You may want to consider that they have a point, and that they have useful experience that gives them some insight into the psychology of academics with poor English.

@Plumpie "all that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good people to stand by and do nothing". Do you really think that "pronunciation of English that you find difficult to follow" falls into this category? Do you really think that you are the one who can set the world to rights, and have a duty to cast out motes?

"Improving pronunciation is not something that can be done easily, especially if one is not keen on languages." I have one easy thing that works for me in English pronunciation, which is to speak slower and focus more on the pronunciation. I always have to balance between not taking too much time to speak and pronouncing correctly. If it turned out my presentations are hard to understand, I would love to know that, so I can speak slower. That would make me be able to speak less, but at least it would be more understandable.

"Can you offer any solution that the speaker is not already aware of?" Strongly implied by one of OP's comments is YES: "slow down". As for leaving this feedback to people who know the speaker well, they are probably tuned in to the accent and so may not be aware that it is a problem.

On the contrary, improving pronunciation is (in most cases) quite easy. It just takes targeted practice which, in turn, takes a lot of time. Few people have the dedication (but some definitely should consider it). In the case described by OP it sounds like this is definitely in order but it’s not for a stranger to suggest this but rather for a close friends.

@KonradRudolph assuming you're German (your name), how long did it take you to stop saying "tyop" rather than "dyob" when trying to pronounce job?  And you contradict yourself: You say its easy to  improve pronunciation - QUITE easy, at that! -  but then admit it takes a lot of time ??? Odd. Weird, even.

@GwenKillerby You’re confusing several things here. For one, slight pronunciation errors, while awful-sounding, don’t generally impede understanding. Moderate foreign accents are completely irrelevant here. Secondly, there’s a difference between something being hard and it being time-consuming. Quantum physics is hard. Folding clothes is time consuming. Also, though irrelevant here, I never used the “typical German” pronunciation of the phonemes “d” and “b” in English and I know few people who do. I don’t know why some people even have difficulty with that. Southern German, maybe?

@KonradRudolph If something is time consuming and you don't have time, then, yes, it's hard ;-)

@MassimoOrtolano At best in the same vein as preparing presentation slides is hard (less so, in fact: pronunciation can be improved through rote practice; the same isn’t true for other aspects of preparing a presentation), and it is just as integrally part of a good presentation. If it’s just a question of time, the speaker needs to allocate their preparation time differently. We can argue all day long whether that’s “hard” but I’ll say that this isn’t what most people would understand by the word.

It seems to me that addressing pronunciation in the context of a presentation would be easier in extemporaneous speaking. If you're writing your presentation ahead of time, you can annotate it with notes on how to pronounce the words, and practice going through it very slowly so you can get the pronunciation correct.

@Plumpie, in contrast to Dan Romik, I'm an experienced and moral person as any other person here, and I think your plan to send an anonymous email is reasonable. Non standard and out of the box, yes (that's IMHO is why people here try to refrain you from doing it). Reasonable and rational, also yes.

@Dilworth You're way wrong on the motivations and there's nothing reasonable in an anonymous email: just the incapacity of standing behind own's ideas.

@MassimoOrtolano, I believe you are wrong. Academia is full anonymous feedback, much more hurtful and cardinal than a somewhat amusing email about one's accent. I'm sure the speaker got many harsh and brutal rejections through anonymous peer review, and she's not going to break because some guy decided to write another anonymous email, peculiar as it sounds. So you see, the academia itself has reserved the right of people not to stand behind their own opinion's and ideas, so that they are protected that way.

Don't send the email. Based on my experience, I predict that the anonymous email you are proposing to send almost certainly won't tell the speaker any information she does not already know, only something that she is either in denial about or that she is (for whatever mysterious reasons of human psychology) helpless or unwilling to do anything about. On the other hand, especially due to its anonymous nature, the email is quite likely to come across as hurtful and to cause her negative feelings such as guilt, self-loathing, low self-esteem, depression, etc., that would make her situation worse without leading to any progress towards resolving her accent/language problem.
There is a time and a place to offer people negative feedback that might help them improve, e.g., when such feedback is directly solicited from you or when you are a person whose job it is to offer such feedback. That time and place is not your current situation. So don't.

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Being part of an international research community means, and has always meant, a) learning the lingua franca (so to speak) of the field - some of us are lucky enough to skip this step because we were born into it - and b) learning to understand the wide range of accents that the language will necessarily be spoken in, again much simpler for us native speakers.
If because of auditory disability or "tin ear" you can't understand non-native speakers, then your ability to interact in the international community will be greatly limited.  You can try only talking to locals or using only written communication, but you'd be better off trying to improve your skills through practice.

Are you seriously blaming OP for not understanding the speaker's poor English (going so far as to insinuate that OP is suffering from a hearing disability and/or insensitivity to foreign cultures)? That is quite rude and inappropriate, and the fact that OP was himself/herself considering doing something similarly rude is no defense. -1

Well, world english is not a property of UK, US, or other countries where something similar is spoken. It is a new attempt to communicate with less friction. Subsets are important when being intersections, as they lead the way to better understanding. So, easing on what english you might be used to from where you come from, might be the way to go ;-)

Hi, @DanRomik !  In fact, I am.  Effective communication - especially but not only international communication - requires genuine effort and practice on the part of both communicating parties.  In the case of poor communication, it is much more common for both parties to be at fault.  But practice can help!   Best wishes.

Although deciphering atrocious English pronunciations is indeed a skill that can be trained (learning the native language of the speaker helps), this post does not answer the question as posted.

International English is a language with easy spelling and difficult pronunciation. The key to understanding weird accents is that the pronunciation is often based on the spelling. As a grad student, I used to meet many people with nearly unintelligible accents. That doesn't happen as often anymore, as I got used to listening International English. These days I have more trouble with some native accents, if the speakers are not used to dealing with foreigners.

@dilletant Noone is saying that English is a property of UK, or US. But there's a line which separates a spoken language by a major fraction of language speakers vs one that's not. It's not about any kind of fairness. It's about integration by the means of lingua franca. If a speaker does not meet the "standards bar", he/she needs to change, not the listeners, because the communication protocol is broken on his/her side

I have to agree that this answer is one perfectly VALID answer.  I spent my formative years in both the US and the UK and became adept at understanding a variety of English Language accents.  Then in a US university I had a calculus TA with a thick French accent - he got massacred by the student reviews many of which said they couldn't understand him.  But I understood every single word he said quite well.
Conclusion:  it is far easier to learn to understand foreign accents than it is to get rid of a foreign accent (usually impossible for males past puberty).
The onus is on the listener.

If an entire audience fails to understand a presentation, it is the presenter, and not the audience that has a problem. I can also put in the effort to read poorly written papers, or densely packed slides (and I'm sure everyone has had a lot of practice with that), but that doesn't mean those things are not flawed. I'd also like to see a source for accents being impossible to change @Craig, since I'm (anecdotally) aware of several actors who trained away an accent when needed.

Certainly I have known people who have excellent ability to change their pronunciation.  But I have gathered over a lifetime hundreds or thousands  of non-native speaker data points in the US, the UK, and abroad in Europe and Asia.  I had a brilliant engineering colleague in his twenties from Korea who lived in the US since he was 13 but sounded like he arrived yesterday.  Yet in Asia I've met many Koreans, Japanese, and Chinese who speak perfect English who have never lived in an English speaking country.

@mbrig - It doesn't surprise me that you know several actors who trained away an accent (or rather, learned a new accent) - those are people who are by nature language centric.  But university/hospital researchers are not "a priori" language centric - they are chosen for research skills.  So the researcher in question, after 15 years as a senior scientist, has 0% chance of meaningful further improvement in their pronunciation (rounded to units of 10%).  The best they can do is improve the graphical presentation so that it gives a better clue about what is being said, and speak slowly.

@CraigHicks: First you say that "the onus is on the listener" because the speaker can't do anything about it, then you give specific examples of what the speaker can do to improve it (more-informative visuals, slower speaking). Does this not seem contradictory to you?

The OPs complaint was pronunciation.  The OP intends to tell the senior researcher that his pronunciation is unintelligible.  My comments about were about presentations in general - things that could improve a native speakers presentation.  So no, it does not seem contradictory.
----- While we're talking about contradictions, if you read my first comment it say this answer is "one perfectly VALID answer".  From the OPs point of the OPs opinion is also perfectly VALID - he listened but couldn't understand anything.  However, the OPs POV is also extremely narrow.

@ruakh - In general to get that kind of position as a senior researcher requires unique specials skills and creativity.  That talent is rare enough that spoken presentation is takes second precedence - although their written presentation is obviously good enough to pass review, get published, and be read - and that's what counts for researchers.
I can understand the OPs frustration, but getting fixated on pronunciation, which I don't believe the speaker can change any more after15 years, is pointlessly obsessive.  The OP might try becoming familiar with the speakers papers instead.

I just cannot wrap around my head how it could be more reasonable to expect to an audience of people from a multitude of backgrounds to be able to understand every single dialect and usage of English than to expect from a (regular) speaker to improve their English so it adheres to one of the multiple understandable standards of using English as well as possible. I have learned multiple languages, but I will never be able to understand every single way that English can be spoken.

@skymningen - And I can't wrap my head around how "if you want to be part of the international research community, you're going to have to get used to other people's accents" and "communicating technical material is the responsibility of both the speaker and the listener" are now somehow wildly controversial points of view.  So I guess we're both confused.

I agree with you that the speaker should be told. Contrary to other aspects of a talk (slides clarity, order, etc..) which are somewhat optional and left to the speaker's interest in making a good talk, intelligibility of the speech is a minimum requirement. Not taking care of this is probably hurting them badly.
Last time I attended in a very similar situation one of the more senior speakers approached the unintelligible speaker and flat out told them : "Do you know it's very hard to understand you when you speak"?. I was there and made a little joke to lighten up the comment and we walked away but the speaker most likely got the message.
So, there's one way. If you do not have the seniority required to give unrequested advices in person tho, your suggestion seems fine to me. Send an anonymous email explaining that you had a very hard time understanding the talk. Just make sure you are passing out the right message, that you are trying to make them aware of what you felt was a big issue making communication difficult and not shaming them for it.
As to what  people have said in other answers :
1) the speaker might be aware of the issue, but not of its severity. This might give them the push they need to act on it.
2) there's plenty of free and little time consuming ways of improving pronunciation (movies, pre practicing talks, YouTube videos, slowing down when speaking )
3) I don't think you are 'shaming' the , no one asks for British English in academia and accents are usually never questioned..as long as they can reasonably be understood

As I pointed out on someone else's answer: the speaker mentioned by the OP is female

Thanks, didn't notice when reading from phone. Fixed.

I do not assume bad faith. The speaker might well be aware and have a thousand reasons for not being able to tackle this. I just think a polite
and non-snarky email need not offend and might prove motivational and informative.
As a foreigner English language speaker in Academia I do believe this is a problem. I've been to several seminars where the speaker was almost unintelligible.
I have not followed the rest of the discussion on comments, so I don't speculate on the author of the question either.

+1 You hit the nail on the head with "reasonably understood". There's nothing wrong with a foreign accent as long as they're understandable. I've heard Scottish people who speak English with such a thick accent that they're almost impossible to understand, and that's their native language! (Besides which, personally I'd be happy if someone told me my attempts at foreign languages weren't very good if they were prepared to tell me what words I need to get better at pronouncing.)

It's unlikely that a non-native English speaker who often interacts with native speakers is unaware that their English is difficult to understand. Do you speak another language? How would you feel if someone sent you an anonymous email informing you that you were completely incomprehensible? Especially if you already knew that people often had trouble understanding you?
On the other hand, you are correct about communication skills. Nonetheless, it's possible for someone to communicate well during a lecture or presentation despite having a difficult accent or weak skills in the target language. You might try offering feedback about how they could improve their presentation given their current language skills, but only if you know that such feedback would be constructive and welcome.

"Do you speak another language? How would you feel if someone sent you an anonymous email informing you that you were completely incomprehensible? " I'd feel pretty motivated to make a change. "Especially if you already knew that people often had trouble understanding you?" I'm 95% sure she's not aware. If you're talking in a language you know you're bad in, would you talk really fast and clearly show no effort? Because usually when people try hard to speak correctly you can see they're making an effort.

@Plumpie It's more likely that she's perfectly aware but she has no intention of doing anything about it because she feels that her rank and expertise entitle her to that. Either way, it's safe to say that your anonymous "feedback" is not going to be well received.

@Plumpie I suspect that most people would feel offended and somewhat intimidated to receive anonymous criticism. At the very least, it looks creepy.

@ElizabethHenning If she's perfectly aware that she can't communicate properly, and is continuing to conduct lectures, then she is failing to do her job properly, and is letting down people (attendees) who depend on her. If she feels her rank and expertise means that she doesn't need to improve her communication, then she should transfer to a job that doesn't require communicating. I agree on the point that any feedback should not be anonymous.

Contrary to the majority of opinions here, as a non-native speaker, I would say that an anonymous email would be helpful. It won't give you any brownie points, and may hurt the speaker's feeling, but it will be helpful to the person regardless. In general, we already give one another too few honest feedbacks out of politeness -- anything in the other direction would be a valuable change.
The most popular answer here asks: "Would you give the feedback if it were about any issue other than English?" I concede that it's not the norm to do so, but it doesn't mean that such a feedback wouldn't be helpful. Indeed, my advisor gives me feedback on the structure of my talk, its graphs, and its typos -- why not my English as well? (In fact, he does comment on when I need to slow down or fix a grammatical mistake).
The speaker may be aware that he has an issue with language, but he may not realize the extent of the problem. There's a chance that the feedback may help, and it sure can't hurt, so why not?
Granted, since you do not play the advisor role to the speaker, I would absolutely advise against a direct conversation. Most likely, it'll make the speaker feel resentful towards you, no matter how helpful your advice is. (Such is regrettably human nature). But an anonymous email would work perfectly well.

As an advisor, I certainly give feedback to my students on their presentations: I discuss structure, graphics, text and English. But they are my students and it's my role to provide guidance to them (and frequently it's not pain-free for them), but I wouldn't bring this up to someone whose background I don't know.

Your advisor gives you feedback because he is your advisor. The OP seems to be in a completely different relationship to the speaker who is the subject of his/her post, and this makes all the difference to whether his/her actions are either appropriate or helpful

It's absolutely not OP's job or duty to offer feedback. It's also not advisable from an interpersonal skill standpoint to offer feedback since there's a decent chance of the speaker getting offended. But if the OP wants to give feedback via an anonymous email, it won't hurt the OP and have a decent chance to help the speaker.

@MassimoOrtolano I absolutely agree that, as a rule, advisors offer these kinds of feedbacks and strangers don't. I'd like to probe further why do we follow this rule? I find that by not giving feedback as often, we all rob one another of opportunities for improving. There's the legitimate concern of people reacting poorly to unprompted feedback -- hence my suggestion of an anonymous email.

"But if the OP wants to give feedback via an anonymous email, it won't hurt the OP and have a decent chance to help the speaker" - I disagree with the second part, and the only reason the first part might be true is that the recipient won't know who sent them this presumptuous and unsolicited commentary

Why do people who want to offer anonymous feedback think that they are actually in the right?

The fact is that not just OP, but multiple people at the talk find it difficult to understand the speaker. The speaker may not know this fact, hence by just mentioning this fact alone, the OP is potentially being helpful. The OP does not have to offer other advice regarding how to improve the pronunciation, which I admit is much less clearly right or wrong.

@Heisenberg "There's the legitimate concern of people reacting poorly to unprompted feedback" but that is only good for the OP, not anyone else, except for the 2 other people HE talked to. So it's selfish, and therefor, BAD. Also, you're assuming vindictiveness on the speakers part. Why?

Anonymous feedback is for students fearing repercussions and trolls. If you are going to say something "potentially sensitive", stand behind it, specially if the recipient is not your boss.

@GwenKillerby The "anonymous email" strategy protects the interest of OP while does not hurt anyone else. I'm not sure I see how this is "bad". I assume vindictiveness from on the speaker's part because accent is a touchy topic, which may cause some people to react poorly with a non-trivial likelihood. I find the amount of emotion and discussion on this thread as evidence of how strongly people feel about the topic.

Actually, lying politely to the speaker by denying her the knowledge that her lecture skills must improve is more "selfish" than sending an anon email. I think it is a legitimate action.

If your advice is not successfully actionable in the short-term, it may not be considered that constructive by the recipient.
So no, do not send her that feedback.
That being said, ask the organizers of the event (or the faculty in charge) to provide transcripts of the talk in advance the next time around, especially if there is any doubt about the ability of their speakers to speak English clearly.
Do not ask for the slides. The slides are designed to be incomplete (and for good reasons). What you must ask for is the transcript. And by transcript, I do not mean that the speaker should read her own transcript while giving her presentation. Reading a script, while making it sound natural, is extremely difficult.
Ideally, the speaker's own notes (the one she has on the podium) should only of consist of a few keywords and key topics that the speaker doesn't want to forget to mention during her lecture. It should not contain full sentences, let alone paragraphs. So in that sense, the lecture shouldn't match the transcript perfectly. But even when it doesn't match the lecture perfectly, a transcript for a speaker, members of the audience do not understand, can still be very useful.
Providing a transcript in advance may not be what you're used to in your academic field, but it is possible and it's actually a pretty standard practice if someone does a presentation in front of journalists (even when the speaker is a native English speaker). For journalists, supplying a transcript in advance helps catch mistakes before they get reprinted, whether the speaker makes the mistake when speaking or whether the journalist makes the mistake when quoting the spoken words of the speaker.
From the point of view of the organizers, that will require pre-screening potential speakers, by previewing previous talks, or if that's not possible, by talking to the potential speakers directly.  This is also a standard practice in some Academic circles, whether the screening process is made obvious or not.
Furthermore, as a non-native English speaker myself with a pretty strong French accent, I'm suggesting that whoever does that pre-screening is a non-native English colleague with an obvious accent himself/herself.
And instead of simply rejecting a talk because the speaker has too strong of an accent, a good pre-screener should still encourage the speaker to still speak at the event, but to supply a transcript in advance at the very least (in addition to any tentative improvement to his accent or delivery), and if that transcript is not possible by a specific deadline, to reject that talk for that event.

"ask the organizers of the event (or the faculty in charge) to provide transcripts of the talk in advance the next time around" Is this something that happens? Surely that would be difficult or impossible to provide. Personally, I deliberately don't write down a script of what I'm going to say in a talk, and even if I did, I doubt I would stick to it very closely. I don't think I'm unusual in that regard.

How is it not actionable? something not actionable would be 'you suck' whereas providing a specific point that can be improved provides a clear path forward.

Asking for a transcript seems like a good idea, but lying about a disability is not.

"What you must ask for [in advance] is the transcript." The what? Talks (with the exception of some fields) aren't delivered from a script. There is no stenographer. There is no transcript.

user2390246, I agree that most people wouldn't follow a script closely, but still a script would still be useful if your spoken English is not understood by your audience. @David Richerby, I wasn't lying, nor I was suggesting lying. People do vary in abilities in understanding foreign sounds. It's like someone who is near-sighted, or far-sighted, or has butterflies appearing in their vision. One doesn't need to be legally blind to politely ask for an accommodation for the next time around, especially if that accommodation is the only way you'll be able to follow what's going on.

@StephanBranczyk If you're near- or far- sighted, you're wearing glasses or contacts unless your vision problem is at the level of a recognised disability. I'm having difficulty seeing "I'm not good at understanding foreign accents" as any kind of recognised disability. It doesn't seem much different from putting in a request along the lines of, "I'm not very good at math so please ask all your speakers to go real slow during the mathy parts of their talks."

Certainly, the OP's advice is actionable and helpful. The speaker must make effort to improve her English, just like she and all of us make effort to improve our lectures, content, form, exposition skills, strategy etc.

@DavidRicherby, If math is not a basic requirement in that specific field, then yes, such a request may be appropriate. The same goes for foreign languages. Some fields require that you know specific languages and knowing a specific language actually helps you understand a particular accent. But if that language is not a particular basic requirement of your field, then you would have a good reason to ask for a written transcript in advance. In any case, I've amended my original answer considerably. I hope that my amended answer gets a better reception.

Requesting a transcript is still completely infeasible.

@DavidRicherby, Then, let's just agree to disagree on that one.

I agree with the commenters that as a listener to the presentation you should probably avoid commenting on the lecturer's clarity (eg because of poor English) unless you are in very friendly and constructive terms with her.
However, I think you could still politely tell her that the presentation was interesting but you couldn't follow perfectly given the poor sound/background noise, and so you would like to receive a copy of the slideset. Then you could suggest to make the slides more self-explanatory.
Your question is more interesting however from the viewpoint of moderators or scientific committee member. In such a case, they have the explicit responsibility to the audience that lectures are clear and understandable. Otherwise, what would be the point of inviting people to lecture at all? Most importantly, a genuinely constructive feedback will be important for the lecturer himself, to avoid future embarassments.
A simple suggestion for anyone with language difficulties is to create/modify a slideset by adding as many self-explanatory phrases as possible. This creates redundancies for a competent lecturer, but saves a poor one. Eventually, such a slideset will only leave the room for poor pronunciation, but all key messages will be firmly delivered.

Some people either make no effort, or have strong difficulties polishing their strong accent. It might depend on the original language. For the English/American native, some people with Roman background language (as I do) fall in this category.
The state of energy of the person can play a role too: when one is sick, stressed or tired, efforts can be difficult. When I give a lecture in English, I notice that after one hour my natural accent begins to show up.
I agree that university  authorities are more responsible for the add value of a lecture. Yet, if you tell them, the impact on how they will translate the issue to the lecturer might be far different, from not taking care to harsher remarks.
As your motivation stands between these two extreme options, I would avoid a written comment, perhaps even more with an anonymous email. But that might be a cultural thing; I'd prefer a direct talk, face to face if possible, in the line of your planned email, for instance to check whether the problem is the same in individual talk: thank the person, ask for the slides, pointing that due to accent-related misunderstandings, you might have lost key aspects of the talk.

People often resent unsolicited feedback because the person giving it doesn't recognize that truly empathetic feedback requires effort on the part of the person giving it. Constructive feedback must give a path forward for the person to correct the problem.
I would try this strategy: Purchase Mastering the American Accent for this person, and make a nice inscription:

I truly enjoyed your recent presentation, and I felt disheartened that I was unable to understand much of it. Your research is relevant to mine, and fundamentally important, so I was hoping we could find a way to improve communication. I am available any time to help you with American pronunciation and accent-if you so desire.

Sign it with your real name.
If in fact you do not care about learning from this person, then leave the issue alone.

Yes, you might want to send the email. I think it will have good and productive effect overall, and help the speaker further in her career a lot. Such criticism, though very unpleasant and even hurtful to hear at first, opens the opportunity to self-improvement.
Your act thus shows that you do care for the speaker. Much more than a person who simply wants to minimize his or her in-comfort, shy away from confrontation and leave the speaker alone and deserted without knowing that secretly the community ignores and disdain her.
As for the fact that the email is anonymous, something that have alerted many commenters here, I disagree with the overall opinion. Academia is full of anonymous feedback, most of which has the potential to be much more hurtful and cardinal than a somewhat amusing email about one's accent. I'm sure the speaker got many harsh and brutal rejections through anonymous peer review, throughout her career, and she's not going to break down because some guy decided to write an anonymous email, peculiar as it sounds. Indeed, academia itself has reserved the right for people "not to stand behind their own opinions" and ideas, so that they feel protected to speak freely, through endless forms of anonymous feedback (reviews and student's feedback, to name a few).

Academia is full of solicited anonymous feedback. Anonymous,  unsolicited, critical emails feel threatening and aggressive. Why does the email have to be anonymous at all?

@DavidRicherby, actually almost none of the anonymous feedback in the academia is solicited by the person the feedback is about. When students give anonymous feedback in my classes, I'm not soliciting this. It's an administrator decision. The same with other feedback. So your point is moot. Academia is full of anonymous feedback solicited mostly by third parties who wish to regulate and even punish you based on the feedback. A rejection by a journal or a sanction against you due to a negative feedback is more "aggressive" than an email about accent that has nor repercussions.

When you give a class, you know that the admins will be soliciting anonymous feedback from the students; depending on institutional policies, it might even be you who hands out the forms and asks the students to fill them in. When you submit a paper, you know the editors will be soliciting feedback and passing it to you anonymously. All of this is solicited by someone and expected by the person who receives the feedback. So, no, my point isn't remotely moot. And I've never heard of an "aggressive" rejection letter.

No. The fact that you are aware that someone forces you to accept anonymous feedback, in order for you to keep your job, puts the feedback you get as a lecturer precisely in the same ethical status as an anonymous email about one's accent. If at all, students feedback is more daunting as it has consequence on your job security. Also, every rejection is a form of an aggressive action, by definition. And if you didn't get an aggressively written review, well, then I'd say you're lucky.

I'm sorry, but there is no moral equivalency whatsoever between allowing students and peer reviewers to make anonymous feedback and sending anonymous nastygrams about somebody's accent. Note, in particular, that student feedback is anonymous to prevent retribution (the teacher is in a direct position of power over their students) and peer review is only anonymous to the ultimate recipient but the editor knows exactly who the reviewers are. Individual reviews might, unfortunately, be aggressive but the editor's decision is not. If your employer is aggressive in handling feedback on your...

... classes, that is unacceptable and you should complain about it. (Anonymously, if necessary, because, again, you are complaining to somebody with direct power over you and may wish to avoid retribution.)

No, I disagree. There is a very clear ethical equivalence (and I'm being conservative here in your favor), between job-detrimental anonymous feedback solicited by administrators, or editors, and a naïve, authentic, and clumsy anonymous email of a listener that have no consequence on the career of the speaker. Notice that usually the reviewer is kept anonymous from the authors although they are by no means under the author's direct position of power. A rejection is an act of aggression, by definition, and it causes to all of us hurt and harsh feelings. That is the reality.

I believe that you can rationalize every norm, the way you do, so that it sounds as if it is actually devoid of any negative ethical consequences. But the reality is that society is structured and organized following quite aggressive rules.

Please look up "aggression" in a dictionary and tell me which part of saying "No, we won't publish your paper" meets that definition. Also, note that your job in no way depends on any individual piece of student feedback.

You seem not to understand the term "aggression". This concept refers to many different kinds of hostile and forceful actions against a person. For example, executing criminals is a kind of aggression some countries have in their power. The act of executing a person is an aggressive act irrespective of the procedure and moral justification given to this act. Same, though much lesser in measure of aggresivity, goes to firing someone, or rejecting one's paper. Both are actions acutely going against essential interests of a person, causing them pain and suffering. Irrespective of the reasons

I'm sorry but there's no equivalency between executing somebody and rejecting their paper.

There's no equivalency. That's an analogy. Both are legal and legitimate actions, in the spectrum of aggressive actions. One is on the extreme end of the spectrum and the other is hurtful, and damaging but not as extreme. Still, both damage the interest of the individual in order to serve a larger goal. The first reprehesion and deterrence of criminals in order to provide social order, the other to distribute academic capital and resources based on merit.


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Are academic indicators (h-index, impact factor, etc) really adopted by institutions? Currently used? And how?
Academic indicators (h-index, impact factor, modified h-indexes, etc) have a long string of criticism by academics and not (see here, here or here).
Instead of debating (endlessly) on how "not representative" and flawed these numbers are (or howling generic rants...), I would be interested to know if Academia.SE community members have objective facts and reports on how academic workplaces are currently using these indicators. For instance in the upcoming REF2014 (UK), academics in my institution are urged to use, as their contributions, the papers accepted in highest impact factors journals.
In summary, can you trade your h-index for a better paying job?

For a better paying job, one might rather leave academia altogether, I don't think the oil industry or the arms industry or other evil, rich industries care about the h-index ;)

i'm convinced that academic jobs are moving towards bonus, company-style approaches, as @walkmanyi says below. So then there'll be no need to switch from academia to oil companies :)

Do you have a reference for REF? We are explicitly being told quality is not IF.

@ElCid If people want to earn a lot of money, I'm sure the oil industry and the arms industry will offer a lot more than academia regardless of the system...

@DanielE.Shub we had an internal discussion on the fact that REF2014 will not be based on metrics. But then a good point emerged saying that it will expose the exercise to subjectivity, which is clearly worse. So an internal communication was sent to urge academics selected for REF to pick their choices among the ones with higher IF

Anecdotally, I saw a fellowship in which the official requirement for applying was a first-author paper in a journal with an impact factor of at least 20.

On the European research market, various opinions have been offered on the use of h-index by ERC grant evaluation committees, and the broader relationship between h-index and ERC funding success. People who provide such opinion can be classified in three categories:

affiliated with the ERC
consultants whose business is to offer advice to (potential) candidates
individuals involved in another way, whose advice is most probably only anecdotal

So, what do the first two categories have to say? The official word from the guidelines is, well… absent. But it is politically correct to assert that h-index is not a good indicator of scientific quality and, as such, not used. This gives quotes like:

Quality in science is not proved by accumulating quantitative points. The role of commercial impact factor and h-index is limited. Overemphasizing of publish or perish policy leads to a gradual perishing of all.

On the other hand, practical advice might be a bit more nuanced:

There will also be a new h-index study the successful 2011 awardees in the PE and LS domains. The h-index is regarded as a background indicator rather than a determining factor and the study on the 2010 Advanced Grant awardees showed that each panel made awards across a considerable range and that there were significant differences across the different ERC panels. There was a big variation between different disciplines within the main domains.

and this:

Every applicant had to choose his 10 best publications published in the recent decade and add how many times each of these papers were cited in the literature. The total number L of these citations describes well how the scientific community perceives their recent achievements. These numbers were provided by the ERC in the dossier of every applicant. However, during the evaluation process the panel did not put much emphasis on any bibliometric data. It was the opinions of the experts which did matter, not the bare numbers. Only after completing the evaluation process, I realised a correlation between these data and the final outcome.

To give another perspective: in France, a new evaluation system for higher education and research was put in place 5 years ago (the newly created agency performing the evaluation is called AERES). AERES evaluates each research group every 4 to 5 years, in order to give it an overall rating, which could be A+, A, B or C. This had at least two very practical consequences that I know of:

For yearly financial negotiations between each university and the Ministry for research, the ministry started to require a spreadsheet with the number of university teams rated A+, and the number of A team (B and C didn't seem to count). Financial support was then dependent on that number, at least as a starting point for the negotiations.
It became customary to include this grade in your French grant applications, because a A+ rating was considered a serious advantage. This was written in the “rules”, however…

So, all in all, are bibliometric and, speaking more broadly, academic indicators really adopted by institutions? Hell yeah! They make deciders’ job easier: quantification of research quality makes it easier to make decisions. Smart decision makers do realize, however, that a single indicator does not make for good decisions.

Interesting. Could you be more specific on which basis h-index should be officially calculated in those contexts you mention? I mean, e.g., for a computer scientist WoS is not really a good (favourable?) source of bibliometric data as conferences tend to be preferred in many sub-communities. On the other hand, e.g., Scopus is of a lower-profile and Google Scholar and in turn the Harzing's PoP based calculations are more "anecdotal", rather than "officially useful" as they include also self-citations and less-prominent publications (e.g., TRs).

For computer scientists, all methods of computing h-indices are unreliable.  But they're presumably unreliable in the same way for everyone in the same subfield, so they can still be used for comparative purposes.  As with any unreliable statistic, it's useful to take multiple measurements, so using the h-indices from WoS and Scopus and Google Scholar and Microsoft Academic Search is probably the least worst option.

(Arguably, there's no reliable, objective way to compute h-indices in any field.  Who decides which citations from which journals count, and how?  Fortunately (sic), the reliability of citation statistics is demonstrably lower in CS than in other fields.)

In Czech Republic, researchers are obliged to indicate their most important publications, together with the number of citations, the corresponding impact factors of the journals, as well as their own WoS-based h-index on major grant proposals to national grant agencies (GACR, TACR, etc.). In a consequence, universities care for h-index and other citation metrics internally as well and in result citations/impact factors are tracked and form a basis for annual evaluation, possibly even leading to end-year bonus calculation. So yes, at least in Czech research space citation metrics, such as h-index and impact factors are a big deal.

Later edit:
Since you ask for objective evidence, I refer to the recent manual for GACR standard projects starting in 2012, paragraph 4.2.10, b-d (all in Czech).

Yet another edit in response to ElCid's comment:
There was an equation for calculating an extra-ordinary bonus taking into account the impact factor of the journal authors get their paper accepted in and then taking into account the stated (percentual) contributions of each individual co-author. In result, the formula spit out the amount of money each department-resident co-author would get for the paper. The bonus was a department-specific policy.
Secondly, there was an annual evaluation taking into account the number of papers produced by the researcher, the number of citations received in that particular year (sometimes extremely hard to track), impact factors for journals of the papers concerned (both submitted and those receiving citations) grants received, and other minor factors as well. The evaluation was a faculty wide policy, I am not sure whether it led to direct financial benefit to the researchers, but certainly these metrics were important in the internal university-wide division of funds which also partly hinged on aggregates of the above described metrics. To my understanding, these policies formed an incentive for the faculty to target high-impact journals in their respective fields.

Could you describe the bonus? Are research-active staff expected to get it anyway? What are the effects on other staff?

I'm really enthused by this answer... I am looking forward to other countries sharing and adopting this model, which I believe is ready to deployment, given the pressure and the tight deadlines dropped on academic staff

The main reason to look at impact factor (at the schools where I've worked*) is so that a future hire can most probably obtain funding to continue research (support grad students, purchase equipment, etc.).
Quality publications become an important aspect of any research proposals a future hire would submit. Research proposals are evaluated by other researchers within the network of the research program. Those researchers can freely use impact factor of a proposal's publications as a criterion for evaluation. I don't know of any programs that use it as a mandatory criterion, probably because it's still controversial.
Some professors might get hired because they already have good funding, sometimes because of R&D contacts with industry, a good IP track record (patents), and a low impact factor may be a terrible reason to reject a candidate like that.
As for converting h-index to better pay, I'd say if you're at the right institution, you can convert it to a better package (salary is only one aspect). Impact factor is not the only indicator that you will be successful, but might be an important one for tenure-track (assistant) professor positions. It may not get you a higher salary, but it probably will get your CV higher on the list.

*Hiring committees are formed and they are free to set the criteria for selecting candidates. Impact factor has been used on several committees at my institution, but it's not an established policy. I believe this is an issue of academic freedom.

Research proposals are evaluated by other researchers within the network of the research program. Those researchers can freely use impact factor of a proposal's publications as a criterion for evaluation — Presumably researchers within a grant applicant's own research field can judge the quality of that applicant's research directly, no?

@JeffE If you're fortunate enough to have those experts evaluate your proposal, then I agree. In some emerging fields of research, I'm not sure proposals always wind up in the hands of committees of experts. In such cases, a high impact factor is probably important.

@Fuhrminator: Wait, I'm confused.  For papers in an emerging area with few people qualified to judge the quality of the work, most citations necessarily come from authors who can't judge the quality of the work.  Why would anyone trust such citations as an indicator of quality?

@JeffE I didn't catch your last comment since my user id is different. I was thinking of young profs in an emerging field who submit a grant proposal to a govt funding agency. The reviewers, none of whom are experts, might use impact factor for lack of anything else. They could also write off the research as bunk because it's some new fad. I'm in IT in Canada and federal grant proposals don't always wind up in the right evaluators hands. They are volunteers, and try to do the best job, using whatever tools are available to evaluate concretely.

The reviewers, none of whom are experts, might use impact factor for lack of anything else. — I suppose they might, but I've never seen that actually happen, either in hiring committees, tenure committees, or grant-review panels.  I have, however, seen entire fields written off as pointless fads, despite high impact factors.

As in JeffE's comments to another answer, it is very unclear to me that anyone should be happy that "bibliometrics" assume official stature, especially in the particular situation of "emerging" fields, where one's livelihood thus becomes contingent on opinions or behavior of non-experts?
In the U.S., in mathematics, it seems that this official stature is very recent, in contrast to various places in Europe where (apparently) the bureaucracy was even less shy than here about insisting on "simple" quantification of the "performance" of academics and departments. Of course, presumably, administrations have always simplified their private appraisals of departments and individuals for purposes of "decision-making" (a.k.a., deciding who gets the money), but more recently commercial products (from our buddies the traditional publishers) have been promoted to university administrators, and have been bought and paid for, over the public objections of faculty...
One point is that traditional publishers are happy, I'm sure, to have the significance of their gatekeeper "peer-reviewed" publications more firmly ensconced by the effective endorsement of their "rating" software packages.
"Conflict of interest" comes to mind, for one thing.
(But I'm not eager to trade this commericalized U.S. manifestation for the systematic, nation-wide version available too often in Europe.)
The real problem is that this commodification of "research/scholarship" adds a function-less layer of misdirection and noise to an already challenging enterprise, with already-precarious economics. For those who wish it to be a "revolution" that gets us out from under some old regime, I fear that instead it is merely a different incarnation of the same thing, sometimes owned by the same mulit-national corporate entities.

How does this answer the question of how broadly these indicators are actually used by institutions?

Specifically, in the U.S. this is a relatively new thing, but is being put in place as a definitive metric in the eyes of administrators. I know people in the UK and elsewhere in Europe (in math) who are precisely judged by such metrics.

In many places of South Korea, IF is definitely used for job performance evaluation.  In one Research Institute I am aware of, there is yearly evaluations which are quantitative, giving each person a score out of 100.  The actual impact factor of each journal publication is used in the calculation, such as the highest IF journals are given 3x more points than low or non.  The final score determines job promotion or firings.

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Can I present the results of a paper that is currently under review?
Among the presentations in a major conference, I attended one where the author cited a paper (of theirs) under review in another major conference. Not only cited it, but showed some of its results.
I have the impression that it should not be possible, since there's the potential risk of influencing reviewers who could also be in the room during the presentation. Or is it only "good practice" not to do so?

Both Dave's and F'x's reply agree on a single point: it is your work, you can do whatever you like with it. That it is under review, does not change that fact at all. It would be rather crazy if there would be a kind of a "submission policy" forbiding the author of the intellectual property to make use of it.

I see their (and your) points. My understanding was the following: I submitted a paper, and I am currently awaiting for its peer reviews. If I start to share the results as a proven fact during a conference, I am essentially assuming that these results should be accepted by the community, hence inducing some sort of short circuit between the reviews and what the community already thinks about it. I had a mentor that was of that opinion, and he taught me that. But I happened to see that behaviour  only recently

It isn't clear from your story whether the speaker cited their own paper under review, or someone else's paper under review.  All the existing answers assume that it was the speaker's paper.

@walkmanyi: See Suresh's answer.  Crazy or not, double-blind submissions require such a policy.

@JeffE: see my comments to Suresh's reply.

At a certain extreme, presenting unpublished results could be considered by a conservative audience as invalid and thus not scientific. On the other hand, if done humbly it could be a useful service of communication.

@Fuhrmanator: I agree. During my doctorate years I was taught never to reveal anything unproven (i.e. peer-reviewed), and for sure my advisor was very conservative in that respect

In favour of unrestricted dissemination
After thinking about the answers provided so far and the discussion in comments, it seems to me that the point of view favouring dissemination of research results  unrestricted by the double-blind peer-review process needs a stronger case. I believe that the answer can be derived from higher-level, rather philosophical, principles.

... Or is it only "good practice" not to do so [to present results under review]?

What is the purpose of developing and disseminating research results?
I am an idealist in these things and argue, that it is first and foremost the advancement of human knowledge and ultimately improvement of the conditions of the human society, as well as the world around us -- regardless of what exactly "improvement" means, I have in mind something like a wider social consensus that the change has a positive vector.
Given this stance, unless there are other considerations in the game, there is no reason which could obstruct our advancement of human knowledge, which ultimately rests on dissemination of quality results to the wider public. Of course, we should be careful and act in a good faith so as to be cautious about validity, significance and originality of our results. Peer-review process is only an auxiliary mechanism helping us to filter out ideas/results in violation of these principles, i.e., helps us to recognize and fix our own misjudgements and mistakes, as well as (in the worse case) dissemination of results not advancing knowledge of humankind, but produced for other primary purposes. After all, the ultimate metrics for the results of scientific research is not the outcome of the peer-review process, but rather the long-term impact on the society and the world around us. That is, whether other people will learn something from the results and whether it eventually helps them to build something beneficial to the society.
Unfortunately, thanks to the recent proliferation of the publish-or-perish attitude and its intertwining with the need to advance human knowledge, as well as  interactions of these two conflicting forces, gradually peer-review becomes primarily a mechanism to filter bad-faith products - think plagiarism, results falsification and all sorts of other scientific misconduct. Yet, I maintain, the process of filtering should not gain a higher importance than the objective of our pursuit itself. To conclude, if executed with caution, restrictions imposed by double-blind review process should not restrict our ability to disseminate our results.

say that a person in good faith publishes (unreviewed) the wrong data and results based on some clinical experiments. Would that be acceptable?

I guess exactly that happens all the time on pre-print servers, doesn't it?

The only problem of presenting results that are not published is if someone else steals the results and writes their own paper about them. (Though this probably more likely only happens with ideas that are shared too prematurely.)
It is generally considered a good thing to promote one’s own work, and one way of doing this is by giving presentations at other universities.
Even if this work is under review at a different conference, I don’t think it is problematic. When presenting a paper at a conference, you are not necessarily obliged to talk about precisely the contents of the paper. You are advertising the paper, and more generally, your own work, so that people will read it and cite it. If you have bigger and better results, then these will help with your promotion of your own work.
Of course it would be weird, though probably not wrong, to talk entirely about a different paper when presenting at a conference.

you're right I did not think about that aspect. I was mostly concerned on the "moral" side. The presentation was given at a twin-conference though

There is one circumstance where presenting results under review elsewhere would be a violation of code. This is when the conference where review is ongoing requires double blind submissions.
In such cases, there's usually a clause that asks the authors not do anything overt to violate double blind review, and presenting at a different venue (where reviewers might be in attendance) would be an overt violation.

Major point. Double blind review does not exist in my field, so I always forget about it…

Could you please edit your answer and provide links for conferences with such policies? I never came across such a stipulation in double-blind conferences I care for, so I am curious, perhaps I overlooked something.

I cannot agree (yet). I just checked CfP's and submission instructions of STOC, FOCS, IJCAI, AAMAS, just a sample. They do mention policies on multiple submissions, and stipulations on how to edit the paper so as to attempt to hide authors' identity. But I nowhere see any instructions forbidding the author to publicly present results of the submitted paper. Of course presenting the paper publicly allows for a Google attack on the double blind process, but as we all know, often do so the references in the bibliography and other clues. So far, I remain skeptical about your reply.

STOC/FOCS are not good examples, since they don't do double blind. Conferences in machine learning like NIPS and ICML do double blind review. I went over a few of them, and they do ask that the authors not do anything overt (like you mention). I merely argued that public presentation of a work under review at a venue where reviewers might be present could be construed as similar to adding identifying information to the paper. Maybe I should have replaced "would" by "could" in the first line of my answer.

@Suresh: Sorry for drilling into this, could you quote please from CfP's/author instructions forbidding presentation/discussion of one's work elsewhere? ICML/NIPS 2012 editions only include standard double blind review stipulations on how to format/style the submission. Nothing else. Moreover, ICML'12 policy explicitly states this: Publication at http://arxiv.org explicitly does not conflict with ICML. Presentation at a workshop which does not have both a review for novelty and correctness and an official proceedings is explicitly allowed. I still think your answer is not correct.

I think, @Suresh is making the point, that presenting your work that is under double blind review defeats the purpose of this double blind process. As such I, too, would argue that the public presentation of these results could influence the review process and I would advise against it. It of course always depends on the level of detail of the presentation. If it's only one slide covering the results it's a whole different matter than giving an entire talk about the findings.

In the case of ICML, I did not see the clause you mentioned. Since it clearly allows for workshop presentation (and really therefore any presentation) my point is not valid there. I'd probably continue to argue that unless this disclaimer is made explicitly, you are still flouting the spirit of double blind policies.

There is nothing unethical in doing so (including results from a paper of your own under review). It is not fundamentally different from presenting any other unpublished work of yours. If anything, you are taking a risk because people might jump on the idea, do the research at full speed (knowing what to look for), and publish it before your paper is finally out…
It depends strongly on the field of research, and the pressure from the competition. In my field (physical chemistry), it has evolved as follows in the last 10 or 15 years: people used to happily report on their not-yet-published results. Then, some colleagues from the US started to stop doing it, especially at the big conferences, citing fear of being “scooped”. Now, in most conferences, you don't hear anything that has not at least been accepted for publication. There are exceptions, usually local conferences, but also for example the prestigious Gordon conferences, which are held under a confidentiality agreement and where unpublished work is favored.

I see no reason to be concerned about this.  Most of my conference presentations are about work I haven't even submitted yet.  And the whole point is to persuade people that the ideas I'm presenting are useful.  All of my papers go on arxiv.org and on my website as soon as they're submitted.
Why on earth would it be wrong to influence reviewers (except in case of double-blind review)?

... which is fine, I guess. My focus is on those works that are under review already and that you might choose to present anyways. If you see my other questions, I might appear as a sort of audience-freak, since I tend to avoid to publicise material that has not been peer-reviewed. Flawed as it is, I still believe that the peer-review system has to be acknowledged as a presentation-safe approach to one's content. And to the "I-deserve-to-be-here" mantra :)

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Are reviewers supposed to know each others' identity, after the reviewing process is finished?
I reviewed an article and submitted my review along with a short letter to the editor. As a service the journal permits to see the decision letter and the other review. However, I am also able to see the other reviewers' letter to the editor, which is signed with a name. My own short letter to the editor I did not sign with my name.
Is this supposed to be? If not, should I do anything in particular if I do find out by accident?
The issue is somewhat addressed in some of the answers for the question Are reviewers allowed to discuss their review with each other?. One answer states you're not meant to find out, while another one states once you've submitted your own review, it is normal to know who the other reviewers are and be able to see their reviews. There are two different issues here:

Knowing the other reviewers' identity during the reviewing process.
Knowing the other reviewers' identity after the reviewing process.

Is case (2) normal?
Edit: I might add that the policy of the journal is not a double-blind: the full list of authors and affiliations of the manuscript were purposefully disclosed to the reviewers.

I think you should inform the editor, in case this is an unintended flaw in the software (which I suspect it is).  If it is intentional, then the journal should warn referees that other referees will be allowed to see their letters.

No, its not normal to know who the other reviewers are if the journal has a double-blind review policy ( my background is Engineering disciplines, might be different in other fields).
What I have experienced in the double-blind review process both as a reviewer and the author:

Knowing the other reviewers' identity during the reviewing process? NO, not normal.
Knowing the other reviewers' identity after the reviewing process? NO, not normal.
Knowing whether the editor accepted or reject the paper? NO (a very good practice as I have learned).

How can (3) be blind? If it's accepted it's going to be published.

Are you saying that it is nor is not normal? Some punctuation is missing.

@gerrit Of course you can go and check it out later if that's what you want! But I think it's a very useful policy and i have seen it by other editors and we have adopted it as well because: 1-If the paper gets accepted it can take up to one year for getting it published, so you will loose interest and not go figure out who it was from exactly 2-Paper might get rejected and you might assume its case 1 3-paper might get revision and it extends the cycle. What this does is that i have never cared/remembered to go and check later which papers I reviewed got accepted => GOOD Double-Blind practice.

I've experienced big differences between mathematics and theoretical computer science, despite the closeness of the two fields and the overlap of the two communities.
In mathematics, papers are normally submitted to journals. (Conferences are useful for many purposes but are not important publication venues.) Journals usually have just a single referee for a paper, but even when a paper has several referees, they don't learn each other's identities nor do they see each other's reports (except in very special cases).
In theoretical computer science, the top conferences are the important publication venues. Papers (or more precisely "extended abstracts" of 12 to 15 pages) are assigned several referees (members of the program committee, who may sub-contract the refereeing job to others if they wish). After submitting a report on a paper, a referee gets access to the names and the reports of the other referees. Members of the program committee who are not assigned to referee a particular paper get (as far as I know) access to the referees' identities and reports as soon as these are entered into the system.  (In all the cases I've been involved with, "the system" is the conference management software EasyChair.)

Generally, reviewers are not supposed to learn the identity of other reviewers for the same submission. As mentioned in the comment by David Ketcheson, this looks like an error from the journal's side. It could also be the other reviewer's error, if he typed his letter to the editor into the wrong field - but the journal should have checked this before letting other reviewers see it.
In general, I never heard of reviewer names or their letters to the editor being revealed to another reviewer for the same submission. In my field, the letter to the editor is often described as "Confidential comments to the editor", and I always interpreted this as only the editor being allowed to see these comments. It is common though in many publication venues that as a reviewer, you get to see the other reviews for the same submission - but always after you submit your review and surely without the reviewers' names being shown.

"It is common though in many publication venues that as a reviewer, you get to see the other reviews for the same submission" no this has never happened to me. A couple of times the editor gave me the other reviews to make the final judgement call based on everything but that was it. It has not been a general practice in my experience.

Really? The CMS systems for many of the journals that I've reviewed for automatically show me the other reviews after I've submitted my own.

There is no good answer to that, and that's once again an example where the answer is discipline-specific. Many disciplines insist on double-blind review: the reviewer does not know who the author is, and the author does not know who the referees are. (Of course, in most specific enough topics, you hit a circle of about ten people who understand a given topic, and you kinda figure out whose paper it is even without googling it; likewise, you can often figure out the reviewers from their suggestion to cite their work.) Some disciplines, or some journals, just send you the original submission with the author's name on it. Some journals disclose the names of the referees after the paper is accepted, but they would warn you of that. Most journals would publish a thank-you list of all the referees in the past year in the last issue of the year.
Now, some interesting twists. I had a referee from a math department contact me directly with his opinion on my paper that was submitted to a psychology journal. Now, psychology is very tight-lipped, and it was on a boundary of a scandal for the journal. But this seemed to be the standard and natural practice in the home field of the referee. Moreover, on some mathematicians CVs, I have seen not only the papers authored, but also the papers reviewed, so it's the opposite of double-blind.

I am a mathematician, and your description doesn't match my experience of peer-review practices.  Certainly ensuring technical correctness is an important function of peer review, but the referee is also asked to judge the paper's importance and novelty, for which different journals have different standards.  (Some only publish groundbreaking work or solutions to notorious longstanding problems; others will publish minor incremental improvements of existing work.)

Referees are generally anonymous, since their opinions on importance, clarity, etc may be controversial.  Exceptions are sometimes made in very special cases; a proposed proof of an extremely famous result (like Fermat's last theorem) may be refereed publicly by a team of experts.  I have never seen a mathematician's CV which lists papers reviewed.  There may be a few people who disagree with the idea of anonymous reviews and intentionally reveal their identities when refereeing, but they are not the norm.

Interesting. Thanks for putting a first hand expertise into this. I am a social science statisticians, and interact with math folks but irregularly. I'll edit my answer.

There is normally no process to inform reviewers of their respective reports. Some journals may relate back the editor verdict based on the reviewers' comments to the reviewers but not even that is commonplace. In journals with an open discussion format (see e.g. Copernicus' journals), reviewers may become aware of each other and certainly read each other's reviews after they have been posted. But, as long as reviewers are allowed to be anonymous, it is unlikely that journals will adopt such an exchange. It does not appear as if electronic submission systems have such structures built-in (not the ones I have been involved with). To keep reviewers unknown to each other and keep their review reports "secret" until the review is done is of course sound since it ensures independent reviews.

One aspect that has not been mentioned yet: some reviewers intentionally sign their reviews, and what you describe sounds like an instance of this practice. (The arguments for or against this practice are complicated; I will not reiterate them here.) Whether this is allowed or not varies by journal.

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How do I write a good peer review?

Possible Duplicate:
Scope for the role of peer reviewer

For the first time, I have been asked to do a peer review. I have accepted, because the paper is well within my expertise, and I don't have less time than others.
Are there any established guidelines, checklists, etc. on how to actually do a good peer review? One might consider it common sense (just read the article critically and raise any issues), but I think it might still be helpful to have some checklist on things to look for. For example, is it my responsibility to check that the references are correct? Should I mention cosmetics ("figure X hard to read"), or focus only on the content? And if I do focus on the content, are there specific strategies in doing so?
The manuscript (draft) is a full length journal article.

Hmm, perhaps this is a duplicate of http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/498/1033 but I'm not sure


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How do people get simultaneous offers?
Several questions on this site relate to a situation where someone gets several offers simultaneously: for example, see How to choose between multiple math postdocs offers?.  But how does this situation arise?  In my (limited) experience, offers do not come simultaneously, and need to be replied to almost immediately (within a week or so).  For example, position A could have the application deadline 1 February, have interviews mid-February and announcements mid-March, while position B could have everything one month later.  To have two open offers at the same time seems very unlikely in a specialised field where positions are not open on a weekly basis.  Then how does this happen?

@scaaahu I mean within a week or so.  I've added it to the question.

This is very field and country dependent.

Having a sufficient number of applications out really helps. That and being a candidate that people really want to hire.

In mathematics, the answer is easy: most American math postdocs are selected on about the same schedule.  There are some variations of 4 to 6 weeks, but that still leaves plenty of room for second round offers from an early school to coincide with first round offers from schools that run later.
Further, there's been a tendency for schools that tend to compete over people to try to race each other to making offers, so the number of simultaneous offers ends up being higher than the number of schools would suggest.
(Also, a one week deadline to respond seems a bit short. What I've seen is more like two, with the ability to ask for an extra week or so which is usually granted if there's a chance of another offer.)
(Just for clarity, by most I mean more than half; there's a big early cluster and then additional positions being considered for months.)

First-round offers are also synchronized by the AMS common deadline, which keeps most schools on the same schedule.

The ability to ask for an extra week or so which is usually granted if there's a chance of another offer — doesn't that give the message you are my second choice?  If it does, does that not have negative side-effects?

@gerrit: They've already made the offer, so what negative side-effects would it have?  I mean, yes, it does risk sending that message, but the faculty can generally take it without too much offense (unless they're the absolute top of their field, they probably know they're not, and they're also aware that people often have personal reasons for choosing postdocs).  Moreover, pretty much by definition the request is from someone with a serious chance of other offers, so giving the extra time to decide makes it more likely that if they do accept, they'll stay for the full term of the postdoc.

@AnonymousMathematician Is that specific for any kind of position (PhD, post-doc), or does it apply for all academic positions?  It's not the case in my field.

@gerrit That deadline is specifically for postdocs.  There's a different one for Ph.D. students.  For TT offers, there's no official deadline, but most offers are still made between Christmas and Easter.

@gerrit Would you want to hire someone who had no hope of getting a job at a better school?  Of course, it is good if you find candidates who like your school for idiosyncratic reasons, but in general the people you want to hire are probably in the mix other places as well.

@BenWebster If one considers it purely in term of school rankings, I see your point.  But if one considers several funded post-doc opportunities with different topics, it's rather subjective which topic a fresh PhD prefers.  What I was thinking is that I would leave the message: he/she would rather be doing something else, and that this would leave a negative impresssion as for how motivated someone is.  But perhaps I'm looking too much into this.  It's anyway nothing actual for me anymore (:

@gerrit: American math postdocs are very different from science postdocs, which are what you seem to be thinking of.  They aren't attached to specific topics, and they're funded primarily by university/department money rather than grants.

In faculty hiring, it's not uncommon for the following sequence of events to happen.

Candidate interviews at University A and University B
Sometime later, University A starts making noises about making an offer (usually over email and on phone)
Candidate puts out feelers to University B, hinting that if they were thinking of making an offer, now might be a good time.
University B makes offer (email/phone) to candidate
Much negotiating merriment ensues.
.....
Profit (for candidate at least)

Sometimes, there might even be more than two players involved in the bidding.
In short, the candidate can trigger multiple offers if they play their cards right. Or it can happen by fortuitous timing. But the approach described above is quite common.

In American sociology, hiring usually happens during the fall and winter months (although the 2nd tier market goes on to the Spring, which is a bit different from the fall/winter markets).
During these months, candidates (PhD Candidates, postdocs, VAPs, lecturers) send out applications for academic positions, usually in large numbers due to the high level of uncertainty and cut throat nature of the market-- Most positions get around 200+ applications (one postdoc competition I applied to last year was interdisciplinary social science and received 780 applications!).
I applied to about 30 jobs this season, which number is actually considered pretty low (I am in a pretty niche field) and I personally know other people who have applied to nearly 100 positions. The fact is, candidates have limited information regarding the hiring (what the department is "actually" looking for- because many things are not noted in the vague job descriptions), and it is believed that, getting an interview, is not only the workings of credentials and qualifications, but also largely due to "fluke." To up the chance, many people apply widely and in large numbers.
Anyways, many candidates do not get anything after months of putting in applications, and a few lucky ones can get multiple interviews, offers, and so forth (interestingly, I find that probability of getting interviews does not correlate too much with publication records either, except for the absolutely top tier market). It is completely possible to have multiple offers and when you do, it definitely gives you more bargaining power in negotiating.

30-100... I hope for the supervisors that they don't all require tailored recommendation letters!

Do you believe in the "element of luck?" Many people say that if you have this, you'll be able to achieve your life's goals in easier means as compared to others. And relating this to your question, those who receive simultaneous offers are probably "lucky" at that particular point in time. Unfortunate are those who really work hard but are not given such opportunity. Anyway, according to successful people especially those involved in real estate business, "persistence pays" - so never stop chasing what you truly deserve!

I would think they happen mostly by having a relationship with the person doing the hiring. That means that the offer isn't made through a tight bureaucratic process but can be more flexible.
Many positions are never publically announced and the only way to access them is through networking. Some position will even be created to be able to hire a specific person.

Many positions are never publicly announced — [citation needed]  (This may be country dependent.)

This quite false in the US in mathematics.  Positions usually are widely announced, and not necessarily linked to one professor who makes the decision.


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Should I focus on GPA or publishing (undergraduate)?
I have high GPA. However, I'm now in my last undergraduate year and I feel attracted to research and publishing research outputs. Should I go ahead with publishing my research? This may negatively affect my GPA a little bit and it takes from my time a lot.
Is it worth sacrificing a little GPA to publish as an undergraduate?

Does publishing worth to GPA scarifying? — Yes. Yes, it does.

Unfortunately, after 4 years, I can assure you that research wasn't a big factor for me.. I hope the best for others..

There is, unfortunately, no single answer to this question. In most fields undergraduate publication is uncommon enough that any publications look good. However, the amount of value added by publications compared to GPA will depend on a range of factors, including the following:
Area of study: Some disciplines may place a higher importance on social or community projects rather than publications, while others may prize GPA. You will need to determine how your discipline prioritizes these academic goals. Within my discipline (psychology) undergraduate publications can be helpful if applying to graduate school, but are not expected of incoming graduate students.
Intended career: Similarly, if you are entering an applied field once you graduate, they may be far more interested in other, more concrete forms of experience. Again, for someone pursuing a clinical career in psychology, publications (especially those that are clinically relevant) might be nice, but employers are more likely to be interested in clinical experience. If you are entering industry they may pay little attention to your GPA, assuming it hits a basic threshold. If you are intending to pursue an advanced degree publications may be more useful, but again this will depend on your discipline.
Amount your GPA will drop: If you have an excellent GPA and will be risking only a small drop (so that you would still consider your final GPA to be competitive), then it may be worth pursuing publication. Many graduate programs in the USA look for a basic cut off in GPA when considering admissions; that is, so long as it is "good enough" it is ok. However, what is considered "good enough" will vary by discipline and program. If you are risking a substantial drop in GPA, it may not be worth it. Be sure you have a sense of how low your grades could be while still maintaining what you consider to be an acceptable GPA. Then determine if you feel the burden of publishing will put you at risk of missing that mark.
Quality/timing/authorship of publications: The overall impact of your publications will influence how much "extra value" they add to your career or academic pursuits. Obviously, higher impact journals will look better than lower-tier. Beyond just having the publication on your CV, the quality of the work and your role in the work will also matter. Being involved with the development or conceptualization of the project will be more valuable in terms of experience than if you assist with data entry. That type of conceptual involvement will better enable you to discuss the project and its implications in job or graduate school interviews. Additionally, in some fields the order of authorship on papers is important and holding a valued authorship position (first, second, last, etc. depending on field) may be beneficial. In disciplines that do not assign weights to the order of authorship (e.g., mathematics), this is a non-issue.
Impact on your personal life: Finally, you will have to determine whether pursuing publications is worth the significant amount of time you believe it will take. Think about this carefully. If you begin to make some trade-offs with your GPA to pursue publishing, and then decide the work load is too much of a burden in other aspects of your life, it may be difficult to refocus on your grades.
If you are having difficulty evaluating these different factors, seek advice from a mentor, professor, or someone who is pursuing the career you are interested in. You may also be able to gather some information about how your field and possible career paths value these factors by looking at graduate program entrance requirements, job postings, and the publicly available resumes or CVs of people in your field.