I hope this is not a politically incorrect question to ask, but for a PhD student who usually publishes at CCC/ITCS/ICALP (and occasionally at FOCS/STOC), could it be harmful (career-wise) to publish less significant works in less prestigious conferences (e.g. MFCS, FCT, STACS, IPL)? Could it be better to just leave such papers laying at ECCC/arXiv?
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2it depends on the quality of results. focus on getting the best results 1st & getting them into the best journals that will take them. =) ... the electronic sites are useful for not-as-fully-cooked stuff & establishing priority etc. – vzn Feb 23 '13 at 19:35
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1What kind of career are we talking about? – Thanatos Feb 23 '13 at 23:38
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6I assume she means an academic career at a research university. – Jeffε Feb 24 '13 at 01:29
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1surprised at high upvotes on this. so far answers below are assuming that "career-wise" is being measured by selection/promotion/acceptance committees & leading to much "inside baseball" talk, but "career-wise" is actually a very broad term verging on vague. for example, a researcher might be happy in their current position, not wanting to move, and it could depend on that particular schools committees attitudes. other note: there is some connection of the question to citation analysis, a growing area of study/application albeit controversial. – vzn May 30 '14 at 16:28
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I was just referred to this question by graduate students that, in my opinion, were far too influenced by the answers. So let me start with two generic advises.
To the aspiring scientist: Don't assign too much weight to any answer on such matters, and don't assume that a small and highly non-random sample represents the common views among senior (or non-senior) people in the community. In general, think for yourself! See http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~oded/advice.html for more details...
To the senior scientist: Be careful about what you say, since it may be misinterpreted in harmful ways and/or have more impact than what you intend and/or perceive.
Re the discussion itself, I think that the idea that credits are non-monotone is not only utterly non-intuitive but also utterly wrong, and I am talking as a person who sat on numerous committees that took various career decisions. A person who has $X$ fundamental contributions, $Y$ important contributions, and $Z+1$ nice/legitimate contribution is ranked higher than one who has $(X,Y,Z)$, regardless of the numerical values of $X,Y,Z$ and assuming that quality captured by the $(X,Y,Z)$ triples is exactly the same. Trade-offs between different types is a different question, ditto re how much credit does each increase give...
In other words, for any set of works $S$ and any additional work $a$, the credit of $S \cup \{a\}$ is (strictly) bigger than to $S$ [i.e., strict monotonicity].
In my opinion, people who claim the opposite just assume that a larger number $Z$ implies a decrease in what the value of $X$ (or $Y$) could have been. But this assumption may be wrong and more importantly is irrelevant to the comparison at hand. That is, if you compare a case of $(X,Y,Z)$ to one of $(X,Y,Z+1)$, you must rule that the second person (called B) was able to meet the performance of the first (called A) although B also did another work of 3rd type; so B is clearly better. Indeed, you may think that B could have done better investing more energy in Type 1 (which is not always true - see below), but that's a comparison against an imaginary B, not against A. (And when you have a case of $(X,Y,Z)$ against $(X,Y,Z+10)$, the same holds is stronger terms.)
In addition, I think there is also a confusion between the works and the publications. If a work already exists in writing, and assuming that it has its merits, then it can only be advantageous to publish it in a adequate venue, where by adequate I mean one that is intended for works of this profile (wrt quality and scope - publication in a too prestigious conference may actually hurt, since it may generate some annoyance and even bad opinions re the author). But if one still has to develop a work from an initial idea (or "only" write it - which always involves some more research...), then one may consider the trade-off between the amount of time required versus the importance of the work.
Finally, as I hinted above, it is not clear that one is better off aiming all the time at Type 1 (i.e., fundamental work). Firstly, this is infeasible and thus problematic/harmful. Secondly, and more importantly, one is always better off following the inherent logic of his/her own interests and ideas/feelings, and aiming to do as well as possible. See more in the aforementioned webpage.
Oded Goldreich
Oded Goldreich
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7Sorry, but I don't intend to stick around since I find doing so very time-consuming and somewhat annoying at times (this feeling is based on some but not much experience with other blogs). But do feel free to call my attention (via email) to anything that you think I would be interested to react to, or to anything that you want my answer to. (This invitation extends to all readers.) – Oded Goldreich May 30 '14 at 09:45
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A person who has X fundamental contributions, Y important contributions, and Z+1 nice/legitimate contribution is ranked higher than one who has (X,Y,Z) — Your claim of monotonicity is not consistent with my experience on hiring and promotion committees. – Jeffε May 30 '14 at 15:32
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9+1 for "one is always better off following the inherent logic of his/her own interests and ideas/feelings, and aiming to do as well as possible"!! – Jeffε May 30 '14 at 15:33
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2ditto on the welcome! the attempt to measure something inherently subjective (candidate accomplishments/contributions) in formal/mathematical language is rather questionable & is reminiscent of statistical/quantitative-based/citation analysis debates going on in scientific circles (& there are various refs/surveys on this out now & TCS plays a role here). re "senior scientists", opinions on how to make the site better and "less annoying" have been solicited (albeit controversially) on meta. – vzn May 30 '14 at 15:37
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2Re experience on committees - I have my own. I put twenty years of such on my claim. It is not only logical, it even works in reality! – Oded Goldreich May 30 '14 at 15:45
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3Re the attempt to use math -- it was merely illustrative. You may prefer the alternative that talks of $S\cup{a}$. This is not math, only using math symbols, and it merely captures the claim of monotonicity while being careful to stress that one should compare the same set of works and not merely numbers. I am all in agreement against the objection to mere statistics. – Oded Goldreich May 30 '14 at 15:50
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Re the site and annoyance. Sorry - I really did not mean it this way. As far as i can see, the site is very nice and the interfaces are far less annoying than I experienced before (except that the comments are completed once I hit CR, forcing me to post several comments rather a single one in a few paragraphs). Anyhow, my concerns are (1) following on any blog (even on a single thread) is extremely time consuming, and (2) one gets annoyed (at least I do) by comments that reflect a reading of the post that is less careful than one would want (and expect on other media). To be cont... – Oded Goldreich May 30 '14 at 15:56
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Cont.: In short, I was "complaining" of the media of blogs (or rather pointing out its CONs), not on this specific blog. Even when complaining, I do see the PROs. Hence, I command the initiators, managers and participants. (But I am allowed to go by my own preferences and try to minimize my own participation; that's what I meant.) In short, I meant no offense, and apologize for using careless phrases that may be interpreted as offensive. Oded – Oded Goldreich May 30 '14 at 16:00
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Regarding the CR annoyance -- you can insert line breaks without posting the comment by pressing Shift+Enter. – May 31 '14 at 13:53
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re "big [fundamental] problems" Tao has some great career advice eg dont prematurely obsess on single "big problem" or "big theory" but maybe this topic is at heart related to researcher personality/psychology wrt risk taking. also re blog topic, fyi for those who are unaware OG has a bloglike section on his site with opinions/essays, except without comments :| – vzn May 31 '14 at 17:07
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Yes, this is a personality issue, and I'd not dare advice anyone about it, except that advice all that they follow their own feeling. In general, as I hinted above, I think the best career strategy is to try to do the best research one can, and not waste time trying to strategize... [See Nr 7 in my webpage http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~oded/advice.html]
Thanks VZN for recommending my site. Indeed, for reasons mentioned in a prior comment of mine, I prefer posting opinions and/or essays over running a blog. And I will be happy to get comments and/or questions about these by email.
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No. Publish.
The only things that would be actively harmful to your career would be publishing most of your papers in third-tier venues (strongly suggesting that you have mostly third-tier results), or publishing anything in a fake/scam conference (strongly suggesting that you are either dangerously uninformed or a scammer yourself).
Jeffε
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4Are you saying that having a couple papers in these venues is good, but having too many can hurt? I might agree that that's how it may work in practice, though my feeling is that ideally a venue should either be considered good/serious or not. Having an additional paper in the former should never be harmful to your career. – Lev Reyzin Feb 23 '13 at 19:36
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1At various stages in your career, your body of work will be compared to that of your peers. If most of your publications are in less prestigious venues (like STACS and IPL), you will be likely judged weaker than someone else who publishes primarily in more prestigious venues (like STOC and JACM). Rightly or wrongly, the likely knee-jerk reaction is that either you couldn't publish in those venues or (just as bad) you didn't try. See also the supposed "importance" of scientists' publishing in The Tabloids (aka Science and Nature). We are apes; we do apey things. – Jeffε Feb 23 '13 at 23:17
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1that's how it may work in practice, though my feeling is that ideally... — I agree with you. Unfortunately, while we all work in Plato and Socrates' Realm of Ideal Forms, we do not actually live there. – Jeffε Feb 23 '13 at 23:24
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11That's not exactly what I mean. All else being equal (impossible, I know), compare 1) someone who has 5 papers in the very top venues and nothing else to 2) someone who has 5 papers in the very top venues and 3 papers in less prestigious venues to 3) someone who has 5 papers in the very top venues and 20 papers in less prestigious venues. It seems you are saying that career-wise, 2) > 1) > 3). I'm not saying I disagree, but I want to make sure I understand your answer. – Lev Reyzin Feb 24 '13 at 01:55
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3Assuming letters for all three only discuss the 5 papers in top venues -- all else being equal, right? -- then yes, (2) > (1) > (3) is the right order. – Jeffε Feb 24 '13 at 06:22
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@JɛffE: given that Lev said "all else being equal", you are saying that (at similar stages of their career, and with similar numbers and quality of collaborators) you would prefer to hire productive person (2) to super-productive (3)? If so, I don't understand the metric. I would understand you saying "prefer 5 top + 3 lesser to 1 top + 20 lesser", since that would allow an inference about the type of work the candidates chose to work on. But the only information in the tuple "5 top + 3 lesser, 5 top + 20 lesser" seems to be energy. – András Salamon Feb 24 '13 at 16:09
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1I would prefer not to hire someone who wastes their time producing second-rate results, yes. – Jeffε Feb 24 '13 at 17:54
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@JɛffE: thanks for the perspective, I hadn't thought about it this way. – András Salamon Feb 24 '13 at 18:37
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9@JɛffE: I appreciate your honesty, but can you explain the apparent contradiction between your comments saying you agree with Lev Reyzin's ideals and your stated preference to hire in contradiction with those ideals? I understand your comments about apes and Plato, but the only explanation I can find is that you must have very soft ideals ... and that's not very charitable to you. ='( – A. Rex Feb 25 '13 at 23:54
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7While I completely disagree with JɛffE, I have been on committees where his view wins out; candidates with 50 publications, 15 of which are in top venues lose out to candidates with 12 publications all in top venues. This seems to happen because the 50 publication CV is difficult to distinguish (at a glance) from the CV with 50 publications all in low quality venues. My personal view, though, is that the person who has time to do lots of "important" work and still has the capacity to do lots of "less important" work should be the winner. – Pat Morin May 30 '14 at 13:21
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@PatMorin That's why I rank (2) above (1). I think we disagree on the following point: I believe a professor's role as an researcher is much less important than their role as a advisor. An advisor who values quantity over quality is likely to attract/produce students who value quantity over quality. An advisor who publishes only 25% of their papers in top venues is likely to attract/produce students who publish only 25% of their papers in top venues. (I take it as written that most students are less productive than their advisors.) – Jeffε May 30 '14 at 15:27
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5To Pat. The quality does not reduce to numbers, nor to numbers scaled by the venue's prestige. To make the claim you make, you must be careful to mask out other factors. You have to be sure that the large number is the factor that caused the negative effect. In any case, the CV (or a research stmt) should focus the readers on what is the most important works, and the reviewers/evaluators should and almost always do the same - assuming that there are works worthy of highlight. – Oded Goldreich May 30 '14 at 16:08
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I should qualify my previous comment. The cases I'm thinking of were research awards in which the candidates were all forced to use an inflexible CV format that didn't allow for a list of Most Important Contributions, just an exhaustive list of publications. And of course, the issue was compounded by the usual factors including large numbers of applicants and limited review times. A better organized CV would have helped, but wasn't an option in these cases. – Pat Morin May 30 '14 at 17:16
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3Still, I'm quite sure that also here it was not a matter of (12,50) vs (15,0) but rather how important were the "top" one conceived. I'd also add that, in the long run (and it does not take too long), it is the importance of the work that counts -- not the venue in which it was published. – Oded Goldreich May 30 '14 at 17:26
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4Off topic, but it is also not prudent to just count the number of papers in a top conference (e.g., STOC/FOCS) while not counting papers in smaller venues that have been actually more influential. It happens often: may be the paper did not seem to be important enough at the moment so you submitted it to a second rate venue, but 5 years later people (not even yourself) realized that the contribution is important and started to cite you. – cryptocat May 31 '14 at 13:32
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One should count papers but rather obtain opinions from reliable experts who know and understand the work. But in my posts I did not relate to what senior scientist should do, but rather tried to inform aspiring scientists on what they actually do. There is a gap between what I think people should do and the reality, and I'm well-aware of it. This refers also to the gap between the well-being of science and the well-being of individuals even when understood in the narrow sense of getting a job (rather than also feeling good about oneself, which in my opinion is more important). – Oded Goldreich May 31 '14 at 17:44
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2To the point raise by the cryptocat, which is not off topic at all. Indeed, the phenomenon mentioned is very real - I can mention several papers of mine in which this has happened. It may happen because the authors underestimated their own work, and it can also happen because the authors knew that the community (and the reviewers as its "random sample") are likely to underestimate the paper! I'll brag and say that in all the aforementioned works (of mine), except one, it was the later case. And five years is on the longer side, it often happens much faster! – Oded Goldreich May 31 '14 at 17:50