By Cucumber without spiced ham
Ever feared checking your Inbox for a request to review another spam paper? Spam papers in watermarking commonly share the following features:
- The author is not concerned with frivolousnesses like the difference between zero-bit and multi-bit watermarking;
- While the technique is not designed to survive geometrical distortions, a 3° rotation generally "demonstrates the high robustness of the proposed approach to geometrical transforms" -- and, of course, pseudo-cropping is always meant for plain regular cropping;
- For zero-bit watermarking (which is definitely the same as multi-bit), the threshold is always taken from the Barni et al. paper [1] ensuring a 1e-8 probability of false alarm. No threshold is ever allowed to include another constant than 3.97 which is engraved in the holy Eq. 15 of the said paper. Whether the computation actually applies straightforwardly to the submitted paper is of secondary interest;
- Explicit distortion specification is generally omitted for the sake of simplicity (oh! and Lena looks good anyway when printed on a 2 inch square!);
- Security is ensured by the use of a secret key;
- Spell-checking is left to the reviewer;
- The results always clearly and unconditionally demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method in any area of comparison.
It appears however that the times they are a-changin' [2]. A Cucumber of ours recently received the new instructions for reviewers from SPIE Optical Engineering, as part of an invitation to review another spam paper. Hell! These new instructions read:
"Although this paper need not be exceptional, it should add
significantly to the field for you to recommend acceptance or revision.
Lately, a substantial number of papers have been submitted that can be
called "not wrong" papers. These are papers that contain no errors, but
they also lack any new and useful information that would move your field
forward; they may provide no citable results, or document so little
progress that researchers in your field will ignore them. These papers
take up your time and ours; they clutter up the literature; and they do
not advance research in the field. If you find this paper fits this
description, you should recommend that the paper be rejected."
That's pretty good news it finally got written in plain English.
References
[1] M. Barni, F. Bartolini and A. Piva, Improved wavelet-based watermarking through pixel-wise masking, IEEE Trans. Image Proc., vol. 10, issue 5, pp. 783--791, May 2001.
[2] R.A. Zimmerman, The times they are a-changin', Columbia Trans. on Bob Dylan, Special Issue on The Times They Are A-Changin', January 1964.
"Although this paper need not be exceptional, it should add
significantly to the field for you to recommend acceptance or revision.
Lately, a substantial number of papers have been submitted that can be
called "not wrong" papers. These are papers that contain no errors, but
they also lack any new and useful information that would move your field
forward; they may provide no citable results, or document so little
progress that researchers in your field will ignore them. These papers
take up your time and ours; they clutter up the literature; and they do
not advance research in the field. If you find this paper fits this
description, you should recommend that the paper be rejected."
That's pretty good news it finally got written in plain English.
References
[1] M. Barni, F. Bartolini and A. Piva, Improved wavelet-based watermarking through pixel-wise masking, IEEE Trans. Image Proc., vol. 10, issue 5, pp. 783--791, May 2001.
[2] R.A. Zimmerman, The times they are a-changin', Columbia Trans. on Bob Dylan, Special Issue on The Times They Are A-Changin', January 1964.
