text:
Why do most people think it's a bad idea to read from slides?
As many of you probably know, almost all advice regarding doing better academic talks includes universal advice to not put too many words in any one slide, and to not read straight from slides (this is always thought to be a sign of a bad talk).
I used to agree with all of this because it sounds reasonable, and anyway that's how I've written my own talks so far. But I went to a conference late last year where a speaker did exactly the opposite of this advice (my field is mathematics). He was literally reading his slides verbatim, and each of his slides was packed full with long sentences. And yet, it was one of my favorite talks of the conference, and for me (a Ph.D student) it was clean, clear, and easy to follow despite the fact that the material was completely new to me. I do think a large part of the reason I found it so clean and clear was precisely because of the talk's structure, and not despite of it.
That experience made me rethink my prejudice against speakers who read out of the slides. For some people, it may be a superior talk strategy to alternatives, especially in academic fields where the details really matter.
So, I am not convinced anymore that it is general (or even, usual) good advice to not read from the slides. Why do people think it's such a bad idea? And please don't say "it's lazy" or "could just read the slides instead of listening to the talk" because in practice, neither of these perspectives demonstrate why an alternative is better at communicating the information, which is what really matters.

I always read the slides to myself faster than the presenter does. Then I am bored while I wait for him/her to finish reading the slide and move on to the next one.

Thanks for your comment! I don't see why that extra time is necessarily a negative. In fact, maybe you have pointed out precisely why  it can be a better strategy sometimes for many people: by allowing them that extra time (from having read the slide to the speaker finishing its reading), they can perhaps focus on assimilating the material, even if for some seconds (which is already vastly more time than what you get in a strong no-reading talk). Also, in this way, there are few surprises to the listener in terms of what the speaker will say.

If I'm bored in a talk, I'm probably going to leave (unless I really have to be there.) If I can't leave, I'm going to take out a pen and paper and do some work instead of listening to a talk that bores me.

I understand your perspective. If I'm bored I will probably also take out a pen and paper and start working on something else. But, just because you find it boring doesn't imply that it can't be helpful to others. I'm not saying all (or even most) talks should be read straight from slides. However, I am saying that the common advice that it is just universally wrong seems off to me. There are many speakers and listeners who may strongly benefit from the straight-reading approach.

I should also say, that I honestly think most people would find a talk in which they have gotten hopelessly lost more boring than a talk in which they have to wait a few extra seconds per slide.

Look around next time you're in a talk where someone is reading from their slides. I mean, you're going to have those "few extra seconds" for each slide anyway, so do an experiment. Take note of how many people are actually paying any attention. Compare to some other speakers. Of course the fraction tuned in will likely be depressingly low for all speakers, but I've seen entire audiences simply tune out readers. I suspect that you were lucky: the speed of the reading fit perfectly with your speed of comprehending the material. I also suspect that won't be a common experience.

@user58865 Yes, I agree that blackboard talks often trump slide talks.

@dmckee It is possible that it may have been a lucky event. But slide-reader talks are not common at all in my experience, so I don't know when I'll be able to listen to one again to "test". I guess a factor may be that I've always had much stronger reading comprehension than listening comprehension, a factor surely amplified by the fact that English is not my first language, and so it may be easy for me to "tune out" the speaker in favor of the written material. If this factor is at all important, it seems clear it would apply to a large part of the scientific population, rather than just me.

Why bother going to the talk at all? I can read; I'd rather the lecturer just send me the slides, and we could spend the scheduled time talking about it. (Yes, I read the last part of the post. I'd pick up the material much better if I were reading it on my own, taking as much or as little time going through as I'd like.)

@anomaly what you say sounds reasonable, but is it really applicable in practice? Like when you go to conferences and are just mildly enough interested in some topic outside your area that you want to check out the talk but not bother with contacting the speaker?
Ideally, the best talks for me are the recorded blackboard talks. But obviously I hardly ever have the luxury of sitting through such an arrangement

@Lentes: I don't know. But would listening to someone read out the slides be any better than just reading them yourself, especially considering that many of the people at the lecture are very interested in the subject?

It wouldn't, you are right, but that's not the point. The point I'm arguing is that it is not clear that such an arrangement (i.e. slide-reading) is necessarily worse than different practically_relevant arrangements that currently are considered better by default. My current intuition is that a rather non-trivial portion of the STEM academic community might create better talks in the "slide-reader" format than the alternative they would, in fact, create; and some portion of the community may respond better to those talks (assuming the modern strong bias against these talks disappears).

A couple of things. A picture is worth thousand of words! Conferences give limited time to present your research. Audience will focus on things more important such as results/graphs/equations and analyse them while an explanation is given. Few listeners have enough time to do both reading and listening, not mentioning time spend on analysing results! I am 100% sure text is not read in most cases which makes it redundant! Also, presenter should have eye contact with audience.

Adding to ff524's comment, I not only read faster than the speaker: the voice of the presenter lagging behind me bothers me for reading the slides. If you are going to read from the slides, you may as well shut up and just show the slides (and perhaps scatter a few comments).

I personally think that reading from slides is better than saying B when the slide says A, which many people often do.

As a wise pirate once said, "they're more like guidelines than actual rules".

The point of giving a lecture or presentation based on a set of slides is that you enhance the audience's experience beyond that of simply being able to read the slides. If all you are doing is reading the slides, what value are you adding? Why couldn't you have just forwarded a copy of the slides to everyone?

I find text (sentences) on slides distracting.  Maybe it's just me but I can't read and listen at the same time effectively.  The slide may distract me and I may miss crucial details in the narration.  Thus I really hate slides full of redundant text, especially if the presenter is reading it.  That said, if I had to follow a mathematical derivation, I would want to have the formulas and arguments in front of me, so that's different.

The problem, I believe, is not that there's a lot of text, it's that with a lot of text there's not much else (and better), like pictures. Because a picture is worth a thousand words. However, in highly abstract fields such as some mathematics, is it even possible to produce informative pictures? If not (e. g. all you have is text and equations), it doesn't matter much if you keep the text in your head, or in your notes, or put it on your slides next to the equation. The latter option could be better because the audience could re-read something they missed from the talk, though.

If all you're doing is reading slides verbatim, then your talk isn't adding anything to your presentation of the topic than a paper/essay is perfectly capable of doing.  If you're going to take the time to prepare slides and practice a talk, and people are going to take time to listen to a talk (instead of read a paper on the same subject), then it's worth investing using the unique aspects of the presentation medium to communicate things in a different way than you can using other media.  It's really just a waste of everybody's time otherwise.

@Joshua: that's begging the question though. Who says talks aren't a waste of everybody's time, reading the slides is better, and what really matters is the Q&A? What's needed is what ff524 offers, a demonstration that it helps. Not merely an argument that for it to be worth doing at all, it must help.

"words on slides are a good idea only if the audience is deaf"

Was the talk targeted at a low-prior-knowledge audience (Ph.D. students) or to practitioners in the relevant field.  If the former, then this may be an effective way to transfer some knowledge to the audience.  If the latter, since you found a great deal of the talk useful, it was probably extremely tedious for knowledgeable listeners who kept waiting for the new-information-containing part of the talk to happen.

You just got lucky and stumbled upon a lecturer who's reading aloud tempo matched your reading tempo. It will almost always work for someone, but the point of lecture is to address many people at once.

In my opinion, you have explained it already yourself: you said your field is mathematics, so I can imagine that the content of the slides was a sequence of formulas.Is this correct? Formulas are very dense and sometimes need quite some explanation, so for such slides it doesn't hurt putting them on the slides.

Related: Should the slides in a presentation be self-explanatory or be as minimal as possible?

Research in the field of multimedia learning suggests that in most cases, "people learn more deeply from graphics and narration than from graphics, narration, and onscreen text". This is known as the redundancy principle.

Previous research has shown students learn better from multimedia
  lessons containing graphics and narration than from graphics,
  narration, and redundant on-screen text (Kalyuga, Chandler, &
  Sweller, 1999, 2000, 2004; Leahy, Chandler, & Sweller, 2003;
  Mayer, Heiser, & Lonn, 2001; Moreno & Mayer, 2002a, 2002b;
  Mousavi, Low, & Sweller, 1995). This finding is known as the
  redundancy effect (Mayer, 2001, 2005c). For example, in a study
  by Moreno and Mayer (2002b), participants viewed an animation
  about lightning formation. The first condition had narration accompany
  the animation, whereas a second condition received
  redundant on-screen text in addition to the animation and narration.
  The group that received the redundant on-screen text performed
  worse on subsequent retention and transfer questions than
  did the group that received animation and narration; thus, a redundancy
  effect was found.

(source: [1])
Why?

Adding redundant on-screen text detracts from the learning
  processes highlighted in Figure 1 because it creates extraneous
  processing—such as inducing the learner to visually scan between
  the caption at the bottom of the screen and the graphic and to try
  to mentally reconcile the incoming spoken and verbal stream. If
  the learner has to waste limited cognitive capacity on extraneous
  processing, the learner will be less able to engage in the cognitive
  processing needed for learning—essential and generative processing.

(also from [1])
Are there times when it is good to include some of the narration in a slide? Yes. For example:

The most straightforward contribution of this work is to add an important caveat to the redundancy principle “People learn more deeply from graphics and narration than from graphics, narration, and onscreen
  text” (Mayer, 2005c, p. 193). In revising this statement of
  the redundancy principle, we can add the following limitation:
  “except when the on-screen text is short, highlights the key action
  described in the narration, and is placed next to the portion of the
  graphic that it describes.”

(also: [1])
In a meta-analysis of the literature on the redundancy principle:

[A]dvantages of spoken–written presentations over spoken-only presentations were found for low prior knowledge learners, system-paced learning materials, and picture-free materials. In comparison with verbatim, spoken–written presentations, presentations displaying
  key terms extracted from spoken narrations were associated with better learning outcomes and accounted for much of the advantage of spoken–written over spoken-only presentations.

(Source: [2])
You perceived the talk with redundant written and spoken text to be beneficial to you; this is consistent with the research as well:

Research on metacognition has consistently demonstrated that learners fail to endorse instructional designs that produce benefits to memory, and often prefer designs that actually impair comprehension. Unlike previous studies in which learners were only exposed to a single multimedia design, the current study used a within–subjects approach to examine whether exposure to both redundant text and non-redundant text multimedia presentations improved learners' metacognitive judgments about presentation styles that promote better understanding. A redundant text multimedia presentation containing narration paired with verbatim on–screen text (Redundant) was contrasted with two non-redundant text multimedia presentations: (1) narration paired with images and minimal text (Complementary) or (2) narration paired with minimal text (Sparse). Learners watched presentation pairs of either Redundant + Complementary, or Redundant + Sparse. Results demonstrate that Complementary and Sparse presentations produced highest overall performance on the final comprehension assessment, but the Redundant presentation produced highest perceived understanding and engagement ratings. These findings suggest that learners misperceive the benefits of redundant text, even after direct exposure to a non-redundant, effective presentation.

(Source: [3])
Note that the results above refer to multimedia presentations, i.e. those that include graphics. Presentations that do not include graphics may benefit from redundant spoken-written text (see [4]). But presentations that do not use graphics violate the multimedia principle, which states that in general, "people learn better from words and pictures than from words alone".
For more information on principles of multimedia learning, see The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning. If you're looking for something shorter, here is a brief summary of the major principles of multimedia learning, and here is a presentation by Richard Mayer.

References:
[1] Revising the redundancy principle in multimedia learning. Mayer, Richard E.; Johnson, Cheryl I.
Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol 100(2), May 2008, 380-386. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.100.2.380
[2] Verbal redundancy in multimedia learning environments: A meta-analysis.
Adesope, Olusola O.; Nesbit, John C.
Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol 104(1), Feb 2012, 250-263. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0026147
[3] Learners misperceive the benefits of redundant text in multimedia learning . Fenesi, Barbara; Kim, Joseph A. Frontiers in psychology 5, 2014. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4088922/
[4] Verbal redundancy in multimedia learning: When reading helps listening. Moreno, Roxana; Mayer, Richard E.
Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol 94(1), Mar 2002, 156-163. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.94.1.156

Thank you for your documented answer. I find the research you cited unsatisfactory for academic-level talks, because the audience of (STEM) academics is not a random sample from the population (for instance, many are non-native English speakers, many probably have much stronger reading and writing skills than listening and speaking skills). In any case, your last cited paragraph seems to imply that verbatim spoken-written presentations are "better" than spoken-only presentations in a situation that would often arise in say a mathematics talk (e.g. no pictures), which makes sense to me.

If there is no difference for post-secondary educational level then that's something I'm interested to see. I'll do so later, as I'm not really in the mood to sort through that research right now, and still what I said may apply. But, I suppose I need to be careful about extrapolating information from that one great experience I had with a slide-reader talk; I'll certainly have to listen to (or read?)  more of these talks to see if there is more to it than just sheer luck. Anyway, thanks for sharing the research.

To your last edit: Thanks for your continued interest in this question. However, I am pretty sure that in my particular case it could not just be a matter of perception, especially relative to all the other "sparse-text narration talks" that I listened to in that conference, which I not only did not feel that I got at all (as often happens in areas outside of one's study in 30-min presentations), but also in fact could not possibly have understood better than this talk, since for most of them I would give up at most halfway through them.

@Lentes I'm not trying to convince you that the talk you attended was not effective - I wasn't there :) I'm just rounding out this answer to make it more useful for future readers.

This is a very nice answer, thank you! The guiding principle I use to decide sparsity in my slides is if someone gets lost, what do I need to get them back on the talk?

@Najib This is all research on facilitating the cognitive process of learning through multimedia presentation. When I give an academic talk, my goal is usually for the audience to learn something, and the purpose of my slides is to facilitate that learning. Someone with another goal (to entertain? to impress the audience with their graphic design skills? to put the audience into a bored stupor so they don't notice obvious problems with the work?)  certainly might pursue another strategy.

@Najib to me, those are learning objectives. I want them to learn what the work is about and learn why it's interesting and important enough that they should follow up. Obviously I'm not going to test them afterwards :) but I still want the talk to be an effective learning experience.

One generally clear example to summarize: subtitled movies. If you watch a movie in a language you speak, having subtitles in the same or another language you speak can be immensely distracting. But if you watch sans subtitles, or use subtitles for a spoken language you don't understand, there's no much problem, despite only getting the information in a form you can understand once.

@guifa Except when watching some content, it is difficult to understand what the characters are saying in some scenes.  With subtitles, you can reconstruct the damaged signal.  I literally have to rewind some videos to catch what was said in a scene, while with subtitles I can glance down and quickly read the lines.  The answer above cites 7 studies; what range of speech quality, subject difficulty, and listener expertise could possibly be covered by a mere 7 studies?  Do we have dozens or hundreds of studies probing the limits of this claim, or is it based off a tiny set?

@Yakk Do we have dozens or hundreds of studies probing the limits of this claim - see the meta-analysis cited in this answer.

"Adding redundant on-screen text detracts from the learning processes highlighted in Figure 1 because it creates extraneous processing—such as inducing the learner to visually scan between the caption at the bottom of the screen and the graphic and to try to mentally reconcile the incoming spoken and verbal stream." ← This. I never read any studies on the topic but I was always convinced that this is true based on personal experience.

I agree that you can expect some leeway from a generally academic audience.  Even so, the old rule of "show don't tell" has been true since Aristotle wrote the Poetics.  I've personally found speaking in metaphors lets you reach more audience members than speech alone.  Not one thing to document that, but I'm pretty sure it's true.

How about asking what the audience wants and starting from that, rather than the usual selfish me me me attitude of speakers?  All the research and statistic in the world won't make a difference if your audience doesn't want want you're giving them.  Of course, I'm arguing against 80 upvotes. Is it any wonder that people hate going to a presentation and are bored to tears?

Let me add to that “when I can’t understand what the speaker is saying” having the specific word he’s trying to say on the slide makes it understandable!  People who know they can't sound like a native should do that.

Your conclusion/footnote Presentations that do not include graphics may benefit from redundant spoken-written text contradicts the source you quote: In comparison with verbatim, spoken–written presentations, presentations displaying key terms extracted from spoken narrations were associated with better learning outcomes  And then the next quote also says that Sparse text performs better on objective metrics than text reproducing the speech verbatim.

@Ben There's no contradiction. The first statement you mention says that the effect of redundancy is sometimes more positive in a presentation without graphics than one with, all else being equal. Neither the type of redundancy (verbatim or sparse) nor the control (comparing verbatim to sparse? verbatim redundancy to audio only? sparse redundancy to audio only?)  is specified, hence the "may" - some redundancy may help in some of those but not necessarily in others. The other statements you mention specifically compare verbatim redundancy to sparse redundancy.

@ff524: But your sources are (at least in these quotes) using the terms "sparse" and "redundant" as mutually-exclusive.  In fact, "non-redundant" is specifically applied to what you have termed "sparse redundancy".  See the problem?  Also, your definition of multimedia (includes graphics) appears to differ from your sources, which include audio+text within the categorization of multimedia and not only audio+graphics or audio+graphics+text.

@michael_timofeev: The quote from source #3 specifically addresses your suggestion by showing that "what the audience wants" is demonstrably inferior.

If a picture speaks a thousand words, then remember to treat mathematical equations as pictures, not as words.

I have worked both in pure math (topology) and very applied math (discrete optimization in logistics).
Much of the usual advice on "using only graphics and very little text" applies well to the applied fields where there is actually plenty to visualize and the theoretical machinery -- at least the part you introduce in the talk -- is not that deep.
In pure math, though, you often have so much notation, definitions and complicated lemmata that it is very hard to keep the slides clean. Furthermore, the speed of talk is often so high that losing attention for 30 seconds might be enough that you cannot follow anything anymore.
Nevertheless, people usually get bored by someone reading to them. While it might be a good idea to put some reminders on the slides to help people follow complicated and abstract stuff, it is not really advisable to read everything aloud.

Nice to have a math-specific answer. The best use of "slides" I've seen in a math talk was one with handwritten slides (in a PDF), where the presenter had written out what he would have written if he had a blackboard, but still taking advantage of the visual medium by using different color marker for emphasis, to group concepts, etc. It was easy to follow, very engaging, and visually interesting even without any graphics in the usual sense.

I think a good way to slow down a little (so that people have time to internalize what is written on the slides, if there is a lot) is to draw some (relevant, like diagrams or examples) sketches on a blackboard/whiteboard on the side. I've seen some talks when the presenter would simply pause for some time, and I'm not entirely sure that is better than him reading, since the pauses were extremely awkward.

@ff524 Yes, many people underestimate the power of handwritten slides.  And for many technical fields, they're much easier to produce that non-handwritten slides:  (a) write exactly what I want, and then scan/photocopy/put the transparency onto the overhead projector; or (b) typeset the mathematics carefully and precisely (possibly time consuming) or typeset them quickly with workarounds ("plain text math").  It seems like a is often nicer and quicker.  (Through well typeset mathematics can be very nice as a study aid, for archival purposes, etc.)

Yeah, this is particularly true when professors are working through theorems. There have been enough times where 30 minutes were wasted with a professor trying to spot their mistake by proving a well known result off the top of their head...

I'm sure in pure math there's lots of content. But up to which point is it effective to go through the detailed definitions and complicated lemmas in slides at a conference talk? In most fields there's a temptation to put too much in conference talks—is math different?

@JoshuaTaylor I think many people also underestimate the power of writing slides by hand in real time in front of the audience. Even if we discount the obvious possible benefit of being able to react to the audience in real time, there are many aspects of active teaching that are like a performance. Research shows that learning is affected by emotion, and creating a relationship between teacher and student(s) is the only way for a teacher to influence the student(s) emotional state. Seeing teaching as an active performance is one way to use it to build relationships and mental engagement.

There are a number of good answers here, but I think there is a point that hasn't been so much emphasised.
On the one hand, the general/default rule is - don't read from slides, make them compact and keyword oriented.
However, the OP belongs to what I believe is a special class of listeners: they are a mathematician and they are (making an educated guess) still young and ambitious to learn a lot quickly. I remember myself preferring very detailed slides when I was not yet acquainted with the spectrum of techniques in the field and still curious about learning details. This is precisely the target group for very detailed slides (although, frankly, a blackboard talk, in this case, is even preferable if at all possible).
And no: not for everybody reading a paper/handout has the same effect as a talk - even with the precisely same content. A good speaker can emphasise and highlight in a way a written text doesn't.
In short: if your topic requires attention to detail (speak: mathematics or theoretical physics, mostly), and you speak to a very eager, but still inexperienced audience, you may consider reading from slides (if they - the slides - and you are very well prepared). If you speak to an experienced, or only moderately curious audience (which is the norm), stick to the default strategy. Or else, go for blackboard.

+1 for emphasis on preparation, which is infinitely more important than anything else about a presentation. And for understanding your audience, the second most important thing in giving a presentation.

@user37208 The problem is: not everybody is cut out for the same style. If slow enough, I think a detailed talk can be nice. Again, I do believe that a blackboard talk is superior in this case. I have changed my preferences during my lifetime, and definitely, as a younger researcher, I did dislike technical talks in bullet style. So, I am afraid, the OP will have to take a decision which audience they want to please.

Even in a slide with high textual detail, the speaker should be explaining the content on the slide, rather than simply reciting it.

@jakebeal But of course, no disagreement with this. If they just read down the slide, that's useless.

When reading out loud, we (subconsciously) speak faster and with less intonation changes than when speaking directly. This makes the talk harder to follow and makes it much more likely for the audience to zone out. Yes, the presenter can fight this and read like they would speak normally, but it takes constant conscious effort on their part, and is easy to forget especially when stressed, running out of time, etc. (Notice that a similar thing applies when the talk is learned word-for-word by heart, which is also normally discouraged).
A block of text on a slide also occupies the listener's attention more; it's basically enticing the listener to read it. And if the presenter ever says something else than exactly what is on the slides (such as inserting a personal anecdote, a last-minute thought, a clarifying point), the listener can actually lose on that precisely because their mind is still focused on reading.
A slide with short bullet points also allows the listener to quickly glance it over as soon as it first appears, and gain a brief understanding of what the talk on this slide will be about. Just like we normally give an outline of the entire talk at the start of the presentation to help the audience understand where we'll be going and why, a bullet-point slide can serve as a mini-outline of the talk for that slide. It's always easier to follow a talk if you know where it's going(1).
Far be it from me to say that a presentation cannot be good (or excellent) if it consists of paragraphed text which the presenter just reads. But it requires much more skill from the presenter to keep the talk interesting and not lose their audience. This can be part of the reason why general advice is to do bullet-point slides; the average presenter is more likely to give a better presentation with that. Of course, the expert presenter can do what they want and what they know best, and they can pull it off. But until you are the expert, it's safer for you to work "the easier way." It's similar to other areas: when you start, you're best off following the common rules. Then you master them, and eventually you understand them and the subject enough to know when you can break them for the better.

(1) I have a personal anecdote to illustrate this (which may of course not be applicable to everyone). At university, when a math lecture had a theorem to teach, it generally followed the structure of "state the theorem, present the proof." One lecturer took an opposite approach: he would basically start with "Let us have group G. Let us have another group H. Let us define an isomorphism ..." He would present the proof first, and end with "... now we can see that H must be a subgroup of G." He would then formalise this into the theorem. For me, these were the absolutely hardest lectures to follow; it was next to impossible to keep track of where the ramblingproof was going without knowing what the goal was.

Subtitles that are timed well to match what the presenter is saying can be helpful on video, and would likely be helpful in a live situation if the speaker's text were well enough planned that a live operator could keep the subtitles in sync, but that's very different from having a presenter actually reading text aloud.

In addition to the counterproductive effect on the audience, when someone projects text and then reads it, I get the impression that he doesn't know it very well.  Especially if, like some I've suffered through, he reads it sounding like someone else wrote it, i.e. as if it's new to him.

I have attended several conferences, all in English and material-based, and there was always a slides-reader.
They have in common:

English wasn't the speaker's native language, and they had problems speaking.
Poor pronunciation, monotonous voice. Some were reading the values in tables!
The slides were poor quality. Wrong colours, light serif font, low-resolution images.
Slides overwhelmed by full sentences with few images and graphs.
Awkward discussion time with one simple question, usually asked by chairman, and "Sorry, no understand" answer.

When reading from slides or from notes, the speaker usually have a monotonous voice and no contact with the audience. A good presenter adapts their speech to actual attention and the content, which is much harder when reading and a lot easier when talking offhand.
Personally, when someone reads it all loud it gives me impression that they cannot speak the conference language or their knowledge of the field of their presentation is not good. Some people are too nervous to speak offhand, but it is quite easy to distinguish them.
I was taught that presentation is dedicated to sell the results and attract the audience. For further exchange of ideas there are discussions, breaks, articles and letters.

The short answer is "Because most people who do it do a terribly poor job presenting". You certainly can give a good talk this way but you have to think about 1 hour about what you want to put on each slide that will be on the screen for 3 minutes or so and then a few more hours about how to put them together. And since the result you get this way is pretty rigid, you should know your audience really well to make sure that the exposition is neither too boring, nor too fast for it. I've seen good "slide reading" talks too (the speaker didn't rush at all, used the capabilities of the beamer to make sure that even on each given slide, which was one full logical unit easy to digest, the sentences would appear one by one as the exposition went, and made sure that each next sentence or formula was both clearly related to the previous ones and containing some new idea or twist),
but they were like 1 out of 30.
Most good speakers prefer to use slides just to emphasize a few crucial points and to improvise with how to say everything else depending on the questions they receive from the audience, etc. It just saves time on preparation and gives more flexibility to the speaker.
This ability to improvise, however, is also a skill and if there were plenty of poor improvisers, the advice might be exactly the opposite: put everything on slides in advance and try to stick to them. However, as it happens, poor speakers are usually afraid of improvisation and have a false belief that doing things meticulously and in order can save an otherwise doomed presentation (doomed for many reasons, the top of which are being aimed at a completely wrong audience and requiring way more time to do properly than allotted), so we just do not see many bad improvisations, but plenty of terrible but meticulously prepared talks and a good portion of those are the ones by slide readers.

Almost all of the talks I attended were in English while I'm not a native English speaker. Yes, I can read the words faster than the speaker talks, but I can't understand as fast, and definitely not when someone is talking about something else. By reading it out, the speaker gives me more time to digest, which is very helpful.
The main point is that you don't put EVERYTHING you want to say on the slides and read word for word and nothing else. Have some bullets points, read them out one a time, then expand each one vocally.
So write your slides clearly and concisely, then by all means, read the slides, and talk much more than that.

If you were better off reading the slides and digesting them rather than listening to the speaker, then I'd say the speaker was doing a poor job. Wouldn't it be even better if he kept quiet and let people read the slide without disturbing them by reading a different part of it out loud?

@DmitryGrigoryev I am not a native English speaker. When I read difficult to understand English sentences, e.g. some legal statement such as license agreements, I read it out to myself sometimes to help myself to understand it. I agree with what the OP says By reading it, the speaker gives me more time to digest, which is very helpful.

@scaaahu Now imagine I would do the same and start reading a different part of it. Would it help you to digest the part you're struggling with?

@DmitryGrigoryev I may miss the last part the speaker is reading while I am struggling with the first part if the speaker reads fast. . However, let me be frank here. I myself never ever fully understand the whole presentation. I would be happy if I can digest some part of a presentation. Reading the presentation also would help me to actually see it when I happen to sit in the back row. So, yes, the presenter reading the slides would help me. I cannot speak for others.

@DmitryGrigoryev, yes, if he puts on the slide everything he wants to say. My point is that he should say much more than the slide and use the slide as indicators. Read them out to let the listeners know where he is at, then expand them. Rephrasing the sentence (purely in order to not read) on the slide causes unnecessary mental strain for non-native speakers to follow. But of course, the speaker should choose the words he puts on the slide carefully.

People have this idea that there is a one-size-fits-all rule for giving a presentation.  There is not, and I know this from having taught the subject in the real world for 6 years.  I have critiqued every sort of imaginable presentation, from sales, chemistry, accounting, updating, etc.  When a car salesman is "doing his thing" he is giving a presentation.  When a magician is "doing her thing" she is giving a presentation.  When a 15 year old is "doing her thing" with mom and dad she is giving a presentation.  The audience is different in each example, as is the presenter.  Most of the answers here are from the presenter's point of view, which is the usual selfish way presenters go about boring their audiences.  "What do I need to do?" is the question most presenters start from.  You need to do the opposite.  Let me explain.
In general, it's a "bad idea to read off of slides" for a number or reasons.  But then, who is the audience, and why is reading off the slides bad for that audience?  If a car salesman read the brochure in front of you then it is "bad to read off the slides."  However, at a math lecture It might not be "bad to read off the slides."  I wasn't there, so I can't say what made this particular speaker's presentation good (or possibly "bad."). It seems you learned something, and thought the presentation style worked.
The kind of presentation you give depends on the audience.  Let me say that again: the style of delivery you use depends on the audience.  It depends on their purpose for watching and paying attention.  There is no one-size-fits-all rule because there is no one-size-fits-all audience.  The examples I gave above should make that clear.  Ask yourself, as part of your preparation process two questions: what is my purpose and what is their purpose?  There are always two purposes in any presentation.  If you're just updating on some progress, then reading off the slides might be fine.  If you're trying to persuade then it's best not to have a lot of info on the slides so that the audience can focus on you, and you can focus on being persuasive, which works much better when people aren't distracted.   But then, if you are trying to persuade your audience that you have found a proof for the Goldbach Conjecture, then you're going to have lots of slides with lots of stuff...the audience won't expect less.
Part of learning is copying the teacher.  The next time you give a presentation, do what you saw last time.  Does it work?  If so, try it again and again to see if the reason it worked wasn't luck but something else.  If it doesn't work, then you will have to explore and find your own style that fits the particular audience to which you are presenting.  The path to presentation excellence is through trial and error.  There is no other way.  In Ancient Greece and Rome, students spent years practicing the art of debate and presentation, and then went out in public to persuade others.  The situations were real and oftentimes matters of life and death or stability of the state, so if you sucked at presenting it could cost you dearly.  By the way, before I forget, what worked then, won't work now.  Why?  Because the audience is different.
BTW, let me add that at the end of your question you make a comment about "communicating information."  Without context and purpose, information is useless.  This is why most presentations are a waste of time.  They are wastes of time because many presenters see themselves as information ambassadors or messengers.   They don't give context, purpose, or meaning to their information.  They expect the audience to "get it."  This is a bad hope to have.
So to summarize, the question of whether it is bad to read off the slides is really a question of whether it is bad to read off slides for your particular audience.  There is no general answer or golden rules on this.  Ask yourself what the purpose of the audience is and go from there.
.

@NajibIdrissi Although sometimes it looks like magic, especially when a mathematician has this incredibly elegant solution to a problem no-one ever saw before ;-)

@NajibIdrissi  Did you actually read my post?

This answer focuses primarily on the content of the presentation (give context, purpose, meaning, not just facts; focus on the needs of the audience), but the focus of OP's question is on the mechanics of the presentation (specifically: reading directly from slides or not).  You're giving general advice about giving good presentations, but your audience is asking for specific advice about a particular practice.

@JeffE what you guys don't get is that without thinking of the audience and their needs the question of reading off the slides is meaningless.  I can't answer his question because it depends on the audience.  He wants a one size fits all answer and one doesn't exist...same problem I face in my classes: "teacher, what's the secret to giving a good presentation?"  I'm surprised at all of the answers which miss the mark completely.

I can't answer his question because it depends on the audience. — The audience is a collection of professional mathematicians at a mathematics conference.  See the original question.

@JeffE I did, Jeff but I don't know what their purpose was in attending the presentation.  Once we know that then we can say whether just reading off the slides is ok or not.  Everyone around here is just thinking in terms of "communicating information." which is the worst approach.  It totally ignores the audience.  The OP doesn't state why he was there.

I don't know what their purpose was in attending the presentation — As a general rule, mathematicians go to talks at mathematics conferences to learn some new mathematics, or at least to get some intuition that will help them learn and/or produce new mathematics. — Everyone around here is just thinking in terms of "communicating information." — Please don't presume to read my mind; I am thinking no such thing.

I am reluctant to add yet another answer to an already crowded page, but I feel there is an important point that has not been made (apologies if I've missed it).
Different people (even within the same discipline) have different preferred ways to absorb information. Some may take things in best by reading, some through engaging talks. It sounds as if OP may fall into the first camp. If all were the same, then we could probably dispense with talks and just read each others' papers, followed by a Q&A session. But this would be a great disservice to those like myself who find it easier to concentrate on listening to an engaging speaker rather than reading a block of text.
The bottom line: it would be wrong to say that "reading the slide" is a poor way of communicating per se, but it is a poor way of reaching a sizable proportion of the audience. Perhaps we should all consider how we can make our presentations appealing to both (or indeed all) types of audience member.

The question is why I think it is a bad idea. In my case, I have attended over the years to a fair number of talks by "slide readers" and they were all atrocious (and boring).
I can imagine the possibility that a lecturer reads from very well-prepared slides and make a decent talk. But in all good slide-talks I have attended, the slides had very sparse, concrete and specific information that was complemented by the speaker's speech.

No, the question is asking why most people think it's a bad idea. It's not an opinion poll about why each individual person thinks it's a bad idea.

@David Richerby: I expect that most scientists/mathematicians (me, for example) have seen a fair number of bad talks by "slide readers", and not a single good one. So this answer indeed explains why most people think it's a bad idea. If somebody is thinking of trying it, they should be warned that (like many things) it is probably relatively easy to do badly and quite difficult to do well.

Basically, people tend to get bored when you read text at them.
If you are going to just read them, the lecture becomes like a sort of audiobook of a paper. Or just a normal book, with a lot of noise distracting you.
The thing with books is you can blaze through the easy parts and slow down on the hard bits. You can leaf back and forth to remember bits you forgot. You control the information stream, and the text is prepared with this assumption. That's why it works.
In a slideshow, you don't control the slides. If you need extra time for a given slide, well, too bad. If you need to have understood that slide to follow subsequent slides, too bad. Everyone will find a different part difficult, so it's hard for the presenter to "just slow down on the hard parts". You end up with a Poisson distribution of "number of slides before the presenter loses them" over audience members, few make it to the last slide without getting lost.
Also, people tend to pay attention less when someone isn't engaging the audience. It's psychological. When reading slides, people look down or away (at the screen) and don't make eye contact with the audience. The audience does not get the psychological cue that "somebody is talking to me" and gets distracted more easily. Also, many people who do this slide reading seem to quickly fall into a monotone, droning tone that's even harder to stay with.
Not reading slides gives you freedom in pacing and managing your presentation in real time. If you are very good, you can actually watch the audiences reaction and adjust the presentation accordingly as you go. Since often at least some part of the audience is not terribly interested in the presentation to begin with, being more engaging helps maintain their attention (if that sort of thing matters to you).
ff524 has compiled a nice bibliography of the research. But here experience can also suffice: Think back to the presentations you've seen. Which ones were the most effective? Which ones were the most boring? Do you see a pattern of correlating presentation styles? What about your peers (after all, you are not presenting for yourself)? Don't just look at one case, look at the general picture. Perhaps in your field, reading indeed does work better (for instance, I think for poetry or literature it can), or maybe the people who like to read slides just happen to be much better presenters otherwise. Or maybe this one talk was an exception, and otherwise even you find most slide-readers tedious to listen to.
I have seen very few slide-readings that weren't boring. It doesn't help that often, it seems that people who do it are bad presenters to begin with, so they are making two errors. Presentations I enjoy, especially if we adjust for topic, are overwhelmingly ones with free-form talking and minimal slide reading. Likewise for presentations I've given and how well they were received. Thus, based on my experience, in my field, I try to avoid slide readings because I have personally seen it to be a poor choice. Your experience may be different, and thus also your conclusion.
However, as I said above, there is a fundamental reason (audience cannot control flow) why slide readings will necessarily be worse than their closest relative, the audiobook and the written book. Whether they can still be made to be as good as a more engaged presentation, is for you to decide.

The obvious effect when reading slides verbatim is that slide and narration are redundant. Why that's bad depends on how you as an audience member are trying to follow the presentation:

If you are just following the narration, the text on the slides and switching between the slides will unnecessarily distract you.
If you are just reading the slides, the speaker's voice will unnecessarily distract you.
If you are both listening to the speaker and reading the slides, you'll have to constantly keep both in sync, which increases your cognitive load, especially when you get distracted just for a second and then have to find the correct position on the slide again.

All of these lower your chances of understanding the talk. These effects don't happen if you have simple slides that supplement the oral presentation.

From my experience of years of teaching young learners to make presentations; the reasons why a presenter should not read the slides are:

It is a waste of time, because the audience can be given a handout with that information.
Making a presentation is knowledge sharing. A slide is only a visual aid to support what you say as a presenter.
The audience is educated, they can read it for themselves.
Reading aloud to some people can be rather boring. It is not interactive, and the key word in any presentation is "interactive".
Generally you put the bullet points, supported with graphics or pictures and then share your knowledge and view on whatever is in the slides. They are there to support what you want to say.

This is my opinion based on what I have learnt and taught over the years.

OP wrote explicitly that they don't want this kind of answer in the last paragraph.

Expanding on jf328's answer, "reading slides" can be helpful if you have an audience that struggles with the language you are presenting in or has problems with low literacy despite natively speaking the language of the presentation. Here's an article that mentions adding an audio track to a written presentation to enhance comprehension by people with low literacy.
Whether or not any of these situations apply is going to be very contextual. At a major international conference with attendees from throughout the world, reading skill may be an important issue and something that you cannot simply presume exists (or exists at a sufficiently high level for your presentation). At a university lecture with students who have all passed the university's required literacy test for enrollment, providing an audio version of the slides "just because" could be seen as patronizing.

I won't go into the reasons that you normally should not do overly verbuous slides; you already know about them.
But on the presentation that you liked so much: If the presenter simply read exactly the contents of his slides, then they were not so much slides but a kind of subtitle. If he was obviously consistent in it, then every listener was free to read the slides or not; or only read the slides and not listen; or listen and read at the same time.
The bad thing about text-rich slides crop up when the presenter does not just read them verbatim. Then you as a listener have to chose between listening and reading; and it is very easy to get confused. This has not happened here.

It's about using the right tool for the job.
There are a variety of mediums and methods to convey information (written material, multi-media, human presenter, etc.).  Each has strengths and weaknesses for different kinds of information, and a role to play.
Highly technical information and tons of facts can be absorbed by the recipient looking at written  or visual materials at their own pace.  A human presenter can be helpful, but more so with "high level" information than extensive detail.  For example, relating the gist and concepts, or providing a framework the recipient can use to organize the information they subsequently read on their own.  (I'm referring to a presentation scenario rather than a highly interactive educational setting.)
If a human presenter is simply reading the slides to the audience, the slides become the presenter and the human just their A/V aid as an annoying soundtrack.  Why not just have an automated slide show, or even one with a recorded soundtrack if the recitation aloud is so important?  What is the human adding to the process?  The biggest value provided by a human presenter is the human interaction.
The recipient's ability to absorb and retain information is tied to emotion (their interest and desire to focus on it, the personal value of the information, the novelty of it, and the strength of emotions associated with it that affect retention); it's the role of the hippocampus in learning.
That applies to any information, including technical content.  The recipient needs to want to acquire the information (and have a framework for organizing it); it isn't useful to simply dispense it in their direction.  If the recipient is already interested and motivated, a human presenter can either add to, or detract from, the presentation's effectiveness.
The role in which a human presenter can uniquely contribute is to engage the audience, tapping into their attention, receptiveness, and emotions to get them involved and invested in the material.  That's done through the human connection, using rapport, conversational language, vocal cues, body language, movement, animation and excitement, adding tidbits of interest, etc.; focusing on and talking to the people comprising the audience, rather than reading and providing audio for the slides.  Conveying high-level information in this manner is the reason to have a human presenter, and the real value they can add.
The practice of someone present for the sole purpose of reciting material displayed on slides is even counter-productive.  It can make the audience less receptive to the information than just giving them the materials to read (for the reasons described in the answers by ff524, J. Fabian Meier, Hurkyl, Angew, Crowley, WGroleau, Robert Buchholz, and Superbest).

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


text:
How to use "Study with me Live Videos"
i see the popularity of study with me videos in on a rise at a rapid pace.
Could someone please tell me how to use those videos?
thanks

What do you mean by "how to use these videos"? Aren't you supposed to watch them?

Put one on in the background and study at the same time. The videos are meant to mimic sitting next to a friend in the library working quietly together.

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

sort: votes


text:
I'm from India, planning to do Phd in Marketing Management. Can I pursue it with my job thats 5 days a week 10 hours a day?
I am currently working in the media industry having a 9 years experience. I want to do a Phd in order to get into the academics sector in the next 3-4 years maybe. I have a 5 days a week working schedule. I have researched a bit regarding the same and found out that some UGC approved universities offer part time Phds. Will that be advisable? Also, will I be able to complete it in 3 years? I cant afford to leave my job since I have a lot of financial responsibilities. Thanks in advance! Waiting in anticipation.

Most full time PhDs take at least three years, so expect a part time PhD to take much longer than that: at least double the time.

My intuition and the comments on this question suggest that this will be really hard. 50 hours/week of work won't leave you much time to do your PhD. The university might raise that objection too... though I am not familiar with the situation in India.

Short answer: no.

Anything is possibly, but a PhD is a full-time occupation, so holding a job that demands fifty hours on-top seems infeasible. Even for a part-time PhD, you'd be working a lot of hours.
(Assuming a part-time PhD plus a full-time job is equivalent to a full-time job with fifty percent more in overtime is a fallacy in my mind. As is assuming two part-time jobs are equivalent to one full-time job.)

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Complaining about a published paper
I have seen a paper recently published in a reputable IEEE journal but this paper is completely wrong, using other algorithms and making false statements.  This is degrading the complete research quality. How can we complain regarding the journal with proof.

The response would be... the paper has undergone a rigorous review.    -- i.e., go away.

If it's an academic misconduct, e.g., plagiarism, just send an email to the Editor in Chief with your evidence.  He/she will be more than happy to follow that up.

can we inform the editor about misconduct anonymously. The main agenda is to inform the misconduct with proof . Will they reveal the identity

Re anonymous complaints. If I were an editor of such a journal, complaints with no name on them would get very low priority. Complaints asking their name be kept confidential might get higher priority but still less than from people prepared to speak openly.

By the way, before you make any complaint, just check extremely carefully that you are correct. Double-triple check. Try looking at the paper from as many contexts as you can reasonably come up with. Check with a trusted colleague that you are correct. Making complaints of this kind and being wrong would be quite embarrassing.

Sir, I have checked very carefully, one by one line is copied in the algorithm and claimed as the proposed one. Few sentenced are changes like grammatically changed. Based on the algorithm, they provided the results which have no relation with the algorithm, random results are presented. I feel very bad when I look at such kind of research in a reputable journal.  I have seen some other papers of this author and everywhere such kind of work is published.  Please show me some way that I can provide the proof anonymously because indirectly I know that person. I don't wanna reveal my identity.

Is the paper wrong in the sense that it is incorrect? Or is it wrong in the sense that it is bogus, to the point where one wonders how the journal could possibly have published such nonsense?
In the former scenario: you don't complain. You write a new paper that says the original paper is wrong because [reasons]. You can submit it to the same journal, although you don't have to.
In the latter scenario: write to the editor and tell them your concerns. Be ready to back up your claims, because the result you're seeking (retraction) is a serious one. Alternatively, you can criticize the paper on social media. If enough people agree with you, you can cause quite some waves (example). Of course, you also risk looking like an idiot if you turn out to be wrong.

Sir, in this paper serious misconduct is there, an algorithm directly copied from other papers and claimed as the proposed one. I was shocked by looking at this and completely false statements and results are there. I don't k ow how to report regarding this. It really misleading the readers and lowering the quality of research. Is there by way to report anonymously.

If you want to be taken seriously, use your real name. "Not using your real name indicates that you are trying to avoid suffering any potential negative consequence of your claim being incorrect. Using your real name indicates that you are sure enough to be ready to suffer potential negative professional consequences if you are mistaken, so you can be taken more seriously. If you are not completely sure about your claim do not waste her time."

I am pretty sure about it with proof. is there any way to publically expose it. Then others will also find it. Nowadays,  researchers want to increase the number of publications with false research also.

I think I described how to do so in the answer; is any part unclear?

If you want to make your criticisms against a published paper public, you can use the platform PubPeer.

On PubPeer , can a person show the misconduct with proof without using any negative statement? This way others can easily judge the content.

Yes, sure, @Makkythomas; it all depends on your wording.

Can I show the scientific misconduct here with proof to tet help from other researchers over it. I am.new to this but such kind  of scientific misconduct really disappoints me


text:
Best Practice To Provide Contact Information in Paper
On the first page of most papers the authors are listed, as well as their affiliation and email address. The given email address is usually hosted by the university. Now this looks professional and everything, though it is not always a good long-term solution, as researchers join other universities and their email address does no longer work (after a while). In my field (physics/cosmology) I rarely see a different solution, but I thought maybe other fields might have found a better approach. What contact information can be provided that does not get outdated?

a link to a website that then relinks to an always up-to-date email address?
a personal email address?
researchgate profile
?

Does anyone work in a field where there is a better solution widely used?
Thank you very much for your thoughts on this topic.

Some universities will permit the email addresses of former faculty to remain in place, probably by forwarding it to another. At one time Dartmouth College even did this for students, though I don't know if that continues.

Yes, that would be the ideal case. Columbia does this too (at least my email address still works after 7 years). :)

If you were a student, the Alumni office wants to keep in contact. Often. Relentlessly.

Do you get a choice? In general, the format of the author's information (including affiliation and contact data) will be set by the publisher, all papers in a journal or conference proceedings will have the same style, it's not like they will allow one paper to put an email and another to put a researchgate link instead.

I think giving e.g. gmail addresses is pretty standard these days.

Don't use your main personal e-mail though, unless you want a ton of spam from predatory journals.

I think this is a good question with only unsatisfactory answers. In short, I don't think you can bank on any method to identify a person (other than maybe the equivalent to a social security number) that is permanent. Neither professional nor personal email addresses are guaranteed to work forever, nor are professional sites like ResearchGate, LinkedIN, ...
Systems such as ORCID, where each researcher is assigned a unique identifier would work, but they will still require some time to gain broad acceptance. This way the paper could cite the ORCID and the researcher can make sure the profile (including contact info) stays current. This system would also make it easier to find publications authored by an individual (especial by somebody with a common last name such as Wang, Ngyen, Garcia, Smith, ...). Of course, there is no guarantee that the ORCID system will last either.

The last sentence is especially important. Any online system can be discontinued at any time. Who can say if it will last for the 40 or so years of a person's career.

While not a systematic solution, I do believe that the best practice for any researcher should be to leave an electronic trail of breadcrumbs. Google yourself and go to the key websites (LinkedIn, ReserachGate, Google Scholar, ...) and make sure you are not too hard to find and your contact info is up-to-date. That way others who are looking for you should be able to find you.

@Buffy That does not apply only to online systems. Real-world addresses and phone numbers gets discontinued, too.

@FedericoPoloni, of course, but usually a person has some control. Not so with "web services" which can simply disappear for some company's business reasons (Here's looking at you, Google.).

@Buffy I wish I had more control over whether my grant is renewed so I can stay at the university so my contact information stays correct. The point is that ORCID is likely to last longer than the vast majority of researcher appointments (and in my specific case, I will even lose the email address the day my contract ends).

I would say it's more important to maintain a webpage with your current contact information. A reader can use a search engine to find you and get in touch, even if your website and contact info has changed over the years.

Just to mention ORCID is designed exactly for this purpose.

This is easier for some more than others based on name. Those with very common names may have a more difficult time being found via search.

Be careful what details you list, unless you plan never to leave academia. Be aware this will be scraped by spammers. So unless the email address, and all addresses it'll ever forward to, have and will always have industrial-grade spam protection, and as for phone number, never put your cell; academics usually just put a landline, which is slowly falling out of practice.

The desire to have a permanent way to address authors of a paper is understandable. However, as you ask for best practice: I do not think there is a best practice, just different practices. Using long lasting e-mail addresses is one option, hoping for people to link papers to e.g. their ORCID profile and keep it up to date is another.
But those options are based on the premise that authors want to be contacted about their work and/or that they should want to be contacted. I am not convinced that this must be the case. You could create an e-mail address when submitting a manuscript for publication (which might appear on the final paper) only for this purpose and discard it afterwards. You could publish something using a pseudonym. Under certain circumstances, such behavior is necessary and totally acceptable.
In this reasoning, it is up to the authors alone to determine how long it will be possible to contact them by information given in the paper. Finally, each paper must stand for itself as soon as all authors passed away, and it should be able to do so as soon as it is published.

It's not for you to decide unfortunately. The journal decides, and if they're asking for an email address then you will have to supply one. You could use a personal email address (@gmail.com for example) if they don't object, however, as you can with ORCID IDs, ResearchGate profiles, and so on.
Many journals/publishers already support this kind of author identification, example, example.
On an individual level, the solution to this issue is to make yourself easily Google-able. If your name is Jane Doe for example you could make a website www.janedoephysics.com. You can keep an up-to-date email address on that website. If you include summaries of your work and link to all your arXiv papers, you should be easily Googleable even if you have a common name.

Some professional organisations provide "lifetime" email aliases - for example, for physicists the Institute of Physics provides physics.org addresses. That's the solution I've been using for two decades now. The alias can be set to forward to whatever address you want. I think this also looks more professional/authoritative than a consumer webmail address. Note though that it's a long time since I checked the T's & C's; keeping this service might depend on paying the IoP subscription.
Answers to What email to use for corresponding author on publications when institution is not permanent? and E-mail address to use in publications also mention the ACM (computing), AMS (maths) and IEEE (electrical & electronic engineering) as providing such e-mail redirectors. I prefer this option to, say, Gmail as it suggests a long-term commitment to the field on your part, whereas a Gmail address can be disposable (indeed, I associate Gmail with throwaway addresses used by spammers).
Contrary to what some have said: my experience is that you can't trust institutions, especially after you leave. My last university randomly locked my email access without warning, wouldn't set up forwarding, and hasn't passed on snail mail either. (And by the time you find out they're a bad 'un, it's too late.)
The other option is a unique identifier, such as OrcID, though quite how they will pan out in reality remains to be seen. Bear in mind that even if the OrcID organisation disappeared overnight, a web search for the identifier will still come up with material that includes your contact details, so it's worth embedding it in your (relevant) social media profiles.

I didn't even know that physics.org does this. I'll check it out, thank you for mentioning it! Also, your last point is a good one!

Just ask your institution whether they can provide a stable email address. Many institutions provide you with several email addresses. One of these may be stable: when you leave, emails sent to it will be forwarded to you new institution. The stable address is not always the main address, so it is worth checking in advance.
Three of the four institutions I have been affiliated with propose this.

Approaching this problem from the other end I found that a lot of papers have at least one coauthor who is already a tenured faculty member. These very rarely change their institution and hence there email addresses tend to stay valid for a long time.
Some journals also ask for a corresponding author (that is not necessarily the same as the first author if that is relevant in your field). This would usually be the one with the email address with the longest live expectancy regardless of how much they contributed to the paper.

The last sentence is not necessarily true. In some fields, the corresponding author is the PI of the work and there is some reputation gained from being corresponding author, so it regularly is a matter of argument.

In others, the corresponding author is just the unlucky one who gets to use the interface.

@Snijderfrey I guess it depends on the field. My experience is from maths. There is no concept of first author and being corresponding author is just the potential for some extra bureaucracy.

One of the authors having access to an open access agreement with the publisher if they are corresponding author could also be a reason to select this author as the corresponding author.

Er, is there confusion between "author to whom correspondence should be addressed" and "corresponding author", the latter being the one that handled the journal submission process i.e. the correspondence with the journal editor?

The university work at provides an email forwarding service they promise will never be cleaned.  It's not the prettiest email, but it does work, and you can forward it to any other email you want.  My guess is several other universities offer this as it's a minimal cost and fixes this kind of issue.

But how do you manage this long-term, as you move through postdocs? If you have ten such aliases do you redirect them all for every new gig? Or daisy-chain them and hope that not one of them fails?


text:
I need help please about being accused on cheating
My prof is accusing me of chatting on an Online exam. I did not cheat. The exam was 30 multiple-choice and 3 short answers.
I got all MCQ right, except I made some mistakes in the short answer.
In the exam, His concern only on the last 3 short answer questions.  he claimed that he cheats from the test bank ( Answer key of the test book). Also, he claimed that I answered one question similar to the textbook; however, this question's answer included only simple mathematical addition of some numbers. This does not show any valid reasons for his accusation. Moreover, during the meeting, he blamed me for choosing the wrong answer for a question. Thus, I am being blamed for answering questions, whether they are right or wrong. and another question was because I answered similar to the test bank  as he was like," this part of the question was not in the test bank)
Secondly, he accused me of violating academic Integrity in my online quizzes, and his concern was, "My other concern is that you spent on average 18 minutes on all online quizzes following the first quiz that included short answers, whereas the class spent anywhere between 40 minutes to 2 hours. The majority of students use a second attempt to improve their score on the first attempt." Note: all the quizzes are theory 30 MCQ, except the first quiz was 25 MCQ and 1 short-answer.
He sent me an email to discuss, and then during the online meeting, he asks me to do an oral exam." he was like, so I can prove some evidence,"  and I refused to make the oral exam as it's unfair to be exam orally for something I don't do it.
He gave me zero on the midterm and put me under academic integrity. Please advise me what I should do? I have my review of the hearing next week.

Or this: Accused of cheating on online exams

"he claimed that he cheats from the test bank"  Your professor actually confessed to you that he cheated?

Other than that your professor pointed out that you answered the multiple choice part mich faster than anyone else, I find what happened and what they objected to impossible to understand as presented here.

As written, this is likely to be closed as a duplicate of the linked questions. However, you could consider editing to focus on the prof's offer of taking an oral exam to clear your name -- I think that is a unique element.

He sent me an email to discuss, and then during the online meeting, he asks me to do an oral exam.

You present this as a bad thing, but it's actually a good thing.
Apparently you did all the tests unusually fast, and in a way that looks to an observer like you're cheating. But that's not enough proof. It's possible that you're just pretty good at this subject. So the professor needs to test whether you cheated or whether you're just really good and fast at this subject.
That's what the oral exam is for. If you know this subject really well, you should also be able to do well in the oral exam.

I worry about this answer. If the prof is hostile, as it seems, and administers the oral, it is hard to be assured of fairness. I would have fewer concerns if the oral was administered by a third party.

Yeah that's fair, the question sounds like there's already been arguing back and forth, so a more neutral third party, at least as an observer, is desirable. But "we may want to have an oral follow-up exam" is pretty common nowadays when professors need to confirm whether someone really did an assignment (or online test) themselves and understands their own answers.


text:
Paper leaked during peer review - what are my options?
As the title states. I recently submitted a manuscript for one of the flagship journals of Springer.
Not long after, I received information that they used my work for their external recruiting process (edit: as in they were hiring for staff), meaning that my paper got leaked to random strangers. This information did not come from them, by the way - it just so happens that one of their candidates was my colleague.
It is my understanding that they are not supposed to do that. We usually transfer copyrights upon acceptance, which means that they are not allowed to distribute my work before then. There are other ethical issues at play, but this is the most pressing one for me.
Now I am concerned that someone might just steal my work, while it simmers during a lengthy peer review. My office forbade me to put in open repositories because of patent issues.
Realistically speaking, what are my options here? Or do I have no rights in this case and next time should just choose another publisher?

I think the patent issue is important here. Were they aware that patent issues are involved?

can you specify what you mean with an external recruiting process? It is not immediately clear to me what that means (I thought editors would only use manuscripts to recruit reviewers of said manuscripts...)

It means that they were hiring for editorial staff, and used my manuscript for their recruiting process. I also do not see how the patent issue is relevant for the leak from their side. It should not have happened in the first place.

Maybe the candidates signed an NDA. Still, this is very unethical. However, I do not see how you protect your patent when submitting your work to publication. Publication precludes patentability.

The people who forbade you from putting your paper in an open repository because of patent issues should also be concerned about this leak because of the same patent issues. Have you informed them about the leak?

Then you say leaked, do you mean it got leaked to the public, or do you consider job applicants seeing the paper as a leak?

I do think it is not uncustomary for a rapid assessment of multiple manuscripts to be part of the interview process for new editors. I can also see how they would want to use manuscripts in the recruitment process that these job candidates could never possible have seen before.
I would also hope (and I guess assume) that they would stress to their candidates that this is confidential information.
In that respect, it sounds a bit like your colleague who informed you might also have been crossing a professional boundary and disclosed information they shouldn't have.

I don't see why. A prospective candidate does not need to abide by the rules of the prospecrive employer - he is not afiliated in any way to the publisher. If anything, my work got used for profit of the publisher without my permission, and now my work is out there in the hands of random people that have no association with the journal whatsoever, and are not reviewers either.

I would happily lease my work for their use in recruiting process, which is not associated in any way with editorial screening or peer review. But not like this. And definitely not for free - have you seen the publishing fees?

This practice may be customary, but is seems unethical.


text:
About to leave academia?
I am about to leave my university in the UK, however I still have access to services for the next few months.
For some background, I initially did my BSc(Hons) at another institution, worked in industry, and then returned to this university to do a master's degree and then the first year of a PhD programme with a full scholarship which I decided not to finish.
Is there a good place to get a list of things that I should do before I leave? I have already spoken to the careers department so I get a list of current jobs in my field, and they have also helped me with both a CV and a Cover Letter for when I apply to new jobs.

Check what's available to you as an alumnus of the university. Things available could include:

Alumni newsletters. This could include invitations to events in your local town.
An alumnus email address.
Subscriptions to certain software programs.

You will need to check to know what's available.


text:
Title for a non-PhD researcher?
I do not have a PhD, nor am I pursuing one, in the United Kingdom.
What title could I be given, if I worked as a paid researcher at a university, but I was not a PhD student or PhD graduate? The level of work would be at PhD level.
It might be misleading to call myself a researcher, as I thought that only applied to either students or people that passed their PhD dissertations.

Generally your title is something chosen by your employer, rather than what you call yourself.

@BryanKrause They are trying to think of a title to give me, sorry for not including this.

In my Uni, a person with such a job is called a "Research assistant."

Actually, "Researcher" or "Independent Researcher" should be fine. There is no official definition and the terms are merely descriptive.
Another possibility is to use a title used by your employer for your role, if that seems suitable. Sometimes a title like "Research Associate" or such is used.
But there is no implication in the term researcher that you have any particular qualification. Your user name here is suitable, if that is, in fact, descriptive of what you do.
But note that it isn't actually a "title" in the sense of something conferred on you by authority like "Professor" is. It is just a description of one of your roles.

I think "Independent Researcher" is incorrect, because they are technically part of a university and being paid by the said university.

@AnonymousM, I don't understand. If a university decides you are a professor, then you are a professor. Qualifications may apply, I agree. And Full Professor is a specific variant. I'm actually "Professor Emeritus", another variant. One real exception, I know of is (was) Professor Irwin Corey

Research fellow
Visiting scholar

"Research fellow" would imply a more permanent position. If you will be under someone's supervision, you could also use:

Research assistant

@DanielHatton Is that a general rule in the UK?


text:
PhD application research interest
I am applying for PhD programs in the USA, one of the schools requested a PhD research interest. The problem is I do not know how to write it, and I didn't done any research in my masters degree, are there any solution?

Don't you have an area of research in mind that you want to pursue during your PhD?

Please don't ask the same question multiple times.

Are there any research topics you find interesting? Then write about them, why you like them, and what kind of things you would like to do!

For the abstract just state you did a masters without a thesis. Universities are used to the fact that not all applicant followed a standard model for their prior studies.
As for research interest I’m unclear what the challenge is? I would pick a topic that is not too general (cell biology) so that the interest is hard to elaborate on or too specific (Actin-related protein 2/3 complex subunit 1B) as to suggest hyper-specialization. Make sure you pick a topic that can be studied in the program you are applying to and explain why it is interesting to you.

You need, at least, to name a subfield of your major field. Not mathematics, say, but functional analysis or something. Narrow is good, but not so narrow that it would be hard to find an advisor. Hopefully you have given this some thought.
If you have any ideas about specific problems in that area it will be a plus, but not everyone has those on entry and needs to discuss with (potential) advisors before getting started.
For someone with just a bachelors degree, less would be required. Having a masters they will expect a bit more. But not a detailed research plan.

How do I structure it? my area is construction engineering management, should I talk about my work experience and the problems that I have observed, then  I talk about the area that I want to do research?


text:
Research interest for PhD application
I am applying for PhD programs in the USA, one of the schools requested a PhD research interest. The problem is I do not know how to write it. Also, they have requested a copy of masters thesis abstract, But in my masters I did not done a thesis.

Please don't ask the same question multiple times. On this occasion, we will merge the two posts since we don't want to lose the answers.


text:
What is feasibility analysis in thesis proposal?
I'm undergraduate student majoring in software engineering, right now I'm preparing my thesis proposal which indicates that one of the chapters should be about "contents and feasibility analysis of the research", I get the content part but what confuses me is the feasibility analysis.
Because the topic I'm doing is defect analysis for a website developed by our college, and I don't have any idea about how a feasibility study about this specific topic could be carried out.
I tried listing some case studies that can be somehow relatable to my defect analysis topic, but I'm not sure whether this is a good approach or not.
Any insights would be appreciated, thanks.

Feasibility is about whether the research can, in fact, be successfully completed with the time and other resources available. In an undergraduate course, a study requiring three years is infeasible.
If the research suggests building something, feasibility also involves whether it is possible to build such a thing given costs, and even, potentially, the laws of physics.
Another way to look at it for such a course is to ask, is this project actually do-able in the timeframe required. And if the answer comes up no, then you need to rescale or otherwise modify the proposal.

Hmm, so what I've understood is that I should focus on the success factors of my project like cost and time. thank you so much that's really narrowed my scope, my thinking was in another universe.


text:
Citations from pre-print and academic achievements - should I add them to the accepted article?
Should I add citations from the pre-print to the accepted article, when I'm evaluated at the University ? Or should I keep them separate ?

This depends entirely on your university's rules for this.

@AlexanderWoo So in general, if University only accepts citations from Web of Science, then those from pre-print mean nothing ?

I have no idea.  Only those people in your university in charge of interpreting your university's rules can tell you.


text:
Lab mate and supervisor got ideas from my experimental results, tweaked it and submitted to a journal without giving me credit. What do I do?
I am an undergraduate senior studying computer science and engineering continuing to work in deep learning and Artificial Intelligence.
I had been working on some datasets from June 2021. My supervisor could not give me time and did not reply to my calls, or texts over the medium he had instructed us to use. One day, he told us to share the research findings and materials with one of my lab mates. This meant that he'll collaborate with us on the work and he gained access to the data on what does and doesn't work well. He tweaked our work and approached our supervisor to publish it. Our supervisor also told us to implement some ideas. But that lab mate intervened saying he had implemented it. I don't know what their conversation was, but that lab mate told us that they would work separately from now on and submit after we've submitted our work somewhere. In the meanwhile, our undergraduate semester finals started, and we all took a break with the supervisor's permission. Sadly, that lab mate submitted that work to a journal without giving us any heads up and with the approval of our supervisor within the exams.
I feel betrayed and insulted because they did not give me authorship or acknowledgment that they got ideas from my experimental findings of 6+ months to quickly generate the manuscript. What do I do now? Where should I go with my work because they already have almost perfect performance on the same datasets? I am really depressed and demotivated to continue any work. Please help. Was this ethical?

You should talk to a mental health professional.

@AnonymousPhysicist Why?

What your supervisor and lab mate did is shady enough. It is unclear from the text how much their work overlaps with yours. If you are going to war with them, you need to be prepared.
Depending on how much your lab mate took from you, you may or may not be able to argue that he stole your work. You need the records: emails, the data that can be proven to be yours, slack (or whatever) message transcripts. If your supervisor is not on your side, or at least on the side of the truth, your mission is a lot harder. If you can't prove beyond doubt it was your data and they just tweaked it, whoever you talk to won't help.
There are a few scenarios one could think of.

You talk to your supervisor, ask them to add you to the author's list because it is your data and your work that got sent for publication. You setup a meeting in person, or at worse, over zoom to discuss this. You communicate clearly what you want and why. You also send an email with your argument and request. You don't need to accuse him, or your lab mate of anything at all at this stage. In fact, you should not.

If the supervisor answers negatively, and you have your proof that it is your data that was used in that publication, you can go to the next step: contact someone at the university who deals with academic misconduct, and you present your story and proof. At the same time, you can contact the editor of the publication, once you have seen that publication with your data on it and tell them about the issue. Normally, editors are sensitive to academic misconduct.

The second scenario is quite dangerous for you because you are making two bitter enemies exactly in your field of research, so you better have solid proof.

If your supervisor responds positively to your request, you let them handle your lab mate, and you stop collaborating with that person as soon as possible.

You can't really prove anything beyond doubt, to people from outside, but your lab mate and/or supervisor really stole from you. In this scenario, as in the second, you need to vanish from that lab and search a group who has better ethics. In this case, accusing them of misconduct is going to be detrimental for you, because they have more votes and people will believe them.

When weighing your decision, you should also take into account that people from outside the group won't believe an undergraduate student over someone with seniority. Even that your supervisor seems to ignore you, it means he might not consider you, or what you're doing important. This makes it much easier for your lab mate to appropriate your work, especially if he's a graduate student or a postdoc.


text:
Sure way of checking if an article is reliable
I have recently started working on a thesis, and my supervisor told me to make sure I didn't include papers from predatory or unreliable sources.
Typically, i perform my searches on Web of science or Scholar and add everything to Zotero.
I was wondering if there was a way, ideally something like an API that i could check my DOI against to ensure an article wasn't retracted or the journal it came from isn't listed as predatory?
I found lists of journals online, like beall's list (link) or doaj.org (link), but it's now raising a second problem; some articles have missing metadata and i can't simply check the name of their journals. Is there another way, or do i need to fix my library first ?
Thanks

I don't understand the sentence "some articles have missing metadata and i can't simply check the name of their journals". If you want to cite an article you have to find out the journal anyway.

@JochenGlueck Well, maybe the zotero connector has a problem or something, but i always have DOI + Author(s) + Year in the article's metadata field, but sometimes the publisher and/or journal are missing. I need to track them back from the url i saved them from to find where they were published

There is no foolproof way of checking whether the findings of an article are reliable. The best way is to be an expert and read it carefully as well as reproducing the findings, but even that is subject to not questioning assumptions that may be mistaken.
I don't know of a programmatic way of checking whether a journal is predatory, but please read How do I identify predatory and low quality journals? With Beall's List gone, how can I tell if a journal is spam? for heuristics. As for retractions, the most comprehensive database is that run by Retraction Watch, available here. Last year, it was integrated into Crossref's database and as I understand it, you should be able to use their API to query a DOI and get metadata information that flags whether the article has an associated Retraction Watch database record.

Thanks! I'll read those. For the retracted articles, i've looked around a bit more, and zotero actually already check this, using the retraction watch you provided. If you add a retracted article (that's in the db) a big red banner appears

Don't check the journal/publisher, check the author(s)
Not everything published in a predatory journal is unreliable, just like not everything published in reputable journals is reliable. Most papers will have a senior author at well-known institutions that is easily Googled for, and their name on the paper is a strong sign that the paper is reliable.
This will take a significant amount of effort, but because the only sure way is to become an expert yourself, so this is still the next-best option.

However the converse is not necessarily true: plenty of good work is done by people based at institutions that are not world-famous.

@avid I'm using "well-known institutions" here to mean institutions that are easily Googled for (a much lower bar than world-famous).


text:
Master thesis topic that nobody in the department studies
I am trying to apply to a university for a PhD position. My master's thesis is dedicated to a topic that nobody in my department (or even in my country) studies or even has deep knowledge of. My thesis is complete and perfectly fine. It has been proofread by a third person outside the department, an expert on the subject.
With this in mind, is it a good idea to mention in the statement of purpose that this is the situation in order to highlight capabilities for independent work and motivation?

It would probably be good to mention that your MS thesis was actually done independently of local supervision and that you are comfortable with independent research. And also that you have positive feedback from external expert(s).
This would be especially true if it is generally considered an important area of research and you want to do something adjacent to it in doctoral studies.
You don't need to spend a lot of space on it if your space is limited. Be prepared to say more in an interview.
It wouldn't be a negative in any case, even though in some places (US, particularly) it might not add a lot.


text:
Can I paraphrase a conference paper I wrote in my dissertation?
During my dissertation, I wrote a conference paper that has been accepted but that will only be published after I deliver my dissertation.
I now want to paraphrase the content of that paper into my dissertation because it is really relevant. I've heard that this is a relatively normal practice with PhD thesis, where whole articles are used as a chapters. Is it fine if I do something like this in my dissertation if I add a disclamer or cite my article (that is not yet published)? Or should I re-write it from scratch to avoid plagiarism?

The conference website will, with near certainty, state their policy on this matter.  Most (in my field, at least) give permission for re-publication in your dissertation.
The burden is on you to:

Find out what the policy is,
Find out what your institution's policy is,
Adhere to these policies, and
Cite your sources appropriately.

(Note, in rare cases, the conference policy might be "You have to e-mail the conference for permission."  In that case, expect that process to take a long time.)
As a matter of common sense, this is also something you should discuss with your advisor.

As with any "should this be in my dissertation?" question, the answer is "ask your advisor".
That said, plagiarism is unacknowledged copying. You can paraphrase your paper or even include parts of it verbatim in your thesis as long as you acknowledge the prior appearance of those ideas or words. Even a complete rewrite does not relieve you of the responsibility to point out that the ideas come from your earlier work.


text:
Job interview for a PhD
I was recently invited to a job interview regarding a PhD. I was told to make a short presentation of a few ideas regarding the project topic. I also have received an overview over the project aims, preliminary work etc.. I must admit that I am quite clueless what to present. In this project a new simulation platform should be developed with the help of the methods already implemented by the two participating work groups in their own software. I thought about presenting some methodology, but this would largely consist of implementing methods that these both groups already published and nothing really new. Also I'm new to the simulation method that is used in this project. Do you think that it would be sufficient to list the methods that can be used for the several parts of the simulation and in which order I would plan to implement these?

I would approach any interview with the mindset of "how can I convince the interviewer that I am the right person for the job". To accomplish this I would focus on three things:

What is the job you are expected to do.
What can you do to get the job done.
What else have I done that qualifies me.

With that I would break down the expectations into a few key items. You could go by aims, or by concepts, or techniques, or whatever other ordering category you can identify. And then in each of these categories you can show how you will contribute. The 3rd part is there to show off some additional skills that are not necessarily related to the project you are interviewing for (like a past project you worked on). Here you can demonstrate how you are able to tackle a challenging problem, learn something new, or be thorough/meticulous in executing a project.

What you say here is a lot of what you need to include, but what I'm missing is something about the end goal. What do you hope to learn in doing this research? How will it advance the field to know the answers, whether they are positive or negative? If you keep that goal in mind, the details of the attack can change and still make progress.
Focus a bit less on the actions and a bit more on the expected knowledge. Not that the actions are unimportant, of course.