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I grade exams together with a colleague but disagree with their grading. What should I do?
Recently, I have graded exams (50 pcs.) together with a colleague from another department. I felt like my colleague was awarding too many points for wrong/incomplete answers. For example, awarding points for just writing information of the question (value and units of parameters) on the answer sheet; or awarding points for copying one of the formulas on the formula sheet to the answer sheet while not specifically described in the grading template
During the grading of the exams I have discussed this with my colleague and decided to mostly follow his 'point awarding system' so that it does not create an unfair grading between sub-groups of the total population. Afterwards, I have discussed this again, but I feel like my colleague is not keen to change his grading style.
What are the next steps that I could take? Is it necessary that the whole university should have the same grading style?
ps: The course is given by their department and I have helped since this year because it overlaps with my expertise. It has a pass rate of ~50%.
ps2: It's not that his point awarding system is so loose that students with a 3/10 will suddenly be awarded a 6/10 but it will certainly change the outcome of passing the course for some students.

Why do you feel like your colleague is giving too much points? People will dissagree, that is just a fact in life, and unless you can provide sound, objective arguments for him being too 'lose' (which I imagine is impossible when grading since different people value different parts in an answer differently), it sounds like you will just have to agree to disagree

Examples are: Awarding points for just writing information of the question (value and units of parameters) on the answer sheet. Or awarding points for copying one of the formulas on the formula sheet to the answer sheet while not specifically described in the grading template.

@Bollehenk - what level study is this taking place? Awarding partial marks for identifying the correct techniques (formulae) doesn't necessarily sound unreasonable, though extracting the values/units may be debatable depending on the amount of work that would be required to extract them and the level of study.

Is it just as valid for him to come on here and ask the same question but say that you are "awarding too few points for wrong/uncomplete answers" ?

It would help to know what field this is in.  Subjectivity is very much higher in some disciplines (Classics, Philosophy) than others (Mechanical engineering... etc).

@J... given that the examples are values, units, parameters, and formulas, I'd hazard a guess at a STEM field.

What would you think of another department demanding you change how you grade your own courses?

@Kevin I didn't see anything about that in the question, but I see now that it was noted in comments.  Should probably edit those details into the question.

Have each person grade different questions, not different students.
Consistency in grading is important, and it is unfair to the students if their grades depend substantially on the allocation of their work to a grader.  For this reason, if you must split grading duties with another colleague for a particular assessment item, it is best to split the grading duties for the questions rather than splitting the grading of the students.  So, for example, one person grades Q1-3 on all papers and the other person grades Q4-6 on all papers.  That way each student is graded by the same person for the same question.  (Logistically, each of you should grade your questions on half the papers, then swap.)
It sounds like this ship has already sailed, and you have made the rookie mistake of splitting grading for the students, with different people marking different students.  It also sounds like you have tried to discuss this with your colleague, but you have exhausted attempts to change his grading.  In that case, even if your own grading style is superior to your colleague, adapting to his grading level for this assessment is probably a reasonable second-best option, simply to maintain consistency of the level of grades awarded.  In future, try to avoid the problem all together by splitting grading over questions instead of over students.

Have to agree here, splitting questions is FAR better than splitting students, and tried both in the past.

It is actually a wonder that this method is not mandatory/ enforced by the university

In the first math exam I wrote, grading was done in under 24 hours using an "assembly line", with each TA grading one question. Once the first TA has graded the first question of the first exam, the second TA can start working on the second question of the first exam, turnaround time is minimized and no exam slips through anywhere in the swapping process. The prof's personal assistant then only summed up the points, and the prof signed the exam.

A friend of my is doing TA in Canada and they use this exact system. In fact the sheets of paper are scanned, a software splits the images in different questions and a TA is assigned one of the questions and they do the grading online in parallel, so who is faster does not have to wait for the other TAs before getting the exams to grade. Obviously require a very good system for the scanning&splitting otherwise it's infeasible.

For exact this reason, we use stapled answer sheets where each the answer to each question has to be provided on one seperate sheet. After the exams are handed in, we tear apart the exams, and distribute the questions to the graders, such that one grader receives all sheets with a particular question

@damian Thank you for finally making me realise why I had to write my name/ID on every page of (some of) my exams.

Consistency in grading is (almost) impossible IMHO. Its presumption is a conceit. But - splitting questions is indeed a good thing to do.

@mbrig it's not necessarily just because of many people marking separate pages, putting your name on each sheet ensures that if a page gets loose for any reason it can still be matched to the correct student.

It's worth pointing out that this is still not ideal yet: If the exam features questions of type A and B, and you only correct B-types, it can happen that students of similar skill level, but one is good in A and one is good in B, get quite different grades. So if possible, I believe it is good to try to not split the questions based on question type

@David some reasons why this approach is not mandatory. One is that for big classes (many hundred) it's not feasible. Another is that having multiple markers allows for moderation, preventing one question being scored in a completely different manner to the others. But if you have multiple markers of a question, you must have a marking scheme that is agreed by all markers and adhered to (though it can evolve as different valid answers are encountered).

Whilst this does solve the practicalities of students getting the same grading on the same question, it does not solve the problem of the other person's grading scheme being unsatisfactory in the first place; nor does it solve the problem currently at hand: two people grading the same question with different methods. This solution would prevent this issue, but not solve it once it has happened

It's the instructor of record who is ultimately responsible for the conduct of the course, including grading*. As it sounds like you're not the instructor of record, but rather just someone who is helping grade, it's not really your place to determine what is or is not appropriate grading.
If you have a disagreement with another grader on how to mark exams, and can't resolve it using the information already provided to you (you said the grading template was insufficient to do so), then it's appropriate to take it up with the person in charge of that course (the instructor of record), and see what they say about it.
Now certainly you don't want to bother them about every little grading detail, but if it's a case of large-scale differences, where philosophical differences on how to conduct grading would substantially change students' grades, that's exactly the sort of thing the person in charge of the course should mediate.
Note that things get a little more complex when it's a team-taught course, where there are a number of "primary" instructors. However, in these situations it's normally the case where each instructor takes the lead on a certain topic. As such, they should be considered the primary opinion on issues specific to their topic. (Concerns which cut across multiple topics should be decided by mutual consent of the "primary" instructors.)

*) With the proviso that certain courses have to meet department or accreditation standards. But even in those cases, it's the instructor of record who is responsible for making sure that those standards are followed.

This answer seems to confuse administrative notion of responsibility with the academic notion of responsibility. In simple terms, I don't like unfair assessments and poor academic practice in my modules even if I am not a formal module leader.

@DmitrySavostyanov I'm certainly not implying that you should put up with unfair practices or that you shouldn't take academic responsibility for your actions if you're not the instructor of record. I'm just saying that the person who is ultimately responsible for how the course is run is the person with their name on the course catalog. -- The OP's question is one of two people having honest philosophical differences about how to interpret an ambiguous rubric. I was just pointing out they should consult the person in charge of the rubric.

At my institution it is typical to double-mark 20% of submissions for the purposes of standardisation / moderation.
This might mean 80% gets single-marked and 20% gets double-marked, or it might mean that two markers assess 60% each (2x an overlap of 10%). For low-weight assessments this is seen as a recommended best-practice, while being mandatory for high-weight assessments.
If such arrangements for standardising / moderating marks do not exist within your institution, perhaps it is worth suggesting that this (or something similar) is implemented.
Without knowing your department, it is difficult to say whether it is appropriate (or feasible) to suggest this be implemented for your current cohort of submissions, else be part of a push for implementing broader change.

A few notes about the process, for the curious:
Where there is a difference between multiple markers for any individual submission, then it is for the markers to settle upon an agreed mark. Where an agreed mark cannot be settled upon, then it gets escalated within the department for mediation.
Where a significant difference between multiple markers across multiple submissions is identified, then the entire cohort must be double marked (and any differences in mark reconciled as described above). Our benchmark for a "significant difference" is a mean deviation (correction) of >= 7%.

The responses you've already gotten are truly excellent. I just wanted to add one small observation. You say that you've been grading these exams

with a colleague from another department

and that

The course is given by their department and I have helped since this year because it overlaps with my expertise

By your own admission, you are, more or less, a guest in their department, doing them a favor by helping out. That means that the grades are, ultimately, not your responsibility.

First, @Ben's suggestion to split grading vertically rather than horizontally - questions rather than students - is good and practical irrespective of anything else.
That being said, I suggest you consider the following:

Give up the fantasy, or perhaps better put: the conceit, that grading is consistent. It isn't, due to a zillion factors: Exams not of consistent difficulty; student population distribution of capabilities not in sync with grading curve shaping; sense of severity of errors differs for the same person for the first encounters and for latter encounters; moods change; unconscious biases (for example: against people with sloppy handwriting); and so on.
Try to schedule a grading policy discussion of all graders and the exam authors, before the next exam is given (next semester?). In that discussion, bring up some specific scenarios requiring finer judgement rather than simply "how many points for which question".
Consider arguing for rougher-granularity grading in the course. I'm a fan of Pass/Fail (or Pass/Fail/Excellent), and dislike number scales, especially 0..100 or fractional grades. I can be confident about looking at someone and saying "Yeah, you understand what we've taught here, you pass." or "No, you don't get it - you fail." And if someone is borderline, then it's a matter of policy whether to pass or fail them (I would tend towards fail personally). But I really cannot justify why someone is a 63 while another person is a 64.7. I feel I'm only helping some arbitrary industrial mass-manipulation mechanism by assigning these kinds of numbers to people.

PS - These three suggestions are mostly orthogonal.

"Give up the [fantasy/conceit] that grading is consistent. It isn't". Indeed. This is underrepresented, in this thread but also in universities. Grading can impact years of someone's life: not everyone is either a straight A or a complete failure, so for many students those variances have an impact. It usually went fine for me personally, but I've seen so many students work hard and then fail a course while their peers passed, even though those peers were equally likely to be better as they were to be worse. Not just the grading style/biases, even studying the right pages creates variance.

@Luc: I think you're explaining how grading is not always pertinent, rather than not consistent. I was talking about the grading of submitted work which one could argue is of the same quality and represents the same command of the material.

Grading is inconsistent, but that's a bad thing.  It's better to try to increase consistency than decrease it.

If a significant number complete works have been graded by different people, you may consider adding a correction so that works done by each grader have the same mean grade (and, ideally, the same variance). This doesn't eliminate all the inconsistencies, but at least makes the grading statistically fair.

Sounds good in theory, but how do you achieve this?

Statistical fairness is only good for statistical reports. For students you have to explain why points are awarded/taken off, as well as provide useful feedback and suggestions for improvements.

An excellent discussion and am enjoying reading the comments. As an undergraduate, I confronted bias, extreme in two cases, in grading during my first 2 years. Only through perseverance and mentoring from two professors was I able to overcome it. Thus, the governing principle in my own teaching career was to let students succeed or fail on their own merits.
Like @einpokum, I abhorred the bell curve believing it to be both antiquated and unfair. One gorilla in the room is the fact that some students on every campus, primarily through various organizations, especially Greek letter ones, have access to exams and papers than non-connected students do. As a graduate student I lost a number of papers graded by professors who left them outside departmental offices. And, as a professor, a couple of papers submitted to me I determined had been plagiarized. Protecting the fairness of student evaluation is an institutional responsibility.
In my own experience, after my 1st year of teaching at the college level, I instituted what I called developmental grading, believing that teachers are responsible for providing a framework in which all students have an opportunity for success. This is a concept I learned when in nursery school from two very intelligent teachers, and it's remained in my consciousness every since. Their application was solely environmental. The approach I used was also environmental, but focused on student evaluation, and was three-phased:

Students took an exam, which was graded by me and later by others as the numbers of students in my general courses increased, from less than 20 when I began, to over 100.
Once grades were known, students could apply to take the exam again for half of the points for each question that they "missed" in the initial exam. These would be added to their earlier grade.
If still not satisfied, they could take an oral exam before the entire class who would then evaluate their performance.

Although there were several who opted for #2, none applied for option 3. I was hoping for at least one to determine how the students would respond.
Only after the 2nd phase was completed did the class go through the exam together to share their thoughts about each question and the expected answers. Later, this was modified for students to go through the exam with student assistants or other professors depending on the course.
A second principle in my evaluation, which students ultimately learned, was that the three previous exams had less impact on their final grade than how they did on a comprehensive final; and, that these exams and the follow-up discussion were designed to help them perform better on the Final. In fact, a student could do poorly on all other exams (barring poor attendance or otherwise failing minimum parameters), get an A on the final and achieve an A for a grade. For some students, no doubt, it appeared as a gift, but they earned a better grade. Why? I believed that finals were designed not to achieve a percentage of a grade in relation to all other criteria, but to test what they comprehensively learned overall about the subject of the course. Grading final exams was one of my base pleasures, as well as the gourmet coffee I imbibed to get me through them. :)
I might add that exams were not the only factors entering into a final assessment, but book reviews, reports about speakers or activities on campus germane to the class or quizzes which they triggered by not asking questions when prompted by my question at the end of each class--are there any questions? Like many of you, I suspect, teaching involves learning complex concepts and reducing them to an 8th grade level so that most first to second year students can comprehend what it is we are talking about.

Separating grading by question, not students is a great answer.  But if that's not possible, try to agree on a rubric, i.e., how many points are attached to each aspect of the answer you're looking for.


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Required items for undergraduate's CV who is applying to grad school
There are many guides for writing an academic CV available online, but nearly all of them are not clearly addressing undergraduates who are applying to graduate school. This group obviously need to include different items on their CV than those applying for a post-doc or a job.
I wanted to know the specific requirements of this kind of CV in addition to the general guidelines of writing an academic CV. specifically, I wanted to know that:

Should I include my research interests? I understand that many senior undergraduates may not have specific research interests, but there are many others who have, and I think this can be a positive point in their application to research based programs.
Should I list courses I've taken in addition to my main courses, that are important for the program? For example, during my undergraduate I have taken many graduate pure math courses (voluntarily), that are very important in the discipline I'm applying to. Should I list them under Education section?
Should an activities section be included, in which my favorite, relevant activities are listed? As an example, I have written many  bots in Python for daily repetitive Wikipedia tasks, and this shows my proficiency in Python (a positive point). Can I list under activities that I have written many scripts for Wikipedia?
Should an Objective section be added at the beginning? (I will write and submit a statement of purpose separately)
Is a References section required at the end of the CV? (I've already made all of the mentioned names in the CV a link pointing to their homepages)

From what I've heard, CVs/resumes do not get a lot of weight in application decisions. The vital information is available elsewhere (particularly in the recommendation letters and statement of purpose), and the rest is almost always fluff and/or unverifiable.
There's a few things that you should definitely do. Focus heavily on research experience and any tangible evidence of research potential. Provide citations/links to publications or working papers. Include academic honors, especially national ones, mostly because they are unlikely to show up anywhere else. Depending on the field, there might be other relevant information (e.g. patents in engineering).

Should I include my research interests? I understand that many senior undergraduates may not have specific research interests, but there are many others who have, and I think this can be a positive point in their application to research based programs.

No. That's what your statement of purpose is for. There's no need to duplicate it here.

Should I list courses I've taken in addition to my main courses, that are important for the program?

You can, but I wouldn't. That's what your transcript is for. Some programs will also ask for lists/descriptions of classes. If a specific class is particularly important, you should consider mentioning it in your SOP or getting the professor to write you a recommendation letter; putting it in your CV is unlikely to draw attention to it.

Should an activities section be included, in which my favorite, relevant activities are listed? As an example, I have written many bots in Python for daily repetitive Wikipedia tasks, and this shows my proficiency in Python (a positive point). Can I list under activities that I have written many scripts for Wikipedia?

Will almost certainly be viewed as fluff. If you an activity is important enough to mention, then include it in your SOP.

Should an Objective section be added at the beginning? (I will write and submit a statement of purpose separately)

No. Again, this is what your SOP is for.

Is a References section required at the end of the CV? (I've already made all of the mentioned names in the CV a link pointing to their homepages)

No. Generally there will be a separate section for entering your recommenders and their contact information, so it is unnecessary.

An exception might be when applying to fellowships. I suspect that some fellowships will consider leadership experiences, community service, and other factors that graduate schools generally ignore. Including these activities (e.g. varsity sports, student government, eagle scout, volunteering) might be helpful depending on the evaluation criteria.

This is a good, thorough answer, but it is also clearly biased towards the perspective of someone who considers the CV as simply an extra component of the application. I gather that some professors actually prefer to glean information from CVs, hence the CV being required at all. I don't think these professors consider duplicating information as unnecessary.

@Tim I'm sure there are, and would welcome other perspectives. I suspect that most professors treat the CV as a secondary piece of an application though. Similar to a glossary, it's where you can "look up" a job or publication that is referenced somewhere else.

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Why do errors exist in peer reviewed publications?
I found a mistake (not a misprint) in an article which has been published in a very good math journal. According the available data, the article was in peer-review process for more than 8 months. But I do not know why the referee(s) did not notice that. What are reasons for this kind of articles?

Maybe related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/131576/how-can-ones-career-as-a-reviewer-be-ended

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/48224/20058

Answers in comments have been moved to chat (please consider making proper answers out of them, if they do not duplicate existing answers).

People make mistakes.
Manuscript authors, reviewers, and editors are people, and people are not perfect. Even if every person involved in the publication of a manuscript catches 99% of all errors, it's still possible that some errors will go unnoticed. This likelihood of course goes up  when authors/reviewers are careless, but it can never be eliminated entirely even with very meticulous review.

As simple as that.

For what it's worth (coming from the software business), that's why there's buggy software.  Most software it code reviewed by one to 4 (sometime more) people, and subject to automated tests.  But, it turns out that People do make mistakes, authors, reviewers, test authors, etc.  As a result, cash registers restart at random, web sites have glitches and even things like Boeing planes and Arianne rockets sometimes fall out of the skies.

It's not unknown for journals to rely on a single reviewer, and it's hardly surprising if that reviewer is only sufficiently expert on most of the paper.  Even multiple reviewers aren't guaranteed to cover the whole scope perfectly.  While gross errors should still be caught, as well as many issues, subtle but material errors can easily slip through.

@ChrisH Exactly right! "Peer review" doesn't necessarily mean thoroughly checked (though it might), it just means that is was checked at least once by somebody at least theoretically competent.

@henning--reinstateMonica. I am not sure it is just 'As simple as that'. Of course people make mistakes, but I suspect a much larger reason why errors occur is because the review system is totally broken, and that reviewers aren't professionalised. I think this gives the idea that errors in the peer-review system are unavoidable, rather than fundamentally caused by greedy journals . It doesn't encourage people to try and change the system if they think it is inevitable.

@4galaxy7 But errors exist even in text with good peer review by professional reviewers. I do think errors in the peer review system are unavoidable. With several million scientific manuscripts published each year, it is unrealistic to expect that they could all be error-free. It is widely accepted, for example, that writing a significant chunk of bug-free code is impossible, no matter how many people review it. No individual can spot 100% of errors, so no group of individuals can spot 100% of errors either.

You could write bug free code if you didn't care how long it would take or how much you would have to pay the developers. Not that this proves anyone wrong - whenever there is human judgement needed there will be errors.

@CarsonGraham: Of course, it should be noted that we are talking about a very specific definition of "bug-free" here, namely "is consistent with the supplied model". There is no guarantee that the model is bug-free, nor is there any guarantee made about the compiler, the runtime library, the linker, the assembler, the OS, the CPU, etc. There are formally verified compilers, OSs, CPUs, etc. as well, but again, "verified" only means "consistent with the model". It should not be a surprise to readers of this website that a proof proves exactly the theorem, and no more.

Going by my experience in reviewing papers, it's virtually impossible to really review every aspect of a paper. This is particularly the case in some fields where the supplementary methods go for 100s of pages and the code may be 10s of 1000s of lines long. It's unlikely that all reviewers have the in depth knowledge of specific fields and the huge amount of time required to properly evaluate everything in the paper. This is particularly the case in fields which are relatively new and ground-breaking - there simply doesn't exist the pool of capable reviewers.
For example, I recently reviewed a paper for a top journal (Nature Genetics) which involved a complex and quite a specialised piece of software for genetic analysis. There was no way I could evaluate each line of code they had written, so there is no way the reviewer could be expected to detect bugs and errors in the code. We have to look at the results presented and their justification to then assume that the code is working as the authors said it would. There is a rather large amount of faith in the authors that their code does what they say it does. I could have spent a whole month non stop reviewing the paper and I still imagine minor things could have slipped by.
This issue is compounded by a) the fact reviewers don't get paid and b) reviewers are often very overworked and c) there isn't much motivation beyond professionalism and academic ideals (although of course these can be strong motivating factors) to spend a large amount of time meticulously reviewing papers.
tl;dr. Reviewers mostly do the best job they can, but given the terrible structure  set in place to perform most peer-reviews, I certainly wouldn't trust a peer-review to be a cast iron certificate that everything in the paper is correct, but fortunately a vast majority of people in academia are honest and don’t try to deceive readers or reviewers.

Ideally, this would not happen, but it is near unavoidable.
For instance, if you are refereeing a proof, chances are you won't read it line-by-line. In fact, when I can only read a mathematical argument that way, it is because I have not yet understood it, and this is a really bad way of verifying global correctness, or coherence, or originality. A lot may be lost, and even if everything is correct, chances are that at the end it is hard to say with any certainty how flexible the argument is, whether all the assumptions are truly needed, whether some steps are really as difficult as depicted, or why. Usually we read modularly, trying to grasp the global structure of the argument, using lemmas and the like as black boxes. Only when that structure makes sense, we proceed to the lemmas. Or we may not even read the proofs of the lemmas, because we see how to prove them ourselves. Now, if one such proof has a problem as written in the paper, there is a chance we will miss it because we see how to prove the lemma anyway. Some referees do not care much about mistakes at this level, since they are easily fixable, and what matters more is that the overall argument is sturdy.
It would be much better, overall, if papers included extended discussions of motivation, intuition, proof strategies, and so on. People reading them would find the arguments easier to digest, and the possibility of missing a mistake would reduce. But technical writing is difficult to begin with, some journals have page limits, and sometimes there are time constraints (related to tenure or promotion considerations, for example) that restrict the ability of authors to spend the time that this inclusion would require. Of course, not having such remarks throughout the paper may make it difficult for referees and other readers to grasp some of the details, which may lead to missing mistakes.
Ideally, we as referees should read the paper several times, at least once line-by-line, but few times we are in the position to devote so much time to the process. When I can afford the time, I may even comment on typos or style, though I much prefer if the substance of my comments is on the mathematics of the paper and its potential for generalizations or extensions, or connections with other works. A few happy times I've seen how to improve some of the proofs presented in the paper, but I imagine I have missed important details as well.
Of course, it may well be that a paper has an error that is not at the level of a typo or a lemma not quite proved as it should be. An error may be significant and we may still miss it. Sometimes we find an argument similar to something we are familiar with, and skip verifying details we expect to be routine, and end up missing something serious. Or we misunderstand. It is really not that uncommon or surprising.
Papers are not written in formal languages that are machine-verifiable. Some people argue that they should be. Whatever is the case, currently most of our proofs are conversational, and technicalities may be omitted on occasion. Many papers are very dense, and it takes years of careful examination by many people to detect flaws or gaps, or genuine mistakes. Peer review is not meant to signify a perfect guarantee of correctness, and it is a mistake to think of it as having that goal.
Here is a quote regarding the refereeing process of the journal Discrete Analysis, highlighting precisely this last point:

In some cases, it is not reasonable to expect a reviewer to check the correctness of a paper down to the last detail. In such cases, editors may be satisfied with indirect evidence that a paper is likely to be correct. (For example, it may be that the general outline of the argument is convincing, but that the technical details involved in converting the outline into a complete proof are very complicated.) Thus, publication in Discrete Analysis should not be considered an absolute guarantee of correctness, just as in practice it is not a guarantee for any other journal.

I'm an engineer and peer reviewing papers in my field for complete correctness is nearly impossible, as papers typically summarize findings with novel computer codes or experiments I don't have direct access to.  I review a paper to see that it is free of obvious fallacy, on topic for the publication, and appears to represent work of sufficient quality and novelty that subsequent researchers might find it useful.  If I'm satisfied on these counts, I'll click "recommend for publication". I'll leave comments on minor issues if I see them, but I don't see it as my job to proofread or edit papers for free.
Engineers generate a lot of data and models on obscure topics, so I suspect these standards are a bit different than in some top scientific journals.  However, I would encourage anyone who doesn't have first hand experience reviewing papers to view peer review as more of a screening process to weed out trash than make sure what makes it to print is absolutely correct.

Indeed, "a screening process". Both to weed out lower-quality papers and to maintain some notion of "status" of the journal, which is a different thing, though related.

And computer code and data analysis are the parts that would be easiest to exchange. There may still be errors in the experimental setup, including decisions/choices that are not even known yet to be suboptimal or flawed.

Code and data are indeed easy to exchange, but they are not typically offered to reviewers. Additionally, the time required for doing code or raw data reviews is well beyond what one can reasonably expect of a professional getting neither pay or credit for service as a reviewer.

The reviewer is not responsible for the content of an article. He gives his opinion on the novelty and scientific rigour, and recommends acceptance or rejection based upon that opinion. He has the freedom to recommend improvements, and is expected to point out whatever appears to be erroneous to him.
The author must not lie (that would create a liability on his side), but of course can err like all humans do in nearly every waking moment.
The reader however must never take anything for granted just because it was written down in an article. It is the reader who must double-check everything and still carry the full responsibility if he looses time, money, or a limb based on a misconception that was transported in some scientific article.

I believe that human error is the most common reason for inaccuracy in peer-reviewed scientific articles, but I must respectfully add another reason: academic politics. I served as a peer reviewer for over 20 years. I typically spent 10-20 hours on each review, because informational integrity is the bedrock of scientific advancement.
The longer I served as a peer reviewer, the more frequently I received articles on controversial topics or from "big names" in my field. Reviews are supposed to be anonymous, but when authors refer to "our previous work (xxx, 2012)" anonymity disappears.
Sadly, it became apparent that some senior Editors were less willing to require revisions from "big names" who used inferior methods, incorrectly interpreted the meaning of their statistical results, or who badly mischaracterized the results of prior research. Errors that would have sounded the death knell for a paper written by a newbie were overlooked, dismissed, and excused. (My own research became increasingly arduous as I realized that I needed to check the veracity of any citation I encountered before relying upon it.)
I stopped peer reviewing after spending three weeks on a particularly critical article by a "big name". This person had used a type of analysis with which I was familiar, but which was not well known in my field. Quite simply, the paper was a train wreck. Among several other serious errors: Basic tenets of the theory underlying the analysis were ignored, misstated, or inaccurately cited. Mathematical calculations were just flat out incorrect. And rather than using standard measurement instruments common in the field, the author used untested, unpublished instruments developed in his/her lab.
I was not a "big name," and I wanted to make certain that I was on very solid ground in my critique. I documented every single concern in my eight-page review with references to published material; never did I leave the senior Editor to just "trust my judgment." Where I knew that the senior Editor might have difficulty tracking down a source, I sent photocopies of the material I had used.
The article was accepted for publication without a single substantive change. The other reviewers, who admitted that they knew nothing about the fairly dense theoretical basis of the analysis, returned half-page reviews that mentioned only typographical errors and run-on sentences. The senior Editor was not willing to discuss the decision with me.
As I said in my opening statement, I do not believe that academic politics accounts for most of the errors in peer-reviewed research. I think that most stem from honest human error or from unfortunate carelessness. I post this response to round out the answer to the OP, and to make explicit the fact that "big names" do not guarantee "good science" or error-free publications.

I would say there is another source of errors in peer-reviewed publications. The latter need to contain something new, so they are often state-of-the-art, and it is just hard both to produce and review their results, hence the errors.

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


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arXiv - is it possible to upload there an abstract and only within a week the text itself?
I want to submit a paper to a journal on which I've worked with a colleague. The paper is almost finished but refers to another unpublished paper I've been working on. To avoid falling behind schedule with my colleague, I am considering uploading my in-progress paper's abstract to arXiv for now, and once I finish working on the paper, I will upload it again to arXiv. Is it possible to upload merely a detailed abstract of a paper and then upload the full-blown complete paper to the arXiv? Please advise.

Papers on arxiv can be updated. Why not publish what you have right now?

@MisterMiyagi thank you. I am still working on part of the section related to 'results' and producing relevant graphs. So I thought to consider uploading the abstract and once I finish my work on it (I think it will take a week or so) to upload a complete paper. I thought it would not be good to just upload parts of a paper, even if they hold the core of it...Do you think it is no good to upload a mere abstract and upload it to a full paper once I complete the writing of it?

@Soni It's a bit unclear why you would want to do this. What's the benefit of uploading right now when you can upload the complete thing in one week? Is there some deadline you need to hit? Are you afraid of getting scooped?

@DCTLib, thank you. Need to meet the deadline for the submission of the paper I co-authored with a colleague, and since that paper refers to the sole-authored paper that I have not yet finished, I somehow need a way to still provide a link to it.  This is the situation for which I am looking for advice...Maybe the best will be to try to submit with the colleague without any hyperlink to arXiv and just write in the reference near the paper "unpublished manuscript", and later once I finish what I need to send the journal a link to my full-blown paper in arXiv (?)

Related question: How to address dependencies when publishing a chain of papers

The Arxiv says it does not accept abstract-only papers.
https://info.arxiv.org/help/policies/content-types.html
This page goes on to say that articles should be "complete final drafts" which is a bit of an oxymoron as drafts are not final.  This is not rigorously enforced, but I would expect an abstract-only paper to be rejected.
Early versions of the other paper can list this as "in preparation" which works best if you don't later change the title.

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


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File naming conventions when sending file back and forth via email?
I often edit a manuscript draft with co-authors by sending drafts of a document back and forth via email. Depending on who I am working with, cloud-based solutions to working collaboratively are not always an option.
After some back and forth a lot of interim drafts begin floating around, so a lot of my co-authors either initial, date, or number a working document when we send it back and forth for edits. Some do none of this at all. I am wondering if there is a correct way to "name" a document when collaborating via email. Is there a consensus on best practices for file-naming conventions when collaboratively editing via email?

"correct" not sure, common sense yes - dates or version 1, version 2 or dates, times and initials are all common...

The key of good VCS such as git is to have a link to which the previous version is. So, ask them to mark their version with their new version number and name, at the least, but, ideally, add from which version they have constructed it (or multiple of these if this was a merge).

@CaptainEmacs No need to do such manual drudgery; that's what git format-patch is for ;)

@Warbo If they can use git format-patch, they know how to use git. If they know how to use git, they will use LaTeX. If they use LaTeX, they are capable of using online repositories. If they are capable of using online repositories, they would use them for a joint document. If they would use them, the question would not have been asked. Hence, they must use either Google Docs or Word. Google docs does not have version problems. It follows that they use Word, email with incoherent threads, and inconsistent file naming for version control and they think "git format-patch" is a Romulan swearword.

@CaptainEmacs I have various collaborators that use Latex and still exchange files via e-mail. Git is more advanced tech than Latex.

Sadly, there is no strictly "correct" method of version control.
There should be, but how could that be implemented across different operating systems, software and Users?
Captain Emacs might be wholly right. Either way, you need to develop your own modus operandi which even if it doesn't go so far as to demand specific procedures, at least tells everyone involved that they must agree a procedure, and stick to it.
Different co-authors have different priorities and all need to understand that if they won't collaborate, they will be responsible for any and all problems arising.

@FedericoPoloni Indeed. But my inference goes the other way round. Warbo suggested using git. :-)

@CaptainEmacs: The shaky step in your chain is “If they use LaTeX, they are capable of using online repositories. […] Hence, they must use either Google Docs or Word.”  Like @ Federico, I’ve known several collaborators who were very happy with LaTeX but didn’t like using online repositories, and whose preferred workflow absolutely fit what’s described here.  I’m sure they would have been capable of using online respositories, but they weren’t willing to.

@PLL "Capable" is the point. But you are of course right, strictly spoken. What still stands in my argument is that, being ready and able to use git, the rest pretty much follows downstream. I probably should have placed LaTeX second last, but I intended it to be more humorous than anything, plus keeping in mind that LaTeX is suitable for git merging and therefore LaTeX usage follows from git usage, rather than Word usage. I should have connected the logic chain of repositories to both LaTeX and git usage as parents. "> Congratulations! You have killed the joke. The joke is now dead." ;-)

From my experience, git is to C as SVN is to Python. For non-programmers, SVN is often the right tool for the job.

Surely there is a startup somewhere that wants to use the blockchain for revision control. :)

If you are using LaTeX, collaborative tools like www.overleaf.com are very useful and avoid the need to know a version control system. They also avoid filling up your inbox. Many institutions have site licenses to them, and if not there are free plans available.

@CaptainEmacs - "If they know how to use git, they will use LaTeX." is not true at all in my experience.  Ever programmer at my workplace uses git.  Only a few with experience in academia would use LaTeX, and even then it tends to be the older members of the team.  In practice no-one uses it, because documents are not shared exclusively with people who use LaTeX.

@GuyG I had hoped my comment would appear as tongue-in-cheek as I had it in mind, but obviously not.

@CaptainEmacs - Probably just not when I skim-read comments...

@Artelius SVN is a fair choice, but it requires a central server (AKA a "cloud"). Git doesn't.

Date the file like 11nov.17.23.This.File....

To get back to the real question...  one can note there are real situations when shared servers are a problem, most notably when some people are in a jurisdiction that limits internet access and some aren't.  Are there still workarounds then?  Yes.  Do they become really inconvenient and for some people a net waste of time?  Yes.

I come from a field where none of these answers are going to work. Remember, most scientists aren't computer scientists.  As a grad student, sending professors arcane rules for naming conventions would probably just be ignored. Everyone has their own usual pattern, and even if they wanted to be helpful, might just forget when it comes time to save. What irks me is people that put spaces in filenames.
As much as I plan to improve this process if I ever run my own lab, here's what you have to do:
The first author (or author leading the publication, or the corresponding author, or someone picked to facilitate) runs the show.

When you send out a draft, state a date for when you'd like to receive comments by (two weeks is a good rule-of-thumb). Don't make your own edits in the meantime if you can help it.
When you send out a draft, put a date on it. When people start sending you comments, sometimes people will be kind and edit one that someone has already edited. IME, that doesn't always happen.
At the end of the time period, or once you've received everyone's comments, use Word's document merge tool.
Save with the new date, and start incorporating edits and responding to comments.
Rinse and repeat.

You will end up with a lot of files, with different dates. I keep the files from step #4 only, once you are confident in the merge. Frankly, space is cheap, and personally I find it easier to open paper-200303.docx to find an old comment than revision tools (for Word). When the paper is accepted, you can delete the old versions.

Not using version control is bad.

Depending on who I am working with, cloud-based[, version controlled] solutions to working collaboratively are not always an option.

You can use cloud-based solutions even when some collaborators are against them. All you need to do is: Download and email the cloud version to collaborators that refuse to use the cloud, and upload whatever they send back.

The OP knows that not using version control is bad. This does not answer their question.

@lighthousekeeper If an OP is following an ill-advised path, should we help them along (by answering their questions) or guide them onto a better path? I believe the latter is more useful and should be considered a valid answer, which is what I believe my answer does

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. Leaving these two to summarize the discussion.

I feel this is misleading as VCS != cloud. If there are objections because the cloud is bad, e.g. because it is under foreign control and well cloudy (if it's there it's there and if it's gone it's gone...), you can suggest to setup a private VCS/git repo!

That sounds like a lot of work for the person co-ordinating the cloud repository! And remember, being "against" a cloud solution is not necessarily being obstructive for the sake of it -- sometimes there are good reasons (security of confidential data; collaborators at different institutions; compatibility issues of a specific cloud solution for those of us who do not have the latest, shiniest hardware and operating systems; ethical objections to giving custom to a provider that dodges taxes)

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the classical "token"/"cookie" system.
The way I used to write papers with coauthors 20 years ago was using an informal token system.  If I wanted to edit Section 1 of the paper, even just to fix a single typo, I had to follow these steps:

Email all coauthors with the text "I am claiming the token for section 1."
Edit section 1
Email all coauthors with their edited version of Section 1 and the text "I am releasing the token for Section 1."

Nobody was allowed to keep the token for any section more than some agreed limit. typically 24 hours, but that often shrank to 2 hours or even 15 minutes as deadlines got closer.  In principle, everyone could keep their own local copy of the paper up to date, but in practice, it was helpful for one co-author to periodically recalibrate by claiming the token for the entire paper.
As long as everyone followed token discipline, there was no need to worry about file names.  There were no version disputes, because the most recent version of Section 5.4 was always by definition in the most recent email releasing the token for Section 5.4.  In particular, if you branched, it was your responsibility to merge correctly, not your coauthors'.
On the other hand, co-authors (including both PhD students and tenured Luddites) who didn't follow token discipline found themselves involved in fewer papers afterward.
While my paper collaboration has mostly moved to Overleaf+git, I do actually still use this system on the unavoidable but thankfully increasingly rare occasions that I need to collaborate on a Word document with someone who doesn't have access to Word Online or Google Docs.
tl;dr: Don't do this unless you have to.

Sounds like working with a broken version of CVS. :-S

It sounds messy from the outside, but I can see how this can work well. Though what happens if you work on Section 2 and another co-author starts working on Section 3 on parallel. Who merges the two sections at the end?

I believe it was answered - if you want, you can update your local document but usually someone says "I claim token for the paper" and updates it for everyone.
I also believe that sections might often be on separate .tex files that are all included in the main file, so no merging is actually required.

If someone emailed me "I'm claiming the token for section 1," I would have no idea what they meant (except for after reading your answer).

@AzorAhai It doesn't matter what system you use, unless you tell the people which one you are using it won't work. Same here. It's clunky, but it has the great advantage that it does not rely on a specific technology.

@Džuris I only ever did this with one-tex-file papers.  Maintaining multiple files for anything shorter than a book makes things much messier, in my experience.

@JeffE I feel exactly the opposite :D Navigating file longer than a screen and a half is terrible, I do file per section all the time.

We even used this when using git/svn just to avoid merge conflicts or wasted time when two people fix the same spelling error.

24 hours sounds harsh. Can we not at least pretend to respect other people's weekends? (yes, I know none of us works just Monday–Friday 09:00–17:00, but that does not mean we should allow ourselves to be under constant pressure to turn-around things that quickly all the time)

@anon If you're not going to work over the weekend, release your tokens on Friday afternoon.  (Better to release the token before you're completely finished with your changes than to make other people wait for you.)  Said differently: If you have a token, you are by definition working, even if it's a weekend.

@JeffE Ah, so you can release a token early. A good idea, provided other co-authors do not mind comments such as:"There is a great cross-reference I have in mind to develop the point in paragraph 4, but I cannot remember the details -- I will do some reading over the weekend to see if I can find it again."

The key to modern version control such as git is knowing the parent documents of a document. You thus need to be able to reconstruct which the immediately previous version is.
So, ask them to mark their version with their new version number and name, at the least, but, ideally, add from which version they have constructed it (or multiple of these if this was a merge)
Thus, at the very least, OP could use -.-.txt.
So you could deduce that that rollingstones-4.2-PK.txt has been derived by PK from (probably) 4.1. As well as rollingstones-4.2-IR.txt has also probably 4.1 as parent, but modified independently by somebody else. When you merge versions with the same number, you can omit the author and just give it the following number, e.g. if rolling stones-4.3.txt is a merge of the previous ones.
If you can afford to and people are disciplined, it would help to mark the immediate predecessor, though: rollingstones-4.4-UM-from-4.3-PK.txt. This is a bit clunky and a poor imitation of modern VCS such as git, but it allows you to deduce the parent(s) of the present version which is all you ultimately need.
To facilitate that, ask people, directly on downloading the latest version, to duplicate it and modify its name immediately to reflect the parenthood of the downloaded version.

This is a great suggestion, and it works well when it works. My only worry is what happens if some contributors fail to change the file name after the edit (e.g. because "oh, it's so minor, just a line here and there"). We still fall back to history of emails to recover the tree of edits. Filename conventions can be done wrong, but email client keeps order regardless. That's why I think emails should be the primary mechanism.

@DmitrySavostyanov Well, email is just a timeline. Basically it means, you have to dig out the possible dependencies anyway by hand. Essentially dynamic time warping, split according to authors, by hand. Yuck!

Well, email keeps a tree of replies, so if people download the file from an email, edit it and email by responding to the same email, we have the tree of edits, not "just the timeline".

@DmitrySavostyanov How do you merge? And what do you do if a new thread is opened? I am kind of beginning to get your point, but if you suggest email as VCS, perhaps you should edit your answer to explain the "algorithm" as to how to manage email as VCS. I am not fully able to understand how one would find the parents in your algorithm. I got that far to see that threads with individual correspondents would correspond to "branches".

Sorry, I thought it's pretty obvious, because emails are a tree and git is a tree, so it's really the same. Of course there is no automatic merge, which is a huge pain and the main reason to use git.

@DmitrySavostyanov In emails, there is not only no automatic merge, but no merge at all, which means, you may not know who the full sets of parents are - in emails you have usually only one parent, and sometimes even orphaned branches. That's why I do not think that emails are a good (ahem adequate) model and I suggested a more explicit approach. Of course, where the explicit approach breaks, you can then further enhance it by taking the clues from the email, but it's not something I'd like to do on a regular basis as a user. Anyway, thank you for clarifying.

If an collaborator sends you an email with a filename that doesn't correspond to your system then rename it so that it does. If collaborators are using word (mostly likely) then word includes a merge feature that works pretty well.

This answer relies too much on people following directions.

@AnonymousPhysicist OP asked for naming conventions. If you want to avoid people have to "follow directions", you need a tool that funnels activity in a particular way, such as Overleaf or Google docs, but this was not listed by OP as option.

If you want to avoid cloud solutions and use email, maybe choose a VCS which works offline (i.e. is distributed, like git) and has support for email (preferably built-in, like git).
There are many ways to set up such a workflow, here's an example for git. Essentially: you work in git like normal, and when you want to send someone your changes you can use git send-email; after receiving an email containing changes you would like to apply (e.g. maybe after some back-and-forth discussion in reply to a git send-email message) you can pipe that email into a command like git am to incorporate the changes.
git is well-suited to use over email, since this was its original use-case and is hence the preferred and best-supported way to use it.

you are assuming they will send you a git formatted email

Most likely, they use Word. See my comment above :-)

Implicitly, the question implies the use of some binary file such as Word as pointed out by others. Version control can be used with binary files, but is typically not that useful. If they use Word, I guess one could extract the xml but lets not go down that avenue...

This doesn't strictly answer the question, because it is about adopting no convention at all. As others have said, it is usually difficult to get authors to stick to the same system.
Assuming you use a format (e.g. MS Word) which has some sort of "track changes" feature, or a text format (e.g. LaTeX) which you can diff:

Let authors rename files in any way they please
One person (perhaps unofficially) takes responsibility for maintaining some sort of continuity of the document (i.e. keeping the structure and flow OK)
If the document versions diverge, this person uses the "track changes" feature to pull them back together
And then emails the result to everyone saying "I've incorporated everyone's changes"
Some authors won't work off this version straight away, especially if they were in the middle of writing something or working closely with someone else

But eventually they will because they don't want to be left out of the loop
In the meantime the "maintainer" just keeps adding their new changes to their "master" document
The key is that they don't need to do any work to switch to the master version.

Authors that aren't off doing their own thing will know which version to choose (the one that says "everyone's changes are in here!")
This has many other benefits like saving most authors time and hunting through emails, removing the danger of changes being lost, stressing authors about continuity problems, and having someone who is looking at the big picture of the document and can discuss that with other authors.

tl;dr: In my personal opinion, the best option is to keep the filename at all times.
Here's my reasoning. The filename tells us what purpose the document serves, which information it contains. The meta information (who is the author, when the last edit was made) is saved in file properties or in special fields within the file itself. The history of edits is traditionally maintained using some version control system (VCS).
In your case, you use email as your VCS. The emails are timestamped and your email client allows you to sort emails according to this date. Emails also give you information about the last author. If people send their edits by responding to the email with the version from which the edit was made, the email client keeps the whole tree of edits, just like git, allowing you to find a parent for every version. A tree of emails is a direct equivalent of a git tree. You may want to create a filter to put all emails with this file attached in a special folder to separate them from the rest of your communications. Other than that, email is already a minimalist and incomplete (no automatic merge for example), but working VCS.
Since you already have a VCS, modifying filenames to code the same information is unnecessary and inconvenient, and should be avoided.
PS: And it goes without saying, email is a much poorer VCS compared to e.g. git, so you should at least offer your collaborators to try using a better system for collaboration.

Email is a horrible VSC, emphatically not recommended. At the very least, OP could use -.-.txt. This is a poor imitation of modern VCS such as git, in terms of allowing one to deduce the parent(s) of the present version (which is the key here, especially with multiple authors). All said, not using a proper VCS is definitely a pain.

@CaptainEmacs Perhaps, you would like to post your comment as an answer?

If you must share files in such a way (and often you just have to, despite the many wonderful version control, cloud file-sharing and collaborative editing tools out there), I suggest a format such as
mainfilename-timestamp-initials.
E.g., cure_for_cancer-202005011030-jb.tex, where the timestamp is for 10.30am on May 1, 2020.
That makes it easy to sort multiple versions of the same file lexicographically (i.e., by file name). But of course, you've then got the challenge of getting collaborators to follow the same convention.

It's not human readable or writable.

@AnonymousPhysicist Meh. I'm a human, and I read those things all the time. YMMV. Choose a timestamp format you prefer, but that particular order at least sorts well.

The ISO date/time format is basically that one, and it includes some better defaults for separators.

minute time stamps are probably a little fine-grained, days work just fine (especially if there are initials too)

In my experience, the single biggest problem is that the file's "last modified" metadatum often ends up reflecting the time it was "last saved/downloaded". That means that establishing where it fits into a workflow can be a nightmare.
My solutions, which do not require computing expertise (I work in a humanities discipline, so one cannot assume everyone is comfortable using the suggestions in other answers), are as follows:

enter dates of recent revisions and associated author monograms in the page header manually (e.g.: "JB 31/04/2019; revised JRW 02/05/2019; JB comments 03/05/2019") -- this makes the information easy to find and ensures it is included on every page of a printout (yes, I like to comment on versions by annotating a printout by hand!); and
all file names commence with the date of the version in yyyymmdd format (e.g.: "20190503_JB_comments_re_20190502_JRW_Methodology"), in order to facilitate quick sorting and unambiguous identification of recent versions on computer filesystems.

I would take a stab at semantic versioning, as suggested by the people who run Github.
In short: append a series of three digits to the end of the filename. For example: myfile-1.0.0.txt. When someone sends it back to you, whatever they respond with, you can tick up your next version to some identifier in that format which clearly counts as numerically greater.

This doesn't work if two people edit 1.0.0 independently.

@AnonymousPhysicist: So the primary author/OP takes it and bumps it up by one. If the co-authors refuse to help at all, then it's the OP's responsibility to correct.


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Do researchers actually read all of the papers they cite?
I am a PhD student (middle stage). I have read only 2-research papers from last six seven months. I have seen some research papers in which they have cited around 12-15 research papers and I think this is the case with every research paper. To me it seems unrealistic to read 12-15 research papers with the details I have read first two.

Question : What fraction of the cited papers has the typical author actually read?

You have two different questions in the title and the text body.

A relevant related question: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/23268/how-long-should-it-take-to-read-a-paper

Most researchers have many years in which they read papers.  So it is not unreasonable that this guy citing 12 papers has read them all.  If you read 2 paper in 6 months, then continuing at that rate you, too, may have read 12 papers to cite!  And for papers with dozens of authors, perhaps not all authors have read all of the cited papers.

This question about struggling with understanding your reading may also be relevant.

Depending on the field (and maybe not even then), reading only 2 papers in the last 6 months is indeed a big problem. You need to read more, and read broadly, to understand your work and where it fits in with everyone else. Perhaps it was just easier when a paper journal landed in your mailbox to scan the contents and read a few papers that afternoon.

@JonCuster: I’d say it’s not necessarily a problem for a student in early-to-mid grad school; it’s a problem if those numbers haven’t improved a year or two later.

@PLL - well, they did say middle stage PhD. Although, early in grad school getting broadly acquainted is perhaps more important to try and see the whole forest, not just your one tree...

In computer science, I "dinged" papers under review that had so few references. Ok, 15 is acceptable for a 2-4 paper summary, but once you get to 8 pages, should be around 30-40 references. I know at least one conference (IEEE VIS) that added an extra page of references, now is 9 +2 of references. References are important!

It depends a lot on the subject. Sometimes you need to cite the source of the method you use - or need to justify the method. Citing 100+ papers in computational chemistry/applied computational chemistry is not hard in a comprehensive piece of work. (Even if one person does a large share/most of the work...)

I agree with the notion that 2 papers in 6 months is way too little. You need to read to also understand abstract things that generally help you write. Like what kind of arguments people are making and such on open problems.

Voting to reopen because it's not a duplicate of the linked question. If the answer to the linked "Do you need to read a whole article before citing it?" is "yes", then that implies that the answer to this question is also "yes". But since the answer is "no", that leaves the answer to this question indeterminate, and it's not a duplicate.

There are a couple of background issues worth addressing before actually answering your main question.  Also what I say is I think fairly typical for math and theoretical CS; I guess some but not all is similar for other fields.
You’ll get faster at reading papers as you gain experience.  Much, much faster.  I remember in my first couple of years of grad school feeling similarly to you: reading a paper was a big undertaking — it could take weeks of work to get through a particular paper.  Now that’s very rare —  even a pretty thorough read of a paper (e.g. for a review) is typically under a day’s work.  Longer than that comes only occasionally, if I need to really thoroughly understand an unusually substantial and novel paper.  Mostly, it’s just being more familiar with the landscape the papers are working in, and the techniques used.  Also, partly, reading papers is itself a learned skill.
You’ll learn how to read a paper in less than full detail (and when that’s  appropriate).  Again, I remember first reading papers, I would go through them line by line and make sure I absolutely understood every step.  Now, I usually don’t need to, for multiple reasons.  One is that I no longer need all the details in order to follow the general outline, because I understand the big picture better.  Another is that I’m better at judging in advance which details I will or won’t need to know: e.g. if it looks like some proof is a routine calculation, then I’ll skip it, knowing that I can come back to it later if I ever need a similar calculation and have trouble doing it myself.  Another is that I may be able to see in advance (e.g. from the introduction) that some sections will be more relevant to my work than others.  And, of course, I can skip or skim parts that recall background material that I already know.
So, coming back now to answer your main question: The actual proportions will vary greatly, but typically, authors will have read all the cited papers at least in part, but will not have read most of them in full detail.  That said, reading 12–15 papers thoroughly isn’t infeasible by any means.
Looking at the bibliography a recent 2-author paper of mine with about 30 references in the bibliography, they break down very roughly as:

30%: I’ve read these papers/books carefully in their entirety at some point in the past.
40%: I’ve read parts of these papers/books thoroughly (including the parts relevant to what we’re citing them for), and at least skimmed all or most of the rest.
20%: I’ve just dipped into these papers/books for specific results we needed to cite (plus relevant background); I’ve not read most of the rest.
10%: I’ve not looked seriously at these ones at all; my co-author is responsible for the citations to them.

This is I think fairly typical for me; but I also know some authors for whom I suspect those numbers would typically look more like 10-30-40-20, and others for whom they’d be more like 80–20–0–0.

I read the vast majority of the papers that I cite, and I think this is the case for many researchers.  There are a few papers cited in my papers that I haven't read, but those have been read by one or more of my co-authors.  And yet the papers I cite are only a small fraction of all the papers I read.  I would guess that I read perhaps a dozen papers in a typical month (and I think this is fairly typical for mid-career researchers, though it may vary depending on your definition of what it means to read a paper).
How is this possible?
First, as you have already guessed, you don't need to read every detail of every paper.  Sometimes you just need to understand one result, or you only need to know the conclusions.  With time, you'll find that it's extremely rare that you need to go through every detail of a paper.  See also this question and this question.
Second, your ability to quickly digest new papers increases dramatically with your experience and knowledge, due to several factors.  Often, only a small part of a paper is concerned with new things.  As you learn to distinguish what part that is, and as your foundation in your field becomes both broader and deeper, you will be able to understand the essential part of most new papers in a fraction of the time it took you before.

Reading of paper means try to prove almost each line of the research paper and try to complete the proof's given as trivial proof's by authors.

@old: That’s not what it means to most researchers most of the time (as explained in this answer, and mine, and the other linked questions/answers).  While a painstakingly thorough reading like that is worthwhile sometimes (especially when starting out), holding oneself to that standard on every paper one reads would be a very inefficient use of time.

What it means to read a paper is actually a bit of a side question. The central question is what it means to cite a paper. You obviously want to be sure your paper is accurate when it describes the referenced work. That may or may not require you to understand every last detail of the other paper. Another side note: if you cite a paper in a research talk (especially an official one like your thesis defense), I'd suggest you do make sure you understand every last detail of it.


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What is a direct and universal way to affiliate oneself with a university (library)?
I am working on projects for which having very direct access to relevant reference materials on the subject (linguistics) is basically essential.
I have come to understand that there is no satisfying alternative to being part of a research library, as a researcher. There is no similarly convenient way to have direct access to the materials you want.
I feel like this is something I’ll probably want my whole life. I sometimes move to new countries, and I’m someone that just inherently always wants to look things up in the most authoritative reference materials.
There are workarounds / “hacks” - strategic loopholes that have the same outcome. For example, just by applying to an evening language course, I become a student at that university and gain off-campus access to databases.
That isn’t satisfying. I need a legitimate, long-term way to be part of a research library, regardless of if I am a student at that moment or not.
I can only think about trying to meet with some officials at local universities to see if they can recognize someone as an independent researcher for a good/valid reason.
Other than that, I am wondering if you can propose “research” of some kind to a university, which they can approve, regardless of you doing it as part of a program (like a Ph.D. program).
Bottom line: what is the most flexible and general way to be part of a research library, not a particular and somewhat finicky way?

Have you tried public libraries? Some public library may have inter-library service with research libraries.

@Nobody. My small village library has good relations with the local university librarian. It might be informal, but it works.

If you are near enough to a university library, go and have a chat with the librarian and ask what is possible.

Are you talking about regular university libraries? Can't you just sign up for a library card? At least in Germany most university libraries will let anyone sign up if they live in the vicinity. I would have expected this to be the case, at least with public universities, elsewhere as well.

(1) Are you willing to pay?  How much?  (2) Do you have a previous university degree?  Some institutions grant library privileges to alumni.  (3) Is your research regularly published in peer-reviewed journals?

Related questions: Can I get an office in a university as an independent scholar?, Is there an affordable way for non-students to subscribe to multi-journals/archives?

At some fundamental level, what you are asking is the following: "What is a universal way how people can access a service that costs money, but for free?" Perhaps unsurprisingly, there is no universally good answer for this question.
You have to remember that universities have to pay money to publishers -- a lot of money in fact, millions of dollars! -- to give their students, faculty, and staff access to scientific journals and text books. In some cases, universities in addition pay a cost for every research article downloaded from publisher websites. It may not come as a surprise, then, that university libraries are not eager (or simply not able) to give access to that service to just everyone. Equally, publishers will likely have clauses i their contracts with universities that restrict who they can give access to publications to. That doesn't mean that universities don't have way to allow others access to their resources -- for example by making someone an unpaid adjunct, or by letting people enroll in classes for credit -- but it means that you will likely not be able to just walk up to a library and say "I'd like you to give me access to all the services you pay for".

In many countries, education and access to books and information are seen as public good and heavily subsidized. Even in the US, library services are often free of charge.

@henning Yes, public libraries are subsidized and free, and typically run by cities for its citizens. But that generally does not include access to scientific literature.

You're lucky.
This may depend on the country, but in many places, access to libraries is heavily subsidized or even free of charge. This often includes large university libraries. You just walk in with an ID, ask for a library membership, and pay a small fee.
Examples:

Vienna University Library: 15€/year for the general population (lower rates for students and staff)
State- and University Library Bremen: 20€/year for the general population, 10€ if eligible for a social discount, free of charge for students and staff
New York Public Library (not a research library, but extremely extensive access to ressources): Free of charge for all New York residents

That's correct, but if one needs online resources one should definitely check what is included in the library membership. I think in some cases the contracts that the libraries have with the publishers would restrict access to the students and staff of the university, and e-journals etc. might not be accessible with a simple library membership.

Not in the cases cited above. I don't know how they do it in the US, but the European libraries I've used have no such graded membership.

I don't know anything about Linguistics, but
there are university research centres in my field (Statistics & Machine Learning) which "external" researchers can apply to become a centre affiliate (with/without a specific project). You will have access to research facilities of the centre (university) if your request is approved.
It is not always difficult for research students (with relevant experience) and faculty members from these universities to apply for membership. There are some requirements applying to all members of the centres such as research contribution, progress reports, etc.

As @Wolfgang Bangerth already mentioned, this is a question is essentially "how do I get something that costs money for free". The answer is, you don't. Its unlikely you'll find a truly free or passive solution.
That being said, in my experience, it is not unusual to request access to resources as a "guest" researcher. I would expect most major universities have an official process in place to facilitate this. I've most commonly seen this in the case of former students continuing work on an existing project or visiting students/researchers from external institutions.
In your case, since you are neither a former student nor affiliated with a friendly university, it would require developing a relationship with a professor that is established enough to request access for a "volunteer" lab member. It would also require actively collaborating with that person as long as you want access to university resources. Whether or not this is a "finicky" process or not is for you to determine.
Something like this is might be hard to establish but easier to maintain. Frankly, once you're in the system, as long as you maintain some goodwill, its unlikely anyone would ever revoke your access. I would imagine that if you contribute regularly you could be listed as a lab member or research affiliate indefinitely.
To make this a reality, I would suggest looking up researchers whose work you find interesting. Then you could try cold-emailing them and requesting to collaborate. This will go smoother if you have published some work or are otherwise established in the field. I would NOT suggest emailing anyone asking for access to library resources - this comes after someone is already interested in working with you.


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Does the increasing number of co-authors per paper justify not having publications in top conferences?
I'm currently drafting a research proposal but I don't have publications in top-tier journals or conferences. Observing recent trends, it seems that the average number of co-authors per paper in prestigious conferences has increased significantly. Many papers now result from large collaborations, which might make it more challenging for individuals who received their Phds at countries with relatively low ranking universities (ranked as such by lets say sites that globally rank universities).
So I was thinking about using this as a justification since most of my papers have either one or two authors but I am not sure if it has a high chance of backfiring.
The argument would have been that the author teams tend to be from elite institutions, primarily US universities who are more culturally compatible or have other things in common. Such research clusters might make it exponentially more difficult than it was lets say 20 years ago for outsiders to have their papers accepted at top avenues . But the answers here convinced me that I shouldn't make such argument.

Does the increasing number of co-authors per paper somewhat justify not having
publications in top conferences?

What is your goal for making this argument? Just about everything has a reason, but naming it doesn’t change that things  are as they are.

@MisterMiyagi To justify my lack of paper contributions to top journals and conferences in a way that doesn't outright indicate limited research ability in my part.

Don't compare too much, do your own research well and own it. At which career stage are you, btw?

No, it doesn't justify anything and I doubt that the phenomenon you see has much effect on papers getting accepted or rejected at reputable conferences. The paper reviewers focus on the paper and what it contributes to the literature, not on the authors or, especially, on the number of authors.
That said, in some subfields of some fields it is difficult to carry on research unless you have large collaborations. Think CERN which has output a few papers where the list of authors is longer than the paper itself.
Likewise, coming from a country with low ranking universities (your words) isn't an excuse either, but it does make things more difficult unless you can develop collaborative relationships, probably abroad. It is difficult to come up with meaningful ideas when working in a vacuum. This is why many universities with large departments also have a number of focused working groups for faculty and graduate students.
It is why international conferences are important. I used to go to a lot of conferences around the world. Luckily I got financial support for this. But I found the conferences just as useful if (and when) I wasn't presenting anything. Meeting and talking to people got some ideas flowing and the collaborations developed into future publications.
Once you meet someone who shares your interests it is now much easier than in the past to keep in contact and keep the ideas flowing. Things like Zoom, for example, let you work in real time, face to face (screen to screen?). I started out in the era when "mail" meant typed or written on paper, in envelopes, with stamps. I'm not so old as the Pony Express era, though.
For most of us, being isolated makes things difficult. I was in such a situation early in my career and developed only later when I learned the above lessons and began to act on them.
Even being at a small teaching college in the US can make it difficult to publish if you can't find people to collaborate and share ideas with.

The argument would have been that the author teams tend to be from elite institutions, primarily US universities who are more culturally compatible or have other things in common that made them more relatable to each other and thus more likely to collaborate . Such research clusters might make it exponentially more difficult than it was lets say 20 years ago for outsiders to have their papers accepted at top avenues . But both your answer and Krause's convinced me that I shouldn't make such argument.

If there are more people per paper and the same number of papers per conference, then there should be more people with papers in top conferences, not fewer.
I would not recommend making this argument. Your work and the venues you publish in are what they are. Some people may recognize the environment you work in is not the same as some others when they look at your contributions, others may not.
In a paper with fewer authors it is more clear what you've contributed; a paper in a top venue with a hundred authors may not indicate that most of them could produce similar work independently if hired at a different institution that is not part of one of these big collaborative projects.

The argument would have been that the author teams tend to be from elite institutions, primarily US universities who are more culturally compatible or have other things in common. Such research clusters might make it exponentially more difficult than it was lets say 20 years ago for outsiders to have their papers accepted at top avenues . But both your answer and Buffy's convinced me that I shouldn't make such argument.

@Kupp That doesn't have anything to do with the length of the author list.

No doubt a lot depends on the specifics of your situation, and the particular grant application that you are writing. However, in many countries there is an increasing awareness that 'contextual factors' should be taken into account when assessing performance, so that people are judged relative to the opportunities that they have had and the challenges that they have faced.
As a result, it may be appropriate to try and highlight areas where you feel you have been disadvantaged compared to others. However, this is something that needs to be done carefully: you want to focus the reader's attention on positive aspects of your CV, rather than highlighting possible weaknesses and then making 'excuses' for them.
Your goal is to ensure that the reader understands the context and norms against which your CV should be judged (with, of course, a particular focus on those aspects where your profile looks good). For example, rather than saying "My region only has low-ranking universities", you might say "I studied at X, which is the highest-ranked university in country Y". "As is usual in country Y, the papers arising from my PhD are co-authored with my adviser only." "I have given keynote presentations at the leading regional conferences in my field; prohibitive costs have prevented me from attending major international meetings (typical annual travel budget: US$Z)."