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How can Springer and Wiley put a 12 month embargo on posting post-review revisions to the arXiv and similar?
This question was inspired by the recent question on posting to Academia.edu.
The general copyright policy for Springer, as listed on SHERPA/RoMEO, is that one can post a pre-review version to the arXiv but one must wait a year after publication before posting an post-review copy to any open repository (and one can never post the final publisher's copy):

This seems to precluding posting a post-review update to the arXiv until a year after the journal article is published. Wiley appears to have a similar policy.
To me this policy seems crazy, because it means that if you actually obey it, you cannot post a revised version to the arXiv for over a year -- and thus you are obliged to leave uncorrected any mistakes that are uncovered during the review process for a protracted period of time. That's bad scholarship at best. I don't see how anyone could comply with this policy in good faith.
It also raises a major issue for peer review. Why one should review for free for a journal that won't let the author share the results of your review with the community in as timely a fashion as possible?
Moreover, I don't see how this policy could possibly be enforceable, due to the timing of the copyright transfer agreement. The author does not transfer the copyright until after submitting the final revised version to the publisher. I am no lawyer, but it seems to me that the publisher has no copyright claim over the post-revision version of the manuscript until the author has actually returned the signed copyright transfer agreement. As best as I can tell, this leaves a generous time window during which the author can freely submit a post-review version of the manuscript to the arXiv without committing any kind of copyright violation whatsoever. The only option open to the publisher would be to refuse to publish the paper in retaliation -- which they are extremely unlikely to do.
So my question is simply this: Am I missing something here? Is there any way that such a policy could be legally enforceable if one posts the post-review version prior to signing the copyright transfer agreement?

I think this one realy needs someone who studied law, and IANAL! But it would be resonable to asume that when you submit you have the intention to sign over copyright and should thus act accordingly

I actually think that this question should be closed. This is half-rant ("Springer is so bad for science") and half a question for legal advice, for which SE isn't the right place. I am only not voting to close because I really like EnergyNumber's answer.

Why, archiving a version post-print is not good enough? There you have corrected all mistakes, you may include additional proofs and graphs omitted for space restrictions (e.g., in CS many algorithmic conferences have 12 single pages limit which is too small) and have all the benefits of peer-review. You also may use a different template of your liking. This is better than good enough for one year.

Before getting too excited, have you verified that the  SHERPA/RoMEO description really does represent Springer's policies?  For one thing, it may not be the same for all Springer journals.  I published a paper in one of their journals a couple years ago and don't recall anything about a post-print embargo. (Of course it's possible that I am misremembering or the policy has changed).

@NateEldredge Unfortunately, in my field at least the copyright transfer agreement is not available from the journal until after the article is accepted. They write "Upon acceptance of your article you will receive a link to the special Author Query Application at Springer’s web page where you can sign the Copyright Transfer Statement online". This is part of my problem: when I submit my paper, how can I morally agree to be bound to a contract I haven't seen yet? That said, google can find a general Springer agreement online but it does include a 12 month post-print embargo.

That is actually a serious problem for good-faith dealing. In the past I have asked editors for copyright transfer forms and was able to get a copy only once -- usually, editors don't have such things on hand. You basically have to gamble that the agreement will be acceptable to you once you get it. You've raised an important but separate issue regarding good-faith dealings in the period between submission and copyright assignment.

Well, you aren't agreeing to be bound by it until you actually agree to it.  Once the paper is accepted and they send you the form, if you decide you don't like it, you could refuse to sign it and withdraw the paper.  Or you could try to negotiate for terms that you like better.  As user6726 suggests, you might also be able to ask for a copy - the managing editor might be a better person to ask than one of the scientific editors.

@NateEldredge, I agree with you: I'm not bound by it until I see it, and even then I have every right to negotiate. But the authors of 2 of the 3 answers thus far seem to feel otherwise. "The route you've identified, of someone deliberately breaching an embargo that they know they are going to sign up to, would be an act of bad faith that would demonstrate that they are untrustworthy." and " it you sign (or intend to sign) the copyright transfer form, you engage not to do certain activities, incl. putting the paper online." This makes no sense if I can't see the agreement beforehand.

The answer to the question in the title is "by putting that in the agreement that contributors must sign". The answer to the question at the end of the text amounts to legal advice. While I sympathise with asker's sentiment, I do not think that this question is a good fit for SE.

The copyright agreement does not require that you leave your mistakes uncorrected, it simply requires you to make corrections in a particular way. The simplest method, if you discover mistakes in the published version, is to distribute some note of correction that specifically addresses your original error, which can be done without violating the copyright agreement. The copyright agreement may allow you to post post-review versions of the paper, since the agreement may contain a clause that "Prior versions of the Contribution published on non-commercial pre-print servers like ArXiv/CoRR and HAL can remain on these servers and/or can be updated with Author’s accepted version". There is always a clause where the author warranties that the work has not been previously published (which includes online distribution via ArXiv), and this is why they need to expressly say that you are also permitted to post the submitted version.
There are two notions of "enforceability" relevant to your agreement with the publisher. The stronger one involves litigation, where the publisher sues you for damages (when you breach a contract). You should hire a Swiss lawyer to get advice on whether Springer is likely to prevail in court. The other notion is "having negative consequences". A simple negative consequence would be that Springer refuses to publish any more of your work, if you flagrantly violate the terms of the agreement. Whether or not your breach involves copyright violation depends on whether or not you give them a license to publish, versus transfer copyright. (In interpreting the Lecture Notes in CS agreement, you would want to consult the Swiss attorney for a precise interpretation of granting and assigning the exclusive, sole right to copy).
Your comment about the review process is tangential, and suggests that you are unaware of review protocol, You ask "Why one should review for free for a journal that won't let the author share the results of your review with the community in as timely a fashion as possible". Reviews are not only anonymous, but also privileged communication between the reviewer and the editor (often -- though not always -- shared verbatim with the author). So you should not distribute reviewer comments, unless that is expressly permitted by the journal.

In general this is an excellent answer. While the copyright transfer agreement isn't available from the journal website until after acceptance (see my comment above to @NateEldridge), the language you quote from the generic Springer copyright form is very important. It may indeed mean that despite the 12 month post-print embargo, one may update an already-posted manuscript immediately. My only quibble is that I think you misread my comment about sharing the review: of course I can't share the review, but the author should be able to make use of its content and share that use immediately.

Then I misunderstood your point. I assume the author is required by the editor to make use of (address) reviewer comments, so that the accepted manuscript reflects those comments. The review is something supplied by the publisher (indirectly) -- it's something of value that they add to the paper, and it makes the published paper more valuable. While I favor people being able to post final versions, that undercuts the market for the journal version, so I understand the publisher's interest.

Springer (copyright transfer form) actually says (my emphasis):
"Authors may self-archive the author’s accepted manuscript of their articles on their own websites. Authors may also deposit this version of the article in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later. He/ she may not use the publisher's version (the final article), which is posted on SpringerLink and other Springer websites, for the purpose of self-archiving or deposit. Furthermore, the author may only post his/her version provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website.  The link must be provided by inserting the DOI number of the article in the following sentence: “The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/[insert DOI]”."
The only restrictions are on the accepted version and the published version. Pre-prints and revisions prior to acceptance are not precluded. However, links to the Springer website/doi should be provided on publication. See:
http://www.springer.com/gp/open-access/authors-rights/self-archiving-policy/2124

Note that it is untrue to say that: "you are obliged to leave uncorrected any mistakes that are uncovered during the review process for a protracted period of time". The corrected version appears in the journal. Just update the arxiv paper with a link to the journal paper, stating that that is the corrected version. And you can update the preprint server with corrections anyway: you just can't breach your publisher's copyright agreement. If necessary, find a second way to phrase the correction, or if that's too onerous, add a note saying that corrections are forthcoming in {this journal}. But all this seems by-the-by, as no one's obliging you to use this publisher: I'm sure any number of open-access publishers will be happy to take your cash in exchange for very few restrictions.
You ask whether this agreement is legally enforceable. It doesn't matter. When someone breaches the agreement they have made with a publisher, they've shown that they are untrustworthy. The route you've identified, of someone deliberately breaching an embargo that they know they are going to sign up to, would be an act of bad faith that would demonstrate that they are untrustworthy.
Academia is built on trust relationships. So if anyone was considering reneging on an agreement, they should first give careful consideration to all their other current agreements and all their future possible agreements, with media, academia, voluntary sector, industry, and government.
Would a publisher pull a paper if the embargo had been breached? Well, they're completely within their moral and legal rights to do so. And consider the business case: if the one thing that they were going to get out of the deal was exclusive distribution of the paper for a year, and someone took that one thing away, there's nothing left for them in the deal.
Note that there are lots of publishing models out there. If you don't like one, and your funder doesn't oblige you to use it, then don't use it. There's a market there: it's pointless to to try to coerce everyone to follow one publishing model, regardless of how fashionable or ideologically pure that publishing model is.

"Academia is built on trust relationships." That's an interesting claim to make about academia in the 21st century. Can you support it?  Or did you just mean that all professions are built to some extent on trust relationships?

In any case, journal publishers aren't "academia". They are separate commercial corporations that make money by selling their products to academics.

+1. The danger is less one of the publisher pulling the paper if you breach embargo. The danger is rather one of the publisher suing you for damages, assuming that the freely available version cost them X paid downloads at Y$ each. This can add up. I have never heard of a publisher doing this, but they would probably be within their rights to do so.

With regard to your first paragraph: the period of time includes the period in between receiving the referee report in which you learn about the mistakes (not necessarily the final referee report) and the time in which the paper is published online.  For instance see this paper that I published with Springer: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11083-014-9323-y#page-1 It says "Received 4 August 2012 / Accepted 19 February 2014 / published online 27 March 2014".  I received the first referee report in 2013.  So indeed the gap can be protracted.

I was confused by the big green tick too at first, but reading more carefully the green tick seems to mean "Yes...12 months after publication."  Hence the OP's outrage...

@PeteL.Clark The embargo only applies to the publisher's draft, though, doesn't it? Surely any author can find more than one way to phrase a correction - one for Springer, one for arxiv?

@Energy: The "author's post-print" refers to the draft (presumably any draft, if there is more than one) the author prepares after incorporating the referee's comments.  If you're suggesting that one should take this postprint, go over all the changes that were made from the preprint, and change them again to slightly different language to put them on the arxiv...Really?  I don't see how that could be in anyone's best interest.  Also,  the policy allows the author to post the postprint on their own personal webpage, so it seems crazy for the journal to object to posting it on the arxiv.

@PeteL.Clark does it really seem crazy? Is the publisher's business model really that hard to understand? Isn't as simple as: they want to be the sole publisher for a year, and the authors agree that. In exchange, the authors get a platform for their work supported by professional editorial staff.

"[D]oes it really seem crazy?" Absolutely yes.  They are the sole publisher in the sense that they are the only ones who are making money hand over fist for the hard work of the authors and referees.  They make their money millions of dollars at a time, not from individual downloads.  If they actually thought that their profits would suffer, they would not allow authors to post the papers on their own webpage.  They are worried specifically about preprint servers like the arxiv, which provide 90% of the services they have traditionally provided at no cost.

@PeteL.Clark yes, you and Federico have made it clear that really this is all about disgust at profitable enterprise. If arxiv does 90% of what you want at someone else's expense, and that 90% is enough for you, then stop publishing in journals. If you want to turn your back on all products of profitable enterprise, journals are the very least of your troubles.

The argument "You can just publish elsewhere" is either naive or slyly cynical.  From the academic side we think in terms of journals, not publishers.  I published the paper I linked to above because Order is the best journal in order theory.  The way they treated my paper was so poor that I complained about it, but I would certainly consider publishing there again.  I recently submitted a paper to the journal of the French Academy of the Sciences, which now happens to be owned by Elsevier.  I am not going to turn my back on a two-hundred year old journal for this reason.

@PeteL.Clark my argument is neither naive nor sly nor cynical. You've made my point for me: you have a market, and you are willing to pay the price. And having done the deal, you now want to complain about the price, even though you are willing to pay it.

I suppose you know that many prominent mathematicians, from Tim Gowers on down, are disgusted with the behavior of the large publishing companies.  Painting this behavior as disgust in profitable enterprise is ridiculous: we are complaining about specific profitable enterprises and their extremely dishonorable practices.  In regards to your advice to stop publishing in journals: no deal.  We are entitled to push back in other ways.  In my opinion we are morally obligated to.  If you don't feel strongly about making academic work freely available to everyone immediately: sorry, but I do.

@PeteL.Clark I've never heard of Tim Gowers: I turned my back on academic maths decades ago. Still, publishing is a market, and as PLOS and others have shown, the barriers to entry are low or absent, so if you and Tim want to do something, just do it - instigate a new publisher (you don't have to become a publisher, just the instigator of one: think of it as a money/mouth congruity). And please don't make assumptions about what I do or don't feel strongly about.

If you are at all interested in relations between academia and the publishing companies, you should learn about Gowers and what he is doing.  I don't see where I made any assumptions about you, but I am distressed by the way you are coming down on the wrong side of this debate.  You write: "Would a publisher pull a paper if the embargo had been breached? Well, they're completely within their moral and legal rights to do so."   They are within their legal rights not to publish a paper at any time, so that's a red herring.  Whether they have a moral right is certainly not clear.

However, you didn't give the real answer: In practice, of course none of the major international publishing companies would refuse to publish a paper for this reason. You also write: "And consider the business case: if the one thing that they were going to get out of the deal was exclusive distribution of the paper for a year, and someone took that one thing away, there's nothing left for them in the deal." What's left is the millions of dollars of profit that they get from their bundled subscriptions.

Could this be moved to chat?

When someone breaches the agreement they have made with a publisher, they've shown that they are untrustworthy. — [citation needed]  I, for one, don't think that the condition is even remotely enforceable, for the simple reason that authors can legally post post-reviewed versions of their papers to the ArXiv before signing the copyright agreement, and therefore before the publisher has any legal rights to the paper at all.

I'll give a more general answer to your question:
"Copyright", or rather, the criminalization of making copies, has been a very problematic social institution since its inception. Quoting Wikipedia:

The origin of copyright law in most European countries lies in efforts by the church and governments to regulate and control the output of printers Before the invention of the printing press, a writing, once created, could only be physically multiplied by the highly laborious and error-prone process of manual copying by scribes... Printing allowed for multiple exact copies of a work, leading to a more rapid and widespread circulation of ideas and information (see print culture). Pope Alexander VI issued a bull in 1501 against the unlicensed printing of books and in 1559 the Index Expurgatorius, or List of Prohibited Books, was issued for the first time.

later on Copyright was tied to the commodification of written text in the nascent European Capitalism (I'll refrain from more quoting; see here and here about the Statute of Anne). The point (in my opinion) is that copyright is about reinforcement of oppressive and/or exploitative social power held by the privileged few. So it's not just this policy that seems crazy, it's that Copyright is fundamentally "crazy" - especially when it concerns cultural and scientific works.
We should really strive to break the yoke of publishers like Springer and Elsevier - and whatever nation-state/international support they have - so that they cannot restrict our socially-useful work to more easily line their pockets. They should not have exclusive rights of any kind on our work, and would merely be providing the service of publishing, distribution and online storage/access. No more than that.
This answer is not the right place to list and compare possible courses of action to achieve this, but you have indeed hinted at one: We should begin to break their one-sided agreements en masse, so that it would be useless to possibly go after individual breaches, or single-out "copyright dissidents" by refusing to publish their work etc. Or at the single conference/journal-issue level - if all authors refuse to sign the copyright transfers and the organizers/editors threaten to leave Elsevier/Springer if they don't accept an oral, implied, good-faith common-sense agreement with authors - they can forget about that journal or conference.

Yes you are missing something: it you sign (or intend to sign) the copyright transfer form, you engage not to do certain activities, incl. putting the paper online.
If you have already done this, then you cannot sign the form - plain and simple, as you can never comply with what you are signing; you have already broken the rules.
There is nothing you can do about this, and to many people it is not a problem. Noone forces you to publish with Springer or the others, but if you choose to do so, you effectively give them the right to make money by selling the pdf or journal for 1 year, and of course they ask you not to give it for free. If you dont like that, you can pay then the open-access fee 500-1000$ and you remove all these restrictions. Or you just put the paper on Archiv and forget about Springer. Or you make it into a pamphlet and sell it youself if you don't agree that Springer should make money on your back.

At least in mathematics, if you accidentally violated a contract that you did not yet sign, and you want to scrupulously ensure that you are complying with your contract, and the website offers no way to remove the revised version, you might apologize to the publisher and ask for an exception to be made. Publishers like their golden eggs and so they generally try to keep us geese happy.

I believe some people have found success in negotiating changes in the agreement before signing it.

@Nate: That's a great comment.  Perhaps there should be some standard, modified version of the (e.g.) Springer agreement endorsed by academic societies and available online.

@PeteL.Clark I recently wrangled from Springer a 'license to publish' rather than a copyright transfer. It helped that my article was released by me under CC0 (functionally equivalent to public domain - I wasn't getting paid for the article anyway...). See http://pastebin.com/FyDTdksz for text.

I once tried to explain this to Springer, they wouldn't listen.

Without looking at the legal situation:
If you work together with the journal/reviewers on making the paper better, the journal contributed by using their reputation to find a reviewer and the reviewers contributed by using their time. The result (and thus the copyright) is not your result any more but the result of a common work, so you need to keep to the intended terms of this common work. (If you don't like the terms of working together, then don't work together).

authors: ฐานิต เรืองกาญจนสิริ


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Is it good courtesy to reply and express gratitude to an editor's long letter of rejection?
I think the editor's generic decision letter will be about one page or less. However, I received an editor's decision letter that is longer than two pages, single-space, with small fonts and small margins. The character count is more than some typical referee's letters (is this usual?). The editor also says that he carefully read the paper, so I assume he invested a lot of time.
In this scenario, I appreciate his efforts in commenting on my paper, so I think it is good courtesy to express my gratitude to him and possibly ask him if he is willing to discuss more on this topic1. I am not sure if my reply will be considered normal or unusual.

1Just a short question on how to organize/further improve the paper.

I've never met a person who rejects a 'thank you' when I acknowledge their work.  If was the editor, I would appreciate your email, especially if you mentioned the amount of time invested in drafting the letter.

Gratitude, yes. Asking for more time… really depends on how you phrase it…

This doesn't usually happen, so you will stand out, but I don't know if it'll be in a good way or bad way.

@Prof.SantaClaus just to be clear, mentioning the time the editor invested in drafting the letter.

If it really is just a short question, why not immediately ask that question instead of asking if he is willing to discuss more?

You can ask.  I was rejected by a journal once by one of the editors and was able to have an email conversation with him where he talked about general advice on writing articles and how best to get the article published, it was eventually published in a journal.

@Tom If the editor contributed a lot, does that deem a coauthorship sometimes?

It's fine to express gratitude with a brief thank you, calling out the specific thing you are thanking for (the time taken to write a detailed response), and mentioning the benefit to you (for example, that it will greatly improve your next submission).
If you include an ask for more of their time to discuss as part of your "thank you", it likely won't come across as a show of appreciation but rather as part of begging for something you want. If the thing you want to express is true gratitude, leave any additional requests out of it. It's not the editor's job to help you improve your paper - take what they've given you and use it. Consult with your colleagues and mentors about what to do with the paper if you need more advice.

I agree; it sounds like the editor went out of their way to be helpful, and probably already went as far out of their way as they were willing to go. They would not likely have held much back. Just fyi after your answer the OP added some clarification about what they're considering asking about.

Absolutely.  The fact that the editor has been so detailed suggests to me that they have told you everything they feel they could say.  To me, asking them to invest further time in you, by asking them more questions, seems very rude.

You are correct in assuming the editor's response is usually short. The fact that the editor clogged the space they had to provide you a feedback shows that they are willing to help and they went way farther than one would expect.
So a thank you is the minimum.
Regarding asking them additional feedback, the editor went already very far with such a dense feedback.
And the feedback is on a rejected paper. It looks like your paper needs a lot of work, given the rejection and the long response from the editor. Asking a short question on how to organize/further improve the paper is most likely useless, since this question is to be solved after carefully considering how to react to the rejection (resubmit here? change journal? do additional research?).
The editor showed they are willing to help a lot, so you may expect they will answer the short question. However, it would be a waste of time if you ask a short question. Even if they will feel the need of answering your short question, you will be wasting your and someone else time.

You are definitely right. The editor already said whatever he has in the long letter.

@HighGPA one good rejection is worth ten easily accepted papers.

Hi Earl I'll take it as an encouragement for positive mindset? Or do you actually mean it

A good rejection helps you in focusing on what is new and letting go whatever you thought was relevant but it turns out is not relevant to the research community. A good rejection sharpens your message and your goals.

Sometimes the polite thing to do is not necessarily the usual thing to do, or precisely not the usual thing to do.
Generally speaking, it is a classic scholar tradition of thanking for criticism not only because of politeness, but also because of how modern scientific institutions work: you acknowledge the value of your peers' input in your work and it being embedded in a greater system.
Going on a bit of a tangent here, but I personally always state my name when asking questions in an academic setting, sometimes even against the rules of a conference, as it stems from my belief that it is proper etiquette to by default let the person you ask questions to know who is asking them (at least in the context of formal setting). My point here is that you always operate on more than one level of etiquette: even if it's not defined in editor-author relationship, it is embedded in a broader system, hence nobody would accuse you of insanity if you thanked for it (which I personally strongly encourage).

Anyone might explain the downvote?

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Should I tell my advisor my fiance left me?
The question: is it appropriate or helpful to bring up life-impacting personal problems with your academic advisor?
I know that details are typically required here, but for obvious reasons I'm being concise. Assume anything negative is being extremely understated.
My fiance left me, but before they did they made sure to do everything possible to make it as painful as it could be. All-in-all it was quite sudden, dramatic, and has affected the quality of my work. For the last two weeks, I have done the bare minimum to keep up the appearance of work (attended some presentations, made a couple slides, and whatnot).
My advisor is genuinely a nice person and has gone out of their way to help students before with health and housing problems, but I'm not sure this is the kind of problem that should be brought up in an academic environment. However, the impact on my ability to do research is great and I've even considered leaving the university.

I'm genuinely sorry that you're going through something so painful and difficult. Regarding its impact on your work, hopefully this is encouraging: if something impacted one of my students for several weeks, I would consider that barely a hiccup compared to their overall degree program. It's when it starts getting to be months that it feels like a serious academic issue.

Some context would be useful for a more precise assessment of your options. If you're in a modern city, same gender and similar age as your supervisor, it's one thing, if you're in some remote place and your supervisor is the old-fashioned religious type, quite another.

It's not the question you asked. But, the best revenge is to have a beautiful life after they've gone. Keep the possibility of Good Things in mind. It helps.

Completely depends on how well you get on with them.

It's unquestionably wise to tell them "I just had a major shock in my personal life, and I may be struggling with that for a while. I don't want it to impact our project, but if I'm distracted, or if I need to take some time off, please make allowances. I'll try to give you some warning if I do need to go away for a while." Help them make space for you to recover.

I do think it's okay to bring it up with your advisor particularly if you trust them and if you are bringing it up to see if your advisor can help you with finding resources to help you during this tough time.
I used to be an advisor and students would share what was going on with them and if they needed resources. Know that if you share something that is out of your academic advisor's area of expertise they may refer you to a different resource on campus. If a student disclosed something to me that was more appropriate for someone in Student Health Services to discuss that I'd let the student know that. I'd often help them with setting up an appointment or even walking them over during walk-in hours if the student wasn't familiar with where the center was located or wanted someone they trusted to walk over to a new office with them.
Depending on your degree/program and where you are at in the semester your academic advisor might be able to help you in terms of extensions, if the drop deadline hasn't passed and you need to lighten your load this term, or see if it's possible to switch to pass/fail  vs a letter grade for a course. These are all things I've helped students with when I was in academia. Good luck to you.

Welcome to Academia.SE. Note that the term "advisor" is a bit overloaded -- undergraduates have advisors that help them choose courses and so forth, while grad student researchers have advisors who are essentially their boss. Given OP's reference to research and research-like work, I assume they are asking about the second -- in which case, they are probably not taking courses, are not being graded in a meaningful way, do not have a drop deadline, etc. And relations with PhD advisors are quite different than with undergraduate advisors (though I still agree with your first paragraph).

@cag51 In STEM, people absolutely do research and classes at the same time in grad school, and in fact the overwhelming majority of students begin research almost immediately upon starting. The idea of waiting until one finishes two years of classes to begin research is an unthinkable proposition. Be careful not to generalize non-STEM norms to all grad students.

@Jerome - I don't think I said the things that you claim I said. On the contrary, I commented specifically because it seems likely that OP's primary job is research, and the answer might be assuming that OP's primary/only job is taking classes....so to the extent I understand your comment, it seems like we agree.

Thanks @cag51. I do understand that and that it's different depending on if you are in a grad program vs an undergrad program and even if you are in a Masters vs PhD program. It's why I included "depending on your degree/program" but let me know if you feel I could make that clearer in my answer. I'm happy to edit if that helps others.

That depends on your general relationship with them. My relationship with mine was rather formal, so it probably wouldn't have been a good idea. We weren't "friendly". There were other members of the faculty that I interacted with, however, that I'd have been comfortable sharing personal details with.
So, if your relationship is strictly professional rather than personal, perhaps not. But if you, say, lunch together or baby-sit their kids (my experience) then I don't see any issues.
However, if this is affecting you so much that you are considering leaving, then you need two kinds of advice. One is from a personal counsellor who can perhaps help you over the issue. But it might also be necessary to talk to the advisor about the possibility of leaving and the reasons for this will probably come up naturally in any conversation. They are not likely, however, to have the skill to give you  the first sort of advice, but might be able to provide you some space and time to sort it out. Good luck.

There was a funny article about how much detail to provide in an excuse, including a two dimensional scale of excuses from "I don't feel well" to "it's coming out both ends".
That was for physical illness but in this case it's the same idea. Your choices aren't just tell your advisor every gory detail or say nothing. There is a lot of middle ground there: in this case you can tell your advisor that you're going through an emotionally rough time because a long-term relationship has ended and that you realize it is impacting your work but it is very recent and you are processing it as best you can. And depending on how they react to that you can include more detail or not.

You don't have a link to that article, do you?

@WoJ I can't find it, sorry, it was a long time ago (like early 2000s internet) and Google is not my friend today. If it helps, I remember the axises of the graph were details and plausibility.

I'm very sorry about your experience.
I think that this is helpful for the advisor to know, and I for sure don't think it's inappropriate to tell them, so I'm generally positive, although I also think it depends on the personality of your advisor and your exact work relationship whether it's a good idea. There are some people I wouldn't tell something like this, but these are rather exceptions than the rule, and I think that an advisor should generally be open for such information.
Note however that such things are only acceptable as excuses to a limited amount. Everybody should understand that your work can be affected by such things, however it is ultimately your responsibility to pick yourself up from this and to hopefully return to full work energy as soon as you can. It is one thing to inform your advisor and maybe have a chat with them about it; it is quite another thing to not do many things that you are meant to do and to try to get away with it based on this reason. Obviously I have no indication that you intend to do this, and in fact such things may harm your work energy a lot, so there may be some understanding indeed. Still, the probability that the advisor will react positively is much higher if you tell them this as information (and let it open to them to what extent this means they will accept a temporary lack of commitment to work) rather than as excuse in advance.

I think the previous answers have covered the Should I tell my advisor... portion of your question. I want to address the ...considered leaving the university bit.
When we're wounded in one part of our life, it is normal to withdraw from everything, so wanting to leave the university is a completely natural response. However, this is not the time to make such a big decision.
You have just experienced a loss that was beyond your control. Staying at/leaving the university is your choice, and it is a decision you should make after you've recovered from this trauma.
Give yourself some time; the right answers will come if you just stay still.

If there are specific protocols in your College's constitution, please follow them.
Failing that, doesn't this seem to be something you should first tell your doctor, or other counsellor?
If you get a medical certificate yes, take that to your Advisor.
If not, why bother your advisor with a purely personal problem?

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Visiting another University during PhD : Opportunity Vs Hassle?
I am doing a 3-year PhD in CS (Probability+Logic) at an average university in Continental Europe. I am currently in my final year (which ends JAN -23). I have one top tier (A*) AI-conference publication and nothing else to show for my two years. But my first paper has led to multiple new ideas and I will be submitting another paper soon and will start working on the third idea right after (let's say in a month's time). I really think if my third idea is correct, it will have a major impact in my field.
Now, in all this there is this tradition (previously a rule) at my university of spending at least 3 months of research abroad. My advisor is quite motivated to send me to this massive research group in my field. Now, if I would have had another year of PhD or another publication or no idea to work on, then I would have loved to go visit this massive group for 3 months. But I am not sure if, in my situation, I can afford to lose a lot of time. I feel I have the following two choices:

Not visit the university, work on my third idea, get it published and I am quite certain it's a good contribution. On the downside, I have no collaborations, no one to talk to for a postdoc, with whom I have talked before (I would like to move from my home uni for postdoc and I could not meet anyone in past two years: COVID)

I spend at least 2 weeks slightly distracted trying to move to a new country, maybe not feel focused there, or even if I do, I will dedicate myself mostly to the work I am doing right now. The uni I would like to visit is a massive group of 30 people under one PI, I am not sure how much the PI would be available. On the upside, it could be a massive collaboration avenue and could be a perfect future postdoc destination.

All in all, I am more inclined to not go, but what I don't know is how big is the role of contacts in finding a postdoc in comparison to having good publications?

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/83204

It is often the case that the visiting student/professor/colleague gets lots of attention at the institute they are visiting. Hey, somebody new with an idea to pursue, limited time here, lets make it work. For an experimentalist that usually meant priority on equipment so the work got done faster than normal. Go, experience, enjoy.

I would recommend going for the visit. The stress of moving is far outweighed by the opportunities it presents. Networking is a huge part of academia, as is travelling a lot. It's good to get used to doing these things early in your career. You may also find that the change of scene inspires you to work harder, or gets you out of a mental rut.

It's true, such things are a hassle. All the more in internet/Zoom times, it may seem pointless or really inefficient/suboptimal... But, still, the personal connection is much greater being there  physically. So, maybe, worth the hassle.

Luckily for you I'm not, and if I were your supervisor I'd not simply ask, but demand to know in detail why you would prefer less experience over more…

I spent two years in a post doc position in a large group that I hardly interacted with the PI at all. It's not the PI, it's the 30 people with different ideas and different futures that makes this useful.

@RobbieGoodwin Thanks for the feedback. But as I presented in my question, my motivation for not going is : Lack of time (I am in the final year) and Two works to finish (which I believe are major opportunities). From the answers I am more inclined towards going but at the same time, it is not that I never want to visit another uni, its my particular circumstances. And at that point it boils down to what counts more for future career : a visit Vs more publications and I think Dmitry Savostyanov answers that.

What do you want to do after your PhD? Do you plan on staying in academia, doing some postdocs and eventually apply for a permanent position as a lecturer or professor?
If the answer is no, then maybe it's OK just to publish a few papers and prepare to your PhD thesis defence. If your future employer is in industry, they probably will be impressed with the fact that you have a PhD, rather than the full story of your collaborations during the project.
But if you want to stay in academia, the next few years will be critically important for your career. Some academics somewhere will decide whether to offer you a postdoc job, whether to award you your first research grant, whether to extend your contract, etc. Some will evaluate your performance by the number of papers you published, but many also by how much they heard of you from their peers. Getting your papers published is not easy; but making sure that people read these papers and appreciate your contribution is a much, much more difficult task. Some people are blind to any contribution except their own. You really want to make sure that on every fancy Committee or Panel there is at least one person who can say: "Oh, SagarM? I heard them speaking at this event lately -- it was some interesting stuff. I never had time to read their paper, but it's published in a good journal. Shall we invite them for an interview?"

Thanks for that (+!) ! I indeed would like to stay in academia, your answer has been helpful.

Spending time elsewhere as a student is usually a very enriching experience.  It will provide you with a different perspective and, while it is unlikely you will come back having mastered something you did not know before, it is  a chance to learn about things you didn’t even know you did not know.
Remember that your supervisor or indeed your unit do things in a certain way often for historical reasons, use certain tools rather than others, or proceed following departmental habits, so a simple change of scenery and the consequent exposure to a different academic culture can only be beneficial.
Something as simple as contrasting the organization of coffee breaks, or time spent having lunch with colleagues, might turn out to be a different experience elsewhere.  If the experience is positive, you get to keep it as an example of good organization.  Even if the experience is negative, you will come back to your unit knowing what not to do.

Suggest you should go there! After all your research has not yet led to a publication so your opportunity cost of visiting is just a potential publication, not an actual publication. But by going to the big group, you can definitely include this in the CV.

I think the answer seems clear enough: GO. If you can still workon the third idea there, then why not?
Even in the worst case, say you can only be 50% efficient working on the third idea, it is a win. The chance to massively open your networks and see the state of the art is priceless.
Honestly, I would be ok with delaying my degree for 1 year for such a chance if I were you.


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When replicating results, what should I do when the author didn't use the method the paper said they did?
I am replicating a model to report on how well it does on a new evaluation metric I am proposing. The method/hyperparameters of the model are given in a paper about it, where it breaks all benchmarks on the tasks on which it is being evaluated.
After that paper came out, several people tried to replicate the results, and found that they could not. Their questions of “Am I doing this right?” can be found on a online message board for the project. They got several responses from the second author of the paper (very well-known and respected in the field), saying that he didn’t carry out the experiments and that they would have to wait for a response from the first author.
Eventually the first author responded with just a few lines saying: “The hyperparameters to use are ....” People ran with those parameters and replicated the results.
However, the parameters he gave disagree with those reported in the paper.
Quite likely this is through no malicious intent: possibly the model was rerun and the changes were not re-incorporated into the draft.
Now, I would like my model when I am evaluating to be as similar as possible to the one in their paper. That way, people can compare my new proposed metric to the metric that that paper uses and see that this model is good at X, but less good at Y, without having to correct for the fact that the models are different.

I have three options:

Use what I think are good hyperparameters for their model (this is what I am currently doing).
Use the hyperparameters given in their paper.
Use the hyperparameters given in the online message board post, which actually achieve the results given in the paper.

Which of these three options is best?

What are you asking?

@user6726 Which of the 3 options presented at the bottom is best.

How much time and efforts would cost you if you do all three options?

While this is not your question, something that you should definetly do is to see that the paper gets amended or there is an erratum.

Given that you don't have space enough to present all three sets of results, I would suggest that you choose the parameters that best illustrate the scientific point that you are aiming to make.
When you state the parameters, however, you should add a parenthetical note or footnote that says something along the lines of:

Note that we have chosen these parameters because [REASON].  Alternative parameters given [in the original paper / by the author] produce results that are [better / worse].

This balances the openness of making sure the reader is aware of the choice you have made and its consequences, while at the same time restricting your presentation space budget to only the most relevant set of results.

I would propose that you include all three parameter sets and their respective results in your paper. In that way it will be more insightful for your readers to understand the influence of the parameters, and it will be easier for others to replicate the results that have been reported by the previous authors.

It is a conference paper (this is CS where conferences are a big deal) and has a tight page limit. I have many other models to talk about beyond this one. Good advise that I may take in an extended form though.

Of course you will have to balance page limits with the importance to include all parameters. I can understand that. Yet, you might put the results in a table (just three rows), or even in a single sentence.

But I would have to explain the different parameters (1 sentence per parameter set). And then more if I wanted to explain why these parameters were being used. And it would add to all tables and all graphs .

Ok, I agree that it might be more suited for an extended version, as you already have written.

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Do journals issue any certificate when they publish an article?
I am new to this field. I have published one review paper in a journal recently. Do journals issue certificates after publishing manuscripts?

Why would they? Isn't the paper itself enough proof that you indeed published in the journal?

A certificate of what?

@Raakh As Saturnus said the paper itself is a proof. However, if you are publishing with Elsevier you can download the certificate yourself by providing the necessary information. I am not sure about the others.

Which field are you new to?

Can you not simply provide the citation or DOI for the paper. The article itself should attest to your expertise and having been accepted in a well known jourmal5 with peer review. Although this will be more relevant for original research than a review. Although if it was an invited review that would be worth mentioning on your CV.

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Is it a requirement that at least one of the authors of a paper holds a PhD?
The editor of a journal asked me “Please confirm the title of XXX XX, Mr. or Dr.?” His title is Mr., as the manuscript was written by two students alone, without a supervisor or anyone with the title Dr.
I replied with this information to the editor’s email. After 10 minutes I got a kind email saying that the manuscript had been rejected by the editor. So did the title of the authors impact the editor’s decision? Does there have to be a professor or someone with the title Dr. on the manuscript?

Was it the same person asking about the title as well as rejecting the manuscript?

Basically a duplicate of: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/145826/72855

My best guess is that the two events are unrelated and the timing was just a coincidence.

@Frugat Neither did Kepler held a PhD in astronomy when publishing the three laws, nor  Mendel stopped working because it took time until his publication about peas was appreciated fully.

Which field are you in, by the way? I miss a tag with it.

There is unlikely to be a written rule stating the requirement of a PhD holder in the journal policy. There are two possible explanations for this action:
(1) The editor felt the need to desk-reject based on reasons other than author qualification (relevance to journal for instance), and simply asked for the title so that the rejection mail would address the authors appropriately.
What has the editor mentioned as reason for rejection? Most likely it is one of the boilerplate emails ("high demand"/"high submission rate" based), which is broad enough to cover almost any reason. Has the editor suggested submission to any other journal? (Why are you calling this Journal 'B'?)
(2) Given that you are both students (and are identified by your institution), the editor may suspect malpractice of some sort since no faculty member is involved. In this situation, the editor has to walk a fine line between risking offending the author and potentially permitting malpractice. If you suspect this, you could always write back, politely requesting the reason for a desk-reject. Please emphasize that you are not challenging the decision, but are rather seeking to improve your work for future submission.

Possibility 3: the journal maintains a database of people (e.g. to use as reviewers/spam in the future) and 'title' is a required field for that. The decision to reject is entirely independent.

1.1 Reason for rejection is Submissions sent for peer-review are selected on the basis of discipline, novelty and general significance, in addition to the usual criteria for publication in scholarly journals. Therefore, our decision is not necessarily a reflection of the quality of your work.. So how can editor evaluate the approach is novel or not? are they familiar with all special section topics? (I mean for example Software Security majored editor are able to decide Neural Network-based manuscript?)
1.2 No

Our mail addresses were not institutional. Editor/`s reply: the emails for all authors are expected to use the institutional emails. In addition, all authors should provide their CVs if possible. If the authors are students, they should indicate which author is the student's supervisor, and provide the supervisor's personal homepage and a list of published articles.. So without PhD holder will be hard to accept manuscript?

Ah, see that might explain it. Non-institutional email ids often ring alarm bells for editors because they are sometimes associated with cranks. Worse, it may also be against your institution rules to submit with a non-institutional email id. This has to do with intellectual property generated by you while you are a student at the institution. In the extreme case, there may be a concern that if you submit without a supervisor's involvement, you could be plagiarizing work. The supervisor's PhD is not as relevant as them being a formal faculty member at your institution.

I disagree with (2) here. Especially the first sentence. Rejecting because of a "suspicion" in such a case would be malpractice. Some institutions encourage students to write. Some encourage them to work together. Some fields don't "require" that the advisor be a co-author. There is nothing in the question that suggests any impropriety.

@Buffy- I agree in a general sense, and indeed, I'm yet to find a written requirement anywhere that the advisor needs to be a co-author. Nevertheless, the suspicion is real, and in this case, the editor's reply (see comment above- they want the supervisor to be an author!) hints at the same. We'll probably never know, and your suggestion of coincidence is definitely possible. I (without basis) am inclined to consider it improbable , given the information available.

If a journal wanted to impose such a rule they would most likely state it plainly. But I think that is very unlikely. It isn't the qualifications of the authors of a paper that make it important, but what the paper actually has to offer. Of course, editors like to know that the authors know what they are writing about, but that is the job of the reviewers to determine and normally reviewers will spend more time with the paper than with the credentials of its authors.
In fact, a paper by an independent researcher without an academic credential might be especially "interesting" if the arguments and conclusions are sound. It might even introduce new ideas into a field. When Einstein did his early work he wasn't well respected by the established intelligentsia of the day. That only came later.
And on the other side, a paper by a brilliant and credentialed researcher that seems to spout nonsense can cause quite a stir.
But, I suspect that in this case, there is some flaw in the paper that the editor noticed independent of its authors. Maybe it was just a poor fit for the journal, or even for the editor's current needs.

One further thought. A restriction on who can publish in a journal, such as requiring a doctorate, would, over time, have a pernicious effect, lowering the quality of the journal. It is the restriction itself, actually any sort of restriction, that leads to some high quality papers not being submitted at all and other, lower quality, ones filling any gaps. The effect would be small, but additive over time.


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Convincing professors to help with the founding of new university
Background
I'm doing some work for a new online-only university that is being founded, based in the US and offering degrees up to doctorate in courses like history, philosophy and literature. It's heavily research-based and doesn't allow credit transfer.
One of the great things about this university is that it will offer scholarships to people in developing countries allowing them to complete a degree at a US university for as little as $100. The university is not designed to make money, but only to keep itself going. (This does not mean it is non-profit; in fact most non-profits are designed to make as much money as possible, they just don't have shareholders.)
We need academics/professors to volunteer to advise and help us get started, especially during the current period where the application for a new university is being considered. We expect them to help by:

associating with the university for the sake of the application, even if only in name;
marking theses, when students reach that stage (though no teaching will be required).

The questions
I've tried emailing professors asking for their help, but it seems no one is interested. I get the impression that online universities don't have much respect from these people and that no one wants to risk their reputation by being involved with something new and different.
What is the best approach to convince established professors to contribute to this project? Would they expect to be paid in return? (A stipend is possible, as well as a title, but no salary.)

In response to your question about professors expecting to be paid, yes.

It's an online-only university based in the US and offering degrees up to doctorate — Red flag! — _ Since the university is research based there is otherwise virtually no need of professors_ — Red flag! — some money, not a salary — Red flag! — I specifically do not want to give the name of the university — Red flag! There's no such thing as a reputable online doctorate.  Students need faculty mentors to learn to do good research.  If you want good faculty, you have to pay them as faculty.  Good places encourage probing questions from prospective faculty.  This smells like a scam.

@JeffE, thank you for outlining your concerns. This is helpful. I have to disagree with you on the point that "There's no such thing as a reputable online doctorate," of course there are many all over the world, OpenUniversity is an obvious candidate. Again, there is no space here to defend myself on all these points, I'm all for probing questions but it is simply impossible to explain anything properly in this comment box (and I'm here to listen, not to argue.)

Open University doctorates are earned on-campus, not online.

Friendly mod notice: I've edited the question to clearly separate the presentation of the background and the questions asked. We already have some good constructive answers. I've cleared a lot of comments, incorporating the added information into the question… if you feel your comment was valuable, please forgive me and consider expanding it into an answer!

'associating with the university for the sake of the application, even if only in name' - Red Flag! Looking for made-up legitimation from established scholars, a practice common for conference organizers and shady scholarly journal editors.

$100 in fees? Red flag! Unless there's a lot of outside money coming in (which is much harder to come by if you don't have excellent research facilities), no way can you develop and administer high quality courses for that kind of small change. That's two orders of magnitude lower than the Open University's fees.

There are a number of issues here:

The new university probably isn't accredited (yet?) and is for-profit (at least that's how I interpret "this does not mean it is non-profit").  In principle a for-profit, unaccredited university could be innovative and wonderful, but it will face a lot of prejudice because most such universities are not.
Joining a new venture like this involves putting a lot of trust in the people who are running it.  If they turn out to be crazy or dishonest, then everyone involved will look bad.  It's difficult to reach this level of trust, and almost impossible starting with e-mail from a stranger.
Advising research students takes time and effort.  It's not just a matter of proposing a topic and waiting for the thesis to come in; instead, there's a lot of advising and mentoring.  This is a major commitment, and I wouldn't want to have my name associated with something like this unless I was doing everything necessary to help the students succeed.  Some of your comments (such as "virtually no need of professors until it comes to marking theses" or "we need academics associated with the university for the sake of the application, even if its only in name") sound like I would be setting students up for failure or misleading them as to my level of involvement.
Time is a major limiting factor.  If I had all the time in the world, then I would cheerfully volunteer to help with all sorts of things.  As it is, though, there are a lot of students at my own institution who seek supervision, and working with them in person is more satisfying and productive than supervising someone over the internet.  If I maintain my current level of engagement with students in person, and add internet activities, then what am I going to cut?  It's not enough to make a case that participating in this new university is valuable.  Instead, you have to make the case that it is more valuable than whatever I might be doing instead, such as research or family time.
What you describe comes across as saying professors aren't really necessary except for validating research output and ought to be willing to do that for relatively little money.  This philosophy won't be popular with many professors, who would like to believe they engage in plenty of crucial activities.  If this isn't the impression you would like to convey, then you need to modify your sales pitch.

Different requests warrant different communication styles. By simply sending an email and leaving it at that, your request is in the same boat as any other piece of spam they receive; unsolicited mail asking for their resources (time, money, whatever).
If you truly wish to have them partner with you in a new business venture, you should engage in standard courtship behavior expected for this sort of relationship; phone conversations, in-person conversations, take them out for coffee, lots of follow-up. Additionally, they'll need to be convinced that you're not a fly-by-night nobody and that it's worth their while to work with you. This takes time and effort, and is guaranteed not to happen if your main communication channel is email. You are acting in a Sales position here; treat it as such.
Do note that you will likely be received with significant skepticism, and you should have ready answers for all the questions you're sure to receive.

This my vary by school, but at least at my institution, this is close to the line where approval from higher-ups is required for a professor to participate.  While professors have a great deal of latitude with how they use their time, the university does actually claim possession of our teaching (it is, after all, what they're paying us for).
There are written-in exceptions (for example, giving tutorials on research subjects is a standard thing, and allowed), and it's possible to request permission for other cases.  It's not clear to me from your question whether what you're asking for would require permission, but it's close enough that I probably wouldn't be comfortable without permission.  That's a big enough deal that it might discourage participants who were otherwise inclined.

Thank you very much for your honest reply. What about for advising only but not for teaching, would that be acceptable?

@Alasdair: I haven't read my own university's exact policies on this carefully, and I'm sure they vary by institution, so I don't know exactly what's permissible and what isn't; that's something you should consult with your lawyers about.  I'm just giving one reason professors might not be receptive to your request: they, like me, may not be sure exactly what's allowed, and may decide that even if this idea is interesting, it's not interesting enough to do the amount of investigation needed to decide whether to participate just to find out that they're not allowed to.

Unfortunately I seem to agree with JeffE. It does sound like a scam. The open universities I know: a) They have permanent administrative personnel organizing the university tasks  b) Despite the fact they are online they have buildings (not necessarily a campus) but at least offices where the administrative people work. c) They have deans, professors and lecturers. Some of them are part-time but certainly not all of them. All faculty is paid accordingly d) Before hiring professors they have courses, syllabus etc. Based on that they hire their faculty. g) For hiring faculty they make public announcements. Public announcements are put in scientific societies (i.e., ACM), on the university site, on press etc. As a result they cost money. Emailing professors sound a poor-guy's scam working from his basement.
If you have all those prerequisites, you will be taken seriously. If not, you should probably look to well-established open universities for inspiration.

Long story short: I'm no longer involved in this project and from what I last heard it has fallen through, probably for the reasons you gave. I mostly agree with what you and most people here have said, but I do resent that just the idea that doing something different and 'charitable' sounds like a scam. I think this is extremely pessimistic and this type of thinking will hold back the academic community from evolving in positive ways. The same for the assumptions that people here made, which are irrelevant to my original question and there is simply not enough space here to defend or explain.


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Is it a good idea to submit paper which is shorter than conference's page limit
I'm writing up a paper for an upcoming CS conference. The problem is my paper is 1 page shorter than the conference's page limit. This conference doesn't have any workshop to accept a short paper.
Someone told me that submitting the paper shorter than the page limit was a very bad idea as it guaranteed rejection. Is it true?

One page short out of two pages or one page short out of 25? If the standard paper is pretty short, then it might matter more than if the standard paper is very long.

This has been addressed in this question

@ff524 There is some overlap, but I am not convinced that this is indeed the same question. The one you linked specifically talks about Short Papers (a type of paper on its own), this one talks about "a little shorter" Full Papers. I'd leave it open.

When I'm a reviewer for a conference (usually in theoretical computer science), I'm delighted to see a paper that doesn't use up every square millimeter of the allowed space. Of course, I might still recommend rejection of a short paper, but not because it's short.

I would not care much because I don't think it gets rejected for being short length. Second it is good because you can add few more relevant details during camera ready submission if required.

I have seen papers rejected because it was shorter than the maximum allowed pages. But this was not the only reason for rejection; rather it was supporting that the paper didn't have enough contribution/content. If you don't want to give the reviewers any excuses to reject, then you might want to fill up the pages, but I think that's silly.
The answer would depend on the field and the page limit. If the page limit is 4, you probably want to fill all 4 pages, because 4 pages is usually not enough. But if the page limit is 12 pages, I see no problem for accepting a high-quality 11-page paper.

Do you mean the minimum pages allowed? I really hope they would never reject a paper for not being the maximum length.

Reviewers may add what they would have liked to see in the paper. Sometimes reviewers see the "missing" parts to be so important to recommend rejection. However, this is much harder to argue if there is no space left, the paper is written  concisely already, and nothing can be cut out without disturbing the completeness of the paper. So having the paper at maximum length helps to reduce the risk of rejections with this being one of the arguments. Being one page short however makes the paper easy to attack with such arguments in case the reviewer feels that the paper is insufficient.

@TobiasKildetoft I've never seen a conference with minimum page limit, but they always have a maximum page limit.

This is a very good answer. Some conferences in my field have moved to very large max. paper lengths, and I often see papers that are 1 or 2 pages short for those. They get accepted no problem, if they are still good.

First I should mention that good conferences and journals logically do not pay much attention the the amount of pages of the papers. The quality of the paper and subject of it besides to the discussions and how much the topic is new seems to be more important than the quantity of the papers.
Check the conference's website to see if they policies on this issue or not. You may also ask your question from their office by email or phone.

The problem is my paper is 1 page shorter than the conference's page limit.

It is unclear that their page limit is a maximum number of pages or is a minimum number of pages. In the first case, I have seen some conferences which had a maximum limit of eight pages but some papers were accepted which were organized in nine pages. If there is a maximum limitation, then you have no problem as you are not passing the limit on maximum number of pages, your paper is in the safe side.
But if they "accept papers with no less than a number of pages", you should check this with the conference management. But still I think that there is no problem with shorter papers, specially your case which is inly one page.
By the way, you should also talk to the co-authors of your paper as they may have suggestion on your paper and may help you to extend your academic paper.

The sentence in bold cannot be emphasized enough: The quality of your results matters far more than the number of pages. That said, going over the page limit is usually impossible, no matter how good your results are.

@JeffE I wanted to say that, if the paper do not reach the page limit (maximum number of pages), it is not important; the quality is more important than the quantity.

If you can anticipate what the readers expectations, then you should be OK.  If your audience is busy and looking for a concise communication, then you may be better off with a shorter paper.   On the hand if it is an student academic exercise, then the instructor probably has an expectation to conform to the pre-defined standard length.  The OP is in the best position to understand and decide, with the possible exception he/she publishes the paper here for everyone and defines the context.  Best of luck with the good paper.

Would you please explain what you mean by "student academic exercise"? Do you mean homework assignments? Please note that the OP is asking about conference's page limit, not the homework essay page limit.

If the OP is a student and submitting to a conference, then I would think that they are expecting the students to observe requirements.  Every situation is different and really is driven by the expectations of evaluators


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I am having difficult first year in my part-time PhD program; How can I figure out whether I should leave it or not?
I have a full-time job, and am a part-time PhD student who is experiencing tremendous struggles throughout the first year, compared to my previous schooling which was extremely easy. I want to know if I'm psyching myself out / over-thinking things, or if I'm being rational or not, given all the circumstances.
My academic career began with a degree in Computer Science, but I took as many side courses in Mathematics as I could.  I did very well, loved it, and thought to do graduate studies. A couple of my professors thought it was a great idea, considering how well I did in their classes, and suggested going for a Ph.D., part-time as I have a full-time job, in the same school. They wrote me stellar recommendation letters and I got in without any issues, whatsoever (unfunded, but that was not a concern to me).
I am nearing the end of my first year in the program, and it has been an unbelievable struggle. A family/personal emergency caused me to have to withdraw from my classes for the first semester; despite how embarrassed I was, my professors told me it was okay and that things happen, and that they still had complete faith in me. Now it's the second semester, and I am struggling to keep up in my classes.  I have always approached math via my intuition, but now I feel I am able to follow my professors in lectures and participate, but when it comes to studying or applying it that's when I struggle. Self-study takes so long and is very arduous and as I'm not used to it; I get extremely distracted.
Compounded with this, is that I want to discuss this with others, but I find it almost impossible to face my professors that recommended me, anymore. I haven't spoken to them since the winter due to shame. They had so much faith and confidence in me (and probably still do), but I feel that as a PhD I should do better, but I'm not. My performance is shocking and appalling to me, considering what I was used to doing. Talking to my adviser is out of the question as well, as when I discussed my last-semester withdrawal situation with him, he made a loose implication that "he wasn't necessarily sure he would've admitted me, in hindsight," and he wondered aloud who was the one that did admit me.
I am still in a position where I feel that I would not be happy unless pursuing graduate study in mathematics, as I want to learn this subject inside and out, be surrounded by a community that I find interesting and exciting, and researching and publishing new ideas. I just have no idea if my struggle is either completely normal, if I'm horribly under-qualified, or if I am just psyching myself out.  How can I figure out whether I should stick with my program or not?

Welcome to Academia.SE! I'm afraid your question is overly verbose, which may preclude people from trying to answer. If you could pare it down to the parts directly relevant to your immediate question, you are likely to recieve more answers.

I agree with @eykanal. My one piece of advice would be to stop clinging to the past and what you were/weren't good at and what grades you got. Start looking at your present situation and start looking to the future. Do you want to be stuck in this unhappy situation for the coming years just because you got A's in undergrad and you found the elective courses at that level easy?

If you can believe it, I actually already did reduce it significantly. But I will try harder to reduce it even more.

I can't find a single question in your post. Saying, Any thoughts, support, or criticism is appreciated is off-topic on Stack Exchange sites.

@AustinHenley I Understand completely. I couldn't, off the top of my hat think of any site to share this with, and this is deeply troubling me. I acknowledged, to myself, early on that this very well may be ill-perceived, and if it ends up being so I will gladly delete it. It is my last intention to pollute the community with personal issues, but I thought I'd take the risk in the event I was wrong.

@ConcernedOne It doesn't mean that the underlying question is bad. You just have to make it more general and to the point. Something more like "How to handle a bumpy first year in PhD program? Supporting details here, ect."

@AustinHenley Got it. I will revise. Thanks for the suggestion.

Just to be clear, you are studying for a PhD part-time, with a full-time job? If so, that sounds rough. No wonder you are having a difficult time. In any case, it sounds to me like you are being too hard on yourself. Try to relax a little. Also, try to find pleasant ways to pass the time when you are not working.

@AustinHenley, it seems pretty clear to me that the question is "what should I do in this situation?"

@BenjaminMakoHill Check the edit history.

This question got good general answers; I have improved the question to better match them by cutting out most of the TL;DR and changing the question from "give me a fish" to "teach me to fish", which the answers do.  Accordingly, I have voted to reopen.

I'll keep this answer fairly general, because what you describe sounds like a fairly general situation.
The transition from undergraduate to Ph.D work is difficult because you're going from a very structured environment (take classes; get grades) to a very unstructured one (take classes, but focus on learning rather than grades; deal with material that's more cutting-edge and therefore open-ended; start getting into research, which is really open-ended).
This is hard, and it's normal to expect a period of transition where things seem out of whack.
Coupled with that is the shame: people going to grad school are usually the ones who do well in undergraduate and have done well all their life in school. You've received praise from your teachers throughout, and have received constant encouragement.
Now you're in grad school. Everyone there is like you, so the competition is more fierce. There are no pseudo-objective measures like grades so there's no way to compare yourself to others (which for high achievers often means that you compare yourself negatively). And above all, all those nice professors who used to encourage you have turned into scowly curmudgeons who expect more and more and more...
It's a wonder everyone isn't depressed. And on top of that you have a full-time job !!
The recommendation that I will give, and that everyone here is giving you, is to ease up on yourself and try separate out your feelings of shame and inadequacy from the reality. You should find a support network of friends, hang out in study groups, do extracurricular stuff. The friends you make in grad school will be friends for life - such is the nature of this crucible. Since you're working full time this is going to be even harder, but maybe you can find others who also work full time and are in a similar position. Also see if you can find senior grad students who are part-time: their experience will be very valuable.
And then in a year you'll be back year asking about how to avoid discouragement in research, and how to avoid procrastinating, without realizing that this is a sign you've made it through the first year successfully :)

That's very reassuring - thank you. My only question is - if it's normal to struggle at first, is it normal to struggle this much? "This much" may be difficult to quantify, but I may just be overreacting, which is my concern.

I don't know what "this much" means. as you say, perception of struggle is a very subjective thing. That's why I recommend finding some friends going through similar experiences: you'd be surprised to see how much of what you're feeling is shared. Also look up the 'Imposter Syndrome' and the many answers on this forum that talk about it.

Separate out your feelings of shame and inadequacy from the reality... Great advice, one question though. How?

A PhD is an apprenticeship - you need to be on the same page as your advisor always.  If he was making comments like that you need to know if it was his poor attempt at motivating, or if you don't get along.  If you don't get along you need to find someone whom you can get along with.  This is a long process.  You should have no "shame" with your former professors either.  And you should definitely go back and talk to them, as well as current students, especially the more senior ones.
As Suresh points out, everything is about to change.  Classes in a PhD program are more to complete any breadth you are missing at the foundation from your earlier program.  Then they are to start filling in a stronger foundation for your specialty.  And then they are supposed to give you a taste of the depth in even more specific subfields. Also to help you understand what professors are available, what they study, and how they work, so that you can find an advisor and a committee.
After that you start doing research - and it becomes a much more self-motivated and often self-directed endeavor that builds on these foundations.  A PhD is about vetting you as a researcher from start-to-finish.  And putting you on an initial research trajectory.  No one will ever ask your GPA from graduate school once you have your degree.  Although it's expected you get good grades by your program (many require A/B's - C's are often failing in grad school - but you're only taking "in major" classes now so C's weren't really great for "in major" classes in your earlier degree programs).  Again though the grade isn't what's important.  But how hard you have to work for them is a potential indication of how hare you'll have to push yourself later in the less directed portions of the program.  But you'll have much more freedom as to what to research.
I have found your problem is not unique.  Many (/Most?/All?) students struggle with what exactly is grad school, and why are they there, and time management.  It sounds like time management is something you will have to work on too.  Not necessarily because you are bad at it, but because you have a lot of constraints on your time.  Holding a job at the same time means you will be a little more removed from your fellow students.  You will want to talk to them and get to know them if you can.  It will help to know that you aren't in it alone.
In addition to your peers, a good book to help you know that this isn't your own personal hell is: Getting What You Came For.  Very affordable survey of grad school.  Honestly most school "handbooks" should be thrown away and replaced with this.  Another good book is A PhD is Not Enough it's a shorter version of the first, but also talks about how your goals and "the systems" goals are not 100% in line with each other and you need to be aware of that and how to navigate that.

PhD can be extremely tough, for many reasons. I finished the comprehensive exam prep (1st year), at 6 am in the morning, to start my presentation at 9:00. Needless to say it was less than stellar. So, most, if not all PhD candidates went through what you are going through right now. To put salt on the wound, your first article is a pregnancy that seems to last forever. And I'm not even talking about writing the thesis.
There will be a point, in this journey, where you're not sure of why you started all this in the first place, where you are on the map, and most painfully where the hell this boat is going. Don't worry, that's normal.
There are a few important points from what I see in your narrative. You're feeling bad because you think your performances are suboptimal, and because you don't want to look bad in front of your advisor, you won't bring up the topic with him/them. He's not really helping either. You're then left with little advice as to how to improve. Then you feel worse, and the situation worsens.
Congratulations, you are now in tail spin. How do you get out of it ?
The beast AKA the PhD topic:
It is very much up to you, that's the point of the first year, you can actually decide and then explain why it would benefit from a re-focus. It is the hardest part of the whole stuff. There's no magic recipe, you need to understand, and to accept that what you managed to explore during the first year, is the only material you have to start digging on the right spot. Discussions with your advisor, and with your peers are very important.
The first Year:
It's the toughest one. You have graduate courses AND the comprehensive exam. Basically, the only bright spot are the two weeks vacations coming after that. Keep it in mind.
Health (mental and body)
It's draining. So you have to take care of yourself. Eat well, sleep well, practice sports, and above all you MUST hang out at least once a week.  A patient girl/boy friend is a great asset to have.
Kill the father:
A much unexplored aspect of the PhD is the relationship student/advisor. The sooner he doesn't act as a father any more, the better.
Finally, you:
PhD is by nature unstructured. That's what it is, that's what it is for. It's your job to keep the bearings aligned, and to foster great discussions with your peers. If you made it here, it's because your brain functions are what it takes to get through it. So, if you are in trouble at the moment, it's not because you have become dumb overnight.
brain candy, in case you didn't see it : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FnXgprKgSE A. Wiles journey through  Fermat's last theorem. 7 years.
A great advice from a peer at the time. "Always start the day with something you can achieve". So it comes down to your ability to set yourself meaningful targets, which results will accumulate over time.
Good Luck !


text:
Should I tell a colleague that he's serving as an editor for a predatory journal?
A colleague of mine, who I regard scientifically, just invited me to submit an article to a special issue of a journal which I consider predatory.
I consider this journal predatory because its publisher released several journals that are considered predatory in my scientific community (bioinformatics), and also for some details like the super-fast review and acceptance process.
The last article this journal published, for example, has the following review and acceptance times listed:

Submission: 12th September 2020
Revision: 23th October 2020
Acceptance: 28th October 2020
Publication online: 29th October 2020

This aspect is very suspicious to me.
What should I do now?
Should I tell him that I think the journal is predatory?
In this case, he might get offended, and this situation might compromise our future relationship. Like, he might not want to collaborate with me anymore in the future.
But if I say nothing, the scam could go on...

The "evidence" you give that this journal is predatory isn't evidence of that at all. It is completely orthogonal to it.

Related, but not a duplicate: Should I contact accomplished researchers listed as editors of shady journal?

The rest of this discussion about whether alternating pronouns is an acceptable way to remain gender-neutral has been moved to chat; please use the chat for any other pronoun-related discussion.

If it is genuinely a predator journal you should tell him, but you should have concrete evidence of that first.

Heh... Is there a list of journals which are not predatory? ( In that case... Published by which journal?)

@mathreadler yes? Look at DAOJ for Open Access, for example. Notice that most predatory ones mimic the Open Access, 'cause the money flow is easier to get by.

What are the provisions that make a journal "predatory" (on whom do they hunt, btw.) ? Just a sloppy revison process? Made to push the H-index of their autors with republication of old stuff? Prey on desperate PhD students who need a third publication, with high publication fees?

First, you need to have very solid reasons for considering the journal to be "predatory". I bring this up because the only concrete reason you gave in your question is a rather poor one: rapid peer review cycle is not necessarily evidence of being a predatory journal, even if it might be unusual in your field (as it is in mine). My point is not to dispute your assessment (I have no idea of what journal you are even talking about); my point is that if you would consider discussing it with your colleague, then you should certainly focus on explicitly disreputable behaviour. In particular, the publisher's journals should clearly be listed on at least one website that tracks disreputable journals. That way, it is not just your assessment; you would have others who would support your concerns.
That said, a publisher with some disreputable journals might have some very genuine journals in its portfolio. This is a very important point: you cannot automatically denigrate one journal just because of other journals from the same publisher. And I repeat, a rapid review cycle is rather weak evidence. Stronger evidence would be actual access to review reports that you can examine and judge to be of unusually poor quality.
So, this brings me to your direct question of whether you should share your concern with your colleague. If you are afraid that she might get offended, then it seems that your relationship with her is not sufficiently close that she would trust that your concerns are personal concern for her. In that case, it would be especially important that you have strong evidence of disreputable behaviour before accusing the journal she is involved with of being predatory. If you do not have such strong evidence, then it is best not to mention anything but to politely decline the invitation with a truthful but evasive answer (e.g. "I am unable to commit the time to such a submission"--this would be truthful since you are unable to waste your effort and time on predatory journals). But then, even if you do have sufficiently strong evidence to accuse the journal of being predatory, you would need to determine how comfortable you are with this colleague. Only you know that, so ultimately it would be up to you to decide whether she might be offended by your presentation of evidence.

Two problems with doing so:
First, the rapid publication you mention isn't especially unusual. Note it took 6 weeks between submission and revision. That's completely conceivable if you look at the typical editorial workflow. In fact if everyone involved does their bit quickly, it could easily be even faster. The time between revision and acceptance is also fast but not extremely so; if the requested revisions were minor (e.g. just some typo fixes) then it could easily be immediate.
The most "suspicious" thing about that timeline is the one (!) day between acceptance and publication online - but many journals these days are putting accepted articles online as quickly as possible and leaving the bulk of the production process (copyediting, typesetting, etc) to later, see e.g. this.
Second, your colleague probably has a clearer idea than you of whether the editor is predatory. For example, they will know if they've never been invited to handle a paper, or if reject recommendations are ignored.
If you do choose to raise this with your colleague, be sure to word it as "I'm concerned the journal is predatory" instead of "this journal is predatory, why are you the editor?".

+1 for the last two paragraphs in particular. As to the speed, it is certainly conceivable even if everything is fine, and one data point can't really tell you much. But if a journal were routinely turning papers around this quickly, I would find that suspicious.

@EspeciallyLime it depends a bit on field - a journal I once handled averaged ~50 days from submission to first decision.

I'd go even a step further, and instead of asking "Are you sure the journal isn't predatory?" say "I'm concerned the journal is predatory." and leave it to the colleague to explain why they are not.

@cbeleitesunhappywithSX indeed - I'm editing answer.

If you knew with certainty that the journal was predatory, the case for saying something would be a lot stronger. But you don’t, and as others said in the comments, the evidence that you cite for this claim is fairly weak. Given that there isn’t even a generally accepted definition of what constitutes as “predatory”, your colleague may reasonably take offense at the implication if you bring it up.
I suggest letting your actions do the talking. If you don’t want to be associated with the journal or think enterprises of this type should not be encouraged by your community, don’t submit there. Politely tell your colleague that you are declining their invitation and leave it at that, or, if their email was addressed to several people and not targeted specifically at you, just don’t reply.

If you care of your colleague you can certainly discuss this in a sort of question style. I mean, if you care of him/her reputation, there should also be a friendship relation between you. If not, I don't see the point as for keeping the same feeling you should be equally concerned with all editors of supposedly predatory journals, at least in your field.


text:
Is it inappropriate to share journal article reviews?
I want to put the LaTeX source files for a paper that I just published up on GitHub (technically they are already there, but private). Is it inappropriate to include the (anonymous) reviews and my responses to these?

I have seen people do that, but to what extend this is in line with journal policies seems somewhat ... iffy to me. Probably depends on the journal.

Yes. A review is normally a job performed by somebody at the request of a journal editor for your benefit. Hence the review is not yours per se to do as you please although you have received it to improve your manuscript. The review is basically a communication between two persons, albeit through an intermediary. Thus posting somebody's comments without asking for permission is similar to publishing somebody's private letters online without asking. It is not strictly illegal as I can see it but it is inappropriate.
If reviews are done in an open system, they are public and then the problem is a non-issue. Such reviews, if one wants to couple them to a paper or manuscript online, can, and probably should, be linked anyway.
As a side point, some journals only allow you to post pre-review versions of your manuscripts online. Revised manuscripts then involve the journal's "services" and are apparently seen as covered by the publisher's copyright rules, at least until they are rejected. This is not something I find appealing, it is just the case and one needs to take a close look to the agreement entered when submitting a manuscript.

Actually, publishing private letters without the writer's consent might get you in conflict with copyright law (if it reaches the intellectual height for copyright to apply) or personality rights (if the writer expresses his personal opinions) - at least in Germany.