text:
Is it appropriate to use the word “like” in a research paper?
In a research paper, is it appropriate to use the word like meaning similar or similar to? For example the sentence:

Like in Eq.(2), we will substitute y in Eq.(6) to simplify the equation.

As long as you, like, don't just stick the word in, like, anywhere.

I had similar concerns a long time ago, but then I got a Referee report written in broken "Russian English" saying that the article is "well written". The Referee wanted more explanations, so I had to rewrite part of the article, and I of course didn't bother with writing style, as it was going to be judged by someone who can't write decent English him/herself.

@CountIblis And luckily everybody else who ever read that article also didn't speak proper English.

@Voo , that was in Phys. Rev. D. there they have the habit of letting the grammar/spelling etc. be fixed later by the typesetters. They send you back a draft version for your feedback, often they will have made some grammatical changes. With so many non-native English speaking physicists, you cannot expect the Referees to give you the right feedback on your use of the English language. Also, you don't want to hinder the development of language; if some way of expressing things is efficient, it will be used and "legalized", even if it isn't strictly correct.

@CountIblis My point is that just because the referee can't write decent English, doesn't mean that later readers of the paper won't judge the paper (and thereby implicitly you) based on the writing - it's nigh impossible to not be influenced by such things even if one tries. So while lazy language might not affect the publication process itself, it certainly isn't without consequences.

The word "like" is perfectly OK, but your use of it in the example sentence is wrong. It should be "as" [[because the clause "Like in Eq. (2)" modifies the verb phrase "will substitute" and thus functions as an adverb.  "Like" produces adjective phrases and would be correct if you were modifying a noun.]]  For example, it would be correct to write "This simplification is like the one in Eq. (2)."
EDIT: What I wrote about the example sentences is right, but the reason I gave, now in brackets [[...]] above, is wrong. In particular, a "like" phrase can function as an adverb; "he sings like Caruso" is correct.  The difference between "like" and "as" (when they express similarity --- both words have several other meanings) is that "like" is a preposition and "as" is a conjunction. So "like" should form a phrase with a noun, e.g., "like the one in Eq. (2)", and "like Caruso".  "As" should be followed by a whole clause, like a sentence, but much of that clause is often omitted. Thus, for example, "As in equation (2), we will substitute ..." is an elliptical form of "As we did in equation (2), we will substitute ...".

If you were using "similar" then your example should begin with "Similarly to" (an adverb), whereas the example in my answer would use "similar" (an adjective).

What about "Just like in equation 2, we will..."?

@Pikamander2 No. "Just as in equation 2, we will ...."

This isn't the world's best sentence, but it's not wrong, and it's not a Valley Girl verbal tic. "Similar to the procedure used to derive Eq. (2), we substitute $y$ in Eq. (6) to simplify the equation yielding ...$

There's a very simple way to improve the sentence. Replace "like" with "as".

As Andreas noted, the sentence is not in accordance with the usual rules of grammar...

@P.Windridge, there are not that many fixed rules of English grammar. His answer could do with a citation, and not one to Strunk and White.

@BillBarth, I would say there are no fixed rules, and we are free to use whatever constructs we want.  In poetry we may want to force a rhythm or in literature evoke a specific sensation.  You are free to write "this idea sense no make".  I think it has a clear meaning.   The "rules of thumb" in Strunk and White etc are a non-exhaustive mixture of authoritarian declarations and common usage.  Sure there's no need to stick to them.  But they are invented to ease communication.

One could easily argue the same about the the rules of logic and mathematics.  Sure, there are physical reasons to see why the rules are "right".  Also the "system" has more "coherent coverage" (thanks to a more limited scope) and it's easier to say what's "wrong".  But ultimately a lot of mathematical constructs are just convention (even ignoring that you can redefine a "continuous function" to be anything you want).

In a maths paper, the main reason I can see to not use standard grammar is laziness (and I'm as guilty as anyone!)

I would say that the sentence is wrong. "Like", used in this way, asserts a similarity between equation 2 and the subject of the sentence, "we", but we are not like equation 2. Rather, we are behaving like we did when dealing with equation 2.

Smart rules help convey your message better. Using more words for the same sentence (as in the suggested rewrite) is a downside.

"Like" is OK here, but lose the "in". The preposition meaning "similar to" is just "like", not "like in".
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/like
"As in" is equally good.

In this case, "as in" is much better. "Like" asserts that the subject of the sentence ("we") resembles equation 2, which is not the intended meaning. (Compare, e.g., "Like all competent mathematicians, we substitute y...")

I think that because "like" is used so often in casual conversation, you know, like when you're talking to a friend and she's like and then I'm like . . . and so on, I try to avoid it in more formal papers.  You can often find a substitute, "as," "such as," "as though," and so on.
Of course, there are appropriate uses, especially when "like" is being used as a preposition:  Martin was so tired that he looked like a zombie.

authors: مجلة جامعة الاندلس


text:
Is the "Journal of Advances in Mathematics" a real journal?
While looking for a journal to publish my paper I noticed that one of the people I follow on ResearchGate has published his paper in

Journal of Advances in Mathematics

I never heard of this journal before yet it has impact factor of 1.244 or at least that is what it says on the journal website.
Is this a real mathematics journal or fraud? Thanks.

Please also see Should we name names when talking about bad publishers and researchers?

A good indication that something is fishy is that the name is "Journal of ".

I've received a fair amount of spam from/about this journal, and that's all I've ever heard of it.  That alone is pretty good circumstantial evidence that the journal is bogus.

For math, here is quick way to see it is not up to snuff (assuming you have access): this journal is not even_indexed_ in MathSciNet, let alone reviewed.  Another quick check: see if it's claimed IF agrees with whats on Thompsons Reuters.  If it doesn't, or is not even listed, it's probably a scam.

The Journal of Advances in Mathematics and its publisher are mentioned in this blog post at Scholarly Open Access.  The post explains why the post's author, Jeffrey Beall, believes that the journal and its publisher are not legitimate.

Is it safe to trust all journals published by Springer or other big publishers?

I wouldn't know.  But I do have a book published by Springer that has terrible editing, so it seems that there are times their quality control is poor.

@MrDi Define "trust".

@FaheemMitha, can a journal published by springer be fake or fraud?

@MrDi I think the answer is "probably yes". There are precedents. There was a famous example of an Elsevier journal which was run as someone's feifdom. There was even a court case over it - the person who was running it didn't want to be removed. Major publishing houses are not magically immune to this kind of phenomenon. Ultimately, they are businesses, and aren't necessarily very active about stopping fraudulent behavior as long as it doesn't impact their bottom line. Though presumably they would act on complaints, if sufficiently many were received.

If you are not a professional mathematician I'm not sure why you're interested in the legitimacy of a math journal.  (That may sound elitist.  It is not intended to be: really, I don't understand why someone else would need to worry about this.)  If you are then you should be able to look at a journal's webpage and evaluate it yourself. Wondering whether a journal might be legitimate because it has a certain impact factor is a bit like measuring the Chinese emperor's nose by asking everyone in China when you are the emperor's barber.  There is no reason to look at statistical measurements done by others of absolutely uncertain fidelity when you can just see for yourself.  (But to be honest: I did notice the text about the impact factor described in o4tlulz's answer.)
I had never heard of this journal before, but 15 minutes on its webpage allowed me to come to a conclusion regarding its legitimacy.  I looked at the editorial board, the publication policy and then started skimming papers: some just to get a general sense and then a smaller number in areas of mathematics that I know relatively well.  I stopped looking when I saw this paper, which was as decisive a confirmation of the impression I had acquired as one could possibly hope for.

Well, as strange as it seems, maths journals are not read by professional mathematicians only (and physics journals are not read by etc.).

@Massimo: Reading a journal (or more practically, reading some papers in a journal) is not the same as evaluating the journal for legitimacy.  I have had the occasion to read papers in non-math journals, but I have never had the need to evaluate a non-math journal.  Note though that I am not at all saying that this occasion would not or should not arise; I am literally saying that I don't myself understand when it would occur.

It seems the link is broken.

If you follow the link of the impact factor it takes you to this page: http://cirworld.org/if and at the very end of the page you can see that
Impact factor is calculated with process of IF calculation procedure of CIR.
So the impact factor you are looking at is not the actual Thomson Reuters IF (I cannot check at the moment if it is included in the list of Journals.)
This, together with the mention in the ScholarlyOA, makes it more than suspicious. I would recommend staying away from this journal and its publisher.

Is it safe to trust all journals published by Springer or other big publishers?

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Is it possible to change something on a research paper between the period of acceptance and publishing?
My paper was accepted in peer reviewed journal last week and is about to be publishing. Last night I thought the solution makes better sense if I change the definition of one of the variables. This is a minimal change which doesn't change any of the other equations or any of the conclusions or results.
Is this possible and how can I ask If I could change this variable?
Also, if they accept does that mean that the paper has to to be reviewed again?

Are you just renaming x to y, or are you changing the value of x to something completely different? The former should be considered as a minor change. The latter us up for discussion.

When you say "about to be publishing" how late are you?  Generally it's common to make minor changes even after a paper has been accepted with no required changes, but if the journal has already typeset it and gone to press, it could be too late.  I would definitely talk to the editor.

@user3188445, they said that they will contact me in "due course" in regards with colour figures and other things...

My advice is to contact the editor of the journal and ask about your desired change. The editor may send it to one of the reviewers, or may accept the change without further review. But communication with the editor is what you need.

I will disagree with MikeV's answer.
In most cases, if the change truly is "minimal," (less than one line of text to change), then it can be "corrected" at the proof stage without further intervention. However, if there is a cascade of changes, then this may possibly involve editor intervention.

It is normal to correct things that are essentially typographical errors at the last minute (page proofs), with the usual caveats about not making typographically-big changes (ones that could change pagination). Changing the definition of a variable sounds more like a change of substance (even if it only involves changing a few words), meaning that there could be consequences for your change (it could render your paper logically inconsistent -- or not, the point is, somebody who knows the area should judge what the effect is). So I have to disagree with aeismail's disagreement: the editor should be involved, to determine whether the intellectual content has been changed.

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


text:
Should I mention the awards I won to a potential masters supervisor?

In the last year of my bachelor degree I was required to write a research paper. That research paper won the first award from about 1000 research papers submitted by students in my university.
Also, that paper got published in a top research journal in my field.
Also, in terms of my bachelor degree grades, my grades were the highest in my college when I graduated.

Should I mention these three facts when contacting a potential master’s (by research) supervisor?

I would find a way to include them in your resume/CV but not mention them in your cover "letter"/email unless your paper directly relates to your proposed graduate research.

Yes, it is ok to include your awards in contacting your potential supervisor. As long as it is relevant to your future work in Masters degree. It is ideal to include that in your CV in "Awards, recognition..." section and if it is a published paper you can include that in "List of Published Papers...". In your correspondence, it is good that you discuss your research interest, your past experience, and why you are interested to be in his/her group. Your potential supervisor will read your CV for sure.

Yes, you can (and should) mention that you already have research experience (did you also do the writing yourself?). This is an appealing skill when choosing between master students who want to do their thesis project with a senior researcher. However, I would formulate it more humbly. For example, "I already have some first experience with academic writing and conducting research, so I hope this will benefit the work for the upcoming thesis project. I attached my first manuscript to give you an idea of my previous work."


text:
Citable code snippets as gists
I have several code snippets shared as gists in GitHub. How to make them citable with a DOI?
I know whole repositories in GitHub can be made citable using Zenodo or Figshare (guide). But as I have mainly R functions as gists, I don’t want to build entire R packages to make it citable.
What are the other options available?

I'm having a hard time understanding why 'code snippets' should even be cited in the first place.

@JonCuster Presumably because they are used in a paper? "Calculation of the fitness value uses the public implementation of Crops [1]".

(of course this would require that [1] is an archival source of some type, with some expectation of remaining available for the forseeable future)

@xLeitix - In the old days, one would spend a sentence or two right there in the paper on the technique, perhaps using a bit of pseudo-code. Nowadays, it probably can go directly in the supplemental material. Particularly if it is just a few functions in R that are put together one would think the 'old' way would work just fine, but as supplemental material it would be a piece of cake. Then it is archived directly with the paper that it is used in.

@JonCuster I imagine that OP wants to make the snippets public so that someone else can cite them. They can't just publish a snippet as supplemental material as if they wrote it themselves.

Closely related: How do I get a DOI for a dataset?

While not in the field, I see two options.  Even if none of them is giving a doi, either:
A) Consider runmycode.org as a deposit for your code. It is backed for example by the French CNRS, the nation's largest body of public research, the Alfred Sloan Foundation, and Elsevier as a larger publisher. One major axis of action actually is to preserve code used in journals.  The service is for free, and all languages are permitted.  Consequently, Elsevier's Journal of Computational Science encourages authors to do so:

You can enrich your online article by uploading relevant computer code and data to the RunMyCode repository. Once published, your article on ScienceDirect will be linked to a dedicated RunMyCode companion website via the "Data for this article" application displayed next to the article, in the right hand side panel. This linkage will allow readers to access your code and data via the RunMyCode companion website. To create a companion website, please go to: http://www.runmycode.org/home

(source, accessed on June 30, 2017)
B) Secondly, lesser for the intended publication in a journal than for broader re-use of your coding by others, there is a dedicated CRAN website here to submit R packages to their servers.  Obviously, to be checked with the policies of the targeted journal.


text:
Should I wait till the completion of all possible experiments?
I am aware that this question can be answered in different ways based on the domain of research under consideration. So, you can confine the answer to the domain of machine learning.
Suppose I am working on a technique in a particular application using a model and get success. And there is a certain hope that the model can further be improved drastically. I don't want to put any of my papers on any pre-print.
In this context, I got a dilemma on the question "should I wait till complete experimentation for publishing or should I announce the success first and then improve?"
Pros and cons for waiting:
Pros:

I can write a full-fledged research paper.
No need of doing an incremental paper i.e., writing multiple small papers.

Cons:

I cannot announce the results quickly.
I cannot use my results for my academic requirements if someone publishes the same early.
Others may treat it as a salami-slicing publication.

Note: Complete experimentation or full-fledged refers to developing a fine-tuned model. But the experimentation showing the domination of the (model based on) technique is already established.

The best people to comment on this are your colleagues or your advisor(if any).
A paper gets published in a reputed journal only when it has publishable material. So unless and until you show your work to your peers(or your coauthors), you are not sure if the output of the experiment is publishable or not. Also it depends on where you would like to publish your paper. If you would like to publish your paper in a high IF journal, and there is significant room for improvement of your results, there is a high chance that the reviewers may reject your paper.
I would advise you to put your work online from where it will show that you were the first to publish it. Then work hard and improve the results and then publish an excellent research paper in a very good journal.
I say so because since you have developed the ideas first, it would be far more easier for you to develop the model as your peers will have to understand the work first and it will surely take time.
During this period you can build on your idea and produce some excellent publishable results.

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


text:
What can one infer if more number of reviewers were assigned compared to the standard?
If we submit a research paper to a journal in Elsevier, then the status will be 'with editor' for some time. Later, the editor invites reviewers. The number of reviewers depends on the manuscript and in general 3 according to Elsiver. After inviting the reviewers, the status changes to 'under review'.

How many reviewers are assigned to a manuscript?
The number of reviewers often varies by manuscript type. Most papers
receive feedback from three peer reviewers. Shorter papers, such as
brief reports or current issues, may receive feedback from two peer
reviewers. Some journal submissions such as commentaries and book
reviews are reviewed by AJPM editors and do not undergo external peer
review

When Elsevier provides the tracking link, it mentions a field Review invitations sent. If it says more reviewers than the recommended then what can one infer from that?
Suppose my paper is assigned six reviewers then can I need to infer that my paper is complex enough that need more reviwers?

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/80391/why-should-a-paper-be-reviewed-by-more-than-ten-reviewers

@AnonymousPhysicist I asked for the interpretation of '3+', which seems to be absent in the answers. The question you quoted does not explicitly deals with this.

Consider not worrying about details of the review process that are beyond your control. It was easier back when one mailed off a large envelope and had no feedback until an envelope came back to you…

@Anyon If we are uncertain about the number, it is recommended to keep 'n+'. But if the editor sends a review request to a particular number of reviewers, then what is the need to tell '>=n' instead of the exact number? So, there might be some information like the review process will be started if at least 'n' reviewers accept and the remaining can be extra or optional!

@hanugm Why does any of this matter to you, the author, before you receive the decision and reviews back? What value is there in expending cognitive effort to learn the exact meaning of things that you can do nothing about?

@BryanKrause I'm just curious to know as I need to spend my entire life in academia.

But why ever need to know, now or in 5 or 10 or 30 years? Doesn't seem like something anyone ever needs to know. Even the editor doesn't really need to know. Certainly after some time the software will change and won't say the same thing anyways.

@BryanKrause oh! I thought that there may be some semantics associated with this. But now, it seems to be just a random notation after your comments.

@hanugm It seems likely that the message is intentionally set up to say n+ instead of a precise number because, in the view of the journal, the precise number should not matter to authors. It is possible that n is the threshold number of reports required to be completed before they take action on the manuscript, but there is insufficient information to conclude that from what you've written. From an author's point of view, there isn't much to do except waiting. If the editor manages to get n reports from n invitations, or if 2n invitations are required is out of the author's control.

@hanugm As for your suggestion that the review process will be started only if at least n reviewers accept, I think that is unlikely. Such a system is bound to cause delays due to issues like "well, I was available when I accepted the invitation to review, but since you decided to wait three weeks for two more referees to accept I am no longer able to produce the review within the normal time frame". In all journals I've reviewed for, I've been able to access the manuscript either right away or directly after accepting the invitation to review.

The editor can send extra invitations. If 3 are required, it is not entirely clear that 3 out of X will answer, some will reject. I caution it's generally bad form to send huge volumes of requests, but an occasional exceedence is not terrible (for example, if you need 2 reviewers, asking 3 at the start strikes me as very reasonable). It is not uncommon for reviewers to reject an invitation (depending on journal prestige), so one would not want to "waste" acceptances or tarnish the journal's reputation by putting massive burdens on authors to respond to N+ reviewers.
I note this is particularly common as far as the filing system that tracks this information is concerned.  If reviewers do not properly select "reject" then it may be the case that there invitation is still 'outstanding' though it is clear that they will not review.

I don't think you can conclude anything without actually asking (and you may not get an answer). It depend on the paper and where it fits in the general literature at the time it is submitted.
I suspect that if you were to provide a paper yielding a definite conclusion to the Riemann Hypothesis that it would be sent to something like 20 or more reviewers. Probably more.
Something like this actually happened not long ago, though I don't remember the details. It was, like Riemann's Hypothesis, a long standing and important question. Perhaps someone still active in math can give a reference.

Wasn't that case a sham review process where the majority of reviewers had no qualifications to review that paper? https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/51965/39100

@BryanKrause, not the case I'm thinking of, anyway. An important result from an important mathematician with a very complex proof. I don't actually know if it has been settled. And it wasn't related to the Riemann Hypothesis IIRC.

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


text:
How to respond to uncertainties of students in the following context
Suppose I am the only instructor for the Algorithms and data structures course in my institute. Before the start of the course, say during the first lecture, I provide the students with the textbooks to be referred to. The course does not have any lab. It is a theory course.
Most of the students who enrolled in my course refer to those textbooks and get clarifications for their uncertainties and also get solutions for problems from the standard textbooks I suggested, during the tutorial sessions. I am comfortable with this.
But, there are some students who use to participate actively in coding competitions and hence tend to ask questions from those sites. For example, If I complete a lecture on stacks, they visit sites such as gfg, HackerEarth, CodeChef, etc., and ask for algorithms for their complex queries. I am unsure about how to handle those questions during the tutorial sessions. It seems like an extra burden to me as those students can push the limits of tutorial sessions from reference books to advanced queries.
I saw some professors not entertaining those queries by saying "do it yourself". While some others try to use their teaching assistants for such queries without themselves involved. I can't agree with the latter as the teaching assistants also find it difficult.
I want to know how to handle such queries that try to push the organized course structure to a broader one.

What do you mean? They ask you questions that they saw on those sites? If those questions are different from the ones you set as homework, and more difficult, I think you should probably refuse to answer them, unless you have spare time.

Even for the questions from the textbook, you should not be giving solutions but rather helping the students find solutions themselves.

I'm not sure I understand the question correctly. Generally speaking, it is a good thing if students want to learn more than what is taught in the course. Could you clarify what precisely your concern is? That it takes time away from the actual contents of the course to answer those question during the course? That it might confuse students with less advanced understanding? That the questions might exceed the instructor's knowledge of the field? That answering the questions, e.g., during office hours will require too much additional time from the instructor?

@AlexanderWoo: Hmm, this depends a bit on the cultural context, I think. In most undergraduate math course I've taken or given, it was common to provide solutions after the students had handed-in their homework. In such a context, refusing to do this is a fail-safe way to make many students upset very quickly. I'm quite sure about this as I tried it a few times (because I actually agree with you that giving solutions is not a particularly good way to help students learn).

@JochenGlueck To be precise, the last one: That the questions might exceed the instructor's knowledge of the field? That answering the questions, e.g., during office hours will require too much additional time from the instructor

@hanugm: Thanks for your response! You wrote "the last one", but quoted two different reasons (which are, at least to some extent, independent of each other). So do I understand correctly that you are concerned about both points?

@JochenGlueck It exceeds my knowledge in the sense that I didn't prepare to handle them and hence need extra time to solve and teach them.

I agree that pushing it off to TAs isn't the solution. Letting them work it out themselves is probably fine if the course is sufficiently rigorous that the good students (also) get a challenge.
But, an option you might consider is to have them form a formal study group to work together on things. Be open to questions from the group after they have made good attempts on hard problems. One way to do that is to schedule a half hour or so, say per week, to work with them, give them context and answer questions. This might be part of normal office hours, perhaps. This assumes reasonable scale, of course. But it also decouples such questions from class time.
A virtual group might even work. Zoom with them on occasion. Invite others, perhaps.

I think you should ask yourself whether answering such questions would be beneficial for some of the other students in the class apart from the one who asked it.
If this is the case then working on these kind of questions is useful for your class. Presumably this will involve situations that are more like real life applications of the algorithms and less like text book examples which gives some new perspectives and insights.
If on the other hand you think this question only interests the student who asked it this already gives you a reason to not answer this in class. If the students are really into it and you are willing to spend some extra time you could organize a separate side project for this but this would be distinct from the course you are teaching.

Be clear : If you think answering those questions isn't part of your job , then include a line e.g.

Please don't send us questions that aren't course work or topics discussed in lecture .

in the course syllabus  . So everything is clear , otherwise you may embarrass and discourage students when you reject them individually later .
Q&A platforms : Redirect them to StackOverflow , or set up your platform e.g. with piazza where students discuss among themselves , you could join their discussion whenever you like  .
Charge them extra $ : Read university policy and your contract first , maybe also consult your department chair . Then you may give them your private email and hint that you also happen to be a private tutor ...

I would be surprised to know that there is a university policy that allows you to get money from your students for "extra tutoring". It seems very problematic; it is a very slippery slope.

-1. This answer is extraordinarily cynical. Seriously, if one cares so little about one's students' enthusiasm for learning new things that one's standard reaction to questions beyond the syllabus is "That's none of my business, unless you pay me extra $ for it", then one should seriously reconsider one's motivation for working in teaching at all.


text:
Is it okay to add a sympathy message or dedication to a victims of recent natural disaster to an academic acknowledgment?
So in my home country there has been a recent devastating natural disaster, I would like to add a message in the acknowledgments  to my current paper before submitting it regarding this. Would it be okay?

You would have to check the journal style guide. While theses often include personal acknowledgements, papers are usually restricted to contribution, collaboration and funding.

One issue is that it is unlikely that such a statement will not be particularly topical by the time the paper is accepted and finally published...

Is your paper relevant to Turkiye/earthquakes/disaster response? Or Syria.

I don't remember reading any paper with such dedication. So, it would be very unusual.
Well, unless the paper is related to the recent earthquake somehow.

@ZizyArcher Perhaps if the paper is generally related -- if it's about earthquakes, or building construction, or disaster preparedness, or international cooperation.

Yes, you can do that in the initial submission. Not everyone would agree, but the times aren't normal either. If it is a problem for a journal, according to their style guide and how rigidly they want to enforce it, they will tell you that and you can adjust. It is unlikely that it would affect the overall judgement of your work by reviewers or editors. You just might need to be flexible if you get pushback.
Note that very few papers get published exactly as first submitted.


text:
Asking my Professor to create a Google Account to submit a Letter of Recommendation for me
I requested a recommendation letter to a professor and he agreed to write one for me. However, the application  (a Google form) to which he needed to upload the letter required a Google account to sign in. He didn't have an account, so he emailed me what he should do, so I kindly told him that he needed to create one, detailing the steps he needed to take. This is when my professor emailed me back rather harshly, asking why he couldn't just submit using just his faculty email. I had to then email the program, and I was told to ask my professor to send the letter directly to the correspondent.
I understand that this is not that big of an issue, but I would like to know whether it was wrongful of me to have asked my professor to create the Google account. How can I be more careful in the future so as to prevent negative responses?

Maybe he is very privacy conscious and doesn't want or need google in his life.

I find it very weird. Usually institutions ask for exactly the opposite, an institutional email to "prove" you really are the reference.

Could you clarify? The requirement to submit with a gmail address is because of the form submission system used by the university you're applying to, right? It's not something that you invented on your own.

Using a Google form for graduate admissions sounds extremely low budget. If you need a GMail account, have the professor write the letter and I'll copy it over into a Google form for you and submit it! Very cheap way to handle admissions.

Many organisations are very arrogant in requiring everyone they interact with to go through a process designed for their own convenience rather than for the convenience of the other party, and your professor is entirely justified in complaining about this arrogance. (Until recently, we kept a fax machine in the office for the one occasion a year that some customer required us to communicate by fax.) Almost certainly, he's not angry with you, only with the other party; but you're the one on whom he can vent his frustration.

I hope you do realize, that "Google account" does not equal to "GMail account"? One can have a Google account for email in any service.

@n0rd : I hope you do realize, that "Google account" can equal "GMail account".  I happily signed onto getting a free phone number with the "Google Voice" service.  Later I found out that Google was referring to my sign-in as TOOGAM@GMail.com but I never did sign up for GMail.  I checked and, low and behold, I've been receiving E-Mail at that address.  Even if Google offers some services separate, I certainly don't trust that a company will necessarily keep things separate forever, and certainly not Google which, already, historically didn't (for me).

when i had this case(i think for some college in virginia) i just created a google account(profname_applicationyear_mycollegename@gmail.com) and sent it to the professor along with a request for recommendation letter and login details and explaining the submission requirement. professor submitted the letter w/o any complaint.

My best guess, and just a guess, is that he was frustrated with the system that was required, rather than with you. It is probably a mistake for any admissions system to require an email address from a particular provider (unless it was for a job at Google, I suppose).
I don't think you made an error, but if you want to ease the waters, go see him and apologize for the hassle of it all. It would probably be a mistake to just forget about it, but also a mistake to obsess over it.
Such systems infuriate me, also. Such extra accounts are always a security/privacy issue.

I agree with "It is probably a mistake for any admissions system ..."; in fact, my first reaction when reading the question was that no admissions system would require a Google account and that this professor was probably misunderstanding something on the web site.

Asked for a recommendation and being happy with the student, I am happy to write it. I am not happy, however, to start having a fight with the submission system. Think this way: the recommendation is written after hours, late at night, it's done - then, I have to spend another 20 minutes or more after midnight to merely get it onto whatever system somebody happens to use; worse, if I need to register - why should I be blanketed with dozens of registrations which are only ever used once?

Some systems now send a login with the reference communication and the personal password to the email of the professor - at least had that happen to me... Avoids multiple accounts etc...

It it obviously not apparent to many that "creating a Google account" is not just two minutes of your time and some mouse clicks, but it is a binding contract with Google, consisting of a dozen pages of legalese that you agree to. As an employee of my institute, I would not even be allowed to conclude such a contract without approval from legal.

@AndreasBlass Unfortunately, universities having similar items are definitely a thing. This is not the silliest thing I've seen, not just for graduate admissions but also for hiring. Not too long ago, I encountered a math position at a college where due to HR requirements all documents (including rec letters) had to be sent as Word files and they explicitly would not accept any PDFs. Curiously, the real variation in ridiculousness seems to be more common among smaller schools than larger ones.

@JoshuaZ That's not all that curious though. As far as I can tell. small organizations are generally less likely to have the expertise or desire to follow standard (or best) practices, receive less feedback about their systems, and are more likely to have idiosyncratic policies dictated by individuals. Of course, the flipside is that they're less likely to be hamstrung by heavy bureaucracy and legal complications.

I'd add to this discussion that if admissions are handled at the program level, it may indeed be a very small group of individuals (very small meaning likely 1 person), who also has other responsibilities, handling the admissions process, rather than a university-wide system.

Note that the OP refers to "a Google account" while this answer currently speaks of "an email address from a particular provider", i.e., interprets this as a GMail requirement, when they're not the same thing. E.g., I have a Google account but not Google email. Recommend cleaning/editing that sentence.

@Dubu even if that weren't the case and such an account was no more of an issue than a new folder directory the issue then is that it becomes difficult for the professor to prove he sent the letter for university records and also protect the student by ensuring that the organization it was submitted to can't turn around and claim forgery (student made account). This is especially an issue if the professor misread the instructions and believed they misread the directions and therefore wanted to triple check that the communication would look official and not cause problems for the student.

It is an unfortunate situation, and I think you misread it a bit.  While your recommender didn't come right out and say it, when he emailed you to say that the submission site required a google account, it was a pretty clear message saying "the site requires a google account, and this is not acceptable to me".
You can assume that either he has an account and doesn't care to use it for this purpose, for some reason or other, or that he doesn't have an account and doesn't care to create one.  Your correct next step would have been your last step  -- to contact the organization and ask for an alternative.

It is wrong to see this as 'not too big an issue'. Your asking your professor to do some work (which he is expecting), but you are asking him to go about it in a very constrained way. Ideally, you would try to provide a 'low friction' route to get this letter of recommendation, and that would never require him to sign up for another service.
It is just about OK for a provider to require you to register with their system of choice, since you are free to work with them or to seek another course/employer. This is a bargain between you and them, and their choice about how flexible they want to be.
Where it goes wrong is for you to extend the agreement between you and your professor into complying with the 3rd party constraints.
The potential triviality of acquiring a social media account in order to fulfill an obligation does not factor into the reasonableness of making the demand. Many organisations have strict social media policies, and for audit reasons should be insisting that formal communications use formal channels.
The most significant flaw with the application process is you could have trivially forged your reference, so you should also be thinking now about how genuine the process you're engaged in really is.

Unless I'm mistaken, the requirement for a GMail account comes from the institution the asker applied to. The asker has no control over that: it's not their fault.

@DavidRicherby The student placed the burden on the professor.  It is clearly their fault.  If the institution in question had required a passport or a DNA sample from the professor, would it have been appropriate for the student to ask the professor to provide them?

@JonSG No, the university placed the burden on the professor; it is their fault. All the asker did was request a letter of recommendation, which is a completely normal request. It's not even clear that the asker knew that the interface for submitting LORs was going to require a Google account. We are not discussing hypothetical cases where passports or DNA samples have been requested.

My point is that once it became clear that there was more to the request than providing a reference and following push back from the professor, the correct course of action was to withdraw the request.  Offing to help create an account the professor did not want was the burden.

@JonSG It isn't the student's fault that letters were requested this way, and suggesting that they should withdraw the request is tantamount to saying they should withdraw their application to the program. OP explained to the professor what was needed, the professor balked (which is reasonable, as others have pointed out), OP brought it back to the program which said an email was fine, OP relayed that to the professor. OP didn't do anything wrong.

@DavidRicherby: He doesn't need a gmail account, only a google account.  my Google account ends in "...@yahoo.com". Works just fine.

@MooingDuck OK, Google account. It makes no difference at all to anything I've said.

@BryanKrause Professor balked at creation of an account. Perhaps they actively don't want it, maybe they already have one and don't want to share it with a stranger.  Perhaps there are institution restrictions. We don't know. What is clear is that the professor balked at the requirement to create an account.  The OP erred in suggesting it was no big deal and offering to help create one. That is the issue. I'm glad there was a workaround but failing that workaround, yes the OP should withdraw the request.  If that results in a withdraw of the application that would be up to the OP.

@JonSG I think you are reading something in the OP that wasn't there. The professor said they did not have an account and asked what to do, at which point OP told them how to make an account. Then the professor made clear they did not want to make an account, at which point OP found a workaround. I don't know what world you live in where professors are such fragile beings that once they are inconvenienced they can never be asked for a recommendation.

@JonSG More likely the professor didn't have one so they asked for clarification. When the student said how to create one they realized that wasn't a very secure way to go about sending letters (easily forged) so for the student's best interest they responded (with shock not anger) asking if there was any way to use their faculty email (which would prove they were the one to submit the letter). The student may have failed to read between the lines and realize they could figure out how to make an account, but they likely understood it was simple miscommunication and not lip from the student.

@JonSG I highly doubt that the professor took offense to having to create a google account if they didn't have one. If it were absolutely the only possible way to send a letter of recommendation they'd probably still do it and then later make a note that that institution has issues. This is all assuming the professor didn't simply misread some instructions they found on the site, which I am suspecting was the case here.

I don't think it was some awful error.  Like you have wounded the man.
I DO think in general that you should think about how people can help you and to make it convenient for them.  And that what to you as the one who is benefiting (or as a possibly more tech savvy person) is normal may not be for them.  Probably you should have asked the program ahead of asking the person how to handle people who did not want to create a login (and given the option ahead of time).
The only reason I am belaboring this is it is a bit of a general learning.  Applies for customers in the business world, bosses approving expenses, etc. etc.  The more you can make it easy in "hassle factor", the better.  Make it easy for people to give you what you want!  Maybe it shouldn't be this way and only the real big issues should be considered.  But that's not how things work.

Unless I'm mistaken, the requirement for a GMail account comes from the institution the asker applied to. The asker has no control over that: it's not their fault.

I get that.  I got it before.  But it turned out they WILL take the letter without making a new email account.  Something that could have been researched ahead of time.  I definitely would have checked if it was a customer signing a $$$ contract--was there some way around the logistics.

It's not clear that the asker even knew ahead of time that their recommenders would need GMail accounts.

Lots of thing aren't 100% clear.  My point remains on researching to make as sure as possible things are low friction.

I think there is a certain courtesy required when asking for letters of recommendation but it is also part of our professional responsibility to provide references for our students. It is not reasonable for a student to have to anticipate every chafing event in advance.

It's not reasonable to anticipate every issue.  It is reasonable to make an effort to do so.  The specifics of the situation will of course determine which happened.  However, it is general good advice to make some reasonable attempt to make things smooth.

I agree that it is our responsibility to provide appropriate references. I do not believe that responsibility extends to account creation or any membership or affiliation with an organization.

@JonSG: The profesor doesn't need any affiliation with an organization, merely a Google account. I use my yahoo email to log into Google, and to StackExchange.

Lots of people don't like signing up for these things, linking emails, etc.  I hate blogs with required disqus or Facebook login for commenting.  It's even why I guest comment versus registering here (and this is explicitly allowed so don't fuss at me).  At least a site requiring a login is one thing since it is their dojo.  But some program collecting letters?  Why should professors (not applicants) sign up for that?

@guest but how would the student know this is the case? The professor was asked to write letter of recommendation to an institution. The professor went to the form and found it was inconvenient for them. The student presumably contacted the institution saying that the professor did not like this setup. There would have been no reason for the student to contact ahead of time. There is no reason to presume the professor would have an issue with the google account requirement or that one did not already exist. Many institutions use gmail for their system and a google account comes with that.

The student might have one by default because of the university's system and so the professor would presumably have one as well. Regardless, there's no reason to do research to determine whether or not someone would have an issue with the submission system. More likely the issue was not inconvenience but the professor feeling that such a system could easily allow for forgery and therefore didn't trust the validity of the system and wanted to make sure everything looked appropriate to the recipient.

All I'm saying is to research things ahead of time. We don't know for sure that he couldn't have found it OR that he could have found it.  But in general, try to make things easy.  If you are every trying to get a customer, you will understand this (and talk them through dealing with the credit check and setting up their account with your finance organization).

Not this is the ordinary form of a LoR.
The ordinary form is a text, which is formulated and subscribed by him.
The important thing for the profs is, that the LoR is an official statement for him. It strength is given by that the prof - at least, in theory - pays with his own reputation, if the statements there wouldn't be true.
This is why profs don't really like to give LoRs. If someone employs you because of his LoR, and then you don't fulfill the expectations, it will decrease also the credibility of the prof. This is why LoRs are so hard to earn.

Your last paragraph seems inaccurate, based on my own experience, and your first two sentences are kind of confusing English.


text:
I am reviewing a very bad paper - do I have to be nice?
I received a paper to review that I can only describe as very bad. Not only are there structural issues that anyone that has previously published a paper in a respectable journal should know to avoid (like providing sources for images that are clearly not the authors' own) and instances of (self) plagiarism. Most of the papers of the authors themselves that are cited in the paper stem from one very questionable journal.
Much worse, though, is the fact that the paper is (IMHO) religous agenda badly disguised as a scientific paper: the authors claim miracles to be the cause of effects they are describing, they selectively dismiss results that dispute their theories and claim in the last paragraph that they have thus proven that Jesus has risen from the grave.
I am honestly really shocked that this was not desk rejected but made it to peer review, but here we are. I now wonder if it is OK to write a review along the lines of "Your paper is bad and you should feel bad" because that really is my honest opinion? Or should I rather skip the review report altogether and just write to the editor that I think this should not be published?

Did you receive it on April 1st?

@TonyK I wish, but no.

Comments have been moved to chat; please do not continue the discussion here. Before posting a comment below this one, please review the purposes of comments. Comments that do not request clarification or suggest improvements usually belong as an answer, on [meta], or in [chat]. Comments continuing discussion may be removed.

"Do I have to be nice?" is a bit imprecise;  What kind of answer would accurately answer your question? You don't have to be even minimally polite to anyone in life, but there might be consequences of varying degree. Are you asking about those?

Strange question. If you do not want to review a paper, don't. Being nasty won't correct that, in fact, if you are nasty, the Editor may not consider your review and may not forward it to the authors. If you cannot be objective and neutral in tone, then you cannot communicate effectively, and you are then upsetting yourself and possibly others to no effect other than harming your own reputation, which should not be chosen as an option.

No, you don't have to be nice. You have to be professional, but this does not always equate with being nice. Generally, there are three kinds of papers that I get to review.

Very good papers. I enjoy them. Very rare. Minor revision, and review is short.
Mediocre to good papers. Lots of work, perhaps good idea, but then something is lacking. Major revision or reject, review has to be detailed to sort good and bad aspects out.
Bad paper. Don't enjoy them, but not a lot of work. Reject, and just a few arguments why it was rejected. Reviewer does not need to list ALL the reasons why. It is up to author to reach certain scientific paper minimum, and it is not reviewer's job to teach authors how to write papers properly.

Of course, everyone expects that papers (3) would be desk rejected, but this is not always possible (someone mentioned religious aspect of the paper, which may frighten the editor into getting reviewer's opinion). Of course, with (3) also goes sometimes the explanation to the editor why the paper is bad, and since it is not visible by authors you can be as nasty as you want there. Just don't send this to the authors my mistake.

Very good papers: I do write lengthy reviews for them sometimes. It helps counteract ill-informed, and -argued short rejection reviews where clearly one has not read or understood the papers.

The authors may be friends/colleagues/head of dept of the editor. And they are for sure human persons (although they may try very hard to hide this fact :) ). No need to be nasty (cfr. https://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/nasty#:~:text=From%20Longman%20Dictionary%20of%20Contemporary,nasty%20streak%20in%20her%20character ).

Just don't send this to the authors by mistake ... he he he. Can't help but laugh. But hey, very important.

I don't see anything in here that I would consider "not-nice" -- i.e., anything that's mutually exclusive with being polite.

@Philip, think harsh love, telling someone their paper is bad because of a list of reasons could be viewed as not-nice depending on the person, but it can be done in a polite way.

@NAMcMahon the OP says they want to tell the authors "your paper is bad,  and you should feel bad". I don't interpret this answer as giving moral permission for this.

''Of course, with (3) also goes sometimes the explanation to the editor why the paper is bad, and since it is not visible by authors you can be as nasty as you want there. Just don't send this to the authors my mistake''.  You do realise authors can obtain these comments if they wish?

I think there is still room for being nice.

@CaptainEmacs And what a (rare) pleasure that is. :D

@Tom That may differ, but at least where I've reviewed til now, there was space to enter comments specifically only for the editors eyes. Can you elaborate how the author should get access to those?

@Karl Data Protection Act or something like that?  If they ask to see the comments which were only for the editors to try and find out if anything strange was said which led to the rejection, I think they can get access to them legally.

@Tom Very unlikely. By submitting your manuscript, you agree to the procedure set up by the journal. How would you convince a judge to seize that private communication? You'd have to construct a criminal case.

@Tom I never heard about authors being able to view confidential communication directly, let alone getting reviewers' identity. As an editor, I would fight this tooth and nail to prevent this and would consider resigning if somebody would overrule me. Yes, you can be nasty in the comments to the editor, 1) it defuses the anger so the reply to authors can be nicer 2) to educate the editor about the concept of "desk reject" (I am a bit sarcastic here).

@CaptainEmacs I agree about trying to help the authors this way, but my time is limited...

''it defuses the anger so the reply to authors can be nicer'' That's a really sad reason for being nasty in editor comments, it's like saying I'll kick the dog and take out my anger on it so that I can be nicer to people.  If a person gets this angry about a bad paper, they shouldn't be a referee in the first place.

@Tom I am editor too. Editor who does not use desk reject instrument should be properly schooled. It really damages the scientific community because reviewers are incredibly scarce commodity right now. Editors should not waste reviewers time on obviously bad papers.

@xmp125a Sure. I do not always do that, but sometimes my enthusiasm gets the better of me. And then it turns out the lengthy review was indeed needed, so that's nice.

I once was sent by mistake the comments to the editors of one of the reviewers. It was along the lines "this is absolute crap, I am so annoyed about how crappy this work is that I can't even start mentioning why", and that was the whole review (no comments to the authors at all). The other two reviewers thought more like mediocre-to-good paper (one major and one minor revision). The one calling our paper crap was being criticized i our paper and we wonder if the editor did slip on purpouse...

Why waste your time writing a lengthy review?   Just note to the editor that the paper should have been desk rejected.  Identify one or two fundamental issues --these could be high level.
There are many authors who have no idea what research is nor the resources to carry out high quality research.   There is no point 'scolding' them.

Review the paper, but not the person who wrote it.

@VitaminE From what I can gather from their citations, at least one of the authors is a professor at a EU university - they should have both ressources and an idea how science works.

Some people, even professors, are so wrapped up in their religious identity that their "belief" colors everything they do. They can't even leave it alone and be objective otherwise, but have a need to proselytize at every opportunity. I've known such people, though not many. They are unlikely to ever change and won't be swayed by any argument, even when their behavior is negatively affecting their career.

@Sursula In any case, really point out to the editor that the paper should have been desk rejected. Too many times these days some editors fail in their responsibilities.

@Sursula Unless it's spelled out, you don't know in what manner the professor at an EU university contributed to the paper. Perhaps they provided general guidance and the other authors included them as a courtesy. Perhaps the professor hasn't even read the paper.

@shoover is that better or worse, though?

@shoover Or perhaps their inclusion is simply fraudulent.

@shoover I suppose you could use something like this strategy: if they stand by the paper, they'll be appropriately insulted, if their name was added surreptitiously they'll be appropriately informed (to be clear, I'm not actually suggesting this, and a reviewer should not communicate to the authors except through an editor).

@shoover If they haven't read the paper, they should not be listed as author (and should not sign off on being listed as such). Authorship isn't just about credit, it implies taking responsibility for at least some of the content.

+1, an actual review I've seen ended with "I have many minor comments. But, I think the points mentioned above are enough to reject the paper" -- which could also be applicable here. I would also definitely write in the confidential to editor section that the paper should have been desk rejected, since it prods them to pay more attention.

@Sursula quite frequently the professor is only mentioned as a courtesy because he's the department head or otherwise the boss of the actual author.

You do not have to be nice, nor do you have to be nasty.
Just be concise, and everyone's life will be easier, even the authors'  (it is up to them to blame the short review on their approach or on being "offended" by reviewers' suggestions to the editor).

If you do not think a paper is publishable, then reject it (it is part of the assignment to filter out the bad ones). If it is really bad, you should be able to form a short, objective critique of the manuscript in your answer, and you do not need to be rude.
If the manuscript cannot support its results with arguments, the manuscript is so poorly written/structured that is is a problem to follow its argument, if there are several big logical mistakes etc these are well defined, objective reasons while you reject a paper.

If the paper is truly as you describe it, I would just write the editor who asked me to review it and tell them "This should be desk rejected." I would still write and formally submit a review, consisting of only one page with major comments. Then I'd send my review off in a day. But no, no need to be unkind.

If it's really very bad you don't need to write a whole dissertation about how horrible it is. The editor will probably see it. Just clearly, succinctly and objectively state the biggest problems and it will get rejected. Don't waste your life on bad papers, instead worry about good papers.

The reason there's an option for reject is to allow reviewers to filter out bad papers.
As reviewers, we are duty bound to engage the manuscript beyond

'who' the author(s) is/are
what our 'personal' feeling is
what our individual subjective view is

Rather, we ought to engage

the academic value of the manuscript
the contribution to knowledge (this can be a lengthy debate in itself)
the academic content
the validity, reliability, rigour
the manuscript vis-a-vis its methodological approach (philosophy, methods) and not our fixated methodology.
Say a manuscript is philosophically underpinned by critical realism and follow pluralism (multimethods) instead of quantitative or mixed-methods.
Are we to castigate the authors or shoot down the paper, bearing in mind the methodological choice of the manuscript and rationale.
the manuscript objectively (be objective and put our research 'bias' aside for a moment) That's a matter for another day.

Of course, there're other metrics of review. I'm just listing some.
By and large, when a manuscript has scaled the editorial gatekeeping, we ought to focus on the review and contribute our quota to knowledge. We need not become a second layer editor. Let's review
So for a bad paper, how bad is bad. Philosophically speaking, isn't bad, in this context of post editor, subjective?
I'll just list the defects from a academic review standpoint. I need not list them all: just some highlights that'll

show that the manuscript is off-track (bad as in bad)
give indication of defects that might prompt/assist in making a reasonable author  in (re)channelling their research endeavour/energy.
Be objective and succinct.

PS: Some bad papers have gone up to become frontiers
[Note that in saying we must fix our eyes on the manuscript and get on with the review, I am not saying we must not write that note to the editor. We can and we should. That's why, as reviewers, we're empowered with that "confidential note to the editor". Nonetheless, let's get on with the review and contribute to our discipline]

even the academic value shouldn't really be a factor. If the paper doesn't really add much but is well written there's no reason to call it a bad paper, it may merely be addressing a very narrow niche or be intended as an addition to a prior, larger work or a prelude to a following larger work.

Given the topic of the paper, it's entirely possible that the editor did not feel comfortable with a desk reject because of (or in order to avoid the appearance of) religious bias.
As such, I would say that your best service to the editor, the journal, the scientific community at large, and maybe even the authors themselves, is to compose a review along the lines of what you posted in the question.
As long as you keep your comments to the content and references of the paper and refrain from ad hominem (and from what I read here, this is well within your capabilities), I would say that that's your duty.

You should be professional and respectful.  Someone spent time writing the article and thinking about it (although it may be very bad) and there is never any justification for being nasty, apathetic, moody or cantankerous, regardless of age or power level in the academic system.
Just give a short, professional explanation of what you think the main problems are and why it should be rejected, then send that to the editor and move on.

Reading between the lines, it sounds like your motive for being anything other than nice might be somehow to "talk sense" to the authors or at least to take an abstract stand by decrying behavior you consider unacademic.
If that really is your motive, you'll get closer to your goal by being polite but firm. If you veer off into ad hominems or screeds about religion in public life, you could be reinforcing their preconception that "Christians can't get a fair hearing in academia," even as unwarranted as that view is here. Imagine them telling everyone at their church about that one time they tried submitting to a journal in your field and got berated. Imagine some young congregant, a future superstar in your discipline, listening to them and becoming dissuaded from academic research. Maybe that doesn't matter to you, but maybe it does.
TBH your question doesn't make sense to me. If you're asking for someone's permission to not be nice, it implies you want to not be nice. ("You should feel bad"? I know that's not literal, but it still says a lot.) If you can explain why you would prefer not to be nice, you can probably answer yourself better than we can.

Academia is, thankfully, not the Stack Exchange network: you don't have to pretend to be nice when it's unwarranted. Papers that completely fail the most basic tests of academic rigour are not just a waste of your valuable time, they show a fundamental incompetence and disrespect for intellectual honesty, and ultimately demonstrate that the author(s) of said paper need a wake-up call.
A simple rejection is unlikely to trigger that wake-up call, but a harshly-worded one might.

Intuiting from the OP, I'd put it at about 90% probability that the authors know exactly what they're doing and are trying to prove a point. Perhaps I'm wrong and it's actually 10%. Regardless, if that is their motive, your strategy is to give them exactly what they are seeking. (See also findings that presenting facts only further entrenches political partisans' errors.) OTOH if they're sincere and unaware, it's hard to see how a "harshly-worded" response accomplishes anything that "polite-but-firm" wouldn't.

Proving what point, exactly? That claptrap isn't accepted in academia?

I now wonder if it is OK to write a review along the lines of "Your paper is bad and you should feel bad" because that really is my honest opinion?

You certainly shouldn't write that, even if it is your honest opinion.  As is pointed out in other answers, many people have no real idea what it takes to create a proper scholarly paper, and if they lack the skills to do this then it ought not be a cause for them to feel bad about themselves.  As you point out, this should have been rejected at desk review.  If you wish to respond with a substantive review for the authors (as opposed to just going back to the editor and telling them to reject), keep it professional and comment in a sober and constructive manner about the deficiencies of the paper that prevent it from being acceptable.  Do not make extraneous comments about the author or their (presumed) motivation, or assert that they should feel bad about the quality of the work.

and claim in the last paragraph that they have thus proven that Jesus has risen from the grave.

The optimistic view is that the author is (apparently) trying to be academically rigorous.  If you reject it out of hand, it will reinforce the writer's belief that the peer review process is nothing but a gatekeeper for approved (secular, in this case) ideas.
You should explicitly state why everything up to the conclusion is bad.  The only thing I'd mention about the conclusion is that no conclusion can be drawn from such a flawed set of "facts".
EDITS:

A commenter thinks that I advocate debating with the author.  But since peer reviewers don't meet the author, and the author doesn't know who reviewed it, there can't be a debate.
Another commenter does think that the only gates which exist are those of methodologically and theoretically sound science.  That is manifestly not true, even though academics would like to believe it so.

It's not necessarily worth your time to argue with those that cannot be convinced otherwise, particularly those who value faith in the face of criticism and label such efforts as the work of evil. Sure, if you want to/enjoy that debate, go ahead, but I wouldn't say it's required academic service.

@BryanKrause arguments are two-sides.  Statements are one-sides.

It doesn't matter whether or not the reviewer reinforces some flawed beliefs of the writer. What matters is that the reviewer holds up scientific standards and, yes, acts as "gatekeeper for approved" (i.e. methodologically and theoretically sound) science.

@henning you'd like to believe that methodologically and theoretically sound science are the only gates which exist.  They are not.

@RonJohn That is not a correct statement about the meaning of the word argue/argument. I refer to the time spent writing what you call a "statement" and I argue it is likely not worth the reviewer's time.

@BryanKrause you can take the time to advance the cause of truth and rationalism, or you can sit in an ivory tower and act smug towards religious weirdos.  One is the right thing to do, and the other is not.

Are you sure you mean "rationalism"? In my world, rationalism is certainly not the primary guiding principle and I don't know why I'd be pressed to advocate it. I do not think it is smug to recognize when someone is arguing from an incompatible belief system and that no argument is possible to sway them.


text:
What is the reasoning behind putting table and figures at the very end of submitted papers?
Sometimes papers I receive for review will not have the tables and figures placed in the text body where the are referenced, but instead at the very end after the bibliography. I personally find that extremly irritating, as I have to scroll back and forth from the spot where a table or figure is mentioned in the text to the page where they are actually displayed. This is not only inconvenient, but makes it also more difficult to assess the completeness and accuracy of data displayed, the overall quality of the figures and images etc.
As a reviewer, I really cannot find any positive aspect for this structure, but sure enough it is not only accepted at some journals, but sometimes even actively encouraged. Why is this the case?

Bad editorial management systems, that's what ...

At some point the journal has to typeset it for real, and does want them separate so a professional can do the proper job.

@JonCuster That I understand, but this could totally be done when I final version after the review process is handed in

So who puts in and then properly pulls out all the stuff? An accepted paper needs the separated bits, so start with that goal in mind. That it is an issue for some people’s work flow is pretty irrelevant. I just put all that stuff in a separate window.

@JonCuster An easy solution is to put tables and figures into the text where the belong-ish, and send them as well as separate files (also to not have problems with resolution when figures are put in the text only). And many, many journals have word or latex templates these days where you are supposed to place the figures and tables.

Look, I get it - this is a somewhat archaic practice. Changing a journal's workflow requires time and money and introduces risk into the process, so they don't do it. Just like a dozen other bureaucratic systems you interact with daily.

Just a minor comment: If you're reading papers digitally and all the figures/tables are at the end, just open the document in 2 different PDF viewer windows one way or another. One of them is your reading version, the other is scrolled to the figures/tables so you can click back and forth.

@Fe2O3 publishing scientific articles is one of the most lucrative businesses there is, with much of the work done by unpaid volunteers (e.g. the review). I truly don't think the "cost" of making the review process smoother would really impact the already thousands of dollars you already have to pay at some journals to get published. Elsevier had some 40% profit margins in the past, the could live with 39 and have one more editor on their payroll.

This is a hangover from earlier times, when graphical material would likely need to be produced and printed using different systems to the main text. Thus, the format is designed to support manual collation of all the pieces.
Some people argue that it is useful for review purposes to have the figures separate from the main text, so that you can easily lay them out (in printed form) and refer to them as you read the manuscript. Personally, I have never been convinced that this is as big an advantage as the advocates claim.

Who even still reads the printed-out version of the manuscript?

I'll chime in as someone who sometimes prints out papers. When you actually care about what they're saying (e.g. you're trying to implement a system they propose but don't implement), it can be really nice to print out all the figures on paper for reference while you read the prose. Sadly, I've never seen a modern paper collect its figures the way OP is asking about.

@WolfgangBangerth I tend to print papers I need to read carefully, including papers I'm reviewing or proofreading. Being able to use a red pen somehow makes it easier to be thorough :) But I would staple the pages together anyway for ease of transportation, so this laying out the figures argument doesn't really appeal to me.

The modern version of laying it out printed would possibly be viewing on two monitors. But I still find it clunky.


text:
What incentive does an institution have to hire expensive research staff instead of having PhD students fill all those roles?
I don't understand why a research institution (that awards PhDs) would employ (expensive) full-time research officers. Why couldn't those jobs be done by a group of government-funded PhD students instead?  (The PhD students seem to be free or at least less expensive to the institution.)
No funding? Simple, just hire more PhD students! They can do whatever the institute requires them to do, such as publishing X number of papers. They are smart but cheap.

Because you are only a PhD student if you expect to receive a degree after the end of your meagerly paid graduate studies. Most organizations can't award PhDs, so how exactly would this work? Organizations that can award PhDs are contingent upon the loosely defined criterion of excellence, so if they end up delivering a lot of crap PhDs, they run out of funding. The only way to ensure your research meets certain quality criteria is to, shockingly, have a bunch of good researchers which do cost money. Also, comparing an average PhD student to a more senior researcher doesn't fly ...

EDIT: I'm talking about institutions that can indeed award a phd title. I've noticed them paying for full-time research officer when the same job can also be done by a phd student for free.

The question is unclear: are you speaking about private research organizations? Usually, when a private organization outsource a specific research project to a public organization/university, they do pay for it. The contract usually specifies the conditions, which probably will include the hiring of a PhD/post-doc to work on the project. There are also problems of ownership of the results: public institutions like to publish their findings in journals, whereas private company may want to keep them (industrial secret)

You do understand that not all PhD students actually get  a PhD. Not everyone can do research.

@Alexandros Then the institution can just get a new one. There'll always be a replacement.

Yes, but research projects and grants have deadlines. Missing one year to determine one is not suitable is not an option.

A lot of things implied in this question are incorrect or incomplete. You seem to think research is like building a wall somebody ordered and you need people to lay bricks. It's not the case. Research happens when there is a combination of interest, ideas, skills and resources. Nothing bad really happens if it's not done...

Besides some universities have an explicit mandate from the government to provide an education. In this case research has to serve that purpose too. Finally the career prospects of someone who does research in a university without a PhD and not pursuing such a title are bad. So you will struggle to find people actually willing to do it on the long term.

@CapeCode I actually meant giving out a phd project. Phd title exchanged for free labor.

"Phd title exchanged for free labor". NO, NO and NO. The fact that you worked or studied hard does not justify a PhD. Only when you research produced multiple publishable results then you deserve a PhD. Free labor<> PhD

Oh, I see. Well would you work 4-5 years for free? I wouldn't.

@CapeCode Not exactly free, there is scholarship, phd title, papers and networking opportunities. It's like a deal, the instutution has someone to do the job without paying much for it.

@StudentT I'm a research officer with a PhD. I was brought on board on two different projects because I had what current PhD students working on said projects lacked, which was the ability to conceptualise the data. This is a skill that is developed over time, and a PhD program works to develop this. While the PhDs who worked on the project did a decent job, there are still a number of conceptual issues that I have to fix, including reanalysing the data sets because their analysis was just not up to scratch.

Not uncomfortable, just puzzeled. Besides in many European countries, a PhD student receives a salary that is not significantly lower than the one of research staff.

A PhD is where you learn to do research to a doctoral standard.
A research job is where you apply what you've learnt.
These things are different things. They are not the same thing.
It's like why you see a qualified doctor instead of an undergraduate studying medicine.

The main outcome of a PhD program are PhD students themselves — skilled independent researchers, ready to embark on the journey to the world of open problems and research tasks. Other outcomes are assumed, but not guaranteed.

Timeliness of delivery. PhD programs are notoriously known to last months and years beyond the anticipated submission date. Research contracts in industry usually have very strict deadlines, and the delays will ruin the company's profile.
Quality of research output. The level of PhD research vary, and sadly, the quality vary as well. By design, PhD projects should be run single-handedly, and therefore the outcome depends crucially on skills and motivation of a PhD student. There is not safety net or shared responsibilities, which brings a lot of human factor uncertainty when it comes to the quality of output. Note also that the writing styles are diverse, and most PhD students have no expertise in  writing according to strict industry standards.
Closeness between research question and research answer. Being a long-time project, PhD study can deteriorate substantially from the original course, especially if something exciting is revealed in the preliminary analysis. Many PhD students end up writing very good theses, but answering a very different question, that was originally set in front of them. This is good for academia, and not necessarily so good for the industry that needs their question answered.

I think the first item somehow gets invalidated by the mere fact that in some fields and places, PhD candidates very typically are funded by projects that are done in cooperation with external partners, and whose timelines are in no way synchronized with the personal education schedule of the PhD candidate. This is compensated for by equally invalidating one of the OP's claims, however, as the remark "No funding? Simple, just hire more phd students!" does not make any sense in that situation because the respective PhD candidates get an employee's salary similar to everyone else.

Why do software companies hire senior developers, when they can get smart hard working people fresh from college at a fraction of the price? Because experience matters, and there are things that a senior can do, that a team of ten juniors can't.
The same happens in research. My former group hired a postdoc from a completely different discipline. When he arrived he lacked a lot of basic knowledge from his future field; and yet, he was getting productive results in a week. A PhD student with the right background would have likely taken a month to get to that level.
And finally, there is work that a research assistant does that does not merit a PhD. For example, maintaining in working conditions a critical machine in a lab can require a lot of dedication and familiarity, so it is worth paying someone to make sure it doesn't break. Since it is not novel research, it hardly contributes towards a PhD, and you don't want to train a new person to do the job every four years.

Junior developers are cheaper but not free. Phd candidates are free, therefore they post no risk to your group.

@StudentT PhDs are generally not free, because only a minority gets a full grant, and this only happens if their proposal is good, which in turn means the lab where they want to study should be reliable. Labs without senior researchers tend to not produce stellar research for obvious reasons.

@StudentT even if you don't pay them, you have to provide them with office and lab space, supervision (professor time), and other training expenses, like conferences and workshops off site. Not to say they sometimes make mistakes and break stuff more often than experienced people.

@StudentT If it helps, you can replace the first sentence with "Why do software companies hire developers instead of getting unpaid interns to do all the work?"

To add to the answers above, there is a term institutes are starting to refer to as "PhD syndrome". This has to do with continuity of PhD projects, especially once the students have graduated. Yes, PhD students are "free" labour to work on certain projects, but what happens more often than not, is that once the 3-4 year period is done, these students move on and do not leave behind maintenance and contingency plans. Project handovers are highly complex and require extra "downtime" for research and training; companies will have to account for this.
I took over a biogas project run by an institute and driven by MSc. students in a community. Within months the system had collapsed, with comments from the community such as " we can not take this project seriously as the project faces keep changing and we feel like we are being treated like a lab". But maybe within research institutes with limited external stakeholders, the use of PhD students may be more sustainable.

From the way the question is stated you seem not to understand how important is the role of supervisor for a Ph'D.
With very few exceptions, it is the supervisor who chooses the project/problem for the student with the following goals in mind (among other things):

try to make sure that the problem/project can be completed by a student.
try to make sure that the timeline for the project can be completed within a reasonable period.
make sure that the student learns the needed results/techniques/tools needed for the project
provide guidance whenever when the project hits an impasse.

A Ph'D student most often cannot chose his project for himself/herself/itself. If he cannot do that, how can he chose one for another student?
Also, how can a student evaluate how hard and how long will take for a project, a project which often needs tools from areas he is unfamiliar with? This often is a skill gained after years and years of research, and even then we are wrong from time to time.
Besides working on a project, Ph'D is also a venue for gaining knowledge. This is usually of two types: basic knowledge in the mainstream of that (sub)field, and specialized knowledge for that project. Ph'D students usually know where/how to find the first type, but they most likely need help with the second. How can a Ph'D student recommend another where to gain knowledge he is unfamiliar with? Most likely, the "guiding student" will have no idea what "his student" needs to learn.
Last but not least, when a project hits a problem, it is often a subtle problem: either something most PhD students cannot solve or often one where the PhD student has to learn something he is not familiar with yet... How can then he help another student in this situation?
If supervising a Ph'D would be a punching card job, where you just go to work for 8 hours, and do repetitive tasks than your suggestion would be fine. But it is not.
Ask yourself the following question: how confident would you be in your surgeon, if he is a resident which is learning on the job from another resident?

Although in some departments, it is indeed the case that "With very few exceptions, it is the supervisor who chooses the project/problem for the student", it's also the case that in some other departments, the norm is for the students to find the research question, with the rare exception being that it is imposed by supervisors. And in some other departments, both routes are common, and neither is the exception.

@EnergyNumbers: I agree, and let's not forget that it also happens that the project is indeed determined externally (possibly by the supervisor, or maybe more frequently by external grants and project descriptions written by the supervisor and previous doctoral candidates), while the doctoral candidate has to find suitable research questions that are somehow connected with the project (i.e. a mixture of both routes, which are thus by no means mutually exclusive).

Aside from the "right person for the right job" answers that are perfectly appropriate, it is not responsible behavior for a department to continuously bring in students to carry out such work.
If you take every faculty member doing research, you might think of their students as being replicants of the faculty.  The job market for academic researchers at faculty levels simply can't grow to support a model where Ph.D. trainees can do all the work.  Universities are slowly shifting the model to help students into (what we academicians call) the "alternative" job market, but this is a process we're all learning about, and we're not there yet.
A current area of focus is on the next level of training -- post docs.  NIH, a huge funding mechanism for life science research, is strongly encouraging mechanisms to limit the eternal post-doc.  In response, my uni has CAPPED post doc tenures (I can't remember if its five or six years).  This applies to the TOTAL post-doc experience, so you can't post-doc somewhere else for five years, and then come here and do another five.  So, if a PI wants to keep a post-doc around after they're ineligible, they have to come up with a staff scientist position, with higher pay and more in the way of a benefits package.


text:
Why no oral exam for phd in Australia?
Oral examination for PhD is common in many countries.
However, most (all?) Australian PhD degrees don't require oral examination. Any particular reason?

Which kind of oral examination do you have in mind? A comprehensive final examination? The thesis defense?

@MassimoOrtolano from my experience, there is no thesis defense in Australia. So I guess that's what the question is about. And I've always wondered why.

Background: In Australia, PhD theses are examined by at least two external examiners; they must be more than an arms length away from the student or supervisors; e.g., no previous collaboration or have worked recently at the same university. Critically, they must be internationally recognized experts in the student's subject matter.  The examiner reports are then deliberated upon by a committee with members drawn from across the university; this means the award of a degree is not done at the school or faculty level.
The examiners serve as independent auditors of the quality of an Australian PhD thesis.  They certify/vouch that an Australian thesis is at an international level.  They do this by presenting a report that justifies that a thesis contains 'significant contributions that extend the state-of-the-art'.
To achieve the said claim for an oral exam, Australian universities will need to either hold video conferences or fly examiners in.  The former is an admin nightmare; e.g., different time zones, getting all involved people to attend/agree, etc.  The latter is too expense.    Now imagine doing the former or latter for hundreds of theses every year.
Having said that, at my university, oral defense is an option that can be requested by an examiner.  This is only for very exceptional cases and rarely granted.

A ph.d. from Australia here. The above answer is comprehensive. What I observed while working at many universities in the USA, since my ph.d., the final thesis defense procedure seems to be leaving ways the student can get away with a bad thesis. No need to be peer-reviewed by independent experts in the thesis area, and the thesis committee made of advisor(s) and his/her friends across the university and, rarely, 1-2 friends from outside the university, makes me nervous. Though most thesis coming out of US universities I have seen are still great.

In most of the well known North American schools an independent authority inside the university evaluates the credentials of external examiners on whether they are eligible for examining a thesis, this includes, ensuring no collaboration with the student and the supervisors for last 10 years. PhD without defense is a highly dubious process where one can pass a PhD even not writing their thesis, because they are not asked critical questions that ensures that it is entirely their work. Therefore, australian PhDs are usually not of same standard of North American PhDs.