Thread by @khimya

“X papers accepted at Y”
~ What people don’t tell about paper acceptances! ~ A thread #AcademicChatter #phdlife

1/N Many papers that you see accepted now would have been very likely a second or a third submission! That doesn’t mean they are not worthy instead they actually took a lot more work including feedback from multiple reviewers, revisions, skilled rebuttals & perseverance!

2/N Yes, many would have made it in first attempt! They are likely the result of dedicated collaborations with some including structured teams! Again not a bad thing, but don’t feel bad because you are comparing this to you toiling the night oil all by yourself+advisor!

3/N Sure there will be many with a dedicated author or two alone who would have made it in first attempt! That must take experience, expertise, time, hard work, excellence and confidence! Again don’t compare!

4/N Noise! There was a paper where our reviewers did not even acknowledge the rebuttal! Not sure what the AC was doing in this case! I ln the past, I have also seen 2 line reviews w/ very high confidence! Rebuttals & writing to AC might help! No guarantees! Not in your control!

5/N Caveat: This is definitely not an exhaustive list of all scenarios! These are just examples of how we end up comparing to the superficial binary 0/1 accept/non accept with partially observable data of others! Yes we all do it! Its humane!

6/N Good reviewers help a lot in improving papers! It takes time to see this i.e if you are lucky to get decent quality reviews! 1/3 papers of mine in 2020 was a 3rd time submission after revisions from 2 conferences! It only got better with age! Was frustrating regardless!

7/N If you see someone tweeting more than 3-4 papers that were accepted! Don’t panic! They are professors and not PhD students learning to do research ! So again don’t compare! See for example

https://twitter.com/roydanroy/status/1309865456203960324

8/N Luck! There is a lot of luck involved in this process I believe due to stochasticity! The topic you are working + the timing, the reviewers you get, the AC you get, their degree of commitment to champion your paper in discussions, the position of sun, moon and venus!

9/N Now a bit controversial issue! Despite double blind, papers uploaded to arxiv, blog posts written and publicized, PR machines much before peer reviews, etc. *might* play some role! I don’t know what’s the right thing to do! Its is indeed a complex problem!

10/N As I am learning myself so I am sure there are more things people don’t tell about paper acceptances that I still need to learn! Dont at me! I would love to hear from senior researchers who are AC, PC, SAC, etc. Happy to learn more or correct my understanding!

11/N See an AC’s take for example:

https://twitter.com/togelius/status/1309711892798205957

12/N Why I felt the urge to write this? Papers are bread and butter for academia apparently! Despite noise in both reviewing & citations (also huge biases here), they determine a lot in academic careers afaik! So the worry and comparison is understandable!

13/N Time and again, we need to remind ourselves that we are more than our papers! A wise genius told me quality matters more than quantity! I genuinely cannot thank my advisor Doina Precup enough for instilling this belief in me! It took some time + I am still working on it!

14/N I am no saint and I also have shared paper acceptances without going into details! More recently I do see many people talking about the story of a paper acceptance! Like a BTS (behind the scenes) of a movie which I absolutely love! Keep them coming!

Ok! Apparently I don’t understand sarcasm! Thanks for educating @nitarshan 😂 The example I gave from @roydanroy is a meme apparently, but well the point still holds for people tweeting about a large # of papers accepted to a single venue!

15/N Adding to this an insightful discussion I just came across from @hima_lakkaraju 👇🏽Very well said! Thank you!

https://twitter.com/hima_lakkaraju/status/1309910028636299271?s=21

https://twitter.com/hima_lakkaraju/status/1309910028636299271