I am getting my masters and we have a research group on my lab. It's made up of my tutor, another teacher and a bunch of students. Everytime we have scientific events, the other teacher presses us with long texts about how lazy we are and how we should be submetting more, and guess what? I have to put her name in all my papers and she did nothing on it. So many teachers do this, they get at least 15 papers submitted in each event with their name on it while they did nothing. I have been producing in this past year much more than I did in my entire undergrad., and the burnout is real ( -д-)

Me: watching in-depth videos, reading data visualization books, and learning color theory in order to make the best figures imaginable for my future manuscripts 👨🏽‍🎨🖼 Reviewer #2 for my future journal paper submissions: * basically DarcyN @ 37:43 * lmao 😭

IEEE journals are often overhyped and not particularly useful. Many IEEE journals have become victims of paper factories, with some papers seemingly intended to confuse readers with jargon and complex formulas or to omit essential details due to page limitations. I only read IEEE papers from certain authors, and over time, I’ve learned to identify authors from paper factories, which I now avoid. Additionally, citations in IEEE journals are generally low, with citation counts often artificially inflated through cross-citations among paper factory groups who cite their own work.

In industry if it's valuable they don't publish it. In academia they publish it anyway even if it's not valuable 😂. i sensed it when i was in my first year at studying my masters. in university, even if you got into an elevator you could smell paper talk. got out and never felt any regret. all they do is just pushing for bs papers that does no go good to anyone but they're just trends to get better views. i remember, my faculty was mechanical engineering but all professors pushed students to somehow publish some bs ass content about covid 19. Ahh it was awful. you're a mechanical engineering faculty. how can you solve covid 19? i regretted why i put my years in academia. felt kinda scammed. immediately got out and felt so much better.

Brilliant video, everyone should watch who is in academia.

Hey Andrey, thank you for the most appreciated video, I have seen many videos in this regard but none of them was so detailed and pinpointed the actual problems I was confronted with. If I were to give a wish for your nexr video topic, to show us what software you use to create your unique graphs and diagrams? There are a lot of software like Excel, SPSS, Graphpad Prism, but what is your secret tip and how to get started, it would also fit alot to add the new A.I. tools that promise to solve your statistical problems and automatically generate charts and graphs.

You can thank Bret and Eric Weinstein for this.

Hey.. I have applied about 75days ago for ATAS. I have applied for Phd and got admission but I am still waiting. Plz guide me what should I do. Can I contact the FCDO directly ?

This really gives a good idea of how someone should be attending these conferences. Thinking that my tuition is used for some professors to take a vacation in Thailand...? I'm not saying that all grad students/researchers/professors attend those conferences just for vacation, but we do heard these things happen quite occasionally.

Every field the progress slows as it advances academia is no different, anyone who expects people to have years of genius like scientists in early 1900 and late 1800's is naive.

One of the most underrated channels regarding acdemia that points out real problems in acdemia many especially things that no one talks about like your video about the graph and what color to choose! Thank you!

raise your hand if you convert your png to 300x300 dpi

The place I work in isnt making me wanting to write any more paper (just got one), whatever idea Ive got, it has been published 2 months ago. It has become so competitive that there is no point to waste life in this rat race. At conferences you can really feel thats all about ego (like a currency, instead of money). In the end it doesnt reward you financially (unless you really are special) but keeps you in stress. I am looking right now how to build a regular career and do research for my own pleasure on the side Also universities have become captured by left ideology, its really no environment I can identify with.

Academia is just a fashion accessory like an iPhone

I think conferences are a legacy tool from pre-telecomm era. That old physics conference you showed was the ONLY place where you could present and discuss scientific work in an organized manner. Also, there were just a few dozens experts on a field. Nowadays, the size of the conferences is a consequence of the massive amount of people working on similar problems. You can be sure that many of the figureheads of the field you work on won't even be present at your conference A, because they selected similar conference B or C to present their results on that year. The bit on sustainability I also find very relevant. I personally don't eat meat and avoid getting a car because of environmental reasons. But because of academia I need to burn huge amounts of fuel into the atmosphere just so I can spend 15 min live presenting my paper, answer a few polite questions, never get any follow up from that and go home. As you said, it is a business, driven by the competitiveness of the field and the amount of people working on problems, not in a collective manner helping each other, but trying desperately to be the first to publish and get recognition for their findings so they can improve their resume, and hopefully get into a professor position with less uncertainty than the forsaken place that it is being a post-doc or temp professor. In my opinion, the only way you can get something out of collaborating with other researchers is if you actually make an effort to build a connection with them, so that they can be more willing and comfortable in giving you useful feedback. And that connection won't be built on a 2 minute talk on a once a year conference.

There's also the pressure to participate in the social events around conferences. People say that's where the "real" discussion takes place. In my experience, it's just where people get drunk and often make a fool of themselves. I've been both the sober observer and the fool in those situations. Therefore, you could be an amazing presenter with a piece of ground-breaking research, but unless you are an extroverted socialite you won't have any impact or gain the reputation you deserve.

Very true about the questions. People very rarely raise any deep discussion points. Questions are usually just clarifying some details that the presenter didn't have time to include due to the awfully short presentation time allowed.

This is another excellent and informative video from you, Andry. Thank you for sharing your experience with us!!

I believe I watched your session during INFORMS Annual Conference in 2019. What a coincidence! Interesting ideas, thank you for sharing.

No way you travel inside Europe and consider that half of the world. And maybe you should tell ua what was the title of your presentation.

conferences are an excuse for underpaid researchers to use funds for traveling.

I think this video is too long. Maybe aim for 10 minutes instead.

Thanks for the video, Andrey. I've found larger conferences mostly useless. I do like reading conference proceedings to see what people have been up to, but I could do that without attending. Luckily my field has a few smaller workshops on more specific topics; it's easier to meet people at those events. I was also taken aback by the lack of attention in the audience at my first conference. Made me lol

Thank you Andrey for summing up all those issues. My experience says that large conferences/congresses do not deserve to visit in general, except if you need to meet certain people in person who are also attending it. Small conferences focused on your particular topic (~100 participants) are much more productive, because of issues mentioned in the video (less crowded, noisy and more productive atmosphere). Moreover, they may be cheaper and closer as well as less formal. The main criterion of a good conference is the presence of people you usually cite and read. It is also practical to have your business cards with you. BTW, what is the audience of your web site? May it be more practical to post in social media? Or is this just an archive? Finally, you inevitably meet an idea that you need your own conference with blackjack and...))

Thank you for this helpful overview.

Great video, and well known facts were given! I truly hate the conferences because of the issues you discussed. There are some conferences, which has really low acceptance rate however they are really rare to find. Most of them are just there for money generating and nothing else.

In the Windows system, PDF vector graphics cannot be directly inserted into Word and need to be converted to EMF format. The best way is to open it with Inkscape, making sure to use Cairo import instead of internal import, and then save it as .emf format. However, in the Mac OS system, PDF vector graphics can be directly inserted into Word with good results because Mac's Word converts PDFs into EMF format images. It is very strange that Microsoft's own Windows does not allow Word to smoothly insert PDF format vector graphics.

I am searching postdoctoral but yet not received any mail 😢😢

After 40 days of waiting, I sent a polite message explaining my circumstances and the urgency of my situation by CCing the HR office of the university and attaching the message traffic with the university. As a result, I received the certificate the following day. My advice is to wait for about a month and then send a message outlining your situation. Also, thanks a lot for the pure information in a lucid way Andrey.

This video was amazing! I absolutely loved it, and I can't wait for you to release the second part! Keep up the great work!

The whole UK research atmosphere is a nightmare. Applied by January and accepted by April, ATAS took one and a half months then CAS generation took one more. Applied for a priority VISA, and it's been seven weeks still no sign. The Home Office doesn't want researchers. Earlier got positions in Germany and the US, deeply regretting saying no to them. Now after this shit of paperwork that is going on for almost a year, I am tired. Missed reading and living in constant stress for a year which is not worth it ...thinking about making a new application this season.

Thanks for the video. I agree with you, but in my own experience the poster sessions were useful. Often I had the feeling that in oral presentations the crowd (including me) was hesitant to ask about the research. However, when you are talking one-on-one this is much easier.

How about securities on paper? That mean a stock certificate. The gentry must come down, since they have mba and do think shoplifters gotta square up.

hell yeah

As a sophomore, your videos are just perfect. Thank you, and ill be waiting for the 2nd part of both conference and plotting videos.

I have been following you for the past few months and learning a lot. Wish I had known you from the earlier days of my research journey. Thank you so much for consistently sharing your personal experiences and valuable suggestions 🥂 9:29 The way you organized the papers for the literature review into such a neat and tidy graph is impressive. Please share which tool you used.

Thank you for interesting video!

We need them because scientists don't usually take vacations, so conferences are a good way to travel and relax on grant money

Is this your way of saying favoritism and camera hogging are totally a thing at college?

high quality tutorial. many thanks

Wow, what a surprise to see a chilean among your collaborators

Your video has been very helpful, I look forward to the next ones. Keep it up 😁

Hi Andrey, great video, very well addressed. Postdoc at UoM here too (Physics). Indeed, the number vs quality metrics battle is something distressing in the community now. Just wanted to add something to the pressure load on us, young scientists: it’s not only about just publishing papers, but also where your name lies in the list of authors too. In some cases, when a committee asks us to pinpoint our 5 most relevant papers, if you’re not the first or corresponding author (let’s say from a collaboration between groups), they don’t even consider it. No matter how good or groundbreaking the findings are, if your name isn’t the first or the last, that won’t count as much for postdocs. Sadly, the iceberg on us is actually much deeper and, to some extent, our passion for science is the only thing we have that is able to sustain it.

I have a similar issue and would appreciate if there is a way I can contact you. I am also a student of the University of Manchester.

I think it is very likely that there will be AI tools soon which will be able to read all papers and assign a more realistic 'score' to them.

I believe there was a time when a paper would be the culmination of one's life's work. Now it's a month's work, and only one small component of what could have been a much more important work.

Thanks for sharing your experience, Andrey. I'm finishing my doctorate and I'm going through the same process as you. Congratulations.

Congratulations on your reflection, Andrey. Your comments brought me a lot of relief and hope that the Academy can be something much more humanized and promising. Thank you and congratulations.

Wonderful talk, Kudos!!

Something I had a discussion about with colleagues in the past: When (if ever) is it okay to trace over pixelated graphs with vector software, to give a nicer looking plot? Sometimes, you cannot (easily/realistically) get raw data out of a piece of measurement equipment for various reasons (I've even had this for security reasons before - you were not allowed to take measurements out, only the pngs of the plots). In that case, I cannot get a nice vector graphic plot. Is it okay for me to trace the data in an vector graphics program? What about just drawing ledgends over it by hand, to make the graph more readable? Is it okay so long as I clearly state that it is a trace? I've also done the same when adapting data from old figures, in papers that are only available as low-resolution scans. What about those cases?