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Reproducibility crisis in ML.how serious is it and what can we do? (62)

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Sri Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara College, Ujire · Posted
Higher Education Policy Pharmaceutical Sciences

The honest answer to 'is a PhD worth it in India in 2025'

I will answer this question honestly because I see a lot of either uncritical enthusiasm or doom-and-gloom on this forum.

A PhD is worth it if:

  • You have a specific intellectual problem you are genuinely obsessed with
  • You want a career in research, academia, or high-end R&D at companies that value PhD credentials
  • You are comfortable with a 4–6 year period of relatively low pay and high uncertainty in exchange for intellectual freedom
  • You have a supervisor who is genuinely good at mentoring (this is the single biggest variable)

A PhD is probably not worth it if:

  • You want it for the credential rather than the research itself
  • You are going into fields (software engineering, finance, many business areas) where a PhD does not provide a salary premium
  • You are relying on it to 'figure out' what you want to do.that is what a master's degree is for

The Indian academic job market is brutal. If you want to be a professor at an IIT or IISC, you will likely need postdoctoral experience and a publication record that takes 8–10 years post-bachelor's to build.

But if research is genuinely what you want to do.it is absolutely worth it.

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10 Replies

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Rohan Desai Distinguished 950 pts · Accepted answer

The Fulbright SoP is very different from a typical PhD SoP. It needs to focus on cultural exchange and diplomacy, not just research.

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Replying to Rohan Desai
Varsha Pillai Growing 60 pts · Accepted answer

+1 to everything said above. My experience was identical.

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Aditya Sharma Starting 45 pts · Accepted answer

Open access is the right direction but the APCs are prohibitively expensive for many Indian researchers without institutional funding.

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Chetan Jain Growing 100 pts · Accepted answer

Strongly agree with the point about choosing venues carefully. One paper in NeurIPS > five papers in obscure workshops.

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Rekha Shetty Starting 40 pts · Accepted answer

I can answer your question about IEEE Transactions review timelines from my experience submitting to IEEE TNNLS.

For Q1 IEEE journals, expect:

  • Initial desk review: 2–4 weeks
  • Full peer review: 3–6 months
  • Major revision decision: another 2–3 months for re-review

As for code and data, most IEEE journals now request code upon acceptance, not submission. Regarding your 2.3% improvement.that is borderline. You will need very strong experimental rigor: multiple runs, confidence intervals, and significance tests.

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Replying to Rekha Shetty
Chirag Mehta Starting 15 pts · Accepted answer

The IEEE TPAMI turnaround in my case was 7 months for the first review. Plan accordingly.

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Replying to Rekha Shetty
Karthik Rajan Growing 180 pts · Accepted answer

Thank you! The reference to MuRIL is particularly useful.I had not considered it as an alternative to XLM-R for Indic languages.

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Replying to Rekha Shetty
Ishaan Verma Growing 60 pts · Accepted answer

Seconding the recommendation for Zotero. Game changer for managing references across multiple projects.

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Deepa Krishnamurthy Distinguished 810 pts · Accepted answer

I have successfully received PMRF (lateral entry, second year). Happy to share what worked in my proposal.

On the research proposal:

  • 60–70% technical approach, 30% context and impact
  • Preliminary results absolutely help. Coursework projects are fine if genuinely relevant
  • The societal impact section should be substantive.PMRF is a national initiative; reviewers want to see why this matters

On citations: Yes, cite your MTech thesis. Framing your PhD as an extension of prior work you did shows continuity of thought.

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Hemant Patwa · Accepted answer

This is really helpful context. One more question: for the ethics committee approval, does the institution where the data is collected or the institution where the analysis is performed need to be the primary ethics approver?