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How can I improve undergraduate students' writing skills?
The fact: my students write badly. The source of the problem is, most likely, low quality primary and secondary education, with little emphasis on essays.
Long term solutions are beyond the scope of this question. My focus is on the short term, as a teacher of a course that asks for essays and reports. How can I help my students to improve their writing skills, even if just a little, during the course of a semester?
A potentially relevant fact: there is no awareness among students (and I would even say, among teachers) that good writing is important for their future.
Other context: I'm in a business department. My class has an average of 20 students. They come from high school. I'm new to the university so just getting to know the type of student.
This question (or its answers) seems focused on graduate students, with many examples from lab work or theses, which is not my case. This question is about us, academics. The focus here is on undergraduates who will not develop an academic career, but require such skill nonetheless, and unfortunately my university is not providing it, at least not systematically.

@luchonacho I mean, are you at a CC? Are most of your students directly from high school, where they performed well? Or, are there a lot of transfers? Do they mostly speak English (or the local language) as a first language? STEM heavy? SLAC?

If you’re teaching a “HASS” subject this is very different to a “STEM” subject. The basic answer would be “get ‘em to go do a BA.” ;)

@SamuelRussell I see exactly the same issue with physics - our students don't have as many essays, but they still have to be able to write clearly and well for essay-type exam questions and especially lab reports.  As with business, my time in industry (after my Masters, before my PhD) demonstrated that good writing skills as an engineer were very useful.

@DanielHatton what sort of qualification do you have in mind for writing skills? High school English (at least in the UK) is a poor measure of any more than the basics of writing.

What country are you in? Different countries have different opportunities.

@DanielHatton I suppose a reasonable passing grade in GCSE  all we can expect from our students, but getting a level from that description is hard: most of AO5 and all of AO6 are applicable in junior school (I have a child in year 3, and similar wording is used) and are requirements for the rest of life.  The distinction you make is clearer.  My A levels were some years ago, so things have changed, but we were still assessed on our ability to communicate ideas in writing in physics and computer science, less so in maths.  My written communication also benefited from studying German to A-level

Re "my students write badly": Can you elaborate a little bit in the question? In what way do they write badly? E.g., is the writing full of run-on sentences and homonyms? Or something else?

@PeterMortensen That is a very good question, but not being a linguistic expert, finding the proper categories to describe the errors is complicated. At a broad level you can tell when a text is well written: you understand it. Basic errors include misuse of commas, dots, connectors, plus orthographic errors. I'm sure there is a proper taxonomy which I am not aware of.

That would be an uphill struggle even if English Lit was their major topic.
What you can most easily do is encourage them to read… to read both good and bad examples of their predecessors' work, and outstanding examples of writing in their own or any other field.
In your situation I'd try to organise some extra-mural options in tandem with the college's English department.

This won't be an easy job; pre-university teachers have tried and failed already before you for 12 years or so.

@FedericoPoloni But, have they really tried?

Several thoughts.

Give writing assignments (goes without saying). Probably more short
ones rather than fewer long ones.
Make sure students know that form matters as well as content. To
encourage students who start from a disadvantage, count improvement
as well as mastery.
Collect and critique first drafts before grading the final work.
Allow students to resubmit essays.
More problematical: have students critique each others' work before
submission. Those critiques could even be private, so that students
wouldn't be calling each other out before the teacher, only noting
when some argument was unclear to them.

Of course this will be time consuming for you and for them. To do it properly you may have to revise the course objectives to include work done to improve writing - at the expense of "more content".

Thanks. What is particularly problematic about peer-reviewing? An personal experience on this? It's interesting but if they are not aware of good standards, it might not be very helpful.

Peer reviewing may introduce  psychological issues (privacy, competition, personal feelings ...). That said, it's common and students may be used to it. Just be aware of potential problems. Peer review need not attempt to deal with standards, just with clarity. That will go a long way.

For peer reviews, I have seen a tool from UCLA http://cpr.molsci.ucla.edu/ used in a math class. I'm not sure if student peer review from students who cna't write is worth the effort, but if you want that, then cpr solved some logistical problems.

@DimitriVulis it's often easier to spot the flaws in others' writing, so peer review should work well.  The process is instructive for the reviewer as well as the reviewee. It won't catch everything; I'm sure some errors are very common, but I do find that when students take up my recommendation to peer-proofread they do better than those who don't (OK,  correlation!=causation, selection bias, confidence, etc.).  This even extends to students whose first report is badly written and respond to feedback for the second, but of course they have an incentive in the form of many important marks

I'm not sure I agree with the "start from a disadvantage" advice, but that's perhaps because I don't understand exactly what the proposed advice is. It seems to be a grading advice, but students have known for ages how to game such grading. Offering more flexibility with deadlines, extra coaching or other similar help could be a better form of compensation.

An anecdote about what can be problematic about non-blind peer-reviewing: I once had a class where Student A did not want to say anything negative about Student B because A worked at the company owned by B's father (I found this out while chatting with the A after the semester was over). So, there can unexpected conflicts of interest.

Unfortunately “Give writing assignments” does not go without saying, at least in my field (maths).  At most departments I’ve taught in, there has been no or very little dedicated writing training, and adding writing assignments into other courses would have gone against not just student expectations, but also faculty expectations and the department’s interpretation of regulations on grading.  (Many kinds of maths grading can be held to a higher standard of “objectivity” than substantive writing feedback can, and one department required this standard for all grading.)

This will require effort on your part, but it's a system that has systematically improved my writing from a D grade on average to an A grade. Often times I see professors engage in 'feedback overload' with each assignment, and your target student will typically take that feedback, understandably not know what to do with it exactly, and continue writing poorly.
Much of your work starts at the beginning of the semester if you want to improve writing in your students. When you grade papers, you need to be looking for specific systematic flaws that persist in an individual
s writing --- if you're lucky, enough students make the same mistake and you can address it all at once to the class in a single document.
For example, suppose you have a student that abuses non-specific language. This might take the form of a paragraph like:
Big yellow dogs are preferable to big red dogs because big red dogs are lucky (Clifford, 2020). They say that big red dogs are better, but they don't account for the fact that big yellow dogs tend to be passed over for their appearance, but often have great personalities.
The abuse of 'they' in this paragraph is a common example of students being non-specific in their language and it's often systematically in their writing. Who is 'they' after all? Is it Clifford? Perhaps it's the red dogs? Maybe it's the editors at the Wall Street Journal? Who knows. But if you focus your feedback on bringing the students attention to this same one or two repetitive problems then you make the feedback digestion process more manageable for the students.
So in editing their work you want to bring their attention to at most 1-2 systematic problems that are persistent in each assignment. By focusing on just 1 or 2 systematic problems, the next assignment should have a majority of those habits improved. Then on the next assignment you pick 1-2 things that are systematically wrong in their writing and you keep 'layering' this procedure over the semester. You might recognize multiple systematic problems, in this case, I still suggest you show restraint on addressing all of them at once.
As a result you end up with a compounding interest problem and you will see improvements over time by being incremental and targeted in your feedback. Of course, you can only do so much, a lot of work rests on the shoulders of the students and you should not bare their burden more than you need to.

A lot of effort indeed! Interesting idea but sounds like one to be implemented after significant experience. Unless I invest heavily, as you say.

What do you mean by 'after significant experience'?

I'm new to the university and course. So I mean after many iterations, until you get to know their style and shortcomings.

I don't believe this to be correct. Good writing principles transcend courses (you said this yourself ;) ) and the students change every single year, so there's no better time to start then right away! Try to experiment with it, otherwise, you'll never really know for yourself. Besides, what you seem to be doing now doesn't seem to be working the way you want, so what do you have to lose?

I like this idea, but I'd suggest looking for common weaknesses across the class for the first writing assignment, and then make the appropriate improvement a specific, explicit requirement of the remaining assignments.  Repeat for each subsequent assignment.  That would generally help most of the class without shifting too much of your time and work from the primary subject matter.

One of the struggles that I've always had is getting students to understand how badly they write, and why it matters. If they don't understand that, why would they work at improving anything? (For context, I'm coming from a maths background, so the specific things I do may not help you, but perhaps the idea can inspire something?).
What I like to do is essentially a peer-review exercise, but the review element is more about the students using what's been written - they have to interact with it on a deeper level, so that they have to struggle against the consequences of poor writing.
For example, I divide students into teams. Each team gets a box of lego. In the first session, they have to design a model and write instructions for how to build it. They are not allowed to draw pictures. The idea is that the sequence of precise instructions mimics a mathematical proof. In the second session, they get a different team's instructions. They don't just have to read the instructions and assess them. Instead, they are challenged to build the same model as was originally designed by following the instructions. This is the point where they really understand how unclear the instructions were and why it's a problem. (If a mathematical proof isn't repeatable, it's not much of a proof!)
Could you find a similar sort of exercise that models what your students could be expected to do in the future? Where they produce a document, and that document has a purpose and whose success is affected by the quality of the writing?

That is a very cool and clever exercise! Thanks! Will see how can adapt it to my context.

This is indeed pretty elegant and cool.

This sounds like a lot of fun.  I could imagine this as a game people played for fun outside of class.

Did anyone use this or could refer to a similar example that could be applied in social science or medical context?

You should look into Writing across the curriculum. Even if you get no support from your school, there are things you can do as an individual instructor.
You should discuss your writing remediation plans with your "management" (assistant chair or someone "in charge" of your course) in advance, so they would not be surprised. You should not introduce any new requirements in the middle of the semester.
Assign work where the students will have to write about the material in your class. Several short narratives (5-10 sentences) will work better than one long essay per semester. If their writing is not to your satisfaction, then make corrections (note that will be a lot of work for you if done properly) and ask the students to re-write and re-submit.
Make sure that the poor writing in the final version does not affect the class grade, but a failure to submit the work will affect the grade at least 1 notch.
Consider using one of the automated tools that detect plagiarism in student writing.

"a lot of work"... indeed! That is why I guess no one around here seems to put effort on it. You say writing not to affect class grade. What about writing change? I could as for an initial ssay and see improvement over the term.

I'm confused why poor writing in a final version wouldn't affect the class grade, did you mean the first?

@luchonacho What would you do with a good writer who didn't improve at all?

@AzorAhai-him- this is not a "writing" class. The class grade assesses their work in another subject. Just requiring students to turn in written narrative, and giving them good feedback (again, this is a lot of work for the grader) will help some students a lot.

@DimitriVulis I suppose I don't agree that "their work" is completely separate from "the writing." It seems like many students wouldn't put in the effort to improve if it doesn't affect their grade.

@AzorAhai-him- Yes, some students are not motivated. Requiring them to write something and providing useful feedback is the most you can get away with. Consider 3 hypothetical scenarios: 1 Students A and B both earn B+ in a math class based on the math part. Student A gets a grade of A- because her writing improved. B still gets B+ because his writing was good initially and did not improve. Students A and B compare notes, B complains. Scenario 2 student C earns a firm A in the math class and puts a lot of effort into rewriting but despite his efforts, his writing stays abysmal (continued)

@AzorAhai-him- the instructor lowers C's grade to A-. C complains. In both scenarios, the school is certain to side with the students, and may tell the instructor to stop using writing assignments. I.e. scenario 3, student D earns a B, but doesn't turn in the narrative assignments, gets a grade of C just for that - it's possible if the syllabus clearly explains that the grading policy allows it.

@DimitriVulis I mean you can make up any number of hypotheticals .. you could say that student C actually earned an "A-," not it was "lowered" which implies arbitrariness. I don't really have an issue with students earning a lower grade by not turning in the required assignments? Also, nobody said this was math.

@AzorAhai-him- "math" is just an arbitrary example. In any class other than "English composition", using the writing ability to affect the grade is certain to lead to student complaints that the school will support. Just lead the horses to water - most will drink, others won't. You can't make them.

@DimitriVulis I guess I have to disagree, both theoretically and in terms of what the school would support.

For us in the French system we had a very rigid way of writing which ended up being pretty handy. I think it's the thing that taught me how to write well. You could teach your students how to write in this way. I will present the method and after say how it was taught to us.
So, the method is the following, and I'll try to be quick. You take the question you were given and analyse its keywords. Do some brainstorming on how to answer.
For the introduction, you give a general idea to catch the reader's interest. Then, depending on the question, you give context and/or definition of keywords. You may also explain why the question is interesting. Then, you reformulate or just write the question again, and you announce the big ideas your development.
For each big idea, you make a "part". You start by a logical connector (first, secondly, etc.), then by providing a summary of your idea, then by announcing the sub-ideas it is made of.
Then, for each subidea, you start by a ~one phrase summary, then the bulk of your argument, then your examples, then you either summarize again or just explicit how the examples are relevant, and then you transition for the next subidea or idea.
For the conclusion, you summarize and maybe then you "open" the question.
Now, the thing is, to teach us this, the teacher went by parts. So every week (which is possibly too much for uni) we had to turn in something.
It could be only the introduction, or only one big-idea, or just the structure (so the "titles" for the big ideas and so on). And we had a clear barometer of which things we weren't doing well (conceptualizing the question, organizing our ideas, etc.).
And also, with time I have incorporated some things of this method into my "normal" writing, but not everything. It can be a bit too boxy.
Also, I was kind of quick here. If you want more information, let me know.

In English, we have the five paragraph essay which is a similar structure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-paragraph_essay

I like this answer, simply because good writing is dependent on good form. When assigning an essay, be SPECIFIC about what is required structurally, just as in this answer. The forces your students to organize their thoughts before even writing. Afterward focus on general deficiencies, such as mixed idioms, loose grammar, etc.

Might be a different generation, but: My native-born-French partner says that when she moved from France to America, she was completely bewildered by the American structural expectation of introduction/topic/support/conclusion, because she'd never heard of it growing up in France. Instead, the emphasis had always been on thesis-and-antithesis -- which itself got her graded down in American college as incoherent (not arguing for a single position). .

@DanielR.Collins That's also true! The French system has its flaws, but it certainly teaches you critical thinking —and that has a lot to do with taken different points of view and positions into account.
However, I was used to thesis-antithesis only on certain subjects, not all.

Writing is learned by reading
Maybe give them some easy papers to read during the course of the semester and have them write summaries. If they don't know how scientific literature is supposed to be worded, as a start, having them read some good examples is likely gonna be more helpful.

Yeah, just getting people to read more would be a big plus. It would be great if they read classic scientific papers, but I'd settle for literally anything. I suppose Bertrand Russell is out of fashion these days but maybe there's someone a little more au courant, with the same clear, concise, substantial, and witty style.

... and practising, for sure

@luchonacho Sure, but for any practice to be effective, you need at least a semi-solid idea of what the end result is supposed to look like. Most of your students likely haven't read a single paper in their lives, so I'm guessing a lot of them are completely lacking this idea.

Writing is learned by writing. You don't learn to drive a car by watching other people drive a car.

Here is a specific recommendation/suggestion. It depends on pairing and peer reviewing. It assumes that you don't really have the time to do adequate multi-level, multi-version review yourself.
Create a double assignment. Two different things assigned at the same time. Give a pair (self selected, random, you select, ... ) the two assignments. They decide among themselves who is responsible for which one. Each writes up one of the assignments and asks their partner for advice on it. They then rewrite, maybe more than once.
Decide on a grading scheme before you start. One way is to give them both the same grade on the assignment. Another is to give out, say, 90% of the grade yourself and let each student give the remaining points to their partner. Those points are specifically for the quality of the feedback received. Expect, of course, that almost everyone will give full points to their partner, or none. The latter result gives you a chance to advise them about teamwork, which they might not otherwise get.
If they want to "cheat" and work on both together, fine. Let it happen. It is an additional skill that will serve them later.
But, the answer of Ethan Bolker is the basis of any good scheme. Repetition with feedback is the only way it can be made to work. If you can give the feedback yourself, given the scale, and you can permit resubmissions in some form, then do that.

I really like the idea but did not completely understand the grading options. Is this described somewhere in more detail, do you have any reference?

I have a couple of suggestions. My background is that I'm an engineer.  I graduated about 40 years ago with my bachelor's degree.
Back in the day, our department had two "writing" courses: "Tech Paper 1" and "Tech Paper 2".  Each was a single credit course, and in each course, the papers were due a little less than a month into the semester.  For each paper, there were very strict rules.  Each had to be less than 10 pages, double-spaced (back in the day when we used typewriters - I don't know how many words that might be).
The papers had describe a technical problem in the "Problem Statement" (aka Introduction) section.  Then they had to propose two or more possible solutions to the problem - including data, feasibility, etc.  Finally, there was a Solution section that explained why one of the possible solutions was chosen.
The papers also needed a clear, less than 100 word abstract.
I can see something similar being done with management students.  The problem wouldn't necessarily be technical (it might be choices for a product launch, for example).
In those days, the department's standard grading ended up with <10% A grades, maybe a little less than 40% B.  The rest were Cs, with a smattering of D grades.
The rules for tech papers were special.  If the student got an A or a B on the first submission, then the course was finished (though B students could resubmit and try for an A).  Otherwise, the student needed needed to take the comments on paper, incorporate them into a new submission and present that.  An A or a B on the second try lead to an A or a B.  Otherwise, there was the possibility of a third submission (I don't think A was possible at that point).  I believe that the grading on the last submission was a bit tougher (for example, if you had a C and didn't noticeably improve the quality of the paper, you could possibly slip to a D (I think - it's been a long while)).
The idea was to get students writing like professionals, not like coddled high school students.  The grader's comments were nearly all in the area of making the paper more concise and more focused (well, as well as improving grammar, spelling, etc.).  The idea of multiple submissions was to make the student understand that his/her work would be reviewed out in the real world, and that re-work was pretty standard.  The grader's expectations were said to be in the realm of what a supervisor's expectations would be once the student graduated.
There was some allowance made for students who were writing in a language that was not their primary language (and, in part because this was in a Canadian university, papers could be submitted in either English or French).
I thought then, and still think that this was a great way to get students to write clearly.
====
Since that time, I've been working in industry (with the occasional detour into graduate school).  I've mentored several of my co-workers on their writing skills.
As other people have mentioned, the best way to learn to write is to read a lot.  But, I go further and say that when you find something whose style you like, you should read it out loud, and listen to what you are saying when you do that.
Then, when you write, you should always read what you have written out loud.  Listen to what it sounds like.  See if you run out of breath before you finish a sentence.  See if you can muddle through that 50-60 line paragraph without forgetting what the point was.  When you read out loud, you will hear the fact that you included the same word in the last three sentences.
I'd like to think that having students read an excerpt of their work out loud to the class would be a good idea.  However, that would be unfair to non-native speakers as well as those who really don't do well in public speaking.  But, if you decide to pair students up to review each other's writing, having part of that review being done out loud might be a good idea.

Sounds like a good idea, but it would require an extra writing class.

@henning--reinstateMonica: Well, yeah.  And the grader spent a lot of time on the comments from what I saw from peers.  The selling point is graduating students who can communicate clearly.  My second point doesn't require a class though.  I'm a really big fan of reading what I write out loud; I find it tightens up my writing.

To expand on Julia Sepúlveda's answer on text structure and Ethan Bolkers answer on form, provide them with instructions. Maybe even spend one lecture on this. We had a course called 'study-qualities' in my first year and writing was a large part of it. But if your university does not have such a course, you have to make do.
The instructions should be hands on, and include pointers like:

divide your main text in paragraphs
paragraphs have headings but headings are not part of the text: the reader must understand the paragraph without having read the heading
start each paragraph by explaining in one or two sentences what you will say in the coming text
end each paragraph with re-iterating the points you made in said paragraph
run a spell-checker
have someone else read your text before turning it in

Be ready, you will face a surprisingly strong resistance. By forcing them to write on a level which should be the most basic requirement after the secondary education, it is something which is very alien for them.
On the superficial level, their reaction will be that they do not understand what do you want. In the reality, they will actively work on to attack you back. Because it is an attack for them.
This is a radical thing. The word "radical" is coming from the latinic word for "root". Because you grab - and fix - the root of the problem.
Be ready: the problem will attack back. Imagine the worst possible attacks, like:

"Sorry I have dislexia" (this will be a lie in 99% of the cases)
"Sorry I did not know that I need to write well here" (crap talk)
"It is a ... class and not a grammar class" (pseudorandom scratch on a paper is still not an essay, furthermore literacy is a must-have already for the secondary education)
They will likely attack you indirectly, partially through their parents, and through the University administration.

It is not about politeness, it is not about beautiful suggestions. It is about that if the student is incapable to formulate round sentences, then you have nothing to grade. You might try to understand his writings - a little bit -, but honestly you are not an elementary school teacher.
I remember as I both laughed and hated the teachers who forced me to write in a good quality. Now, many decades later, that I see that a large part of the University students are in fact functional iliterate, I know that they were right and I would do the same, yet more vehemently.
So, the first important thing, be ready for sneaking counterattacks.
Second important thing, you need to have a hard hand.
Third: you will likely lose. Do not count with radical results, but target them. You have a good chance for a little improvement in the short term. But they won't write correctly, it does not matter how strongly do you "motivate" them, and you can not let fail the whole class. Your gain will be:

You will know that you did your best.
You made the Humanity a little bit better.

The best approach I saw to this was to provide examples. One of my philosophy subject tutors wrote four different short essays (<1000 words) on the same topic. They were of varying quality with respect to structure and evidence. So the good essay was organised logically, each paragraph concerned one argument and gave reasons for the position. On the other hand, the bad essay was a mix of assertions without evidence, inconsistencies, related ideas very far apart etc. All four essays were given to the tutorial class and they were asked to grade them (in groups) with reasons for the grading.
The bad essays took him a lot longer to write. Instead of writing bad essays, I imagine you could find some examples in one of the 'homework assistance' sites and then work your way up to write the better ones.


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How should I interpret a promising preprint that was never published in a peer-reviewed journal?
There have been a couple of occasions in my research in which I've come across a preprint that is several years old and is very relevant to the work that I'm doing.
Often these preprints have very promising initial results. However, when looking at the CVs or Google Scholar pages of the authors on the preprint, I can't seem to find a version that ended up getting published in a peer-reviewed journal, even if the preprint is several years old already. Why would would a researcher abandon a manuscript that they obviously put a lot of time into?
Do researchers sometimes just abandon lines of inquiry because they get too busy?  Or, is this an indication that their promising initial results were not robust enough for peer-review, and I should be wary of attempting a similar study?

In my field, important credibility indicators for preprints without a formal publication would be: who the authors are (yes, of course, this is a bit unfair); and how the preprint is cited (can be unfair too, because it encourages a rich-get-richer mentality). If there is subsequent work with formal publications who cite the preprint in their related work study, you would expect them to say if the preprint is known to contain errors (or, sometimes, if there is a reason why it wasn't published). But if subsequent work ignores the preprint, it can be a bad sign (... or they may have missed it).

There might be any number of reasons. You might try to contact the author(s) to get more information. But... (not all with the same likelihood)
They might have left academia for various reasons and not bothered. Is the CV also old?
They might have incorporated the key ideas into another paper with a very different title. You search is then fruitless.
They might have discovered errors.
Reviewers might have considered the results trivial.
Their attempts to publish might have been rejected by journals for other reasons.
They might have changed sub-fields. (This one less likely, I think.)
But you should be wary, at least, of following up on unpublished work and, at least, be sure that you can verify the claims independently.

One other important possibility (if it's math), everything with the preprint is basically fine but they submitted to a top journal and the refereeing process took 2 years but the paper was rejected, they then spent a year revising based on those reports and other feedback they'd gotten, spent half a year deciding where to resubmit, then it took another year and a half to get accepted at the second top journal,  but their backlog is such that it takes another year and a half for it to be published.  So now 6 years have passed and the preprint isn't published anywhere.

@NoahSnyder that sounds oddly specific...

That’s not actually intended to be the exact story of a particular paper (mine or others), but more a realistic amalgam of different stories of mine and others.

I second the suggestion to consider contacting the author. You should have a low threshold for doing that.

To abbreviate @NoahSnyder: Maybe the authors lost interest.

@NoahSnyder this hits home. I think this happens more than people think.

They might not be able or willing to afford the publication costs.
They might not have thought highly of the result at that time, and when it proved popular, it was not new enough to interest journals. (What do you get from republishing something that's already known by everyone in the field and put to test for validity "in the wild"?)

They might be in the lucky situation to not feel pressured to publish by their employer, so why bother?

Just to give a concrete example: this paper solved a famous open problem in the field. As you can see it was essentially written in 2009. It was published in 2016. I'm not privy to the editorial misadventures it has encountered, but no doubts about its correctness or its relevance were present in the community in the intervening years, as far as I can remember

This kind of thing happens a lot, publishing papers can be tough at times and it can take several years before something gets published.  Someone told me they knew someone who wrote a paper and couldn't get it published for many years, but now the technique in that paper is used all the time and it is referenced a lot.

They work in an environment where preprints are accepted as publications already, so no need to re-publish it, espectially if the preprint got a lot of citations already. (I believe this can be the case for senior researchers in theoretical physics and computer science, and I expect it's also dependent on which country you're in, whether you're in industry or academia, etc.)

Sometimes you can guess from the journal and the arxiv revision history what the process looked like.  In the example Denis gave, it looks quite likely that v1 is a genuine preprint, v2 is what was first submitted to The Annals, v3 incorporates major changes based on the original referee reports, and v4 is relatively minor revisions based on the referee's responses to their revision.  It's totally implausible that any journal would rejected that paper, so that example shows just how long it can take to get an important long paper refereed at The Annals.

Not all peer-reviewed papers are solid, and not all non peer-reviewed papers are unsolid.
Judge for yourself.
Seriously, sometimes people cannot be bothered to fight with reviewers about minutia, relevance, impact, significance; worse, sometimes people have a problem to get a paper published in a journal that later proves to be seminal to a field. The story of Schechtman comes to mind (or also some colleague from my own field who wrote an absolutely central paper for my field which took several years to get published in a peer-reviewed journal).
If it is an experimental paper and hard for you to verify, you may tread more carefully, but anything that's theoretical and in your reach to check for yourself is worth consideration if you need it.

As others mentioned, there can be various reasons.
Perelman only published his proof of the Poincare conjecture as preprints. It was enough for everybody to hear about his proof, so why bother?:-)
Mochizuki only published his proof of the abc conjecture as preprints (to be more precise, he also published it several years later in a journal where he was the editor-in-chief, if I am not mistaken). In this case, the extra reason was the proof was too complicated, so nobody could referee it :-) (I am cutting some corners:-) )

"he also published it several years later in a journal where he was the editor-in-chief, if I am not mistaken" you are mistaken—there was a rumour they had been accepted to appear in such a journal, but it didn't happen. The papers are still not published, and only a small group of people accept Mochizuki's proof as doing what he says it does.

@DavidRoberts : Thank you. So this is also a "clean" example:-)

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text:
How to write a graduate study personal statement for a technical field without related bachelors degree?
With the desire to obtain a master's degree in Management Information Systems, IT Management, or Computer Science, how do you proceed writing a personal statement when your bachelors degree is unrelated?
With minimal previous technical experience (basic knowledge on programming, some collegiate participation in software club), is it possible to be considered seriously? What can be added to the statement to strengthen your impression?
I ask because a lot of the graduate ambassadors at DePaul have bachelors in different fields.
Related: How does one change to engineering for graduate school after undergrad in a science field?

Hello @Garry, it has been a year since you ask this question. Can I ask that are you successful in the transition? Do you have any tip? Thank you so much.

@Ooker Sorry Ooker, no followup to the question. I asked this question for a friend of mine and they chose to pursue other interests.

I was recently accepted to a MS program that is different from my undergrad and graduate training.  In my personal statement I tried to relate my experience to the field I was pursuing.  I had field research experience in public health, but I was applying for a MS in biology.  I still used my research experience, but I focused on the general research skills that I developed, things that would be useful in the lab.  I mentioned things that are universal to all research.
I think if you convey passion and direction for the new field, you'll be alright.  It can be an advantage too.  Think of ways you can incorporate your previous field if possible.  If not, show them your maturity and passion.  It seems like admissions committees can tell who is going through the motions and who is genuine.  Make your voice heard.

Recently I applied for an MS in electrical engineering. I wrote my sop on my own.
Firstly you have to mention how you got interested in this field. Then you mention all about your academics and activities from your schooling to present day. Then you mention about your area of interest and your academic projects and internship(s). At last why you want to do graduation in the area you prefer to and conclude.
Regarding your projects you have to give brief explanation about the project and the things that you used in the project .

No, you don't mention "all about your academics and activities from your schooling to the present day." You only discuss relevant information that helps the reviewer understand what you want to do as a graduate student (plus some motivation as to why). A blow-by-blow replay of your academic career is not particularly helpful—unless you have particular circumstances that require clarification or explanation (a gap in your career, poor performance at a particular stage of your career, absence due to illness, etc.).

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Which soft skills for research career?
In a previous question we stated that soft skills are pretty important for admission decisions in universities, so I suppose that you'll agree with me if I said that they are very important not only during the admission phase, but throughout the whole career.
Which do you think are the most important ones?
Thanx!

You've always been able to answer your own question on SE sites, and now they've made it even easier to answer your own question while posting it. I recommend you edit your question to remove the answer part and post that as an answer. I'd upvote it :)

In a previous question we stated that soft skills are pretty important for admission — I don't think this is an accurate characterization of the answers to that question.  Soft skills are important to succeed at interviews, but most admissions decisions (at least in North America) do not require interviews.

I broadly agree with Davide's answer above, but I would move the list around somewhat:

Tier 1:

Self motivating
Communication, broadly-defined
Ability to stay focused on a single task for multiple months & years

Tier 2:

Work on a team
Creative, curious personality
Strong writing skills

Tier 3:

Learn from criticism
Personable

Tier 1 skills are, in my mind, absolutely required to be a researcher. The inability of any of those will preclude you from doing your work (i.e., unable to communicate means unable to publish; unable to stay focused for long periods of time means unable to complete research projects & grants.)  Tier 2 skills will turn a good researcher into a great researcher. Technically speaking, researchers don't need to be good team members, but having that skill will greatly improve your academic worth and potential. Tier 3 will improve your worth to yourself and others as a researcher. There are probably a bunch here that I missed and should have included.

I would put "learn from criticism" in Tier 1.

In my opinion, I'd suggest these (in order of importance):

hard-working attitude
public speaking
ability to manage personal relationships
ability to work in independently
ability to work in team
creative skills and ability to formulate new problems and ideas
ability to accept & learn from criticism

Do you agree with this list?
Would you add something?
Would you change the position of something?

Hard-working attitude isn't a skill—it's a personality trait. So are most of the rest of these. Also, on an unrelated note, I'd avoid using casual spellings ("hardworkin'", "speakin'"), particularly in academic writing.

I would add being able to communicate ideas and concepts effectively.

The ability to write clearly (or maybe this is a hard skill).

@DaveClarke: That's definitely a hard skill, as is public speaking.

I want to add self management. I mean think better about our life, our work an so . I mean knows to control our mind to when think about what and how to do that

I will add some further unmentioned skills I value highly and miss among many students in the age of internet and information overload:

googling/filtering, knowing & using search operators, especially for finding literature. Seems obvious, but I see so many students lacking basic search and internet skills that this is my #1
knowledge management, meaning future-proof saving and organizing of your knowledge and bibliography
keeping up with academic publications
critical thinking (logic, fallacies, cognitive bias, problem solving), history and philosophy of science (Popper & Kuhn),

Being a scientist means to study further and learn your whole life, more than in any other job, where most of soft skills named in other answers apply too (work hard, in team, motivation ...). Also I think curiosity and creativity are rather personal traits than trainable skills. If you don't have them, consider choosing another job.

You didn't say what kind of graduate program you are talking about.  The admissions criteria for a Master's program are very different than for a PhD.
Here's what the top-three admissions criteria look like for admission to a research-oriented PhD program:

Evidence of research ability.
Evidence of research ability.
Evidence of research ability.

So, if evidence of research ability is so important, how is it judged?  Well, there are several ways that applicants can demonstrate research ability:

Demonstrate prior success at research.  For example, participated in one or more prior research projects that led to a publication at a peer-reviewed place.  This is usually the strongest evidence.
Show prior experience with research, with evidence that it went well or that future research will likely be a success.  For example, participated in one or more prior research projects, which did not lead to a publication, but the letters of reference state have positive things to say about the applicant's research ability, and the letter-writers are credible on this.  This is next-best.
Show great intelligence and technical ability, as well as passion/motivation.  Here we are talking about indirect measures of research ability.  One of the strongest ways is to excel in technical classes.  Admissions committees will also look at the motivation/drive (what does the applicant want to study? why? is the applicant driven to do research? why?), at written and other communication skills, and other factors.

Of the materials in the application packet, I could prioritize which are most important:

Publications.  If you have publications, include them.  Admissions committees will often read the publications, look to see where they are published, etc.
Letters of reference.  Strong letters of recommendation can be very valuable.  They need to come from credible people who are well-calibrated about what it takes to be successful in a Ph.D. program, and they should be as strong as possible about the applicant's research potential and other abilities.
Classes.  Great grades in relevant courses is helpful.  The courses also need to provide adequate preparation for the Ph.D. program.
Essays.  The personal essays should be thoughtful, well-written, demonstrate the applicant's interest in research and goals for Ph.D. study.  Admissions committees will read to see whether the essays seem well-informed about the field the applicant wants to join.  They'll also try to figure out the applicant's most likely interests, to see if they are a good match for the faculty in the department who are looking to advise new Ph.D. students.
Other materials.  The rest of your application packages (e.g., GRE scores) are of lesser importance.  They're more likely to get you rejected, or raise a red flag that causes the committee to look more closely at the rest of your application packet, than they are get you accepted.  It is semi-important to demonstrate communication skills; if you cannot communicate clearly in the language of instruction at the university, then you may not be able to serve as a teaching assistant, which means the school may not have a way to fund you, which is very bad.  Also, advisors are more likely to want to work with someone who has good written English than someone who will need to learn how to write clearly.

The question was not intended just for admission phase, but, more broadly speakin', for academic career. In addition, the elements you listed (publications, classes, etc) ain't soft skills...

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How to test (admitted) grad students before hiring them in your lab
Recruiting "bad" PhD students who only become emotional, temporal, and financial drag is not good for anybody. I was listening to the recent freakonomics podcast episode, and thought it would be great to use tricks for testing the candidates before hiring them. Interviewing only can tell you so much, but unlike industry, PI's have more time to test the students before committing to seriously bring them into their research program.
In a related question, some qualities of successful students were discussed. Specifically, I want to test for

persistence/focus
creativity
logical/systematic thinking
communication
teamwork
"smartness"
some basic skills (programming, computer skills, writing, etc.)

At the same time I do not want to punish for lack of knowledge or experience. Also, I'm okay with eccentric personalities to a certain degree.
I've seen PIs testing their candidates by giving them mini research problems before hiring them (or while they are rotating in the lab). Some students will quickly finish the task and further explore the science on their own write fantastic reports/papers, while some students never finish the simplest first step. This seems to work fine (but some students might think it is not fair). I would like to learn if there are some quick tests that would reveal the quality of the candidate.
What tricks/procedures do you use?
P.S. I am in a computation/theory heavy science in US.
EDIT: I am especially looking forward to King Solomon's cutting the baby in half type of creative solutions. Perhaps PI can ask the student to do an impossible task and see how long it takes before the student says he/she thinks it is impossible.

Just to make it clear, you mean recruiting for a PhD, right? Could you specify the country? Where I am originally from, it is typical to hire someone as an intern for a couple of months (summer) and then decide. But of course many other places have more restrictive, centralized admission policies, and taking someone on might only be possible from within the university, after admission, and so on. If you have a rotation system in place, is this not enough time to see if someone is more or less capable of independent work? Could you give the arguments as to why this might be viewed unfair?

@amlrg I am assuming the students are already admitted to the institute & department. Yes, rotation would be a great time to test them. I want to discuss strategies in doing so in detail.

I suggest changing the question title to reflect that you are talking about testing students after they have been admitted into the program.

PI's have more time to test the students before committing to seriously bring them into their research program - not always. In some departments, PhD students are effectively admitted directly into their advisor's research group.

but some students might think it is not fair — So what? (I assume you are open about your expectations and enforce them fairly.) You can't make everyone happy, and you shouldn't try.  Students who disagree with your standards are welcome to work with another advisor,

In Germany, where I work, most PhD students are employed using a contract as government employees. This arrangement makes "tests" unnecessary, as the contract includes a six-month "probationary" period, during which you can evaluate the candidate. So, while there is certainly an incentive to higher the best person, it becomes possible to remove someone who quickly shows himself unsuitable for the project in question.

Is there anything wrong w/ the typical job recruiting techniques of interviews + talking to their references?  I generally look for passion on the topic, but try to check via references that they actually produce good results.

@Joe Not that there's anything wrong with the standard procedure. I just want to know more "tricks" and "quick tests" to weed out the dangerous ones.

Do you want to do a distant test (for instance over an online chat interview) or a model lab test (he comes to your office/lab for the test)?

"Perhaps PI can ask the student to do an impossible task and see how long it takes" I guess the really good students (i.e. those you want to find) won't take long to think that you are impossible...

What tricks/procedures do you use?

I work with each student as a potential colleague.  I meet with them regularly, monitor their progress, offer what feedback and advice I can on what classes to take, papers to read, problems to work on, techniques to apply, people to work with, conferences to submit to, writing, presentations, and so on.
If they show sufficient promise/progress after a semester or two, I offer to continue working with them in an official capacity as their advisor.  If they don't show sufficient promise/progress, I offer to help them find another advisor who better matches their interests, background, and working style.  If necessary, I help the student navigate a change in degree programs, departments, or universities.
Finally, if I don't have enough time to effectively evaluate and/or advise a student, I just say no at the beginning.
In other words, I don't have any tricks.  I just do my job.

I don't think it is fair to judge a person by tests. People have ups and downs. Look on their overall profile. Have they done something creative even once, in their career? Some students are exam-phobic and do not get A grades all the time, but if you look at their research and thesis in the past, those are very creative and novel. Those kind of people are the ones, that succeed, not always the ones who run after a 4.0 gpa(on a 4.0 scale).
If the person doesn't has any novelty to show in their past projects, ask them the reason. What was the idea behind the work they have done, what did they learn from it, and what do they intend to learn from their PhD. Why are they pursuing a PhD? Why do they want to join your lab? Tell them what are you looking for, in the candidate and ask them to do a self-evaluation. Tell them to be frank, if they do not know something that you want them to know, and that you'll be willing to work with them if you really see them as the right candidate.
Keep your expectations real. You might never find a student with 100% qualities matching your requirement, but if you find that right candidate who is willing to give his 100%, you can make their 70% match better than anything else you'd ever get.
At the end of the day, a good student is the reflection of a good teacher.
Oh and by the way I'm also a Bioinformatics major and it is not always possible to know everything on the computer skills side. They might be excellent in one programming language but know nothing in others or they might be average good in a number of languages being the master of none. At the end, the thing that matters is, if they can get the job done, using whatever technique, whatever approach!
Correct me if I'm wrong. :)

The statement "I don't think it is fair to judge a person by tests" is a bit ridiculous. Sure, perhaps individuals should not be judged solely based on formal examinations, but to say individuals should not be judged at all based on examinations undermines entire fields of valuable practice and research. Tests are useful. What would an "overall profile" be if not comprised of a variety of subjective and objective tests? Also, what you are recommending are small tests.

Well, my point here is to say that knowing more about a person and testing a person, are two different things.
An example to that: Albert Einstein was a wonderful scientist yet if he had been tested, he might not have been the "A" grade student.

What I am saying is that testing, either subjective or objective testing, are two ways of "knowing more about a person". An interview is also a test. Also, Albert Einstein was tested and he was indeed an excellent student (http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/956/was-einstein-a-poor-student).

Not to sound facetious, but have you ever considered your role as the mentor in understanding why these collaborations don't work out? Relationships are bidirectional. As such, I am struck that in your initial post the issue is the deficit of the student.
I'm a grad student. I've worked with many professors on different projects. In every instance you get what you give. Most normal people will do their job (i.e., the grad student meeting expectations) if you do your job, at least in the context of a collaboration across time.

I haven't started my lab yet. But, I have seen a number of fellow grad students who were unsuccessful. I understand there are many factors, and many of them could be because of the PI.


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How to engage students in oral presentations?
Paper-based exams are not fully representative of knowledge, and it is good to consider oral presentations of students as a factor for the final grade to some extent. This is somehow the case in graduate courses, where the number of students is lesser, but how to follow this strategy for crowded classroom of inexperienced undergraduate students. I mean a classroom of 50+ size with students who do not have experience in scientific discussion!

I've had classes of this size where I have each student do an individual presentation. It is very time consuming but I also feel it can be very worthwhile.
If you give each student 10 minutes to present some information and you have 50 students then you will have 12-13 hours for presentations (allowing 15 minutes total per student including Q&A, changing students, etc.) If you teach in 2-hour sessions then it will consume 6-7 sessions. If you have 30-32 sessions per semester it is doable but it also removes a significant chunk of time from lecturing.
In my case, I lectured for several weeks (giving the students time to do their research and giving them the foundations they needed for their presentations) and then had the students give their presentations. Then I continued lecturing with other assessments later on. The module was not about presentation skills but I do feel that in each subject, we need to teach the students some general skills (structuring an argument, how to format text, how to research, giving a presentation, etc.) in addition to the module content.
The students ended up understanding the material quite well when judged by their presentations and I found many of them quite eager to learn how they could improve their presentation skills.
In the end, I was happy with the overall results and plan to do it again.

I would like to add to earthling's answer. If you have teaching assistants, please do make good use of them in this aspect.
As a TA, I have had excellent experiences in mentoring undergraduates to prepare research presentations, final papers, projects and proposals for these papers and project. Of course, we were generally in a class of 120-160 students so that speaks to a classroom scale higher than what you are suggesting. There were 3 graduate TA's, usually and we each had about 50 students to mentor. We found that we could devote significant amounts of time to each student when we met them on a one-on-one basis. Of course, the professor also met them one-on-one and there were a couple of rounds of iteration of their final presentations - which was very, very useful for the professors, the TA's and the students. As mentioned previously, it was a time sink, but very well worth it.


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Are generalized recommendation letters bad?
Sometimes online application systems ask for uploading recommendation letters as supplementary documents (scanned copies). In this case, it is possible to get general recommendation letters (addressed as To Whom It May Concern) and submit them for different applications.

Is it bad to submit a recommendation letter, which has not been addressed for a specific application? Assume that the content will be the same.
If it is OK, is it bad to attach some recommendation letters for an application when it is not requested?

What level is this?  Grad school applications?  Postdoc?  Tenure-track?  How many things are you applying for?

I'm actually surprised that whatever system you're using has you upload the letters yourself. Typically (maybe this is field specific?) an applicant should not even get to look at the letters, since any negative (or neutral) comments the writer includes might strain their relationship, and so excluding the applicant means the writer can, in theory, be more direct and honest.
That said,
1) This is bad. A generic letter is obviously better than no letter at all (if one or more is required), but not always by much. It indicates that you are interested in a position somewhere rather than interested in a position there. If your other qualifications are superb this might not matter, but you can give any application a really significant boost by showing the people who will be reading it that you are interested in them and will be a good fit. This doesn't mean totally different letters for each application, but you will have to help your letter writers to tailor small changes, for each letter, that "personalize" your applications.
2) This is probably bad too; if they didn't request letters, then they don't want them. At best they'll ignore them, at worst they'll be annoyed that you don't follow directions.

First, as wsc says, you should not be uploading the letters yourself.  Usually there's someone in your dept. who can accept letters and send them out if there's no way for the letters to be uploaded directly.
Second, senior letter writers already spend a lot of their own valuable time writing letters for dozens of people.  Asking them to write separate letters for dozens and dozens of applications for each person is completely unreasonable.  In Math for research jobs in the US, letters for job applicants are not school specific.  (Though they do usually say "postdoc" or "tenure track position" since obviously a strong postdoc candidate would often be a weak TT candidate.)
(For teaching letters for liberal arts schools my impression is that the situation is somewhat different and some specialization may be expected.  But I don't have first-hand knowledge.  Of course, for those letters, it's less likely that one person is writing 50 letters a year.)

Not having access to letters appears to be a US issue. In other countries, it is more or less accepted that students will get the letters of recommendation directly and upload it themselves. I recently caused a bit of commotion when I asked an EU-based fellowship program if I could directly send my letter of recommendation to them instead of forwarding it to them via the student!

Interesting.  When I wrote a letter for Cambridge Part III, there was an elaborate procedure to ensure that the letters hadn't been tampered with.  (The letter had to be on official letterhead, signed, and put in a sealed envelope with my signature across the seal.)  But maybe England is different from the continent?


text:
Is reuse of "internal" results considered self-plagiarism if used in a later publication?
This is a little bit different from the case of reusing boilerplate text.
Say one has done a series of experiments (either real or "virtual") to produce a set of results. Because the results are inconclusive as to the cause of certain effects, an additional, much larger set of experiments were performed under a series of different conditions to complete the "factorial matrix" of possibilities (all possible states of factor X crossed with all possible states of factor Y).
However, because the original results are valid, and represent unique "cells" in the factorial matrix, is it necessary to rerun the experiments for a future publication, or is it just a matter of obtaining journal permission for the re-use of figures and tables associated with the presentation of the data? As an example, am I violating copyright if I add a new set of curves to a figure which contains the same data as before?
I ask in part because there was just today a retraction based on reuse of figures, and I'd rather not run afoul of guidelines.

What?  Do journals hold copyright on data?  Or just on the presentation of that data?

Data collected the same way would be the same data. Data are facts, which are generally not copyrightable.

I've revised the question to make clear the intent is on the presentation of that data.

From my experience, researchers are free to re-use a given dataset as many times as they want in numerous publications. I've been involved in single datasets (which, admittedly, took years to build) that generated dozens of papers, and that is by no means a unique scenario. My understanding is that researchers are to refrain from publishing an identical analysis on an identical dataset in different papers. If you're using a single dataset for multiple analyses, there's no need to re-generate the data.

I agree with the other answer that this is a normal occurrence.
To avoid any confusion, be clear and cite the previous publication as the source/original presentation of the data. It is not citing (even yourself), which is an ethical breach, as it makes it seem that have done more than you really have.


text:
How to cite a paper with erratum?
I want to cite a paper [A], which has been corrected by an erratum [B] in the same journal. I have not found a rule how to cite this case.
Is it proper to cite [A,B], or just [A] or just [B].
I am rather looking for a recommendation by some sort of scientific organization or major journal than for personal opinion, so please provide a link.

An erratum would usually only include the part to be corrected from the original publication. Hence it would be insufficient to cite just the erratum and not the original article. Examples of such errata are shown in the US NLM  site. Thus you must cite both original article as well as the errtum.
But there is a method to cite errata. You should cite the original article [A] in the main section and cite the errata [B] after the citation info of [A] in the references section.
Similar to this.

References:
[A] Authors of A. Title of A. In conf./article/report/etc. Erratum. Author of B [B]
[B] Info of B...

A simple example is provided in the answer here.

Should I use bold font for the word "Erratum" just to remind people?

You ought to confirm the norms with the publisher. If this is your own form of publishing, it would be up to your preference, although I’ll prefer italicised.

@Ébe's advice is probably best for the [1] [2] scientific style of references. In many humanities disciplines using footnotes, however, it's simplest and most common to append the errata information to the end of the publication unless you want to discuss the errata individually.  So something like:

Michael Cuthbert, "Common tones in simple time," Journal of Music Theology 11 (2016), pp. 220-230, errata v. 12 (2017), p. 294.

Whether to italicize errata in a citation like that (is it still Latin? or now English?) is up to you.

This is also what I'd do with the [1] [2] style that I ordinarily use (in mathematics and computer science). In the text, there would be simply [7]. In the list of references at the end of my paper, item 7 would look like what's in your answer.


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Why are (galley) proof requests given such a short deadline?
Often the publisher requests to get the proof within 24 hours when it's ready. What are the reasons for making this so short? Do they want the authors to not make too many changes?
EDIT:
The email I received said:

Please ensure you check the entire article carefully, and answer all
  queries. Return corrected proofs and any related material by uploading
  to the site within 24 hours.

EDIT: @StrongBad pointed out a related question.

Yes, an interesting question considering that usually one's wait for these galleys is months on end, with no accurately predicted deadline...

I'll try to explain the problem from both perspectives: author and a journal typesetter.
The typesetting process goes as follows:

We pre-plan the issue contents 2 months in advance, in order to balance the issues in size. This is necessary for small journals with 4 or 6 issues per year, not quite for large journals with a long publishing queue. At this moment, we take articles that are accepted. If there's not enough of them, we go through the queue and try to find articles that can be accepted quickly.
Now the authors provide the final version. This takes some time, so I receive the articles usually 4-6 weeks before the issue date. That's not a lot of time.
Most articles are typeset within 1-2 weeks after I receive them. With these, there's no problem at all. However, then you have articles that take more time, since the quality of the figures is being discussed, as well as semantics (when the formatting from the authors is poor and the semantics are not clear) etc. This takes some time. So it can happen that the article is typeset like 2 weeks before the issue date, or even less.
So now the article is typeset and is with the authors for proofs. Any correction they make has to be incorporated. Sometimes it's not easy (requests for replacing a figure with a better one, for moving figures to other pages etc. are not uncommon). Sometimes I strongly disagree with the authors on these. In such cases, we need to have yet another couple mails exchanged or the chief editor involved, and that takes time again. At this moment you see that 24 or 48 hours can be the maximum we can give.
Once all articles get back, the issue has to be made ready, articles published online, CrossRef+Scopus metadata prepared, DOI registered etc.

That's the perspective of the journal I typeset. I hope that it is clear that the publication comprises a lot of steps. When the authors are cooperative and reasonable, everything goes fluently and the final version is ready 4 weeks before deadline. And then you have cases when things don't go quite well, and you get very close to the deadlines.
Moreover, to make things easier (and reduce the amount of work just before the issue date), you leave authors quite a short time for response. In most cases, there is plenty of time left, but if 80% of people misuse this time, we work 16 hours a day the last 3 days before the issue date to sort everything out, and we simply want to avoid this.
From the perspective of the author, 48 hours is not much for proofreading an article, especially since this has to be done very carefully. However, in most cases, if you ask for extension (a 5-line mail with a very short request is enough), it will be granted without any problem. Just please don't misuse the possibility.

These timings don't fit with my experience as an author (presumably because of being in a field that works on a different timescale). It can be over a year between the journal receiving the final version of the paper (already typeset, just in a different layout) and the author receiving the proofs (often edited to create major errors that completely change the meaning or turn the work to nonsense). After the 2/3 days given to the author to send back the re-edits, the paper appears online, in final form except page numbers etc. A couple of months later, the paper makes it to a journal issue.

@JessicaB That's quite possible. The publish queue is probably quite long in the journals, right? And yes, the timings are quite field-dependent, and even journal-dependent. I only tried to explain from the view of the journal that the things aren't quite simple.

@Yo'. Thanks! Traditionally. How long it takes by the designers to prepare Galley proofs ?

@goro Somewhere between 10 minutes and 1 hour per page. But remember that most copy editors have other things to do as well, the backlogs of their work range from zero to months, and at least from my own experience, you can't do typesetting 8 hours straight because it's very tough on your eyes and you need breaks when you do other stuff.

All of the arguments on this answer hinge on the existence of deadlines caused by the need to balance issues in print. There might be people out there that care about the printed versions of their papers this side of the year 2000, but I have yet to meet them. As it stands from your argument, then, the imposition of extreme deadlines on authors without a warning is pretty much just based on a legacy practice that the journal feels bolsters its commercial negotiating position but from which the author gets zero meaninful benefit. So... why should authors comply with that deadline, again?

@E.P. Well, I tried to explain how it is in some journals. Of course, you can answer by swearing over the publishers bullying the authors, but I'm not sure it makes any sense :-)

Well, this answer is an apology of some pretty unreasonable behaviour on the part of publishers that, as you explained, are exclusively due to constraints that benefit the publisher and not the author. It might not look like that from that close up, but the structure is all there if you zoom out. There definitely is lots that could be accomplished by reasonable voices within publishing arguing for a move to paperless systems that would actually implement their stated mission of serving the scientific community efficiently and cost-effectively, ...

... but then that might crumble the facade-level pretense that publishers are anything other than vested interests trying to wrest as much money as possible out of the taxpayer via scientific institutions. So yeah, the incentives need to be created from the side of the demand, but the "we're here to serve" spiel just becomes increasingly untenable as time wears on.

Galley proofs are part of the production process where a book or journal issue is actually printed, as opposed to the 'softer' process of deciding what pieces will go into it and in what form. As such, the deadlines for their revision are associated with the physical production process rather than the editorial process for the piece and can be quite different from deadlines for e.g. minor revisions or revise-and-resubmit requests.
These proofs are only meant to be used to check that the typesetting correctly represents the author's intent, and not that the content is scientifically correct (which should have been done at an earlier stage). Occasionally a one- or two-sentence 'note added in proof' may be appended to a paper but that's about it; for an example see the AIP style guide, p.11. Checking the typesetting is assumed to be a straightforward matter that does not require more than one day (though assuming that an academic can spare the time at the publisher's decision with no prior notice is another matter), so such deadlines are usually OK.
Note also that such deadlines can be negotiable if properly handled. If such a requests lands on you and you will not be able to complete it in time, it is usually acceptable to notify the editor, as soon as possible, that this is the case. A polite note along the lines of

Dear Editor,
We have successfully received the proofs of our article. Unfortunately, today is my thesis defence, my coauthor is getting married and my advisor is away due to travel, so we will be unable to complete your request to review the proofs within 24h. We will get them to you as soon as possible, which will likely be the day after tomorrow. Is this acceptable, or will it lead to a delay in publication?

can work wonders in stretching such a deadline. From personal experience, I have seen a 24-hour request be stretched to a full week without a publication delay.

Or, for instance, the journal could send you a notice on Christmas Eve to return the page proofs. (This happened to me recently!)

The high-probability explanation of this capriciousness is that they think they can "get away with it", given the circumstances. Remaining silent for months, and then giving someone a 24-hour deadline is ... let's face it... grossly disrespectful. Power-inequity manifest. Explanation-over. :)

@paulgarrett Right, to an exntent. However, I don't think that in many branches there's monopoly or oligopoly. You can choose journals based on their galley proofs time, if you wish :-)

@yo' I find that to be extremely disingenuous. The power disparity between journals and authors is plain as day except, apparently, to the people with a vested interest in keeping it around.

I don't say I disagree. But still, it's a marketplace and it works like this. I don't consider my last comment ethical or non-ethical and I don't discuss the power distribution in the whole thing. I just state the facts. And frankly, unless there is a incentive for the journals to change their minds, they won't; so if you want to change things, you have to create the incentive.

@yo' You were responding to a comment that was explicitly about, in paul's words, "power-inequity manifest". I don't see how you might manage to not discuss the power distribution in the whole thing ─ I really do know that it wasn't your intent at all, but I'm really struggling to see your initial comment here as anything other than "that's right, we the journals have you by the (expletive), suck it up or don't publish at all". You're right that incentives need to be created and all, but I don't see how snark from people with vested interests helps.

(That's probably more bile from my side than intended, btw; let's not escalate this into a pointless argument. But please do reconsider how your comments read from an external perspective.)

Ok, I really meant it as saying: Well, unless you do something about it, nobody will, because the publishers certainly won't. (I see now how that this is not how one would read it though. And I'm quite unsure what to do now.)

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

You talk about only checking the formatting as an author. However, every single time I have received proofs they managed to alter more than just formatting. Newly introduced spelling errors and worse mistakes are frustratingly common. Unless they explicitly mark their changes (some do!), checking can be tedious.

As I said in my answer to How much time is usually left for authors to return page proofs? What happens if I am late?, I have never seen a 24 hour turn around time requirement, but 48-72 hours seems quite common. I think there are two reasons for the turn around time to be on the order of days. From my experience, publishers are working on a tight schedule; there might only be a month or two between when the proofs are finished and the issue is delivered to subscribers. If an article needs to be re-typeset or delayed to a later issue, the publisher will need to rework the the entire issue which is going to take some time. It seems that with their time scale the longest they could wait for proofs would be two weeks. This leads to the second issue. Academics do not handle deadlines well and publishers need to handle the articles from the worst procrastinators amongst us. If you give a bunch of academics a deadline in 2 weeks a non-insignificant portion will take over a month. Quick, cheap, paper based publications with flexible deadlines for authors and reviewers just isn't practical.

I am not convinced by this argument. Most journals today typeset every article in a new page, so there is basically no need to change anything to shift a paper to a later issue. The only thing that changes is the page number. Moreover, excluding special issues, it seems far more sensible to allocate a paper to an issue after the authors return the corrected proofs.

@FedericoPoloni I don't understand the printing process but printed journals are not just a bunch of stapled/glued together pages. Further, if the journal has some color pages, but not all, that can make a big difference to the layout. Many journals also have advertisements which may also need to be repositioned. My guess is that the publishers think the current system is sensible enough. I don't have much faith in publishers, but I would think that the system would change if enough people required extensions.

I guess we are simply in different fields then. As far as I can tell, in mathematics a journal is just a bunch of articles stapled togethers, each printed on different pages. Advertising and other editorial content is minimal or non-existent and is never on the same pages as the papers.

Again, if the publisher is silent for several months, which is the norm in mathematics, and then sends me an email telling me I need to do something within 24 hours, ...

@FedericoPoloni Even in mathematics, most journal issues are more than just a bunch of articles stapled together. Respectable-looking journals are bound, and (if I remember correctly from when I was a managing editor) that requires the number of pages to be divisible by 8. There might be other constraints that I'm not remembering now (or perhaps never knew).

@AndreasBlass Interesting to know. I was (probably wrongly) not using "stapled" in its literal sense in my previous comment, but it's interesting to know that there is this constraint, too. What did you people do when the total number of pages of the articles ready for production was not a multiple of 8?

@FedericoPoloni I have no idea exactly what the layout team does, but I am pretty sure most print journal, with the possible exception of AMS journals who may use the unaltered LaTeX, spend considerable time laying out each issue.

@FedericoPoloni The journal I was editing, the Bulletin of Symbolic Logic, had some leeway in formatting (and sometimes even delaying) things other than regular papers --- things like membership lists, meeting reports, etc. In the worst case, on blank age at the end wouldn't be a disaster.  But I know that the people working on layout put in considerable effort to make things fit well.

Laying out a publication such as a magazine or journal is very much like solving a crossword puzzle...you have certain constraints put on you by the printing process itself.  A press form is typically 16 pages... 8 per side.  So a publication is most efficiently printed in multiples of 16 pages.  You can also have 1/2 sheets that have 8 pgs., 4 per side, but that means more press runs, more setups, more forms to fold in the bindery.  The layout process also takes into account the most efficient use of color...if you can "gang up" all your color plates on the same side of a sheet, it's cheaper.

Your paper ought to be in pretty good shape after you get to the point of galley proofs. At that point, you are really just checking to be sure that their typesetters didn't introduce errors. All of your own typos and requests from reviewers should have been fixed by the time you get there.

There was one paper that had the typesetting introduced hundreds of errors. It was an equation heavy paper in a biological journal. That took less than a day, but I only worked on that paper that day...

If that happens, you can ask for an extension.

@Memming Indeed in that situation, when yo say "You made so many errors that I cannot complete correction in one day", they can hardly deny you an extension ...

Short galley proof delays are not universal, in particular for journals having no print edition. I am involved in the copyediting phase of the LMCS journal (called "layout editing"), which is an arXiv overlay journal. When we modify articles for style or typographical reasons, we give authors 2 weeks to verify our work (sending them the new PDF plus a LaTeX diff). The 2-week deadline is really to put a deadline, but there really is no urgency. When the authors approve, the paper gets assigned an issue and the final version is published in that issue.
My understanding is that the galley proof step with short deadline is because, with print journals, some editing must occur as part of the preparation of a specific print issue, and fit in the production timeline for that issue. But once you get rid of the print version (and who reads academic journals on paper nowadays?), the problem simply goes away.

Speaking as a former Design Director, Typographer, and Production Manager of many publications and also of national-market print advertising work:
The reason that there's a tight deadline for authors' galley proofs is because of what galley proofs are for:  evaluating whether the formatting has introduced any issues with readability or meaning; whether there's any typos or format errors; whether there's any omissions or duplications.
The turnaround is tight because it's part of the production phase, not part of the editorial phase.  The time to edit and re-write and fuss over the article is done and gone. Galley proofs is a final reality check, not a chance to revisit that awkward sentence in the 4th 'graph.
Traditionally in print, editorial and not production is given the luxury of extra time.  Usually there is no luxury of time, in spite of what it appears to the author.  Most journals have a lot more production steps to go through and are very close to press time when the authors' proofs go out.  It may seem like "not a big deal," but a printing operation has scheduled their presstime very closely, and if your book is late, it gets bumped from the schedule in favor of something that is actually ready for press.  If your book is bumped from the press schedule, it might be days or weeks before it can slot back in.  The cost to "hold" the press is spectacularly prohibitive.
Production and pre-press times are shrinking these days, it's easier today and faster to get a book to press than it was in, say, 1985.  In many ways that exacerbates the problem with proofs turnaround...there's just no "fiddle" time anymore.

But nowadays many major publishing companies release journal articles online several months before they appear in the journal issue.  Why does it matter if an article appears online three months and three weeks before the absolutely identical version gets published or three months and two weeks before the absolutely identical version gets published?

In the non-academic press, a publication (i.e. magazine) with a cover date of January 2016 would be delivered to subscribers and newsstands/bookstores no later than mid-December 2015;  To do this the skids of finished magazines have to be at the post office in the first week of December.  If your publication has, say, a 100k print run (a bit bigger than your typical academic journal) a large bindery operation needs three or four days...five days if it's a smaller bindery.  That means it has to be off the press before the last day of November.

Let's say your publication is five forms (5 x 16 pgs.) two of which are color.  Modern presses run at about 10k impressions for sheet, 30k impressions for web.  You've got five set-ups and five runs...a couple days if your press only runs one shift.  Prepress for that is a day or so, and so the latest you can be at the printer is the beginning of the fourth week of November.  But when you send your materials to the printer, they have to make proofs (blue-lines or some other proofs that show full sheet impositions).  Those proofs need about 4 days to turn around, so we're back to mid-november.

It takes a week or so to do the composition and layout and final fussing-around with a five-form publication (80 pgs or so).  That means that we need the authors' proofs back by the first week in November, for a commercial publication.   An academic journal needs a longer lead time, because the people who have to read and approve things are, well, academics and not full-time publication people.  So the proof cycles are that much longer.  This should help you understand why a publication with a January cover date needs to be wrapped up by the beginning of November!

also...forgot to mention that Christmas, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, all fall within that timeframe...so add ANOTHER week. We're back to October.

I am talking about academic presses, and in particular mathematics, where color is very rare.  Here is an example: this article was published online on March 27, 2014.  http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11083-014-9323-y#/page-1.  It appeared in the July 2015 issue.  If you check out the journal's website, you'll see that articles typically wait for a year or more before being placed in an issue.  Clearly this is not proceeding on anything like the timeline you suggest.

Are you suggesting that your single specific example means that I'm "wrong?"

Academic presses have extended timelines, because the reviewers, editors, people-who-must-sign-off, are often not terribly available.  They hew not to the paper-author's beck and call.

It's not a single example but an entire journal published by one of the two largest academic publishing companies.  And it's not a matter of "wrong" but describing different things: articles in popular magazines are rarely written a year before they are published.  I'm giving explicit examples to show that academic articles often sit -- publicly available, in a finished form -- online for more than a year before they find their way into an issue.  I have over two dozen publications.  When, recently, one of them appeared in the same year it was submitted, I was completely shocked.

@Pete L. Clark:  I would imagine that your very prestigious and wonderful mathematical journal is given an outright insulting budget for print publication, and so have to keep the size of each issue within budget-driven constraints.  That means the book can't just grow because your amazing and deserving paper walked in the door.  They've already got enough fascinating papers to carry them through next year, so yours just goes into the queue.

I don't understand what you're getting at (and I really don't understand why you've chosen such a sarcastic tone).  Publication queues are understandable and necessary in the current system: no one was complaining about them.  What is more recent is the phenomenon of journals releasing the papers online more than a year before they are formally published in the sense of appearing in an issue.  This also a very positive practice.  It's just that if a paper stays "on deck" for more than a year, then it's clear that waiting a few more days on the proofs would not cause publication delays.

You're right, Pete...that was altogether too sarcastic.  The problem is, people with ONE point of reference deem their experience to be the "standard" against which others are evaluated, when in reality, they have absolutely no idea what is going on.  It's part of the "me, mine" mentality that is infecting the entire world these days...people think it's "all about them," and then discount as irrelevant information that most decidedly speaks to their issue.  this is the case here, where a decades-veteran of publications is discounted because "that's not how math journals I know about" do it.

None of the things that you put in quotation marks were said by me or anyone here.  When two people with substantial expertise give differing advice, it is likely that they are both correctly describing two different things, and we should try to find out what those are.  Most of the users on this site are in STEM academia, for which a very small number of very large publishers dominate the market, especially Elsevier and Springer.  Have you worked for these academic publishing companies?  If not, which ones?

In addition to the fact that in most cases you can easily check the proofs within a day, I would assume that it’s also more efficient for the typesetters and in particular the copy editors in the case that you actually want to correct something as they are still familiar with your paper and are thus faster at applying your corrections. For example, after one day a copy editor usually remembers the reason and context of a particular change and can thus faster work your corrections.

(I'm a journal typesetter.) No, it's not really easy to proofread a paper. We sometimes make lots of changes and lots of things can go bad, even if we try that not to happen.

@tohecz: Did I ever claim something different? (I only claimed that it’s usually easily possible for the authors to check the proofs within a day.) Also, if you are involved in typesetting: Can you confirm my assumption?

Now I feel that I wanted to comment another answer, sorry for that. Anyways for your question: I think it depends. It's certainly more comfortable to keep the article with me for as short time as possible, but I don't consider having to return to it a problem. It's more the overall complexity of the process that makes us impose short deadlines on proofs.

And yes, you can check the proofs within a "normal day", however, people seem not to have many "normal days" -- all the time you have seminars, teaching activities, board meetings, scheduled discussions with students, travelling, etc. It's sometimes hard to find spare 3 hours within consecutive 3 days, not to speak within 1 day.

The reason is simply that nobody is expected to make any changes to the galley proofs. The content and the basic wording of the paper is fixed after acceptance. No rewriting or reformulating is allowed at this stage. The authors should only check if the typesetting and copy editing did not introduce any errors. Often you are also given a list of changes that the copy editor made and you can also work through this list. In other words, the author is only expected to read the galley proofs once and only with the "correctness lens". This could be done in less then 24 hours in almost all circumstances. In exceptional cases you may well ask for deadline extension.

I don't find this a compelling reason. I agree that normally it takes less than 24 hours to check the proofs; let's say reasonably one hour or two. But they could be sending them in what is a busy day for me. For what they know, I could be on holiday, or it could be the day of my PhD defence, or my wedding day.

@FedericoPoloni, of course. And, as I have ranted above, how could there be a 24-hour quasi-emergency after months of silence from them, etc. For-profit publishers are, if only by accident or economic necessity, bullies.

@paulgarrett In my field non-profit publishers are following exactly the same practices. Physical publishing of journals (which in my opinion is totally useless) automatically requires good publishing practices. If academicians do not insist physical publishing, and could manage online journals, problem would have been automatically solved and many cost saved.

@FedericoPoloni, normally, the typesetter would contact you in advance, saying on WHICH day the proofs will reach you. Then it is up to you to accommodate sufficient time for the proofreading on that or the following day...

@al_b, I have never had any accurate advance warning of when the proofs are coming - the acceptance email says wait for proofs, after that you're at the mercy of the publication workflow.  The only errors that have been introduced in my papers have been easy-to-find/fix breaking of formulae, but there's no guarantee that an author will even see the email within 24 hours (and therefore no opportunity to ask for an extension).  That said I don't think they really expect every proof to be returned in that timescale.

The proof is an actually typesetted version of your paper, ready to production. In other words, everything is ready that someone pushes a button and the press can print the issue. This is the very last "lets check it one more time" thing.
For this reason:

If you have a correction, it is actually cost money to them.
If there is 50 paper in the journal, and 10 out of the 50 start rewriting the paper in the last minute, then the production line waits till everything is fixed, reformatted, again cost money. A lot.

Before anyone starts to complain about the 24 hr (which is common in my field, too), let us be a little professional.
Your paper should anyway be free of errors and well written at the point of submission. Then several referees check it back and force, as well as you are free to check your manuscript if you are not sure. When you are at the proof stage, your paper has already read and checked by several people, several times for months. You don't have a good reason to re-write anything, except if there is an error due to typesetting. In other worlds, if you done your job decently, you don't have more than 5 min job with that proof in 99% of the time.

Actually, the typesetting process often introduces many errors for some reason. I think the publisher somehow 'retypes' all the text which seems bizarre in this digital age (but then again, this publisher didn't like LaTeX and insisted on converting everything to MS Word).  Though you are right that it costs the publisher a lot of effort (and some money) to change things at this stage.

@Memming It may vary publisher by publisher. I have seen less than 5 genuine typos/mistakes in proofs so far, but I met dozens of professors who wanted to change the title or conclusion in the proof (directly editing the PDF), which makes me sympathetic toward publishers in this question.

@Memming It depends. Sometimes it happens I introduce rather stupid mistakes even if I pay a lot of attention. One example for all: A figure with two graphs got change from top-bottom to left-right layout, but I forgot to change one in-text reference from "top" to "left". Certainly: The idea that you can proofread an article in 5 minutes is a bad idea. I, the typesetter, am not responsible for mistakes I introduce, in the sense that you cannot be angry at me that I made a mistake and you missed it during proofs.

@Greg I think there's a misunderstanding. I wrote that comment with my LaTeX typesetter hat on, I made a mistake during the processing of an article of someone else, when I needed to re-arrange the figures to better fit them.

@tohecz (sorry, I am missed you are a typesetter) By the time I publish a paper I really know all the key point by heart. 5 minutes is maybe an exaggeration, but someone who is familiar with the text should able to check if all the equations, figures are correct or not in very short time. If someone messes up a figure that I worked for hours and redone 5 times, I don't need an hour to catch it. If the typesetter misspell an adjective that no way influence the readability my results and conclusions and  I cannot catch it with one read - I live with it, and sleep well.

@yo' How on Earth does the proposition that you are not responsible for the errors you introduce makes sense to you?