Getting a paper accepted

Science vs. “Research Game” and Careerism

• Many commenters distinguish between “doing science” (discovery, understanding) and “playing the game” (papers, grants, prestige).
• Some see the article’s branding/marketing advice as further evidence academia prioritizes careers over discovery, especially in U.S. PhD cultures.
• Others argue this has always been true to some degree; science has patrons and politics, yet still progresses.
• A nuanced view: career optimization has produced both major advances and a lot of low‑quality, hype‑driven work.

Communication, Branding, and Clarity

• Broad agreement that clearer writing, better figures, and shifting from “what we did” to “why it matters” genuinely improves papers and helps readers.
• Several worry that in ML, “branding” (catchy names, punchy titles, flashy graphics) has become central, blurring good communication with salesmanship.
• Some say similar branding exists in other fields (e.g., characteristic figure styles in chemistry) and does affect recognition.
• Debate over whether peer review rewards truth or mainly rewards plausible, clearly packaged claims; code and artifacts often escape serious scrutiny.

Peer Review, Randomness, and Politics

• Multiple experiences of acceptance/rejection feeling largely stochastic once a basic quality threshold is met.
• “Author engineering”: having a well‑known coauthor or insider often helps “enter” a field; double‑blind review only partially mitigates this.
• Reviewers are overworked and uncompensated; many skim quickly, making clarity and first‑page impressions disproportionately important.
• Some conclude peer review is primarily a social filter; others defend it as an imperfect but still “strong” filter against obvious errors and fraud.

Ideas, Experiments, and What Counts as Science

• One line of argument: ideas are cheap; real science is rigorous experimentation/theory plus faithful reporting, including failures.
• Counterpoint: high‑impact, genuinely surprising ideas are rare; “obvious next step” ideas plus solid execution still move fields.
• Several lament that negative or non‑working results are rarely published, causing duplicated effort and slower progress.

Metagame Advice and Career Strategy

• Commenters extend the article’s theme: optimize time for visible outputs (papers, grants, high‑impact collaborations, conferences).
• Engineering that “makes things actually work,” cluster tooling, teaching improvements, and careful packaging are often invisible to academic gatekeepers.
• Some suggest these “invisible” skills are better rewarded in industry or entrepreneurship, where working systems can be directly monetized.