text:
How to transfer to a better math grad school as a 1st year student?
I'm a 1st year math PhD student and wish to transfer. I applied to transfer fall 2023 to 16 schools but didn't get in anywhere. I'm going to try again, but first I'll answer why I wish to transfer and how I ended up in my situation to give more context.
Why I wish to transfer: I want to be in a program with stronger students, a more challenging environment, and most importantly, professors in my research interests: algebraic geometry, number theory. My best option in pure math, given the professors who've left or retired over the 1st year, is discrete math (graph theory & combinatorics specifically). However, discrete math is still pretty far from algebraic geometry. In fact, there aren't even any courses in algebraic geometry being offered, so I study the material myself. As for the other issues, courses and qualifying exams posed no issue. It's suspicious how easy everything is going, even the research that I started this semester is flying by. With 2 professors I was scheduled to read through prerequisites and then attack a specific research problem. The semester and both research plans started early February, with credits for the spring and an expectation to continue during the summer. With 1 professor, I completed all the tasks mid March, and with the other I'm on track to finish by the end of April.
How I ended up in this situation: I wasn't able to get into a better school since I applied (in fall 2021) after only completing 2 years of undergrad and got my B.S. in 3 years (f19-s22). I thought about staying a 4th year, but my parents pressured against it citing the monetary cost. The undergrad math department offered no support (in fact, negative money, since by starting and finishing a masters in the 4th year, I would even lose the 4 year partial merit scholarship that I gained in 2019), while grad schools cover tuition and give you a stipend for living expenses. Given how many kids my dad has to support and my belief that a transfer is possible, I decided to start grad school.
What should I be doing to improve my chances? Next cycle is my last chance as if I don't get in for fall 2024, it's better to hustle and finish my PhD in 3 years. I have generally strong credentials that would normally make me a good applicant for a higher-ranked program.
I asked a professor, former chair of admission, and a few students to look over my CV and statement of purpsose when applying, so they're very polished. To not waste people's time, I also asked schools I got rejected from for feedback before posting to academia SE. One said

It's hard to say. We don't usually consider transfer students from graduate schools like yours - if a student is bringing a Master's degree, it is usually from a better school. You should be asking Directors of Graduate Admissions at more realistic schools. Your professors can give you advice. Kansas State and Carnegie Mellon might possibly play out for you.

Another said

We are less likely to accept PhD students from other programs. There has to be very good reasons for transfers. I should also say that at ---, we could only accept a small number of applicants this year and so it was more competitive than usual.

The biggest issue, mentioned even by programs that otherwise declined to give feedback, is there's 200-300 students applying for 7-12 spots. However, I consider myself qualified enough to contend for those spots. It appears that my reason for transferring wasn't good enough, and that the low prestige of my grad school (50-100th) hurts my chances. I knew that prestige might be an issue, but I didn't consider it to be such a large issue that I would get rejected from everywhere. Certainly I could've applied to schools just slightly better than my current one, but then all the problems which caused me to transfer except the subject area would remain. When applying, I mentioned the lack of professors in my subjects, but left out the part about student strength and difficulty after receiving mixed responses in feedback. One thing I might've failed to mention in my statement of purpose is just how strong my desire is to transfer, that I'm willing to give up 1 year just to be in my preferred field of research. Should I add that when reapplying? How else can I improve my application?

I think this is too focused on your individual situation. There are lots of questions here about admissions criteria for graduate school, especially https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38237/how-are-ph-d-applications-evaluated-in-the-us-particularly-for-weak-or-borderl and https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/176908/how-does-the-admissions-process-work-for-ph-d-programs-in-country-x/

I saw those already and they don't address transferring except to say "If you have a poor record during graduate school, it can be very difficult to transfer graduate schools" and "You should definitely consider schools that are (generally speaking) less competitive than the school you are leaving." However, I don't have a poor grad record.  @BryanKrause

https://academia.stackexchange.com/search?q=phd+transfer

I read through the 1st page of results and there's nothing regarding reapplying to transfer for math, as opposed to just applying to transfer. Also, I searched https://academia.stackexchange.com/search?q=phd+transfer+reapply and didn't find any help. @BryanKrause

You may have a better chance of applying to PhD programs in other places "from scratch" instead of trying to transfer.

We want to have coverage for all the relevant situations, but there's a limit to where it's better to just close questions as being too dependent on the individual to be useful. If you can make this question substantially less about you and make clear what generalizable thing is different about your situation versus all the others, then it could be useful.

The math job market is so competitive that I think you are already screwed as far as an academic career is concerned.  (Also - you should check - does anyone with a pure math PhD from your school get a postdoc?  From our PhD program here, only one person has ever had a postdoc offer as far as I can tell in the entire history of the program, and that person had to decline for personal reasons.)

I think there may be an interesting question here -- and I'm certainly curious to see if Alexander Woo's comment is the consensus. I've suggested some edits to your post; hopefully you're OK with these edits, as I think this version is probably on-topic here (and you can make additional corrections if needed). I realize there were some additional questions in your last paragraph (about getting post-docs), but that's a whole separate issue; recommend making a separate post for that in a few days if necessary.

@MoisheKohan What do you mean by "from scratch"? Hiding the grad school to appear from scratch is unethical, restarting undergrad is surely not what you meant, and as for getting a Masters then applying as if I've left a Masters, I'll have one by the end of this semester.

@AlexanderWoo At least 1 person per year does. Someone who got a PhD 2 years ago even got a assistant professorship after 2 years.

I did not mean hiding your current grad school; yes, applying not as a transfer student, but as a regular PhD applicant. If you are admitted, it will be up to the new graduate program to decide how to count your current MS/MA degree and classes/exams that you took.  In particular, if your current classes can be used as substitutes for their classes.

@MoisheKohan All the applications I did did not distinguish between new and transfer students, there was no option to select your method of application.

I downvoted because this version of the question is worse.

Sigh. I would vote to close if I could (don’t want to unilaterally hammer it), too dependent on individual factors.

Did you take  "field theory" before you took 2 abstract algebra courses? If so, that's strange. It looks like you need to strengthen you algebra before you transfer or re-apply.

Good point @AnonymousM I have taken some out with edits

@Nobody Yes. The field theory was covered again in my abstract algebra course so it turned out to be a waste of time. For reference, the 2 abstract algebra courses made it through a huge chunk of Dummitt & Foote, field theory used Galois Theory by Ian Stewart. There's no abstract algebra at my grad school beyond that level, I took the highest level algebra course there, which I would consider my 3rd grad algebra course if not for the fact that almost all of it ended up being review. To learn more, I'm studying commutative algebra on my own.

I think you've found yourself in a bit of an unfortunate situation.  Only getting three years of undergraduate instruction makes it hard to compete with other excellent students, nearly all of whom are staying for four years and many of whom are really maxing out the opportunities their institution provides.  You explain why this was not your decision, and I feel for you.
I think you are finding that it's pretty hard to trade up from one PhD program to another once you're already there.  Realistically, I think you may have to give up on your hopes to get a PhD in a top 20 department.  On the other hand, you should be able to find a department that shares your research interests: if you want to do algebraic geometry, you should not be at an institution where none of the faculty do that, and I think you can transfer into an institution in which there are strong faculty in that area.  For instance, my institution (UGA) is about the 50th best graduate program overall, and we are very strong in algebraic geometry, with at least one truly world-class mathematician working in that area.  I'm not saying that coming here is as good as going to Harvard or Princeton or Michigan (it isn't), but it's still very good, and in fact programs like ours serve unusually motivated and knowledgeable students quite well.  We have had some graduates go on to do distinguished work in algebraic geometry...and we are not unique in this regard.  Other PhD programs at around the same level can say the same.
Good luck.

What do you even have to do nowadays to get admission to a PhD program in a top 20 department nowadays?

@cgb5436 from reading the "about me" page of students on top universities, I've noticed that almost all of them had an outstanding record before applying to the programs (an IMO medal, awards, experience in research and even some published papers). They are basically able to do what average people (like me) need to learn while doing the PhD :)

I am not a mathematician, and I am occasionally reminded on this site that math PhDs are quite different than science ones. So, this will just be a partial, rather speculative answer; hopefully an actual mathematician can give you a better one. But, a few points:
(1) I suspect your "mistake" was in your SOP. Compare the v1 of this question to the revision 4. The first version was all over the place, whereas in version 4, a brilliant editor did an amazing job writing excellent prose that clearly and concisely made your situation crystal clear. I jest, since it was my edit, but I'm a little bit serious: if the beginning of your SOP had laid out such a compelling narrative, I rather doubt that you would have gone 0 for 16.
(2) Despite my diagnosis, I'm not sure this will help you much if you reapply next year. Yes, you can borrow from what I wrote above and write a much better SOP, and this will probably be enough to get you "serious consideration." The problem is that at that point, you'll no longer be a new grad student; rather, you'll have been in grad school for two years. So, a good undergrad record and a clear narrative won't really be enough anymore; rather, you'll need to show some impressive accomplishments from the past two years. From what you say, it's hard to get impressive accomplishments at your low-ranked school...so it seems like a bit of a vicious cycle, at least from the outside. Good luck.

It's a bit cheeky to say that when you're the one who edited the question.

Yes, that's the "jest" :-)

Paragraph 1 could also convey "I'm conceited and don't get along well with others". I might phrase it in a more positive way about the opportunities at the target school. Also worth considering re: Alexander Woo's comment above, it's likely that the environment consisting of no interesting professors and a non-challenging environment is operated by a group of professors who were seen by their peers to be better candidates than the average student at even the "better" schools OP is targeting.

Good points, made an edit

Find out where people from your current department have successfully transferred. Then see if any of those places have algebraic geometers. You don't have to limit future applications only to such schools, but knowing what those schools are will give you a realistic benchmark to compare against where you dream of transferring. I didn't get a sense from reading your post how you decided what schools to apply to this year. I know someone who got no math PhD program offers when finishing college, and it turned out that (i) the person's application list was all top-20 departments, which was quite unrealisic for that student's situation and (ii) the student had not spoken to anyone for feedback about the list before applying. If I had been shown the list ahead of time, then I would have warned the student that it was wildly unrealistic.
I know someone who transferred a few years ago from a math department outside the top 50 (but ranked much closer to 50th place than to 100th place) to a top-20 department, so this kind of thing can happen, but the lower ranked the school is that you're applying from, the less likely it is that you'll be successful.


text:
Straight To PHD or work with an MA as part time professor?
So I've recently applied for my PHD in Economics and have found a a couple job offers to be a part time professor at a college (not a university) which only require an Masters degree. The contract is for 10 months.
I'm debating whether or not it is beneficial to my  academic career to delay my PHD for the next year for the sake of this teaching position as i am currently under then belief that it will improve my CV.
Which one is a better option?

When you say you have found job offers, does that mean you have received offers? Or found opportunities?

@Dawn Found oppurtunities, I know someone at this particular college and he told me his department is hiring for introductory Microeconomics and Mathematics for Business and Economics.

Are you looking at the US?

@Dawn Yeah I am

Consider: Publishing is always a professor's primary job. Teaching is a secondary side-gig. Reason from there.

This is an opinion question which is disfavored here. It is also a personal choice question which is also disfavored.
But I would think, in general, that there are better ways to start out on an academic career than with such a position. Unless money is a big issue, my advice, if I were your advisor, would be to get into the doctoral program now and try to pick up a bit of teaching experience as part of it.
But that is an opinion, worth just about exactly what you paid for it.

Yes, I agree here. My observation is that those hiring Econ professors would not consider you to be a better candidate if you took such a job pre-PhD. I also am guessing that they typically hire late-stage PhD candidates for these positions.

@Dawn can you explain why?

Econ departments typically care more about research than teaching. You will likely have opportunities to teach during a PhD. These are considered sufficient. There is diminishing marginal utility to additional teaching. The exception might be community colleges or liberal arts colleges that are lower ranked, but I can’t say for sure.

Note that most job market advice for aspiring economist faculty members doesn't even mention teaching. See here, and also the other advice he links to: https://chrisblattman.com/job-market/

+1 I would suggest editing out the first line and making it a comment on the question instead. The advice here is actually much more solid than you're giving it credit (the OP really should follow this).

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Segregation rules for females studying in Saudi Arabia
Saudi universities are best in Middle East with nice modern programs and financing and scholarships. Unfortunately, as some of you may know, Saudi Arabia has special segregation rules for women entering the country (they must be followed by a guardian - male-relative or husband) and studying in colleges/universities.
What are exact segregation-related conditions for a foreign woman to study in the Kingdom? Can somebody here share their own experience? Not touching every university, but the situation in the country as a whole.

Some of the universities are effectively "compounds" in which the laws ruling the rest of the country are relaxed. For instance, the abeya which women are obligated to wear outside is not required on the university campuses.

They are certainly well funded but far from the best in the Middle East.

Saudi Arabia has women's universities (i.e., for women only) that are actually quite decent.

@aeismail Thanks! But I'm afraid wearing a piece of clothes is far from being an important consideration

I myself study as a PhD student in King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). It's a mixed-gender university. A single woman can study here without being accompanied by a husband.
It is a graduate-level university, that is, you can study only for Master of Science (MSc) or Philosophy Doctor (PhD) degrees here.
Regarding programs we have applied mathematics, computer science, electrical engineering, material science, Earth science, marine science, environmental science, statistics, mechanical engineering, chemistry, and many others (I'm not aware of all possible fields that are studied here).
You can find more information on the official website (https://www.kaust.edu.sa/en).

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


text:
What to consider as reviewer before dooming a paper
I am conflicted about what should influence my recommendation as reviewer.
A few times, I've been in a situation similar to the current one. Consider a paper that, after receiving a major revision, has been resubmitted, and I am doing a second-round review. Or alternatively, think of a paper currently in the rebuttal phase of a peer-reviewed conference. After the initial round of reviews the situation is the following:

2-3 reviewers are somewhat positive about the paper, but not overwhelmingly positive. Their reviews have reasonable quality, but do not go into depth.
(At most) one reviewer is negative about the paper and highlights one or more considerable but not necessarily critical weaknesses (e.g. correct but outdated methodology, imperfect reproducibility). The review is quite detailed and it is clear they know what they are talking about.
I am reserved about the overall idea and have identified some shortcomings that could be improved. The revision provided by the authors addresses some of the shortcomings, but not all. I do not feel that the remaining issues are huge problems, but neither are they negligible. Quality-wise, I believe the paper could be accepted, but I would prefer a rejection.
Experience tells me it is likely that if I raise my rating/recommendation, the paper will be accepted, but if I stick with my rating, then the paper is doomed ( it's a highly competitive venue).

No further round of reviewing is permitted, and the next decision is final.
As stated, I am reserved about the paper's idea and would prefer if the paper is rejected. However, this is science, and it should not be about my "feelings". The paper does not have a major technical flaw and fits to the venue. It could be accepted. But then again, many other reviewers and editors sometimes follow their feeling of gut. Peer-review is inherently subjective. Maybe I should just follow my feelings as well. However, I can also empathize with the author side: More than once have I or my colleagues been in a similar situation. This thought makes me want to help the authors and raise my rating. But again, this is science, and such factors should not matter – at least I think so.
You will probably realize that I am conflicted.
Question: Which of the above factors should influence my decision? Are there perhaps other, more important factors that I should consider?

I am aware that the final decision is made by the editor/program chair, and not by me. However, I am still concern about the impact my recommendation might have.

are these really "feelings" in a purely emotional sense and not rather your expertise and knowledge on the topic telling you its subpar?

@Sursula Well, subpar is not a clear term. My "expertise" tells my that it's a paper that could be accepted, but doesn't have to be. I know worse papers that have been accepted. I know better papers that have been rejected.

I'm voting to close as this is a purely speculative question calling for a speculative answer.

@Buffy I believe it is possible to answer my question without speculation. I do not see in what sense speculation is necessary to make a recommendation, e.g. based on a published reviewer guideline which addresses similar situations

Why do you know the other reviews to begin with?

@MisterMiyagi I can see the other reviews because in my field they are always visible to other reviewers after I've submitted my own.

@MisterMiyagi The question is in the context of a second round, or a rebuttal phase.

This is why a referee should not see the reports of others, or only after the editorial decision.

Do you have to select a recommendation from a fixed list, or is it free text? If the latter, it opens up options like "very weak reject, because of X". The editor's got to make the final call, so if you're ambivalent, let them know that.

However, this is science - Though you may be reviewing scientific work, peer review is not itself science; similarly with deciding who to give awards to.

Isn't calling it "dooming" a little too emotional here? Perhaps that's a symptom that you're mixing emotions into your assessment. I'd say that ideally there should be zero emotions in peer review. A rejected paper is just one where you incorporate the feedback you got and resubmit somewhere else, isn't it? Delayed by some months, yes, but doomed?

You should consider whether you think the paper itself should be rejected.
If that is from a gut feeling then applying a lower confidence to your review seems appropriate. But tactical considerations on how others rated the paper, or how your rating relates to others, or what the authors deserve, or similar are not the point of a scientific review.

Some random points to consider:

Does this science deserve to be published, and is this venue
appropriate? By "deserve" I mean was the study appropriately
conducted. Are the results meaningful to the community?
Not every paper has to conclude every imaginable question one could
have on that topic. Reviewers often lose focus and expect a career's
worth of work out of every manuscript. If it answers some questions,
and opens up new ones that inspire further research, then that is
great.
Do not fall into the role of gatekeeper but stay as a peer
reviewer. You know the difficulties involved with research and that
not everything is perfect. Be a peer, approach it in good faith,
and then decide if the work lives up to the claims and the venue. If
you see other reviews, were they done in good faith?
All things being equal, if there are no major technical flaws or
misrepresentations, does the field benefit more from this article
getting published in that venue with its respective visibility, or if
this work ends up in a lower tier (but maybe more specialized) journal?

How is "gatekeeping" any different that deciding if the article lives up to the venue?  Probably the meaning of this word has shifted while I was not looking. Just curious.

If a journal lists a series of requirements, or some standard of novelty, one can make that assessment. Is this the 1st-3rd example of some interesting phenomena, or is it the 10th-20th? Is it the first example of a process, or an extension of something already well known, etc... Gatekeeping is more like "sure this is new, but I don't feel it belongs in this journal". Tantamount to "my research is more interesting than yours".

I think "would it be a valuable contribution, or would it rather be more valuable elsewhere" is crucial. Perhaps "would I myself be happy to find it in that journal" sums it up.

"Does this field benefit more" from publication than from non-publication <- key consideration IMHO.

Concerning your second point: https://xkcd.com/2268/

The only way to leave your feeling out of things is to stick to facts,  and facts alone.
Firstly,  where at all possible,  a refrain from giving ratings during per review.  To the extent I've stopped reviewing for some venues that won't let you submit a review without giving them.
What I would do in your situation is write a review that said:

I am reserved about the overall idea and have identified some shortcomings that could be improved. The revision provided by the authors addresses some of the shortcomings, but not all. I do not feel that the remaining issues are huge problems, but neither are they negligible.

In addition to this I would evidence my points. In particular I would highlight the remaining non-negotiable remaining problems. I would not make a recommendation either way for accept or reject.
This is what @R1NaNo means by being a reviewer rather than a gatekeeper.

I like this answer as a non-academic. It seems like exactly the type of useful feedback one would hope to receive about projects in the corporate world as well. It provides useful information and perfectly conveys sentiment without "dooming the paper" or "letting the paper slide"

Experience tells me it is likely that if I raise my rating/recommendation, the paper will be accepted, but if I stick with my rating, then the paper is doomed ( it's a highly competitive venue).
What if other reviewers share the same opinion as you? There seems to be a strategic decision-making element involved, which I believe contradicts the fundamental role of a referee. The primary responsibility of a referee is to provide a recommendation, not to influence the editorial decision—that is the editor's responsibility. Therefore, it’s best to focus solely on your own assessment and provide your feedback independently. In many journals, referees are not required to give a recommendation or rating.
I am reserved about the overall idea and have identified some shortcomings that could be improved. The revision provided by the authors addresses some of the shortcomings, but not all. I do not feel that the remaining issues are huge problems, but neither are they negligible. Quality-wise, I believe the paper could be accepted, but I would prefer a rejection.
Why recommend rejection if you believe the paper meets the quality standards for acceptance? If you think the paper makes a significant contribution to the field, it’s better to request a second revision to address the remaining issues.

From what you wrote, it looks like the paper has its value and needs to be published. The only question is whether it is good enough to be published at this venue, or, in other words (and the following is an obvious simplification), if this paper is rejected, will the paper that would be published instead of it be better? You cannot know that. Ideally, the editors can have more information on that, so maybe you should not feel you need to determine the final decision. It looks like the authors' revision improved the paper, but you are still not enthusiastic about the paper. Maybe you should just increase your rating somewhat, as the revision is better than the initial submission, and let the editors do the rest of the dirty work:-).

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


text:
Reviewers do not live up to own quality standards
I have the impression that some reviewers have quality standards that they themselves cannot, or do not fully live up to when in the author role. However, since in most journals/conferences, the reviewers' identities are unknown to authors and fellow reviewers, it is difficult to check whether this impression is justified.
Some evidence

I have one colleague for whom I know that this is true. As reviewer, they often criticize papers for lacking supplementary experiments, e.g., ablation studies, sensitivity analyses, but as author, they often don't conduct such experiments (even when reasonable).
In peer reviewer discussions, I have witnessed that some fellow reviewers demand absurdly high quality standards, going far beyond what is typical (or possible) for the field.

Question: How common is this?
I hope that someone who can see both sides, e.g., an editor or PC chair, might be in a position to give an answer based on facts.

Let's suppose it is like you suggest. What would be the conclusion? Would this have an impact how you handle their comments?

@Snijderfrey Well, I suppose if this is true for many reviewers, I guess I would take their comments less literally than I do now.

That would be a mistake. Don't propagate others' mistakes, rather focus on improving the quality of your own work.

You can be an excellent baseball umpire without being able to hit the ball. Or a respected literary critic, etc.

What's an ablation study?

I do think OP might have a point though not sure how it’s actionable since it might point at a system problem, namely it sounds like reviewers sometimes nitpick. I’ve seen this in the world of code reviews in software development and I’m sure I’ve done it myself, requesting changes that weren’t really needed because of a hyper focus on the smallest flaws not realizing that I’m not applying a realistic standard of quality. Reviewing is hard in any context.

FWIW, most of the papers I review have poor experimental evaluation that cuts corners in the interests of expedience.  I try not to do that, which is probably why I publish so few papers.  I am at the stage in my career where I only care about quality, early career researchers may be under more pressure to publish in quantity (e.g. for promotions), so while they would prefer to concentrate on quality, they have to deal with real world issues.  That doesn't mean they are wrong to helpfully point out ways to improve the quality of a  paper when reviewing.

What do you mean by "absurdly high quality standards"? Isn't it that standard experiments are performed according to the respective protocols? Whereas for non-standard experiments there are simply no standards. The demands of referee to go beyond a typical protocol is very easy to address.

@AzorAhai-him- ablation study: If you have an approach that depends on multiple component techniques, you try removing bits one at a time in order to see how much the individual bits (or specific combinations thereof) are contributing to the results.

This is not uncommon, but the root cause isn't that reviewers have high standards. As you've noted and I can confirm from my observations, these researchers often don't adhere to such high standards themselves. The reality is that they are busy people who lack the time to fully understand the papers they review. Instead of dedicating one or two days to thoroughly read, understand, and thoughtfully critique a manuscript, they make quick judgments. They skim through the paper and assess it based on its appearance, the interest level of the topic, the authors' affiliations, and their reputations. If a referee, using these superficial criteria, feels that a paper may not be suitable for publication in a particular journal, they look for formal reasons to justify its rejection. Citing the lack of ablation studies, sensitivity analyses, etc., is the easiest way to reach that end.

This is a shallow generalization. This is more of an example of the worst of reviewing rather than the standard.

@R1NaNo Unfortunately, this is not the worst of reviewing. The worst of reviewing is when the reviewer decides to write a negative review just because the manuscript is authored by a competitor. A mentor of mine explicitly asked me to help him find arguments to justify rejection of a manuscript written by a competing group. Compared to that, busy referees who write superficial reviews are angels :)

@R1NaNo I also would like to add that in my experience, about 80% of referee reports are very shallow. Here's my post about one such report: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/186660 Unfortunately, most researchers are very busy and simply cannot afford spending enough time to properly review a manuscript.

"I also would like to add that in my experience, about 80% of referee reports are very shallow." My experience as editor and associate editor (and also author) of various statistics journals is very different. I'd put the number closer to 20%. And I'd think I've seen around 1000 reports. Of course it may depend on the field.

@ChristianHennig Unfortunately, busy referees write their superficial reports so as to make them appear well-thought. It is only when you are the author that you fully see the actual quality of reports. Of course, as an editor, you must have seen a heap of reports, but many of them may be not as thorough as they appear to be.

@Mitsuko Well certainly I have seen them and you haven't. So even though you may be right in principle, I for sure have better information about whether I'm right about the reports I have seen than you do. ;-) (Note that the author whose work is criticised isn't necessarily in the best position to have an objective view about whether the criticism is justified either.)

Looking at this from the point of view of an editor who handles a paper, the major important issue here is the quality of the resulting paper. If reviewers' comments make sense, it is irrelevant what these reviewers do in their own papers. That's just a different editor's job. If a reviewer asks for something that is important for raising the quality of the paper, this is a valuable request, and if the reviewer doesn't do that thing themselves when they publish, another editor and their reviewers should ask for it. They may not, but I have no influence on that.
On the other hand it is true that sometimes reviewers ask for things that may in principle have some value, but may require a huge effort for little effect, or would be better addressed in a different paper as the present paper is already long enough and only so much can be expected from a single publication. Once more, from my point of view, it isn't really relevant in such cases whether the reviewer would do such things in their own papers. Rather I'd expect the author to say in their reply to reviewers why a certain change/addition is not made. As an author I rather regularly do such a thing myself. Sometimes the editor is just fine with it (remember, it is not the reviewers who decide whether a paper is accepted, it's the editor). Sometimes the paper goes to the same reviewers again and it may happen that a reviewer is not happy that one of their issues has not been addressed. In this case they may insist and give arguments why they believe it's essential, and the editor may or may not agree. There may also be a path to compromise in that the reviewer still insists on something that was requested before but not all of it, and then the thing may go into another round.
The main point however is again that it doesn't matter for this what the reviewer does in their own publications. If you as author believe that certain requested changes are unreasonable, be it because you don't agree, be it because the effort would be unreasonable or it would go beyond the scope of the paper, you can defend your point of view in the reply to reviewers, and then it depends on whether and to what extent you can convince the editor and the reviewers - and it can happen for sure that an editor will accept something even if one of the reviewers (who may have asked for something unreasonable, and maybe for something they wouldn't do in their own papers, but that doesn't really make a difference) remains unhappy.
Regarding the more "empirical" side of the question, I've got to say that as editor I'm not usually interested, i.e., I will not check reviews against what the reviewers do in their own publications, because I think it's irrelevant to my job. However of course I often nominate reviewers whose work I know to some extent, and I rarely have seen strong discrepancies between reviewer demands and standard of their own work of the kind the question asks for (as a statistician, I do occasionally see reviewers asking for more simulations in methodological papers who try to get away with a minimum in their own, so it does exist to some extent).

I think you highlighted an issue OP is talking about, the tendency of some reviewers to nitpick (i.e. requesting large changes for little payoff). Not sure if there’s a fix to that issue or if it’s just the cost of doing business though.

I wonder if part of the issue is the perception that the job of the reviewer is to be a gatekeeper and decide whether a paper should be published, but their main job is actually to help the author(s) to improve their paper so that it is more effective in communicating the idea.  Ablation studies, for example, often make a big difference to how convincing the experimental evaluation is.

@bob Remember that authors get to respond to the reviewer's comments. If you think something takes too much effort for too little payoff, include that in your response.

In addition to the other answers already provided, I think this also has to do with the role those people (or any of us, really) are in. As an author you have a different responsibility (i.e. assignment/task), and thus perspective (including drive and investment) than as a reviewer.
You will advocate differently as a result. Now would it be good if a bit of scientist/author understanding would be present in our review practices: Yes. Just as it would help if journals would give clear expectations and standards on what to do and not to do as a reviewer - and also if we all gave up striving for a Cell/Science/Nature paper and settle for "just" getting our data out there without all the pump and circumstance that inflates paper content.


text:
Polarizing paper "almost good enough", but no revision offered
For several years, I've been trying to publish a specific line of research, without success. Rejections are common in academia, so the lack of success is not surprising.
During peer review the reviewers are typically polarized, with one faction  awkwardly praising the manuscript, while the other faction clearly opposes publication. However, the chair/editor decisions are eerily similar. The text is usually quite long (much longer than for other papers I've written). I've summarized some examples below

"The chair acknowledges the solid ... However, reviewer X rightly pointed out that ... Unfortunately, the paper cannot be accepted in its current form ... However, the chair has no doubts that this research will eventually be published" – Reject, no revision offered
"This paper has great potential ... However, some reviewers, in particular X, ... Section Y needs revision. However, no revision is possible for this manuscript. If a revision were possible, it would have been accepted" – Reject, no revision offered
"This paper has several strengths ... However, reviewer X raised concerns about ... I view this paper as slightly below the acceptance threshold" – Reject, no revision offered

Note that these are from different reputable journals (Q1).
Question: Why does the chair/editor keep telling me that the paper is "almost good enough", but does not offer a revision? I find this odd, as do my co-authors and colleagues. To me, it sounds like the editors/chair are not telling me the true reason for rejection, but how should I figure this out if they're not honest about it?

Question might be related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/162070/78796

Maybe it's just not Q1 material and a Q2 journal will publish it?

It is not unreasonable to ask the editor directly.  Doing so removes the ambiguity of other people, who are not involved in the review, interpreting the editor's decision.

The editor is probably telling you that the paper is "almost good enough" because it is "almost good enough". For better or worse polarizing research can be scrutinized a bit closer. Just speculating, but it sounds like, from your description, that maybe the work isn't as airtight as it needs to be for those journals to risk publishing what might be a controversial take. Of course it is also possible that the negative reviews are impossible to address and no matter what you do someone will be unhappy. An editor may not want to deal with that if they don't have to (not that this is good practice).
So, I would not assume that the editors are lying - a paper can be good but not good enough. The examples you provide are actually pretty straightforward from my perspective. They all say that your manuscript isn't bad but that it can't be revised to a point where they would consider accepting it. Taken at face value, there are flaws that can't be fixed. Maybe this isn't a fair assessment
but if every set of reviews you've received have been polarized, that goes beyond bad luck or a bad reviewer.
I think you have a few next steps. You probably need to comb through the reviewer reports - there may be a common thread. You could also reach out to the editors and ask for more details - they might not respond but at this point it's worth a try. And, if you haven't already, find a neutral third party who can look at the paper. An unbiased perspective might help you spot some weaknesses that are killing the paper in review.
At this point, I would also consider targeting lower tier journals. Your story paints the picture of a manuscript that is being sent to journals a bit out of reach. You're consistently being told "hey this is good and publishable but we don't want it". Which is weird in a vacuum but might be less weird if you are targeting big names in your field. In my experience, three rejections from similarly tiered journals with similar, vague comments means that it's time to fall down the list a bit.

Thank you for the answer. I get your main point about not being good enough. But if that is so, why do the editors make it seem like it was a close call? This was the main reason why I kept submitting that manuscript to top venues

It probably was a close call. I don't think there is any deeper meaning to the rejections. It's up to you to decide how much time/effort you want to spend shopping it around before jumping down a tier though. For me, 3 is enough but you might have different priorities.

@mto_19 I think the tenor here is that for some reason, some reviewers strongly reject your work, the editors agree, and there is nothing you can do about it (e.g., by editing, revising). The problem is in the approach, method or result (we cannot know which one applies from your post). For example, imagine your research shows that on average, white people are less intelligent than black people, and that there is a genetic reason colocated with the skin color gene. As an editor, I would avoid such a work like the plague, and I would hide behind a reviewer. But I cannot say that.

@Peter-ReinstateMonica Do you mind converting your comment to an answer? You might be right. I would be worried, if journals suppress articles with political delicate but scientifically sound findings!

@usr1234567 I have zero experience in research, let alone publishing, so I feel not qualified to write an answer. My remark was more a logical conclusion. My example was perhaps less than optimal; more likely than a politically fraught (but correct) result would be a method or result which is burnt or defies conventional wisdom -- and is very likely wrong, even though there is no obvious mistake. Say, homeopathy works; cold fusion; empirical psychology claims which already reek of non-reproducibility.

High-ranking journals and conferences often evaluate papers on two axes, both correctness and "notability."
This second is a fuzzy notion that speaks to the other function of high-ranked journals, which is to help their readers triage which articles to pay attention to in the ongoing deluge that are always passing through.
The rejections that you are getting sound like the journals are considering your work borderline with regards to the "notability" criteria: interesting enough to send out for review rather than desk reject, but then the reviews are not positive enough to keep going with it.
My strong recommendation, in a situation like this, is to move your article to venues that don't care so much about notability. Specifically:

If it's not already in a preprint archive, put it in one ASAP. Then people will be able to see, discuss, and cite it even if it's not officially peer reviewed yet, which is very important!
Try a Q2 / society-level journal, which are fine "bread and butter" places to put work.
If that fails, go to a reputable megajournal (e.g., PLoS ONE) that explicitly does not care about notability.

None of these will be quite as nice for your CV as a top-ranked journal, but rank is less important than it looks. Remember, if there's truly something interesting there, this is just the first of a long serious of publications that you'll be making on the subject (building reputation and "notability" over time), and good work can easily rack up hundreds of citations even in lower ranked publications.

Go to conferences and give talks. There you get direct feedback from the community and you might get more unfiltered comments, opinions, and hints regarding your research. You can discuss with people and get a feeling, how your research is perceived. Do they think you are an outsider or a crank? Are they just not interested or do they think your research is not interesting at all?
Your talk needs to be accepted first! Depending on your field, it is easier to get a talk then a paper in a journal (or the other way round).


text:
Success of Aggressive Rebuttal Strategy
I have observed that in rebuttals (conference and journals) the author-side is usually very polite, positive, and submissive. Some phrases I commonly read are

"Thank you for the detailed improvement suggestions. We will incorporate them into our work."
"We are happy to read that our work was well-received."
"We will tone down that claim as you suggested"

Some less common phrases are

"We acknowledge your concerns about ..."
"We believe you may have misunderstood ..."

According to my understanding, authors usually choose this polite and submissive tone because they fear upsetting reviewers, who are usually in a more powerful position during a rebuttal than the authors.
Question: Have you ever observed a case where the authors were successful with a direct, offensive, and combative strategy in the rebuttal? I rarely every read rebuttals like

"Your evaluation of our work lacks objectivity and is scientifically unsound."
"Your assessment of our work's novelty is not supported by sufficient evidence."
"It is clear that you are not as familiar with the subject as indicated by your reviewer confidence score."
"The papers you suggest us to cite are not related to our work, which raises the suspicion that you are trying to unethically promote your own papers."

Has anyone ever tried or observed this strategy and was it successful? If yes, how did the authors do it? How did the reviewers react? I am wondering about this because I always find it a bit awkward to be very polite and submissive. Please note that I am aware of the typical recommendations of how to behave during a rebuttal (e.g., as discussed in this question).

Please note that I am not asking whether any of these phrases are morally acceptable or not, or whether you think this is a good idea.

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

I enjoy reading reviews and rebuttals in journals that practice open peer review. I have seen responses that are very...blunt, so for the exact question ("does anyone do this ever"), yes, that's a thing someone has done ever. One that sticks in my memory is a very short negative review (the words "garbage in, garbage out" were used multiple times) where the author replied that they felt the reviewer hadn't taken it "seriously", and were going to exclusively respond to the comments of the person "who bothered to actually review it" (and wrote in far more detail). This review was a couple bullet points with few actionable comments, while the other review had far more to say.
As alluded from the fact this stuck in my memory, it's an outlier. I've never seen something as far as the examples in the OP, and agree with the assessments in other answers of their appropriateness/lack thereof. With regards to the original question ("has there ever been a circumstance where people criticise the review openly"), yes, but not to the extent of e.g. accusing colleagues of possible misconduct or taking shots against their presumed identity. Even the extreme comments like this were technically "comments on content rather than contributors".

According to my understanding, authors usually choose this polite and submissive tone because they fear upsetting reviewers, who are usually in a more powerful position during a rebuttal than the authors.

Perhaps some do, but the reason why I choose a polite (not submissive) tone is that I appreciate that, at least the vast majority of the time, the referee has volunteered in good faith a significant chunk of their time to read my manuscript. My manuscript is not God's gift to mankind, no-one has any obligation to read it, so I am grateful to people who do volunteer to read it and assess whether it can be published. If I think they are fundamentally wrong, I will say so and explain why. But I have only very rarely had any reason to do so. Much more common is the situation where the referee's misunderstanding points to aspects of the paper which ought to be improved.
Your proposed rebuttals add nothing of value to your response to the referee. Clearly it's not sufficient to just say:

Your evaluation of our work lacks objectivity and is scientifically unsound.

You also need to explain precisely why it is scientifically unsound. But once you have done so, there is no reason to add pointless biting remarks like this: your factual rebuttal is what will demonstrate that the referee's evaluation lacks objectivity, not your statement that "your evaluation of our work lacks objectivity", which has zero value to either the editor or the referee and makes objective discussion more complicated.
You are conflating being assertive in the sense of clearly explaining why the referee is wrong and attributing negative motivations or incompetence to the referee. Note that people can be wrong, and frequently are, without being incompetent. Moreover, if you find yourself attributing incompetence to referees most of the time (as I infer from your previous question), then chances are that what's really happening is that you are having trouble seeing your own manuscript through the eyes of other people (rather than most of your referees being incompetent). This is a problem that everyone faces to some extent, but getting into the habit of putting the blame on the referee will not help you get better at doing this.
Finally, there seems to be a clear connection between the attitudes you exhibit in this question and your attitude of "hating your peers" which you exhibit in this question. You seem to be overeager to attribute negative qualities to your colleagues: not only incompetence to referees (which may be sometimes but not typically warranted), but also "submissivity" and "fear" to people who respond politely to referees. Overall, I predict that your career in academia will not be a very satisfying one unless you manage to get over this pronounced need to attribute negative motivations to others.

+1, generally good answer. However I don't think personal remarks and what the thread opener has written elsewhere belong in an answer, which is also for others who may have the same (legitimate) question. I think this bit should rather be a comment.

@ChristianHennig I understand that this is not how Academia SE is supposed to work, but in case the underlying issue differs from the literal question, I prefer to write answers addressing what I find to be the underlying issue for the concrete person asking the question. In such cases I feel that writing primarily for the benefit of the concrete person asking the question is more useful than writing answers primarily for the benefit of an unknown abstract audience.

Please note that I asked a different question. Have you seen aggressive rebuttal strategies be successful or not? As stated, "I am not asking whether any of these phrases are morally acceptable or not, or whether you think this is a good idea".

I also really don't like that you try to take this ad-hominem via my other questions. Let's please focus on the question, and not the person asking.

@mto_19 I think it would be very irresponsible to not warn someone of the consequences of responding like this. The answer is trying to help you. You don't have to listen but the consequences will be yours, not theirs.

@mto_19 "Please note that I asked a different question." Your question seems based on a misunderstanding, so I addressed the misunderstanding. "I also really don't like that you try to take this ad-hominem via my other questions." Yes, it's almost as if introducing a personal angle has the potential to irritate people and distract from the matter at hand. I wonder if this phenomenon perhaps bears some connection to your question...

I have been successful in forcefully rebutting claims by reviewers on several occasions for both papers and grants. I've convinced editors/grant panels to ignore a review, and to commission further reviews. But it's generally not by saying things like:

"Your evaluation of our work lacks objectivity and is scientifically
unsound."

"Your assessment of our work's novelty is not supported by sufficient
evidence."

"It is clear that you are not as familiar with the subject as
indicated by your reviewer confidence score."

"The papers you suggest us to cite are not related to our work, which
raises the suspicion that you are trying to unethically promote your
own papers."

Firstly, these address the reviewer, not the person making the decision (the editor, or panel member). Secondly, they have a whiff of ad hominem about them. That is, they attack the person, not the argument. Thirdly, they are statements without support themselves. Now, you might go on to provide support, but if you have provided sufficiently convincing support, then the summary statement should not be necessary. As writers say "show, don't tell".
Instead of "Your assessment of our work's novelty is not supported by sufficient evidence", say "The reviewer states that our work is not novel, and support their point with reference to the work of A, B and C. However, our work differs the work of these groups in the following ways... Thus we believe that our work is novel".
Instead of "The papers you suggest us to cite are not related to our work, which raises the suspicion that you are trying to unethically promote your own papers.", say "The reviewer suggests we cite A, B and C. However, our work is about X, and A is about Z, B is about W and C is about Y. Thus we do not follow how they are relevant."
Note that the above is neither submissive or aggressive. It's just a list of statements which you hope the arbiter will take as facts. Your job here is to seem like your are more objective, less emotional and have a better command of the literature and intricacies of the techniques than the reviewer, without actually saying so. If the facts support you, saying so is unnecessary after you've laid out the facts. If that doesn't convince the editor/panel, then saying you are better than the reviewer isn't going to convince someone who isn't swayed by the facts.
This is also where the politeness at the top comes in. This helps bolster the idea that you see this as a professional discussion of facts, rather than an angry exchange of opinions. You recognise your "opponent" as a human, who has, after all, given up their time, entirely voluntarily, and without payment, to consider your work. So in that way, they are doing you a favour. It helps to actually believe this. You then go on to show, surgically, in detail and without any defensiveness, using only facts, that they are entirely wrong.
Addendum
I should add that there is occasionally a case for your first comment. And that is when a reviewer makes unwarranted personal comments about you. If comments are made about your gender, race, nationality, age, name, the university you work at etc then you are warranted in replying to such unprofessional comments by pointing out that they are unprofessional. Really, such comments should have been screened out by the editor, and I would write to the editor pointing that the reviewer has attacked you personally on the basis of something irrelevant to the work. I would include a note that you are willing to address any substantive comments the reviewer has (I would address them ahead of this if there are substantive comments).

+1 for pointing out to address the review, not the reviewer

Please note that I asked a different question. Have you seen aggressive rebuttal strategies be successful or not? As stated, "I am not asking whether any of these phrases are morally acceptable or not, or whether you think this is a good idea".

@mto_19 I don't comment at any point about the morals, but rather about the effectiveness. I have seen direct or blunt rebuttals, which actively demolish the case of the reviewer be successful. Indeed, I have written them. But I have only seen them be effective when used with utmost care, and give the judge (the editor) the impression you are not being fair and unemotional, while building a picture of the reviewers incorrectness in the editors mind. I advise against ad hominem not because its morally wrong, but because it is ineffective.

@mto_19 To put it another way - I have seen, and have been successful with calling an argument in a review "stupid" , but I have never seen anyone be successful with calling a reviewer "stupid".

@mto_19 So you asked "Have you ever seen this tactic be successful?" The answer to this depends on what you mean by "This tactic". Above I outline cases where non-submissive or polite answers can be successful. If you mean "have I ever seen direct ad hominem attacks on reviewers work", then, as I set out in my previous comment, the answer is no. "How did the authors do it?" See the majority of my post. "How did the reviewers respond?" If done correctly, the reviewers don't get the opportunity to respond because the editor discounts them.

The editor is the person who makes the decision, not the reviewers. From my experience as editor I can say that I will not blindly follow the reviewers. It is hard to not reject a paper if all reviewers are negative, but for sure I have seen problematic reviews, and I am open to authors taking a strong position against a reviewer. I have accepted papers where an author was very negative about one review for sure. I may be convinced by the author's arguments; maybe I even had thought for myself already that the reviewer had some unreasonable demands. Not all reviews are of top quality. (As another answer says, however, it's the arguments that count, not making generally negative statements about the review.)
Also personally I don't find the "tone" of the rebuttal very important. Politeness is worth something in life, but as an editor I will not normally be biased against a paper just because the author says straight on that they don't agree with the reviewer's arguments without phrases such as "Thank you very much for this thoughtful review" etc. I will however in most cases send the revision to the same reviewers again and of course I can't guarantee that the reviewer reacts to this in an unbiased manner. But then the fact that a reviewer may be pissed off by the rebuttal and this may come through in their next review will not necessarily make me take their side. At the end I will make up my own mind regarding whose arguments convince me more.
However if I ask for a revision based on reviewers' comments, I also have read the reviewers' comments, and I see some benefit in at least some of them. This means that the author's chances are not very good if they decide to go against all reviewers. Also, in author vs. reviewer controversies I have found the reviewer more convincing than the author more often than not - but certainly not in 100% of cases.
I also add that editors sometimes (or even often) have to handle papers for which they don't have much personal expertise, in which case it is probably more likely that the editor follows the assessment of the reviewers. An editor can spot some reviews of low quality (and bad papers!) even without being expert themselves, but in some cases the editor may not be in the position to know whether author or reviewer is right, in which case there may be a tendency to trust the reviewer, hence reason for the author to try to "appease" the reviewer.

In answering this question, I want to refer over to my answer on the question "How can I clear myself of emotional attachment when reading reviewer feedback?"
As an author, I am always polite and professional in my response, rather than aggressive, for two key reasons:

Even the most obnoxious and unfair reviewer represents a reasonable sample of the pool of eventual readers for a paper. They're a blustering ignorant fool who doesn't understand the basics of my work? So will many others be! If I want to maximize my impact and persuasion, then knowing which parts upset this ignorant fool reviewer is valuable.

I find that polite and professional responses are much more effective for actually winning my point, if I am actually correct. Saying "Your criticism is scientifically unsound" turns it into an assertion about opinion, which is much less persuasive than a polite query that exposes the unsoundness, e.g.,

"We are unclear on how the reviewer came to the conclusion that our proof was invalid, as they failed to identify either an erroneous argument or provide a counterexample. We would be happy to address this in further revision if the reviewer can provide a clearer statement of the basis for their conclusion."

There's no submission or strategic appeasement in these tactics, just a recognition that polite and professional communication is the norm for good reasons.

Please note that I asked a different question. Have you seen aggressive rebuttal strategies be successful or not? As stated, "I am not asking whether any of these phrases are morally acceptable or not, or whether you think this is a good idea".

@mto_19 Sorry that I was not more clear - my point #2 is saying that I generally see aggressive rebuttals fail, because they turn a winnable factual argument into "That's just like, your opinion, man."

I've seen hundreds of reviews as an editor, and I don't recall ever seeing one where the authors attack the reviewer's competence in a manner as aggressive as the examples you give. Presumably most authors are aware that insulting the reviewer is counterproductive, especially when they know who you are while the reverse is not true.
However, I've seen some marginal cases:

The authors decline to revise the manuscript in light of the reviews. Authors don't strictly have to give a reason when they withdraw their manuscript this way, but sometimes they do.
It's also possible the authors write to the editors complaining about the reviewer, either the reviewer's tone or their technical competence. These complaints are not sent directly to the reviewer, for obvious reasons. If the editors agree, the most common thing to do is to disregard the review. This could mean accepting the article even if the reviewer recommends rejection, for example. It also means that, usually, the revision is not shown to the reviewer again.

Writing these aggressive comments in the response-to-reviewer box is asking for trouble. A diligent editor will most likely intervene before the comments reach the reviewer, but not every editor is diligent.

Responses to referees should assist the editor to evaluate the paper
The politeness in responses to referees comes primarily from the recognition that refereeing is a service, so even if the referee has said something you disagree with, or misunderstood some aspect of your paper, they are still doing you a valuable service by reviewing your paper at all.  It is appropriate to be polite to other professionals who volunteer their time to assist you in the process of creating a publishable paper for the public.  No submissiveness is required, but politeness ought to be a given.  It is a basic expectation of professional conduct and basic human decency.
With regard to the examples you give of offensive or combatitive responses, yes these are all offensive and childish (with the possible exception of the first one), but that is not even their major problem.  Their major problem is that they raise extraneous assertions that do not give any substantive assistance to the journal editor in evaluating the merits of the paper at issue.  This means that aside from being offensive, they do not address the goal of ensuring that the paper is sound, or assisting the editor to evaluate the paper.  I cannot imagine any of these statements making an editor more likely to accept a paper, and honestly, some of them might even cause a rejection of an otherwise meritorious paper.  Below I give more detail on the problems with each statement.

"Your evaluation of our work lacks objectivity and is scientifically unsound."

This kind of statement (only more polite) might possibly be okay if it were a conclusion stated after making a compelling case for a lack of objectivity in the review, or a fundamental error in scientific reasoning that renders the review flawed.  As a stand-alone statement is is merely bald assertion and it does not assist the editor to determine the quality of the paper at issue.  Even if such a finding were warranted, there is no reason it could not be couched in more polite language that is respectful to the reviewer and thankful for their efforts --- e.g., "We appreciate the efforts of the reviewer to analyse our work.  With great respect to the reviewer, for the reasons previously stated, we feel that he may have lost objectivity in review of the work and may be proceeding on the basis of a flawed view of [subject/topic].  For this reason, we do not propose to make suggested changes X, Y, Z, and we request the editor to accept the paper without these suggested changes".

"Your assessment of our work's novelty is not supported by sufficient evidence."

Why would you expect a reviewer to bear the onus of proving that your work lacks novelty?  If novelty is in doubt, the author must explain what the paper adds to the literature that is not already there --- it is not a presumption to be "disproved" by evidence from a reviewer.  (Though as pointed out in comments, if the reviewer is aware of other literature that covers the work, they should raise this specifically with relevant citations.)  Rather than saying this, if you think your work is novel, why wouldn't you just tell the referee all the reasons that you think your work is novel --- e.g., "We note the referee's concern about lack of novelty.  We have reviewed our work against the relevant literature to confirm novelty of the material presented.  Our view is that the work adds elements X, Y and Z, which plugs a gap in the literature that is not covered in papers A, B and C."

"It is clear that you are not as familiar with the subject as indicated by your reviewer confidence score."

What possible value does this statement have in explicating the value of the paper at issue to the editor?  This is nothing more than an offensive cheap-shot at a reviewer accusing them of being over-rated, with no substantive bearing on the quality of the paper at issue.  It carries zero information about the value of the paper or why the paper is written in its present form.  It could not possibly assist the editor in any way other than to tell them that the author is childish, nasty and unprofessional.

"The papers you suggest us to cite are not related to our work, which raises the suspicion that you are trying to unethically promote your own papers."

This is a huge accusation to make, and if you're wrong, get ready for a defamation lawsuit.  If you submit this, you are accusing the reviewer of unethical behaviour and you are making that accusation through a channel that is read by at least one other influential academic (the journal editor) who is a colleague of theirs.  If you think the papers suggested are not worth citing, why not just say that, without speculating about unethical conduct by the reviewer?  Academics sometimes recommend citation of their own papers ---without any unethical impulse--- simply because those are the works they are most familiar with on the topic and therefore most likely to know about.  (In any case, in a blind review you don't know the identity of the reviewer but the editor does.  If the reviewer is promoting their own papers then the editor can see this.)

+1 but: "Why would you expect a reviewer to bear the onus of proving that your work lacks novelty?" I do get annoyed by reviews that say something is well known without giving any reference. Unless you are very well embedded in a certain field it is hard to be sure to know all the literature, so if a reviewer says "XXX already exists" I don't think it's too much to ask that they point the author to where this appears. Also reviewers may think something already exists, but in fact there may be a subtle but relevant difference, and without a reference editor and author can't check it.

I'll slightly disagree, @ChristianHennig . If it's the sort of thing that's widely known enough that I wouldn't provide a reference in a paper, I won't provide a reference in a review either. It may still feel like esoteric knowledge to the author, but that's the risk of stretching outside of your home field.

@jakebeal I'm with Christian here. Lets leave aside whether its esoteric to the author or not, the person who needs to judge is the editor. As a reviewer, you run the risk of it being well known to you, but unknown or esoteric to the editor. Its also the case, as Christian points out, that the work under review might be subtly different in a way that you've missed. ALternatively you just get into a unproductive trading of "Its not novel" "yes it is" between the author and reviewer where the editor has no way of telling who is right.

I suspect we're in violent agreement, as I'm thinking about real basics here. For example, last year I reviewed a paper that claimed to solve a well-known problem, but actually had formulated an entirely different and simpler problem. By analogy, it was like claiming to solve the Traveling Salesman Problem, but instead of finding the shortest path to visit each city precisely once, finding any path that visited each city at least once. Given the "101" level of the issue, I did not see any need to provide citations, just a clear explanation of the error.

Just think how many fewer people would've died, if any epidemiologists had ever bothered finding a citation whenever they said "Everyone knows 10 micron particles aren't airborne".

Disclaimer: Below I argue for a case in which an "aggressive rebuttal strategy" can be effective. But I don't endorse the idea that any of the example statements from OP's question could be effective, especially if given as stand-alone statements.

In my discipline, there is a major difference between journals and conferences, based on how decisions are made:

At journals, the editor makes the decision based on the submitted reviews. While an editor can always overrule a negative reviewer if they don't agree with the criticism, selective journals are typically unlikely to accept a paper that has any negative reviews. So, authors have a clear incentive "to make all reviewers happy", which can lead to submissiveness.

At conferences, the decision emerges from a discussion of the program committee members who reviewed the paper. In case of mixed reviews, it can be an effective strategy to emphasize arguments that diminish their credibility of a negative PC member (e.g., pointing out objective mistakes in their review) and provide "ammunition" to the more positive PC members. I have seen various successful applications of this strategy in the past.

I will just add that I ended up in a really difficult position with my second paper (of two, so I'm no expert here). I was required to give a pool of suggested reviewers and there was no way I could avoid one particular person  in the field, and yet I knew their affiliations were... not ideal, and stacked against my approach.
What came back in his review (I'll never know it was him, but it's 99.9% obviously him) was a lot of ridiculous remarks and it took a 5000 word rebuttal against him. The rebuttal was basically as long as the paper.
I got comments like "The authors claim that this process is done in less than 30 minutes!" (yes, with the exclamation mark) so the response was "The authors kindly point out that no experiment was run for less than 2 hours and, indeed, no graph is shown with results for less than two hours. The authors are unclear where this claim was made.". Not only that, but I frequently used his own papers against his own arguments.
So, not directly aggressive, but a huge amount of basically passive-aggressive, but objective, text to counter and dismantle the spurious remarks.
It worked. I just wish it never happened.

Most journals will let you list reviewer to be avoided to to a conflict of interest, which is used to avoid exactly this sort of situation. If for some reason the submission site doesn't let you, it's still something that you can put into your cover letter in the case of a severe enough situation.

@jakebeal I cannot remember the absolute specifics because this was over a decade ago, but it was definitely a considered approach. A cursory glance from the editor on Google would have brought this guy's name up as the first result, so we would look disingenuous if we excluded him from the list. We had to bite the bullet.

The phrases you consider can easily fall into the category of ad hominem attacks, where you are criticizing the reviewer as an individual, and not the reviewer's points.
Ad hominem attacks are usually weak, ineffective arguments.  Indeed, many consider them to be logical fallacies.  Avoid them like the plague.   If the reviewer's points are simply wrong, respond that way -- say why they are wrong.  If some nonclarity in the document caused a misinterpretation, fix it.  Even if your text is clear as day, try to make some sort of nod to the review by attempting to clarify more.
If the whole review seems unfair, then address every single point by patiently explaining why each is erroneous.
An appropriate aggressive response involves addressing the incorrect points with flawless logic.  If you want the tone of a response to review to sound more aggressive, leave out all the temporizing language like "Perhaps our description was not clear enough, so we fixed it", and mercilessly shred each of the reviewer's incorrect points with well-reasoned, crystal-clear arguments.


text:
How can I withdraw a published paper?
When I submitted my paper to a journal in November 2021, I saw that it was indexed by SCOPUS, but in 2022 I noticed that it is no longer indexed by SCOPUS. Therefore, I want to withdraw my published paper from that journal. Does writing an email to Editor in Chief work for my case?

You might want to first ask for an explanation from the editor.

As Buffy says, first try to find out what happened and why it is no longer indexed by scopus. There might have been a mistake that someone can fix.

@gib it's improbable. Getting delisted from Scopus doesn't happen overnight, it comes with lots of warning (from Scopus) and warning signs. The explanation is most probably "we didn't publish enough papers that are cited by other Scopus-indexed journals", which is not something that is easily fixed.

Maybe relevant: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/182515/how-to-make-sure-journal-is-indexed-in-scopus-or-not

Lesson: don't publish in scrummy journals. :|

You might be able to retract it, but you can't ''unpublish'' it.

If it's already published, you can't.
Typically when you publish a paper, you sign some rights over to the publisher: you give them permission to put your work into their compilation. This comes either as assigning them copyright or granting some exclusive license to your work that says you will not license it to anyone else similarly.
Typically you also retain some rights that allow you to continue to present parts of the work, share copies among your close colleagues, etc. There also may be explicit terms that state when the work can be reproduced by another (for example, if you or someone else wants to reuse a particular figure in their work).
I am not aware of these terms including a clause that allows you to "withdraw" that publication: you've signed away those rights. "Withdrawing" a submitted manuscript is only an option available to you pre-publication.
You can "retract" a paper, but this is done when you as an author have done something wrong, and wish to inform others (or are compelled to do so) that they should not rely on it. Retracting a paper does not give you an option to re-publish it anywhere else, and isn't used because you want to punish your publisher.
I suspect the reason you care about this is because you work at an institution that requires "X papers published in SCOPUS-indexed journals" for graduation or promotion or whatever. This issue is something you'll have to take up with them, to see if they can "count" a publication based on it being previously SCOPUS-indexed, or whatever. In my opinion, these are really foolish rules but they aren't the fault of the publisher.

Bryan Krause already gives the right answer, namely "what you want to do is not possible". To explain why, you should not consider a journal as a collection of websites that can come and go, but as an actual collection of paper pages that are archived in libraries and other institutions that guarantee permanent storage of information.
If that's what a journal is, it becomes clear why "withdrawing a paper" cannot work: You certainly can't expect the publisher to send a note to hundreds of archival institutions that says "please take a pair of scissors and remove pages 101-129 of issue 2, volume 13 of our journal". All one can possibly do is publish another note that says that the publisher can no longer stand by an article because, for example, it contains fraudulently obtained data. Such a note would then appear in a later issue/volume. But the original article remains "published". That is generally true even for the websites: Publishers will add a note to the page, but the page with the article remains available -- because it can be retracted, but not unpublished.

Yes, and further, no one else would want to publish this already-published-but-scissored-out article. Reputable journals want to publish new research, not recycle old stuff so the author can claim a better journal. And if it's been cited by anyone, what happens to that citation? It now goes nowhere? It goes completely against the purposes of publishing something if publishing is temporary.


text:
Using titles in C.V
I am going to prepare an updates C.V. Regarding the advisor of my Ph.D thesis, what is better to write about the title of my advisor. I would like to know whether it is common to put Prof. in front of the names of advisors or not?

This depends on local usage. In the US it would be quite different than in Germany.

What country is this?

In fact I want to send CV to several different countries such as UK and Norway

It doesn't matter. The only thing that they will be looking at is the person's name (either to google it or because they recognise it). If it isn't common practice where you are sending it, they will forgive the difference because you are applying from abroad.
Note: Totally normal in the UK but also fine to not include the title. We don't really care.


text:
Is it possible to add a co-author in conference paper?
I presented an abstract in an international conference. Now the conference has already announced news about publishing articles in proceeding of the conference. At this point, i would like to know whether it is possible to add a co-author to my manuscript before sending to the journal? It is worth noting that the co-author has already proposed some ideas to add them to my paper.

The likely answer is yes, but it is the conference committee that makes the rules here. You need to seek advice from them.
Alternatively, and maybe a better path, is to just do it and submit the paper with the appropriate authors. If the committee has a problem with it they will tell you, but I doubt that would occur.
But you say abstract in one place and manuscript in another. I'm assuming that the abstract was just a placeholder for what was to come. Acceptance wasn't based on the authors, but on the content of the abstract. Most conferences want to publish and promote the highest quality work. That would probably outweigh other considerations. But they may want to just publish the abstract, in which case they might judge it differently.
But they make the rules. We don't.


text:
About withdrawing manuscript
I submitted my short manuscript four months ago to a math journal. I sent a tracking email about the status of my paper and I was informed that the editor has a problem with finding appropriate reviewer and asked me to send him the name of potential reviewers. Can I withdraw my paper, because it seems to me it takes a very long time and I need it too much to publish soon.

Why not send a list of reviewers? Does your supervisor or colleagues have any ideas or suggestions? If they know of fast reviewers, it might be a better thing to stick it out with them

Unless you sent it to a journal in the wrong field, any other journal in the same field is likely to have similar problems with referees.

You can withdraw your paper at any stage before it's published, although the longer you wait the more annoyed the journal might get (you are using up their reviewer resources after all). After it's published, you'll have to retract as opposed to withdraw it.

Doesn't sound like there are any reviewers as yet according to the editor. Unless the editor has sent it to one and is struggling to find another reviewer. I just think changing ship now would end up being far lower and there is a risk of jumping ship to a predatory journal in the rush.

Sure, but 1) "should I change ships" wasn't what was asked, 2) there's no guarantee that changing ship will result in a faster review since the new journal can also have trouble finding reviewers, and 3) it's easy to avoid predatory journals - just submit to a subscription journal that doesn't have APCs.

Good point. Didn't know about APCs (article processing charge). For me is the spam and hassles that happen once your email is out there... It is very frustrating

I must add this note that I was informed that the editor in chief is himself handling the process and he told me it is not fit with editors's field!

The fact that the editor in chief is asking for help is a good sign. If you can find supportive reviewers, the journal will likely streamline things as much for you as possible I suspect.


text:
some questions regarding research plan for postdoc
I am going to apply for some postdoc positions which last more than one year. As usual, one of the main required documents is research plan. Having considered some good questions in academia.stackexchange such as Research plan without a specific goal?
, Research proposal for postdoc applications and Research Plan that works?, I have another question:
In the case of more than one year postdoc positions, how can I cover several years with one research plan?  In other words, I am thinking on some different projects to conduct during these years. Can I mentioned in my research proposal (plan) all of them which are less related to each other? One of them is a kind of my research work in my Ph.D program and the others are further away from my thesis project. In fact, besides working on some aspects of my Ph.D thesis, I would like to work on other topics. As an example, let suppose I worked on pure math and for future I have some plans to work on some applied math. My reason is based on my interests on both of them. In addition, I think by conducting research on projects related to my thesis in first year of my postdoc , I will be able to obtain quick results to provide progress in my research work.

You can cover several years with one research plan by putting the different projects on a fictive timeline.
You can mention multiple of them but they have to have a logical connection.
I don't have experience in mathematics (I did a PhD in Life Sciences), but one important point for postdoctoral application is to show that you can do research in an independent manner i.e. that you understand what topic of research is interesting/relevant, the hypothesis you develop regarding this topic, the approach you choose, and the key experiments which would lead to the results to answer your hypothesis.
An another point is that the research can be done during the timeline of the granted money, i.e. it is realistic and achievable. It is also hard at this stage because you might not know yet but you need to have an educated guess at it. That's why that in terms of number it is also up to you to decide if you should include all of them or not.
Regarding possible failure of the plans, try to include the ideas which are innovative and challenging enough but at the same time easy for you (because of your PhD experience) to do in realistic timeframe.
In your case, the hardest part of the grant proposal is to convince the reader that there is a logical approach between these different parts you want to study. If there are no connection at all then it will be difficult to do so and I would advise to not include all of them.


text:
What would be the next step after revising a manuscript?
After receiving a report on a manuscript from the referee, then the revised version must be submitted to the editor. In this step, will the revised version be sent to referee again to check that or the editor evaluate the revised version?

@Sursula Thanks for link. Actually, this link does not include an answer for my question.

Voting to close because it depends on the journal. When you submit the paper it should tell you.

@user40491 now that I look at it, the link does actually answer your question - it has this paragraph "With revised manuscripts, usually the reviewers from the previous round are selected. The editor may also decide that certain or all reviewers need not see the manuscript again, as their comments have been adequately addressed."

Depends. If the requested revisions are minor then the editor might be able to check the revisions themselves. Otherwise they will usually be returned to a referee, typically the ones that reviewed the original since they have read the paper before so they can review it faster than a fresh pair of eyes.

thank you for your answer

Normally, if you do peer review, you are asked if you are willing to review the same paper again in case another review round is necessary. The likelyhood of having reviewers, not editors do the re-review changes depending often on how major the revisions have been. The more revisions were necessary, the more likely it is that the reviewers will do the second round - at least from my own and colleagues experience.

thank you for your answer


text:
Is it okay to struggle with the content of research paper you are reading?
I am a PhD student works in computational theory. I have been doing coursework for nearly three years and right now I am starting to reading research papers. I am making progress very slowly, taking about two to three months to read a paper:  even after reading it, I have questions. I have to actually verify every and each sentence of the paper which requires mathematical knowledge, and I have done enough mathematics coursework. I am getting feedback that I am reading too slowly. I have tried to work hard as much as possible, but it is not giving much results. Although there were many times in the past in which I am able to complete the incomplete proofs given in research paper. Struggle basically means completing the incomplete claims or theorems of the research paper.
Question :  Is it okay to struggle with the content of research paper you are reading? and Is it going to improve with time? How to be efficient in this situation?
What seems to me little troubling here is I am in a surveying phase (reading research papers), then I will move to publication phase. So first I have read the paper then only I can work on them. I don't How much time other PhD students take to read a research paper. If I am taking 2-3 months for just one paper, is it okay?

Yes, struggling with content is normal. Perhaps you can ask other questions so that I can provide a more constructive answer.

Relevant and perhaps a duplication: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/106883/in-academia-does-the-amount-of-material-that-one-has-to-learn-diminish-as-time

I, too, have been thinking about things like this recently. Thank you for your question!

Reading a paper shouldn't take long. Now, completely understanding the proofs and details can take a really long time, even months. Specially depending on your background, and on the technical tools/ideas the paper is using. It is okay to take that long.
There are two questions you should ask yourself:

Do I need to completely understand the paper I am reading?
Do I need to prove every line of every paper I read?

The first question is related to reading or skimming through a paper, a more agile read of the paper to understand the main ideas and conclusion. This should allow you to figure out if this is a paper that is useful to you and your research, and if it is, then you move on to the 2nd question.
If the paper is important to you/your research, and contains techniques/ideas that you must know and be comfortable with, then it makes sense to completely understand it and spend a lot of time with. Even still, ask yourself if you need to prove every single statement, or if there is a more important body of statements  that you actually care about, so that you do not need to prove every single thing.
It is okay to struggle with what you are reading. And it is also ok to ask questions to smarter or more senior people about it. If you get super stuck ask them for help, and ask them for intuition regarding the result (why is it useful? where did the idea come from? where can it be applied). It is okay to ask! (See Paul Garrett's answer here!)
It is going to improve with time. As long as you work hard, and learn the theory/ideas, you will eventually start to see things repeating here and there, and when they do you will be able to read papers much faster (and, more importantly, identify what is new and where you need to put more attention). Experience and knowledge will naturally lead to efficiency.
Keep working, you can do it! Good luck!

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


text:
How to mark student reports more efficiently
I have been assigned to mark student reports for an engineering coursework, which mainly involves the use of a software. The main content of each report is around 15 pages. There are 45 reports in total. I am also required to write feedback to each student. I have not been involved in designing the assignment nor teaching the course.
The professor who assigned me this task told me that the marker last year took about 4 full days to complete the markings, and yet I have spent more than two weeks doing this (and not really doing anything else), and I am not yet done. I did need to spend some time familiarising myself with the subject matter and the software in the beginning, because I have never used the software before, but it is not that difficult to use.
Since this is my first marking experience, I am wondering whether it is normal to have spent so much time marking. Is there any strategy I can adopt to complete the task more efficiently, especially in my case where I am not involved in designing the assignment?

Marking assignment is a very demanding and time-consuming task, especially if you intend to do it thoroughly (and you should). It is also a big responsibility, as you have the students' success in your hands. It might be that your supervisor underestimated the time necessary to take care of it, although it's difficult to say without knowing the exact content of the assignment.
From my experience of grading assignments and exams (topics: acoustics and fluid mechanics), 2 weeks of work for a class of the size you mention doesn't sound like a lot, especially if, as you said, you needed to get accustomed to the specific aspects of the course.

I am wondering whether it is normal to have spent so much time
  marking.

My answer is yes, even though it depends on the type of exam. It might indicate that you take the task seriously, and it's a good thing.
Now as for:

How to mark student reports more efficiently

Here are some of my usual approaches:

Make sure you clearly identify the 'gold standard' to which you will compare the answers. Is there a ready-made solution (from last year) or do you need to make your own (if it's the later, the 2 weeks time frame is even less surprising). The prof/instructor should help you with this step.
Grade a given section/exercise at a time, for all students and then switch to the next one.
Do a quick overview of all the assignments to identify the good quality ones, grade them first.
Take a break between individual exercises, maybe do some of your administrative or research work for a while (this to avoid overdose).
Don't take cases of very low quality assignments personally (student clearly didn't attend class, tried to get away with an all-nighter, don't care about the grade, etc.). Students have their reasons. It's not you, it's them.

The good news is that you will theoretically be better and quicker at doing this next term.
Good luck!

I was in a very similar situation this past term. I was also tasked with grading engineering assignments that involved the use of software and a written component for which there were no solutions (mind you they were a little shorter than the ones you are grading). I am familiar with the software so it ended up taking me 5 days to mark.
Jigg has covered most of the bases, I just wanted to add another tip for efficiency:
In an effort to give them good feedback I wanted to write thorough comments. But after I got going on the marking I found that many students were making the same kinds of mistakes and I was writing the same comments over and over again. Eventually I just created an excel spreadsheet that really helped automate the marking that looked like this example:

The totals for points and points available are summation formulas so I didn't need to do any totalling myself. As I graded each assignment, I just compared it to the solutions I came up with and judged how well each of them met the criteria (nothing new). When I saw something wrong I just copied a detailed comment from the comments list and pasted it in the relevant cell. When I was finished with an assignment I just copied the everything in the thick black border into the online comments section, entered their grade, and moved on to the next one. If there was something new (and incorrect) that a student was doing I created a new comment and copied it into the list. Sometimes I also wrote something like "good work" next to the assignment total, just so that there were some positive comments.
Granted this worked really well when the students were all doing the exact same thing, but if your students are writing about different topics, it might not work as well.

Good idea to have a small library of comments!

+1; while the grading that I performed as a TA was not so involved (~1 day to complete for a class of 20-30), it's certainly true that students will often make the same mistakes! Worth noting, if there is a mistake that consistently crops up, it should probably be covered in class/lecture to help clear things up, as obviously many students did not understand the concept.

Is there a faster tool for this than Excel? I currently copy the table to org-mode and export it as HTML for posting, but it would be nice to have something that was more streamlined.

I don't know if there is a faster tool. I think your best bet is to try to minimize your keystrokes required to grade each paper (use macros rather than clicking) and get into a rhythm.