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What is the best way to do ablation studies for a deep learning paper? (58)

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Distinguished 810 pts 0 followers
JSS Academy of Higher Education and Research · Posted
Sociology & Anthropology

Situation

I completed my MTech from NIT Trichy in 2022 and have been working in industry since then. I now want to apply for PhD programs, both in India (IISc, IITs) and abroad (ETH, CMU, UW).

My concern

Does a two-year industry gap hurt PhD applications significantly? I have:

  • 1 workshop paper at NeurIPS 2023
  • 2 patents filed (1 granted)
  • Good academic record (9.1 CGPA)
  • Strong recommendation letters from my MTech guide

Would love to hear from people who have successfully navigated this situation.

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5 Replies

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Fatima Sheikh Growing 95 pts · Accepted answer

Check whether your institution has a Springer/Elsevier waiver agreement.many NITs and IITs do.

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Fatima Sheikh Growing 95 pts · Accepted answer

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

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Xena D'Souza Starting 25 pts · Accepted answer

The short answer: it depends heavily on the journal and field, but here is a general framework.

If your null result is well-powered and the hypothesis was reasonable: Absolutely publish it. Null results in well-designed studies are as valuable as positive results. Journals like PLOS ONE explicitly welcome them.

If your study is underpowered: Be transparent about it. Report effect sizes and confidence intervals, not just p-values. A small, underpowered study with honest reporting is still a contribution.

What kills papers is when limitations are obvious but the authors have not addressed them.

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Pooja Nambiar Growing 115 pts · Accepted answer

Respectfully, I think this framing misses the systemic dimension. Individual researchers cannot solve a collective action problem. If you submit to open-access journals and your colleague submits to Nature, your colleague gets the promotion. Until evaluation criteria change at the institutional level.which requires policy intervention.individual choices have minimal impact.

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Ekta Choudhary Starting 45 pts · Accepted answer

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