Here's another one: advisor tells you your idea isn't good enough and then publishes that himself after you graduate!

I submitted a paper to a reputed journal in my field, one of the reviewers trashed our paper and suggested that he will "accept" the paper after the some minor changes; and if we cite 5 papers which were remotely related to our methodology. Since it was a double-blinded review we couldn't get the name of the reviewer but all the 5 papers had a single author in common. We stood our ground, reported to the Journal, and after much hue and cry the Editor said please cite only those papers which are related to your research. We didn't cite any. Paper was accepted and published, albeit delayed.

All of this can be summarized by Goodhart's law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." I saw all of this happen in spades during my PhD career. It's disgusting and antiscientific.

I always respect any single person who tells the dirty secrets of their profession

My understanding of "author intimidation" is the scenario, in which a peer-reviewer deliberately submits a negative review in order to intimidate an author, whose work he/she sees as a possible competition to his/her own. This is also a huge problem in grant applications, where "grant mafias" or "paper mafias" use author/applicant intimidation tactics in order to prevent certain departments from growing and developing. Some academics think that winning a debate is not enough and that they need to blast the reviewed work into smitherines, crush the author, kill any of his work motivation and urinate over his grave.

This channel is one of the main reasons which made me rethink going for a PhD. Thank you for all your insights, Andy!

I'm a software engineer and not an academic - however there is a lot in software development that is similar to academia, people with very high IQs and large egos as well as some extremely competitive people. I once published an article only to fond that someone else copied it word for word claiming it was theirs - fortunately I only had to reach out to a few developers for them to descend on this person to remove the article they had plagiarised. Also a previous boss of mine was set to code review and test a complex and potentially risky set of changes I had committed and I knew that he had not tested the changes - he nonchalantly said that he didn't need to test them and despite my protestations the changes went live and all hell broke loose. That particular boss was a nasty piece of work who took pleasure in seeing other people fail - I should have put my foot down and reverted the commit when he refused to test it. I would not be able to remain sane in academia. Thank you for the insights into academia.

I’m finishing my PhD in the US and most of these things, if not all, are true. However, there is a tremendous pressure for PhD students in engineering to graduate with 3, 4 if not more publications. I know PhD candidates who work in big labs and end up benefiting from all their peers by using the citation ring as you mentioned. Of course their advisors also benefit from that. On the other hand, if you work with a professor who doesn’t have many students, or you are the only one, things get harder. It is common to sort of break down the dissertation into 3 or 4 minor publications instead of trying to bundle everything up and wait more time to have one single publication. Unfortunately, like you have mentioned in other videos, it’s getting harder and harder (in all STEM fields) to jump from PhD to Assistant Professor, and they are sort of making the postdoc a prerequisite. So, a PhD student waiting for the dissertation to be done in order to publish something is not a good idea if you want to have a minor chance to get something in academia rather than a post doc. Also there’s a lot of publishing incentives in the US that make it easier to publish. The same is valid for writing technical books. Take Springer for instance. Back in the day that yellow cover book meant quality and authorship. Today, I run into some very lousy and low quality books published by them... Like my advisor says: “the PhD degree is becoming what a bachelors degree was 100 years ago...”

I was apart of a paper mafia until my mob boss started to scrub my name off the papers I was writing. While my name was removed, people from her family suddenly appeared as Co authors.

My colleague and I tried to publish a paper in a leading journal in my field and was told to include citations from said journal and certain authors, which we did. Then about six months later the editor finally got back to us and had a boat load of unreasonable comments. We went out of our way to address every single comment before the paper was sent for review. Two anonymous reviewers provided positive feedback and minor comments, which were addressed. The editor then told us the paper was rejected because we ignored some of the comments from the reviewers and didn't take the feedback seriously. Needless to say we were stunned but accepted our fate. So imagine our surprise when we saw our idea published in the same journal 8 months later in a paper of lower quality than what we submitted. That was the straw that broke the camel's back, I now work in industry.

If you are a student, do not trust paper mafias. Even if they add your name to a paper, they can remove it or submit the paper to different journals without your name. You cannot trust people who are gaming the system until you are at least a faculty member of your own.

I was about to apply for an MD-PhD program, but i wasn’t sure i wanted to go for the academic path in life. After watching your content, I’ve made up my mind and decided to leave acedemia. Maybe in the future I’m willing to give it a try again, but for now, it doensn’t seem like the ‘noble science path’ i was dreaming about when i was younger. The philosophy of science is so far removed from the reality of working in academia … Greatings from the Netherlands!

I switched from academia to Big Pharma 15 years ago. Aside from several wild exceptions everyone has heard about, I've found pharma med affairs to be far more ethical and compliant than my years in academic research. I had several of the things you describe happen to me. We once submitted an important paper to a large journal, representing a truly significant finding. The field I was in was so small, you almost always know who your reviewers are, especially once you've read their comments. The paper was rejected. Later that year, we were asked by the SAME JOURNAL to review a paper from a competing lab that was an exact duplicate of our rejected study. Academia is a racket.

1. Adhere to orthodoxy 2. Herd mentality 3. Follow the Grant money and do/say whatever is needed to get it 4. CYA 5. Lie

Delaying peer review is so dirty.

My PhD supervisor and boss recited his own papers in a paper we published despite the fact that I had not used any information from those prior publications. In my PhD thesis, one of my goals was to minimize citing his work. PhD was not fruitful and I hated working for him

I wanted to do a research project in my last year of undergrad. I was ready to go and one of my professors blocked me and basically said that students don't do their own research they do the professor's research.

Great channel. - I’m finally getting answers to the things and mechanics in the maze of academia, I always wondered about and had no one to ask for. Be sure I‘ll cite your name for being the most outstanding academic whistleblower ever. : ) , cheers from Berlin.

Another one or two I experienced personally: Editor requesting that recent papers be cited rather than the original sources. In peer reviewing papers finding citations that are irrelevant! Probably included to increase citation record of "friends"!

Sometimes rules and regulations add to these issues. For example, student slavery begins when laws require journals to publish articles whit a faculty member because it promotes journals. The student cannot publish any articles alone and must be forced to write the name of a faculty member. In some cases, citation criteria can help, for example, they can set boundaries for self-citation (articles of journals or articles of a person)

I’m so happy I chose to get out with my masters after two years in the 90s. So much you say is familiar to me. Happy to be working in industry. Faculty definitely frowned upon not supporting the university system by doing research.

Some years ago, a couple of US pranksters created a "peer-reviewed" study of some research, all of which was made up, and whose thesis was ridiculous. (Almost on a par with "dogs make good airplane pilots.") They had no problem getting it published.

With regards to delaying peer review, I guess that's where it helps to submit a preprint to arXiv

There is also malpractice on the part of the authors who submit their articles to journals and which consists in that, once they receive a dictamination with suggestions for modifications to improve the paper, that is, a dictamination of 'Publishable with modifications', they withdraw the journal article they submitted it to, improve their text based on peer recommendations, and then submit it to a journal with higher impact ratings. As part of the editorial team of a scientific journal, I must say that it is a very annoying practice, since it wastes all the time and work that was invested in finding peer reviewers, anonymize the article, etc. Greetings.

The peer review system and academic publishing in general is absolutely fucked up. In my view, it's a relic from the pre-internet days, where there was no better alternative and publish or perish was not yet in full force. We should stand up and get rid of it.

Thank you for showing us how to optimize our performance and revenue as scholars.

I quit academia and went into private industry because I refused to corrupt my principles to play their game. The corruption is almost as rampant as government. I averaged 3 large papers a year while in academia and Department chair told me to break them up into 5 or 6 smaller papers each to pad my resume for tenure. So I quit and never did apply for tenure.

You are absolutely amazing and honest. Applying by Nov 1st. Ur videos help SO much. Thank u!!!

Honestly, I wouldn't consider those tactics dirty at these point. The system is basically designed to work this way.

In some areas of science(physics, maths and some biology) you can "publish" on the archives which gets your paper out to view and stops people from publishing your work essentially.

Thanks for the tutorial :)

I'm a 2nd year PhD student in Human Sciences. My advisor has been pushing me to publish from day one, even if I'm not ready. Her favourite dirty tactic is to publish rubbish labeling it "insights from an ongoing research experience". I hope in the future I won't feel too ashamed of what I'm publishing.. Any tips to deal with pushy (and inconsistent) advisors? Perhaps you've already uploaded a video that could be useful in these cases? Thank you!!

I am glad my PhD was done in cooperating with a company on an industrial application and that I have immediately gone into industry instead of staying in academia.

Thank you so much, Andy. You have no idea how far reaching your contributions are. Bless you

This is actually the most important reason why I might be physically incapable of working in academia. I guess my integrity has not entirely vanished despite my environment's best efforts.

Thank you for sharing :)

It was 20 years ago when I was in college and I had a psychology professor who briefly discussed during lecture how he's seen shady things done when it comes to academic research and publishing. What amazed me at the time were some of my fellow students who were indignant that such a thing could even be possible and wrote him off as a conspiracy theorist or a liar. It was right about the same time when I had a different psychology professor (figure out what my major was yet?) who was wetter behind the ears and she would sometimes mention how baffled she was that certain psychological advancements over the years weren't the result of hard-earned research but social politics and special interests. "Why would they do it that way and not base it on their research?" she would seem to ponder.

I only got as far as a masters in history. Then did nursing. Glad i did it though. I learnt so much about life during that time.xx

This and many other issues with " academic dishonesty" was the reason I chose to leave academic world after qualifying exam.

I'm not really an academic but I have tried peer reviewed publication twice and eventually achieved success with one of the articles. My area is management, not really science, and I think that ideology comes into management more. I suspect (though can't be sure) that my papers were both resisted because at least one peer reviewer fundamentally disagreed with the position set out in my paper. I have learned that, although the papers are supposedly anonymous, a lot of effort is made to get reviewers selected who are friends and to make sure those reviewers say the right thing. I have experienced this as a peer reviewer.

Good list of questionable to dishonest tricks.Having been an editor of a journal I have also seen prospective authors cite the editor's papers in order to gain acceptance of their submitted work. The really really harmful effect of splintering, redundancy and other practices that lead to paper inflation in numbers of published works is that the literture becomes much more difficult to manage for relevance to what one is doing researh wise. This is a huge problem.Another dirty trick is to publish work where previous significant work in the field is ignored and not cited in order for the authors of the recent papers appear to be doing pioneering work in the area when in fact it may be derivative.

Multiple submissions might be a panacea to counter these other tricks. When accepted by multiple journals you can choose the journal with the least amount of demands and also the chances of delaying the peer review in all journals is smaller than a single journal I would say. But I am a layman.

I do wonder the reasons behind not being able to submit to multiple journals in the first place… (definitely a dirty tactic of the journals here). Surely if the option to submit to multiple journals was available, it would actually eradicate a lot of these issues you discussed

Add "p-hacking" to the list.

I think the first tactic could be argued to be a rare case of 'two wrongs making a right': If peer review were being redesigned from scratch, we might imagine: 1) preregister; (1a- do the work!); 2) preprint on something like arxiv; 3) peer review and promote. At step 3 we might imagine a shortlist of journal reviewers being invited by the authors to review the preprint on a public server, where anyone who wishes to is able to add their specific comments and feedback to appear within and alongside the preprint itself (i.e. dozens of peers, instead of just two or three). The editors of said journals, as well as other that just stumbled on the preprint, could then have a means of making either unconditional or (more likely) conditional acceptance of the preprint as a full article in their journal, taking into account the accumulated feedback from various peers that accumulated over the preprint period. This kind of approach would massively increase both the transparency of the peer review process while both allowing the paper (albeit in a non-final form) to be publicly visible months or years earlier, and also allowing speeding up the peer review and publication process too. Fundamentally it would flip the balance of power between authors and journals in ways that I suspect would be net positive. The standard serial peer review system, where a manuscript slowly cascades across journals in darkness for months or years, is a massive impediment to the openness and velocity of scientific progress. In the absence of wholesale rehauling of the peer review process to something like the above, the slightly duplicitous tactic described might not be an inherently bad idea. If enough researchers do it, perhaps it will force the wholesale rethink required.

It is so brave of this man to do this solidarity

Academia can a veritable Kafkaesque nightmarish environment due to its demoralising, disappointing, disorienting, alienating and gut-wrenching quality (this is the naked truth despite pretentions to the contrary). That can be true for both undergrads and postgrads and I know this by experience. Academics and admins who enjoy status and privileges (not to mention obscene wealth and misguided, illegitimate sense of moral superiority) can be rightly identified as the 'animals who are more equal than others' in this essentially totalitarian, anti-human system. In the United States, I dare say that school shooters (such as Seung-hui Cho) are practically the Frankenstein monsters this sort of environment creates. What's more, it deeply pains me to contemplate the ignoble reality that universities (and public education in general) are places where objective rationality, critical thinking, realism and wisdom can barely gain a foothold.

Well, to my mind, it's hard to expect that there won't be any dirty games if the whole system is so dysfunctional. People review competitor's papers. It's like giving Samsung's patent application for review at Apple - what do you expect? By the way, this publication game already starts in grad school: PhD students also form little mafias and "help" each other by writing a few paragraphs for each other's papers. In neuroscience (which is highly competitive and it's hard to even land the first postdoc not mentioning about a PI position), it is quite common.

What I would add, comes a bit as a completion of that fragmentation of the work. Sometimes they cite some important concept (often critical to even justify their current work) from a previous work of the main author or co-authors and, after you try to track the works that claim that great gem of knowledge is either a concept often cited from an yet another previous work. Until you get the original claim in that original adam and eve work, the concept is so diluted that almost bares no resemblance to what the authors claim in their latest work.

I did PG studies in the 80's and with a good degree (2:1 - when they did not hand them out like confetti) and go onto straight onto a MPhill/PhD with no MA needed. Of course education was not just another business model back then.

I haven't encountered any of these. But the review of my two journal papers took two years both times.

Entered a book contract with PhD supervisor's colleague (also a PhD student). I had recently finished my PhD and was working overseas. I did the majority of the editing and he cut my name from the book and published it as his own. He refused my phone calls and e-mails and put my name in the acknowledgments.

your words are treasure Andy!

Sir, you are a god amongst men

"Dirty Tactic" number 6 - citation pushing - cannot be considered dirty in the same way as others. As author, I always get requested to cite this or that reference, and I usually do it. As reviewer, I always reqest that some of my own papers are cited, typically 1 or 2. Why do I do it? First, I consider it a fair compensation for the time I spend reviewing the paper. Note that by default, journals give no compensation of any kind to the reviewers (even open access journals that make profit from accepting papers). Second, since the manuscripts I review are in my field, sometimes my papers indeed fit nicely into the references. Of course, I often recommend citing other papers too (not just mine) if they fit the context and help improve the manuscript under review.

I worked in one group where a postsoc was told to put the name of a famous professor on her paper as a birthday present to him. In the same group the prof made sure his group worked in the latest trendy areas, so as to get a foot into each early on. It made him look really good if you didn’t look in detail. One postdoc moved to industry, then fed details of the software he war writing to a PhD student at his old university. The student produced his own copy of the programme, which made the student and the group head names. Most research is mediocre, some is just wrong. Some of mine was poop, some was very good. Academia is a ruthless business.

As an none academic studying a masters in data analytics. When I read paper. I found the stuff your talking about stands out in papers. In fact when dig a little for example. Ask qustions like. Where is there data from? You find them quoting a paper with one of the 'co-autors' name on it.

Thanks for sharing the insider tips! Btw is there no way to keep these things on check? Asking for a friend 😶😶😶

I have also heard that your chances of publishing a paper are increased if your reference list includes papers from the same journal you are submitting to.

A friend wrote a paper. The lecturer submitted it to a conference with his name as lead author, even though he was not involved in writing it.

I experienced ‘author intimidation’ while I tried to publish my MPH dissertation by my supervisor based in Canada

The last "trick" is valid science. Even if it's exactly the same research, it is reproduction of a scientific result... a key part of the scientific method that is often forgotten.

Here's a good one: Step1 - Have a couple of buddies who you mutually agree with to not publish together. Step 2 - suggest them as reviewer when submitting your paper. Step 3 - Enjoy the gentle review.

Andy thanks for this. I believe every word of it! The irony is, no one knows about or can access this stuff without a lot of effort! I have 4 M.A.s and did all of them without knowing academic journals even existed. Now I do, nothing takes up more of my time than trying to find out their names, what is in them and how to access them. And as you rightly say, when you do get to read what's written, it is usually earnest but poorly reasoned fluff. Luckily no one in acadaemia is remotely interested in my topic, so I've only found 5 papers on it, so far. They are all from.tje 80s and all say more or less the same thing! Of course there may be thousands out there but 'you do not have access' makes it not really worth my while to find out! So, from what you say, people are consumed with angst and dark thoughts about writings no one will ever read! Still, keeps them off the streets, I suppose.

I appreciate Andy's social criticism here. Academia is first and foremost a firm, and thus can be studied from a micro- and a macroeconomic perspective. Andy has outlined the former, in my work (as an independent autodidactic author, free of the chains of bureaucracy-hypocrisy) I focus on the macroeconomics of academia . Academia basically serves military corporate agendas on the one hand and "absorbs" the non productive "knowledge worker" force on the other (think : a million dissertations on Hegel). Andy here then sheds light on the symptoms of the greater problem. Now, taking things even farther back, how did the military industrial complex emerge with academia its engine? This predates capitalism , and roots are to be found in toxic feudal oppressions. We are suffering a Mass Pathology : Post Feudalism Stress Disorder. I write and publish under my own firm because I reject this heinous paradigm.

Just insane: I got my Masters in the liberal arts and it is the exact same. Maybe even worse because the fields are even smaller. We always knew, as Masters students when to approach our advisors. If they looked like they were about to strangle someone, they must be in the middle of editing a reader to publish next year. When the color came back to their faces, that is when you can talk to them.

I always thought there was a paper mafia but I never heard anyone else say it!!!

Many of these dirty tactics around multiple publications and refereeing would disappear if referees were paid to referee papers properly and on time, and if the authors had to pay a fee to have them refereed.

You have to make a video on academic harassment

When I was doing a masters, there was a research group where they all put each others names on every single paper.

Andy, thanks a lot for the great summary of dirty tactics in Academia. I would add colonial tactics to your list. Coming from non-anglo country in the global south I suffered and have seen others suffer with plain theft of ideas, even from masters and doctoral thesis published on the web by our institutions. In my case I am the lead author of a high impact paper in Journal of Hydrology. I caught a string of American researchers trying to deviate citations from our paper. A guy reproduced our model, showed in a conference and then others started to cite his reproduction, omitting our original paper. I caught the plot because I was asked to review their submissions. I've also witnessed an influential group of reputed meteorologists form a mafia against works lead by two russian researchers, completely betraying the very basic principles of honest review.

Hi Andy is there a way to avoid these tactics in any way? If you want to publish, without doing a PhD? Pls enlighten.

That ‘clink’ you heard? Was my wide eyed enthusiasm falling on the floor. sigh

Well there is a university in the world only focuses on making policies to push students even retrospectively like, A student have to write a Policy review analysis. A student have to write a knowledge brief. He/She have to conduct a webinar to ask someone to come and have a webinar on any issue. Have to do an internship at research stage without any support from any one. A mini proposal before a research proposal must be presented. Deteriorating number of supervisors but supervisor must be from the main university. Have you ever seen such kind of policies any where else????

my field is a social science and how much of the methodological work is done by uncredited grad students is astounding. the older generations have not at all kept up with the methodological rigor, have no idea how to do analyze or interpret their data (gathered by unpaid or underpaid undergrads anyway). last semester saw a prof hiring hourly for a grad student to explain the model and results in his own working paper to him. clearly he didn't actually analyze the data himself if he needs the model and results explained to him! the generation of armchair scholars is keeping up with the demand for rigorous data by just making their students do it for no acknowledgement. kind of the opposite of a paper mafia, lots of work going into papers that's completely uncredited and unacknowledged, the already tenured profs solo publish these and don't give their students any credit whatsoever for doing the actual science part of the paper. i'm ABD and so disillusioned at this point (with various aspects of the academy, not just this) that i probably won't finish.

There's also just basic capture. Ive heard of ppl rhat had a poor reputation as being difficult ro work with, or not going with the program, and they were consistently stymied and jerked around with a few of the tricks mentionedinrhe video. But one thing ive heard of is if the paper isnt conventional enough, the author may have to rewrite the wording and include a few phrases that really have no impact on the work itself, but do create a desired political feel.

I know of two prominent academics who have been rewriting the same paper for the last twenty to thirty years- and getting away with it!

Is there any negative blowback if you post your paper on a WordPress blog befire you do anything? I mean, the example you gave of someone submitting a paper for review, and the reviewer is also wokring in the same area, so the reviewer holds off on reviewing until she publishes?

Submitted a manuscript to a journal, added a group not to include as reviewers, because of competition bias. The journal editor did so (same nationality? connected in some way ?) despite that remark, which was clear from the unfounded, nity-gritty comments of the reviewer, intended at creating maximum delay, clearly expressing between the lines the jealousy of not having had the idea herself. I left it with the patent application, which was approved.

Publishing as the first on a subject can to some degree be solved through a preprint

On the one hand, I find the negativity quite sad. On the other, it's good you are exposing the garbage. The professors and colleagues I respect the most are those who retain integrity and in their work. Funny enough, almost all the papers I read are from a single author.

- PhD supervisors sharing information with your competitors bit their collaborators while delaying your PhD thesis and paper for a year. Review of thesis is "pending" - "golden one" getting handed research papers from many people for "having a look" or "polishing" to be corresponding or first author - ideas stolen - supervisors not supervising but actual sources of supervision totally ignored in publications or any recognition - delaying publication to have others add fluff to no end - preferential treatment in handing out opportunities - using ghost writers to get more done - stealing data or programs from harddrives and using it for own research - stealing detailed collaboration proposals for doing the work oneself without any recognition of the origin - insisting on very quick collaboration proposals / idea exchange to "do it entirely differently" alone - not telling friendly collaborators that one creates one's own detailed research application to outdo them while keeping them stuck by stalling the collaborative application - being assessed by committees of dependent competitors who wouldn't dare to criticize anything in fear of retaliation - keep doing stuff that you know will never work but "it's research" and you just don't tell people and keep up hopes - using stuff from previous "supplementary materials" as gift for others to publish as own research in main paper. - using internal work documents of others for writing your own papers or sharing them with third parties so that they can publish it or do related research without citing the origin So, that's a short manual

It's more than just tweaking a paper and passing it as a new paper. People are going out of their way to nerf and break apart their valuable results to artificially increase the quantity. Imagine studying stress management, wirtting a paper on your results while omitting KEY domains that you know are significant, and then proceeding to write an additional 2-3 papers than incrementally add one crucial factor after another. This is what a lot of scholars are doing to boost their metrics. It's super rare to find research that gets you 1k+ citations, so quantity > quality.

Another dirty tactic is making a deal with an editor to send your paper to a Dr. Yes reviewer or Dr. Accept reviewer who always accepts manuscripts without any changes or corrections.

I’ve been plagiarized a half a dozen times. But this doesn’t seem one of the dirty tricks in this discussion. This is really nasty! The editor told me unless it is word-for-word, I could do nothing about it. Instead I was hired as a consultant to the employer one of the authors and invited to join the editorial board of the journal. Another time I was working with the University of Chicago where the director of an institute hired a post- doc to reproduce my results and present them in DC when they knew I would be in Paris and could not question them in the roll out. When I complained to the funder they gave me $100k to extend my research and keep my mouth shut. I could go on and on, but I don’t understand why stealing intellectual property is not a “dirty” trick.

Question: does it directly cost the one student to put 3 supervisors' names on a paper? Or are the losers the peers of the 3 supervisors? Similarly, does the author lose through including a reviewer's citation which is only tangentially relevant? Or is it the peers of the reviewer who lose. Not trying to justify anything, trying to understand the dynamics of the game

These aren’t even “dirty tricks”. They’re just tricks of the trade. 😅

this sounds like even if somehow things change and become better it would be extremely difficult to disentangle the useful results from the balderdash ... unless things change so much so as for people to feel it's safe to be honest about their prior use of dirty tactics ... not possible ...

A+

I was aware of some of them. Actually I witnessed some of them as well. It’s shameful 😢

It starts with relatively harmless and then he mentions very immoral tactics like delaying peer review and author intimidation. One thing is when you play the system to benefit you without victimizing anyone, but to do harm to other researchers to benefit yourself, that's aanother level. Such tactics harm the scientific process.

Ah, that's why the Chinese Papers have so many co autors.

What's wrong with submitting to several journals? The redundant work in peer review?

The whole journal system seems corrupt through and through. It's what Yudkowski calls an "inefficient equilibrium", which no single agent can unilaterally change. Don't blame people for exploiting a bad system they didn't create but must live under.

Ghost and gift authorship solved. Divide papers and citations by the number of authors.

For the references, I've had 3-4 requested citations by reviewers. Always chinese authors in chinese universities. Always including a comittee member of the publication Always garbage tier articles

I hate it very much. The thing that I have to write the name of one of the professors just because my supervisor want to make a favor to one of his colleagues...... It's pretty annoying actually. Just because as you said when you are a PhD student you can't say No. What Bothers me the most is that even these people don't do any work that is worth writing their names on my paper.

Speed running strats... Nice #gg

I have seen all of these. Publishing academic papers from a position in industry is challenging because we are often years ahead of academia. Here is another one, you submit something groundbreaking to a journal and one or more of the reviewers delays the review and outright steals the idea with no prior work in that area. File provisional patents to protect your IP.

You can't say this without publishing it. This should be build up as a case and published in a scientific paper.