Remove co-author for ethical violation? My co-authors and I are preparing to submit a major project manuscript.  Unfortunately, we have just learned that one of the persons involved in the project has committed major scientific ethical violations related to the project, but not directly impacting this paper.

The scale of the ethical violation is quite large (think: non-consensual and dangerous medical experiments) and is directly connected to their work on the project. It does not, however, affect the validity of this manuscript or their contributions to it in any way.

Many of the co-authors, however, no longer want to be associated with this person in any way, and are likely to withdraw their names from the manuscript if this person remains an author.

Would it be reasonable to remove this person from authorship based on their ethical violation, essentially as a form of community shunning?

Personally I think you cannot do it, and I wouldn't even speak in terms of "reasonable" or "unreasonable". If someone makes a contribution to your work, that person is your co-author, deal with it. If a person wants to remove his/her own name, its their private decision, but I can hardly imagine doing that for other contributors without their consent.

When I engage in research with other people, I consider it a sort of binding contract: I do this for you, and I expect you to put my name on the front page. If you don't want to deal with me anymore, it's OK, but next time, not this time.

Furthermore, while I don't want to overthink it and portray pictures of possible dystopian future, I believe such ways of "community shunning" are very dangerous. Maybe today you have a valid reason for it, but you'll open a Pandora's box: first we retroactively remove people for their flaws, then for their views on sensitive topics, then for their thoughts.

I think this is a question that requires legal advice, not ethical advice before you would make any such move. If the person has a valid claim for authorship and you don't honor it, you may, possibly, become liable. I don't know if that is the case where you are or not, but you should protect yourselves.

The ethical consideration is more complex, but I doubt that few would condemn you for shunning a person for violations such as you suggest, especially since the violation was on the same project that supported the publication.

Since the violation is, as you say, directly connected to the project, you should also examine whether the work itself is so tainted that it should be abandoned. This is a radical step, of course and would have both negative and positive impacts on the other participants. I won't guess at the proper resolution of such a consideration, but think you should probably give it serious thought and discussion. And of course, you may have to balance that against the possible good that might come from what was learned in the study.

If this study was undertaken in the US, I wonder what happened to the IRB and what they might have to say about a resolution. The same would be the case in other countries with similar ethical oversight of research.


What are the long-term advantages of a US PhD compared to Europe/Oceania? I have applied to PhD programs in ecology in Europe (Germany, Denmark, UK) and Oceania (Australia/New Zealand). Now the deadlines for US programs are coming up and I am debating whether I should apply there as well. Aside from the exorbitant cost to apply to US programs I am interested in comparing the pros and cons as far as career opportunities.
I have ready a MS from a major US university and I will turn 31 soon. My career goals are to pursue a teaching/research position.

Assuming that the potential advisors satisfy my requirements (good publishing track, personable, successful students, international connections) and that there will be funding. I will consider "rest of the world" and USA.

Rest of the world:
- can be completed in three years, in this case I will have gained two years for a possible Post Doc, and also make use of my Masters
- I will be able to just focus on research without being a teaching assistant, from what I understand publications would count more than teaching assistant experience even for a 50%/50% research/teaching position
- it might be harder in case I want to find a job in the US, especially since I will not be located within the country
- there are no obligations to complete courses
- pay rate is generally decent compared to cost of living

USA:
-I am under the impression that with a PhD from a top US institution is well-regarded internationally and would be easier to find a job in Europe or Australia
- the teaching experience could be useful to me as I would like to also be involved in education alongside with research
- there is more time to explore and think about research questions and goals, as opposed to Europe where you join to develop a certain project
- the stipend and the US is very low also compared to the living costs especially on the West Coast. It would mean five years of financial sacrifice
- more chances to perhaps be involved in other projects, it seems there is more of an open research community within departments
- it might be productive to take some classes that are taught by top profile professors

Are the extra time spent and the financial sacrifice for a US PhD worthwhile for my career goals and my preparation has a successful educator/researcher? Will my international mobility be limited based on where I graduate?

I think the key question is: What do you want to do after the PhD?

There are some points that you may consider to choose a programme if you want to stay in the academia. The advantages or disadvantages of the length of these programmes depend on your training/background.

Your background. If you are familiar with the topic you are planning to work on, then you can probably start checking the relevant literature immediatly, in this case a 3 years program may be what you need. But if the topic is unfamiliar to you, then you would probably have to attend lectures and to read textbooks, in this case a 5 years program may be better.
Your CV. A work in the academia usually involves teaching and research. If you have teaching experience, then you can focus on developing your CV in terms of research. In this case I would go for a 3 years programme and get involved full-time on research. If you do not have teaching experience, then you might want to consider a 5 years PhD where you have the opportunity to teach and develop your CV in both lines.
The topic. Some research projects by their nature itself require different amounts of time to develop. For instance if you are going to work on modelling a specific data set vs. having to obtain the samples directly in the Amazon.

Regarding the mobility, I think after the PhD what really matters is your CV. Either if you graduate from Oxford or the University of Tuvalu.

It depends on your subject, interests, and future career goals, IMO. The US presents the best educational services all around the world, especially in graduate levels (almost all agreed on this); on the other hand, the student life in the US is relatively hard, mainly due to low rates of stipend and scholarships and high rates of life cost. Unlikely, PhD students in the Europe are usually enrolled as if they are employed by the university. A high value of salary and no additional works, such as teaching and etc.

However, keep in mind that future job opportunities in the US are definitely higher than that in the Europe and Oceania. Studying in the US is similar to mountain climbing; when you conquered the crest, the remaining of the way is downhill, hopefully :).


Outsourcing trivial authorless work I have worked on a problem for close to two years. I feel I have an adequate theoretical solution. However I feel to get some backing on the theory I need some quantitative hard computer data. It is only a few days work of programming. Would it be ethically wrong to recruit an undergrad for a few days volunteer work without pay to get the computer crunching part done and not mention him as a coauthor and only mention as acknowledgement?  This is only for time reasons as I am not familiar with tools required. Everything will be given as cook book to the interested programmer.

The fact that to a seasoned programmer the work is easy doesn't have anything to do with it. As you describe it, this is work that's required for the publication. Without it, you don't have a paper. With it, you do. Therefore the programmer contributed significantly (critically) to the paper, and therefore the programmer should be an author.

The fact that it's quick and easy for a programmer simply means that programmers have spent significant time and effort learning skills that you don't have. If you consider the work trivial, then go out and learn the skills yourself, and do the work yourself. If that's too much work, then put an appropriate value on that work and offer authorship.

An example in my field is histopathology. I can take tissue slides to an expert who will look at them for five minutes and provide an interpretation. That expert becomes a co-author, not because of their five minutes of work but because of the decades of experience behind it.

Collaborators shouldn't need to run a bloody gauntlet and engage in hand-to-hand combat to become co-authors. If they provide a skill that contributes significantly to the paper, that should be enough.

Would it be ethically wrong to recruit an undergrad for a few days
  volunteer work without pay to get the computer crunching part done and
  not mention him as a coauthor and only mention as acknowledgement?

It's not ethically wrong if the engineering contribution is too tiny, compared to the whole contribution of the paper.

In fact, it's very common that professors/researchers hire several undergrads/interns to work on engineering a tool, and only list them in the acknowledgment. (I can provide many examples).

However, it is ethically wrong if the engineering contribution is substantial, and you don't list them as co-author. Whether there contribution is enough for co-authorship depends on your judgement, but your judgement can be wrong.

If you read the book "7 habits of highly effective people", one of the habit is always thinking about win-win solution. You can't just expect somebody to work for you for free. It sounds unrealistic.


How to Shop for a Good Advisor (In the sense of a Good Person and an Advisor) I want to know how I can shop for an advisor (between departments) that does his job: advises students without coercing them to put things in their dissertation they don't believe in or choosing topics for them so that they themselves can profit. I guess I want to find the signs of a not-bad advisor (not harmful) who is interested in the topic rather than a positively good advisor.

With a few obvious exceptions, a "good advisor" is totally dependent on the fit with the student. You have some opinions already on what you are looking for, which is good, but not everyone may share your opinions, for example, I disagree with "choosing topics for them so that they themselves can profit" - I would much rather work with an advisor who expects to profit from the work I do (giving the student appropriate credit, of course), and would highly value the guidance on choosing a fruitful direction of study from a seasoned mentor rather than follow blindly my own naive assumptions. (note: I'm not saying your opinions/qualifications are wrong, just supporting my assertion that "good" is relative)

That said, here are my suggestions:

1) If your field allows it, I would highly recommend a graduate program that has some sort of "rotation" system where you spend time(1-3 months) with 2-4 different advisors so you can learn their styles and interests. Of course this isn't always an option, so...

2) Be honest about your expectations with any mentors you are interested in. You will get the most helpful response if you don't include value judgments in your expectations - don't ask "are you good at meeting regularly with your students?" Instead ask, "How often do you meet with your students? What does a regular meeting with you look like?"

3) Talk with current and former students of your advisors of interest; make your personal interests and expectations clear. Ask about all phases of their project, from initial planning to final writing. Find out how successful they have been publishing their work and if their expectations related to publication were met.

4) Make sure your methodological approaches agree with your advisor, not just research interests - if you believe strongly in quantitative methods and statistical analysis, but your advisor publishes on anecdotes and case studies, there is going to be friction and your advisor may not be equipped to mentor you.

5) Most of the stories I have heard about professors who are inflexible with their students or who have taken unfair credit for their students work are related to pressure around the time of tenure or in very large labs where projects are pre-defined - these situations might be fine for other students but given your concerns you may want to avoid them unless everything else makes it a great fit.

By those criteria, the best advisor is the one whose students have the best placements - post doc, TT, or otherwise. It might be hell, but track record (considering attrition rate as well) speaks volumes.  High attrition rates suggests bad environment.  Low placement suggests inadequate advising and career-advance credit given. Faculty with a proven succession of placements must be doing something right.


Conflicting views with my supervisor on how a thesis should be written My supervisor gave a lot of feedback (in actuality they are mostly complaints) about a part of my thesis (while I have let others read my work and they were more understanding of what I wrote). There are a few helpful things but overall I found lots of her comments are related to not having a deep understanding about the science and the "end goal" of such experiment i.e. how the data can be used to best contribute the world (She is not a big expert in this area of research albeit having some experience).

She seems to dwell excessively on the "writing side" i.e. simply write a publishable "technical report" following what others have reported in similar experiments (which there are tonnes of things I dont like and I am not alone, there are numerous critique papers in this field of research that criticizes how things are unreliable. She attributed it as I have not read others' works because my format and content seem to deviate from others, but in fact I have read tonnes of them but I just found too many flaws).

I am more on writing for a full account and for the sake of science and advances (I know it may sound naive, but I really gave a lot of thoughts before I decide how my data should be used and interpreted but she thought they are excessive and didnt understand why I need to write them). While her comments may be useful in the sense of publishing a manuscript in a certain journal, however, I am under the impression that a thesis should be more free and more of a full account of what I can make the most out of my research, rather than straight up a manuscript catering to a certain journal.

However, there is no way I can pass my thesis without passing my supervisor, so how should I approach it?

Would you rather pass your thesis, get a degree, and start to get control of your career or get blocked? It seems to be an easy choice.

Don't lose track of the fact that this work isn't, hopefully, going to be the best work you ever do in your life, only the first (or an early one).

Fighting with a supervisor who can be a block is seldom (never?) a good path to success.

Take her advice on this. Get finished. Get a good letter of recommendation. Move on. Make you own choices then, when it doesn't have negative consequences.

Think of "getting done" as the big win, not winning an argument.

I am an undergraduate but if I know what I want, I KNOW WHAT I WANT. it is your thesis after all, and you are the one which life it is going to affect.
I wouldn't let this go like she wants.
Of course fighting and bad attitude is not a good choice but I would try to let her know that it is YOUR decision, after all.
Comments and suggestions are more than welcome but thesis is a huge thing for me, I wouldn't let my thesis represents anything else than myself.
Unfortunately, our mentors are often experts in other fields cause there is no time to commit yourself to everything, but they tend to put themselves on the top cause they have the title. So sad.
Fight for your idea. Try to be civilised. Good luck.


Competitiveness for masters program I will be graduating this Fall with my undergrad (GPA: 3.66) and am planning to go to grad school in math.  Given my early history of poor grades (2 Ds, 1 F), I am planning on only applying to the masters programs.  Ideally, I would like to get admitted to my current university's masters program (top 15 US school in math).  To help boost my application, I have taken some first-year grad math courses. Additionally, I have been doing research under fairly famous applied math professor (h-index above 50.  Though I have heard that h-index is not an objective factor).  While I have read that in some grad courses they hand out all A's, is there a way to prove to the admission's committee that I actually deserved the A's?  Lastly, what do masters admission's committees look for in applicants?

Masters programs would be easier to get into, since they often don’t burden the department with a graduate stipend, that means you’ll be responsible for tuition most likely.

I would apply to PhD programs if I were in your position. If you performed well on your upper division courses and have a gpa over 3.5, then you’d have a good shot of getting in. In this case, you are more likely to get a stipend and a tuition waver. That means you’d get paid to go to school and if you feel that the PhD is too much, you can also leave with a masters degree.

Edit: didn’t have time for a fuller answer earlier.

Don’t worry about the “free grade” in the graduate courses you took. Truly, all that is important there is that you have demonstrated experience and success in a graduate course, and indeed, at an apparently good Institution. No one is going to look at your grade and say “whatever, it’s just a grad course.”

Most grad schools look to your upper division courses as a measure of how you’ll perform in graduate school. I did terrible in my first couple of years in undergrad; I also failed a class or two, but I did well enough in the latter half to end with a 3.5. I was admitted into a good graduate school (in 2008).

As to your peofessor’s h index, that’s actually rather good. It means that he has at least 50 publications with 50 citations. While there is no objective measure of the quality of research, this means that he is well known in his community, his work is frequently cited, and his recommendation will carry with it some weight.

Grad schools look at several things. You need a good GRE score to get past general admissions, but no one cares past that. Your GPA matters, and yours seems good enough (better than mine was). After that they want to know how you did in upper division courses like Analysis, Algebra, etc, since you’ll be taking more intense versions of these classes, and they want you prepared.

Also having experience with graduate courses is a plus, I took a grad number theory course that helped me, and almost as importantly as the rest, they look at your recommendations. You will be part of the school’s community for the next five or more years as a PhD student, and they want to make sure that you can work with someone on research topics.

(US centric answer) Any faculty member at your current university can probably tell you the likelihood of being admitted to their MS program. I'll just guess that it is pretty high.

But I think you may be making a mistake to apply to only MS programs, unless you intend to apply to institutions that don't grant doctorates.

For a doctoral institution, I'll suggest that the competition for a slot isn't terribly different for those intending to get only an MS and those seeking a PhD. The reason is that in the early part of the program the students take the same courses, putting the same load on available resources. It is only later that this changes. (A tradeoff, perhaps, is that while MS students often pay tuition, doctoral students often serve as TAs, providing a needed service to the university.)

My suggestion would be to cast a broader net and don't assume that you would automatically be rejected from a doctoral program. Acceptance would depend on many things, including the view the current faculty has of you and what they would say in a letter.

The old, terrible, grades may have less impact on your future than you think, provided that your trajectory is ever upward and you have demonstrated in later courses that you didn't actually fail to learn essential things from the early ones. Not everything is weighted equally, and potential for success is rated very highly.

Cast a wider net. You may catch something nice.


I didn't ask permission before including figures in my thesis - now what? I used a number of figures from journal articles in my master's thesis. I cited the sources in all cases, but didn't ask permission (I didn't know at the time that I was supposed to). Many posts on this site recommend asking permission to be "better safe than sorry". In my case, the thesis is already published - should I ask for permission now, even after the thesis is published and for each of the figures?

I am not sure that one is supposed to ask permission to reproduce a picture from a book/article in their dissertation. From academic point of view, an citation is necessary and sufficient to properly acknowledge the source - otherwise it would be plagiarism.

IANAL, but I don't think there are any copyright issues here, since your thesis is a non-profit academic publication and a relatively small quote from another academic source should be normally treated as a fair use.

To be honest, my answer is No need, it is enough that you have specified the source.

I think some aspects of the current legal system, such as copyright, patents, etc, are inhumane and must be corrected. I think the reason you are suffering this weird issue is a reflection of the fact that the existing rules are crazy.


Should I write that a student is a feminist in my recommendation letter? I'm in the process of writing a recommendation letter for a female student to be admitted to some honors program within the university.

She is fantastic and I assume that she will get admitted with or without my help, so my question isn't necessarily specific to this particular letter, but I do remember feeling curious about this, so now's a good time to ask, I guess!

It's this one line in my letter that made me scratch my head a little bit. The line in question would like to say something like, "she is very interested in advancing women and other minorities in the STEM field," which is a quality that I approve of heartily.

The problem is, I am not sure if everyone in academia feels the same way about this as I do. Perhaps there is that one grumpy old professor from the Old Boys' Club who absolutely hates "feminists" and maybe I am inadvertently hurting her chances.

Sure, I could word it carefully so that it doesn't set off the feminist trigger in most people, but I still have that nagging feeling of "what if" in my head.

Just to make sure that I am not misunderstood, I also support gender equality, and I do not want to discourage anyone from saying so, but recommendation letters are a delicate thing that need to appeal to everyone, and I do not want to hurt anyone's chances, most of all not of these fantastic women that I want to brag about to everyone.

First of all, your title doesn't quite match the rest of your question.  In your suggested quote you write "she is very interested in advancing women and other minorities in the STEM field," whereas according to the title you are asking whether you should write "She is a feminist."  Sadly, these things will not evoke equivalent responses in all parties -- the word "feminist" has unpleasant connotations in certain circles nowadays, more so than a generation ago.  (By the way, I am a feminist, and it makes me sick that the word is now taken in this way.  But it is by many, and so I think it is too loaded a word to use about someone else in such a context.)

The purpose of a recommendation letter is to successfully convey your impression of the recommended party.  In particular, if you feel strongly that the recommended party should get the position being applied for, then you want to write the letter that maximizes the chance of that happening (while staying appropriate, professional and truthful, of course).  With that in mind: how relevant "she is very interested in advancing women and other minorities in the STEM field" to the honors program the student is applying to?  Is this advancement one of the activities that students in the program will be participating in?  Or, beyond interest, does the candidate have a record of activities and/or accomplishments in advancing women and other minorities in the STEM field?  If the answer to either question is yes, I would suggest that you fill in further details accordingly: this is part of your argument that she is great fit for the program.  If not, then: are students selected for the honors program because of their progressive views -- or, much more cynically put, because of the alignment of their political and social views with those of the administrators of the program?  Probably not, right?  In particular, because "She is fantastic and I assume that she will get admitted," then I don't think you need to help her out in this particular way.  There is some risk that even a feminist could read "she is very interested in advancing women and other minorities in the STEM field" as a bit of a consolation prize.  Again, write the strongest letter you can.

You want to put some icing on the cake, and add something about the candidate's feminist activities, but are questioning whether doing so openly would strengthen her chances.

If her CV is openly proud of those activities, by, for example, listing a volunteer role in a feminist organization, then you can be similarly open.  If she has chosen not to bring these activities out clearly in her CV, you can still work them into your letter, but in a more subtle way, e.g.

  As a grad student, Dr. Jones was extremely effective as a peer mentor in our department and as an outreach volunteer in the community.

Outreach can get you brownie points with, for example, the NSF, so this could be an effective selling point.

Also, if Dr. Jones took the initiative in some way, that would be another plus you could draw out of it, without being explicit.


Can a faculty in a different college in the same university be influential on my tenure review? I am a new tenure track faculty.  Last semester, I met a professor in a different college in the same university in a committee meeting.  She was very nice; she said that she wanted to be my older sister.  However, I felt like she was not reasonable and so I stopped talking with her about 1.5 months.  For example, she made me pay for her meal; she made me cook for her 6 times in row for two months; she asked me to search papers for her study about 3 times in a semester; so on.
I was wondering if it is ok to keep the distance from her as a new faculty?  Can she be influential on my tenure review in the future?  The reason I am asking this is that I'm kicked out of a dissertation committee today.  The dissertation committee chair is the person she always indicated as "her best friend".  So I begin to worry....
I'd truly appreciate it if you'd help!

If your department chair (or chair of your tenure committee) is going to be asking external academics for input in your tenure review (this is not uncommon!) then you might want to tell them this:

"This person asked me to cook meals for her 6 times in a row for 2 months, along with other things that I found to be unreasonable, therefore I distanced myself from her, which apparently she did not like, based on at least one incident that seems to have been inflicted on me recently with her pulling the strings".

If your university has a "faculty association" or "union" representing its faculty members, you may want to seek their assistance in delivering this message to your department chair or chair of tenure committee, so that you do not have to do it directly.

It is difficult to advise you from afar. The direct answer to your question is yes, but that is because politics can run rampant in some universities with many factions. You aren't asking whether she can be part of your formal tenure committee, I realize, but that is possible in some institutions also. Even a member from another university is a possibility.
However, having a mentor as a new faculty member can be a valuable thing, especially if you are a woman, which you don't say. At some places that mentorship can make the difference between success and failure. But a mentor needs to be pretty selfless in most respects. It is hard to interpret her request that you do research for her. That could be a good or a bad thing, depending on what you get out of the task itself. Being selfless doesn't necessarily mean that the mentor doesn't push you a bit. But, again, it is impossible to judge from here.
So, think about whether her actions are selfish or just encouragement for you to look at new things.
As for cooking and such, it is possibly worrisome unless there are some special circumstances.
But, the one piece of advice I can give is not to let your distancing be interpreted as an indication of a negative attitude, even if you have one. If you can distance and keep it neutral, then it is less likely that, in case she is selfish (or worse) that it will come back to reflect on you. Don't poke the bear in its den. But that, too, might be an unnecessary worry.
So, think first about whether she is offering mentorship and what that might mean for you in a positive way if you accept it. You might also explore her relationship to others in your institution that are in similar circumstances in order to come to a judgement on whether this is a good or a bad thing.


Can I (should I) change the name of this distribution? I am nearly finished with a paper, as well as some accompanying open-source software. We are planning on submitting this to a prominent statistics journal. One of the more promising methods that we discuss in the paper deals with the normal-inverse Gaussian distribution, commonly referred to as the NIG distribution. This is usually pronounced “en-eye-gee”, but it’s understandable that some people say it phonetically (it’s a relatively obscure distribution).
In case it is not yet clear, my concern is that NIG is somewhat reminiscent of the “N word”. I had some reservations about writing NIG so many times in the paper and in the software (by convention, there would be many functions with NIG pre-fixes, e.g. nig_foo()). I thought maybe I was overthinking things, but I’ve had a few people (including a co-author) comment about the potentially inappropriate nature of this name.
Thus I feel like it might be worthwhile to refer to this distribution by a different name. It is not uncommon for distributions in statistics to have multiple names (e.g., normal vs. Gaussian), and we would make it clear that it is the same distribution. The problem is, I feel very unqualified to just change the name of distribution that has been around for 40 years.
If we do change the name, here’s a short list of some of the things I’ve considered.

The Normal-Wald Distribution (Wald is another name for inverse-Gaussian)
The Gauss-Wald Distribution (Same idea)
The Barndorff-Nielsen distribution (Ole Barndorff-Nielsen was one of the first researchers looking into this distribution)
The Barndorff distribution (Less wordy, but I don’t want to remove a surname without asking him)

Questions
Is it a bad idea to change the name? I’m slightly uncomfortable with it, but I might be overthinking it.
If I do change the name, what’s the most reasonable choice? (I realize this is very subjective, but feedback is welcome)
I don't think that the name of the distribution is intentionally or overtly "racist". The main point is that (i) this distribution is relatively obscure and (ii) many distributions have multiple names so it might make sense to have an alternative that has no chance of being problematic.

Actually changing the name because someone might be offended by a sound that comes from a completely different domain and is completely separate from the history of racism would be condescending, in my view.
And, as you say, the term is in common use. Changing it would also confuse some people.
Leave it be.
There was no intention to do harm and the acronym is natural. The language police are unlikely to chase you down. It would be different of course if the acronym were chosen for racist purpose, but that is clearly not the case here.

Niggardly, niggling, and Niger are a few "obviously inoffensive" words that people have found offensive (source).  The Mandarin word 那个 has also been found offensive; offensive enough that the teacher using it was removed from the class where it was used (source).  I suggest that you use an acronym other than NIG.


List of reputable open access journals I found a list of "potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers" here.

I am just wondering if there is a similar list of reputable open-access journals in the social sciences.

The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is an attempt to create such a list for all fields, including the social sciences:

  DOAJ is an online directory that indexes and provides access to quality open access, peer-reviewed journals.

They have a search function that lets you drill down to specific fields.

The real problem (and probably the reason for this predatory journal explosion) is that the classic journals have become abusive and predatory themselves. For example Springer/Nature journals will reject your paper without explanation and direct you to one of their fee-paying open access for guaranteed acceptance on resubmission.
Worse, the old classic journals do not do peer review often, make decisions based on profitability of your paper and sometimes take months or even over a year to respond. Some do not ever respond. This includes Springer/Nature which did not respond at all to a submission and did not respond to the inquiry about why they did not respond. So, may be these predatory journals are just as predatory as the old corrupted ones. We may have to switch to the new era.


Should I list my work as a frequent journal reviewer as a volunteer work in LinkedIn? I am a frequent reviewer for a particular (computer science) journal, and I wonder if the review work I do counts as a "volunteer" work?

I do already list this work in my CV under (PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES) section. Should I also add it to my LinkedIn profile under (volunteer experience) section?

I think you should take advantage of being a peer reviewer. You can add it to your LinkedIn account, and create a profile on Publons and ReviewerCredits to be registered as a peer reviewer.


No reply from the professor after the follow up email There is a PhD position at a university. I have sent an email and also a follow-up email (after one week from my first email) to the corresponding professor and I haven't got any reply yet (it has been 4 days from the follow up email!).

somewhere at the personal webpage of the professor it is stated that to apply or if you are interested to postdoc please first email your CV to Prof. X. On the other hand, the "Apply online" button in the open position list is active. What should I do now? send another email to the professor?

My answer will be general -- not specific to the particular institution you want to apply to.

You could contact the department and ask, "I sent my CV to Prof. X, as suggested at the application instructions page (provide link), on [date], but have not heard back yet.  May I go ahead and submit my application, or do I need to wait for a response from the professor?"
Note that four days is not very long.  Depending on the application deadline, you may want to give this a bit more patience.
You have submitted your CV as instructed; unless the instructions say you must hear back from the professor before submitting your application, I suppose you could go ahead and submit your application.

Faculty members often reply the emails coming from applicants, within which there is anything interesting for them. Unless a professor goes for a sabbatical, he/she would read your email, considerably; and with due attention to the available vacancy, your CV will be analyzed, carefully. If nothing would be reflected from the professor, you have not been discerned as a right fit for that position. You can resend the email, once again, after a couple of days, again. But after that, it is up to the faculty member to either reply you or neglect your email, at all.

The aforementioned links are typical at the faculty members' webpages. They are devised because annoying emails from the applicants often bother them and such links just direct the applicants toward the right way of application: the official applying, instead of sending email to individuals!

Best


What makes academic failure different from failure in another career? It is my understanding that academia as a nebulous whole has its own culture and speaks its own language that makes it a very different environment to work in compared to other so-called "industry" jobs.

Indeed, my own supervisor once referred to a former student of his as "having a job", meaning that she now works outside of academia. It's clear that for him, like many other academics, academia (or maybe their own particular field of research) is a vocation or calling, rather than a job.

My question, therefore, is this: why, within the culture of academia, is failure seen or felt to be different from failure in another career? What is special about academia that makes missing out on a postdoc or permanent job so different from missing out on any other industry job?

The question that inspired this one: How to deal with unavoidable failure? which asks how to deal with not being selected for a tenure-track job.

Many other careers are not structured around "success" and "failure" in the same way that academia is, and the jobs that are are acknowledged to be high stress. I agree strongly with what Anyon mentions about the pyramid structure of academia, as well as survivorship bias. Jack Aidley also nicely captures the difference that "In most careers you do not 'fail' you simply cease being promoted." Here are a few other ways that the idea of failure is omnipresent in academia. (This is from a U.S. perspective, and I do not know how widely it pertains elsewhere.)

First, success or failure is very personalized and visible in academia. Academics are not very interchangeable: like artists and few other professions, everyone does the job differently and produces creative output. It is often hard to separate yourself from your work (whether being critiqued or praised). Further, on the research side each person is essentially an entrepreneur who is their own publicity, branding, fundraising, management (if there's a lab or students to supervise), R&D, and administrative department. There's a lot of personal investment in this job, and failure cuts deeper into the sense of self than in other jobs.

Second, in other jobs, most people are rarely evaluated by strangers, and often the people evaluating them are invested in their success. Performance evaluations in offices are usually with co-workers and they are often two-way. Managers and HR folks often care about improving the workforce they have, rather than going through the hiring process again. In contrast, the entire tenure process seems designed to give people anxiety (which a professor complained to me about when I was a grad student--he was worried another professor was working against his tenure case). The tenure process is a years-long audition, after which you can be essentially told that you no longer have a job in whatever tiny college town you uprooted yourself to live in. In most industry or government jobs, there's much more flexibility to move between jobs (not just one big annual switch), less stigma about switching jobs, and often lots of small evaluations rather than a few huge hurdles.

Third, academics need to "hustle," constantly seeking new opportunities for funding, research materials, ideas, and labor. Both applying for funding and submitting papers are processes with routine failure built in, and it can be somewhat opaque what is being sought. (Not to mention that the content of research may turn out not to lead anywhere interesting, after all.) However, many jobs don't have such stark success and failure. Annual sales income is a continuous number, or the quality of a project is within a range of acceptability. In many occupations you can gain or lose clients, but usually no one client is crucial. In the industries where grants or contracts are key sources of funding, there are large teams devoted to the project, and often a lot of projects in the pipeline. In contrast, academics are often pretty much alone in their success or failure, and for someone "on the tenure clock," how a particular project turns out--which may have a large random component to it--may change their tenure case substantially.

Fourth, professors are hired not only for what they can do right now, but an entire track record of what they have done and how they are likely to adapt over time in the future. Especially in combination with the large number of people with PhDs competing for a small number of tenure track jobs, this rewards people who have very linear career paths, moving from success to success. Many people worry about deviations from the norm, as well as about failures.

Some of these components are present in other jobs. I mention these other jobs not to compare who has it better, but to point out that things like high-stakes evaluation based on partly random outcomes is not a universal trait of many jobs, while it characterizes investment banking and (I argue) academic research.

Investment bankers are often individually held responsible for their performance, a lot of which relies on investment markets, which have a large random component.
Writers face a lot of the same problems with submissions and rejections, but writing is very rarely their main job. (That has its own problems...)
Salespeople have to deal with a lot of rejection and often work on commission. Their job and their salary are contingent on their success. However, there are low hurdles to switch in and out of sales, and often people can hedge their bets by working part-time at another job. (The precarity that goes with sales and service jobs is also part of what adjunct instructors--aspiring academics--face.)
Doctors need to pass a lot of hurdles on the way to their profession, and not getting past a hurdle may mean that one is saddled with lots of debt without a lucrative career. Then, depending on which field of medicine, failure may mean a patient dies or has bad complications. These sorts of consequences have a legal and financial complications, on top of the large emotional toll. Doctors may also have to relocate nationally or internationally if/when they switch jobs.
Founders of start-up businesses will have many of the same pressures as professors (the same people must develop and execute ideas while securing funding, with large personal investment). However, failure is a celebrated part of the culture in, say, Silicon Valley, and the potential financial rewards are tremendous. (The restaurant industry also has serial entrepreneurs, though with less potential payoff.)

While each of those jobs mentioned above has a lot of judgment of and consequences around failure, those descriptions hopefully remind you that these extreme conditions around failure are largely NOT present in many other common jobs (service industry, teacher, programmer, manager, IT person, mechanic, engineer, nurse, technician, counselor, administrator, banker, accountant, office clerk, interpreter...).

Failure in academia - as someone who has worked in academia for over 15 years, I can assure you there is no such thing as failure in academia. The way tenure track positions are given to candidates often lacks any metric scheme or logic for that matter. This has nothing to do with publication records or number of citations. In fact, I would go as far as to say that in 90% of all tenure track positions given, it doesn't go to the strongest candidate, but to the one who poses the least threat (in terms of competition) to the folks in the department. No search committee hires a candidate who is making any of them look bad.

Now, at Harvard, ETH, Cambridge, or schools of this calibre, this is likely to be different. Junior Professors there may have been on "watch lists" for a while and their hiring is almost entirely based on "success", and positions there go to top-notch candidates. This is a reason as to why these top schools are where they are. But to all those who scored a tenure track position at a mediocre Uni I have to say: congrats, you were most likely perceived as the least threat to your new colleagues!

Then, I have seen folks making it to be full Professor with a publication record that is easily topped by many "top-dog" postdocs from those better schools. The problem in academia is that once someone reaches tenure, there is usually no way someone can fail. As one comment above said: "in industry you cease to get promoted", unfortunately, in academia, promotion does not cease and there is also no mechanism to reprimand low performance or to hold an academic accountable for anything really (unless for grabbing a student's butt or so).

I fully agree, working outside of academic is like having a 'real job', because there are consequences to your actions, there are promotions and demotions, or redundancy. None of this applies to tenured academics, so it is not like a real job. It is like the rich kid from next door, who can afford to pursue his/her art career with the backing of their parents' cash.

Academia turns a nightmare for most who attempt and a dream for those who managed to get tenured. Its not a calling, its not a job, its like being fortunate to get well paid (often through pubic funds) to pursue a passion.


Is it proper to discuss unrelated subjects during class to increase interactivity? It is common that students may experience monotony if the instructor continuously teaches. And there are many ways to grab attention.
I am particularly interested in knowing whether it is a proper step from the instructor side to moderate short debates (5 mins, 10 mins, etc.,), especially on (probably ongoing) politics, movies, religion.
The question is about the domains that are aliens to either of the three topics.
If no, what is the reason for it?

No. Distracting the students with other subjects than the one being taught is not a solution to the problem but a way around it. Of course it is different if the discussions are on the topic being taught: that is a great way to teach!
The problem of "boring classes" is not the subject or the students. The problem is the teacher, who should learn (often by experience) how to keep the students interested. It is possible to interest students in any and all subjects, as long as the teacher is engaging, explains why the subject is useful, provides interesting real-world examples (if appropriate), explains the subject at a level appropriate for the group, is able to answer questions, etcetera.
Secondly, many students will be annoyed by the constant interruptions and irrelevant off-topic discussions, and they will also notice that the teacher is trying to hide his lack of teaching skills behind "entertainment", alienating them further and possibly even leading to them complaining about ineffectiveness of their classes.
Thirdly, an important part of studying is learning to learn and to concentrate. You would not be doing the students a favour by distracting them. (But do not misunderstand this: a light-hearted remark or funny joke is perfectly fine and even helpful to relieve some tension and stress, but that was not what you were asking about)

In some galaxy far away, in a time long ago, some clown correctly observed people fall asleep rather than pay attention if lectured to for a long time. And other clowns, with pedagogical expertise of sorts, observed that human beings generally learn better by being engaged rather than by being passive. And those clowns resolved to Fix The Problem.
Unfortunately, especially in the business/private sector, and amplified by sensitivity to not put students (oops, learners...) on the spot by demonstrating their incomplete understanding if forced to engage in actual subject matter discussion, the horrendous concept of "energizers" and "icebreakers" emerged. This is the practice of interrupting boring lecturing by making people do something completely unrelated, generally dumb, interactively. I guess it is preferable to just droning on altogether, but it is a weak subsitute for actually teaching well, interactively and engagingly. It's principal advantage is that it needs minimal preparation, and minimal thought by the instructor to include, since it's generally off the shelf.
Since no clueless idea goes unimproved, this idea of "energizers" is now being recycled in other settings, including academia, by sometimes deliberately planning inane, off-topic interactive interruptions to the flow. It reminds me of tales of concert pianists making markings in their music where exactly they plan to make a dramatic flourish with their hands.
Removing tongue from cheek, of course there is value in a) allowing breaks, b) building relationships though idle, possibly unrelated unforced banter, c) breaking up the monotony of one person speaking, d) humanizing the instructor and students with occasional breaks from the script and deviations off-topic, e) looking for partially on-topic and partially-off-topic analogs and examples "from real life". But all that's another story.


How do I handle a colleague's gender change when citing their paper? We are currently working on a conference paper where we plan to cite and discuss a paper as a related work. It was written by a colleague at the same university who has kindly offered to help us understand its specifics.

After publishing said paper, the colleague has changed name and gender. For example, suppose that the paper is authored by George Smith and she now uses the name Mary Smith (not the real names). The problem is that she insists that her new name/gender is used everywhere, including our citation of her publication. She explicitly asked us to change the citation from G. Smith to M. Smith.

I’m not sure how to handle this. The publisher still lists George as name as do most citation data bases. Our scientific handbook demand that external sources should be cited as precisely as possible and should not be modified. (I asked about this specific case and got back a multi-page document that stresses the importance of respecting gender identity [no problem for me] but the document does not address this issue.) On the other hand, the paper has a distinct title, journal name, volume, number, pages and a DOI so everybody should be able to find it, even if one author is listed as M. Smith instead of G. Smith.

Do you have any advice on how to handle this situation? Would a change from G. Smith to M. Smith be acceptable/reasonable?

Is it an option to ask M Smith if she would be ok if the first citation were to read as the following?

  Smith, M. (published G.) 2014, recent advances in foo, international journal of foo sciences 12:56, 427-865

This would eliminate the only reason I can think of for misgendering the person, namely that readers might be unsure whether they are looking up the correct source. This would be a weak reason, though, since we have DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers) now.

Edited on second thought: What is the worst thing that could happen if you use the new name? Someone might find it more difficult to look up the paper; that's a minor inconvenience. Compare this to the frustration, if not anger and distress, that it would cause M. Smith to be referred to in cold print by a name that doesn't reflect her identity and that she is struggling to leave behind.

Depending on how your citations are formatted, you will probably find the initial doesn't matter. For example, a reference listed as:

"Smith, M; Bloggs, J; Jones, A; Brown, B. J. Foo Bar, vol 6, p. 200, 2014."

is unlikely to be difficult to find even if a single initial is different and there's no DOI included. A reader will probably assume the different initial is just a typo, if they even notice it at all. The discrepancy is very minor.

If I saw that reference listed on a paper and tried to look it up I'd mostly use the journal details and publication date to find it, then author surnames as a cross-reference to make sure I'd got the right one.

If you really feel the different initial could be confusing, drop it entirely. Her surname hasn't changed, so by using that on its own you won't confuse any readers who find the names don't precisely match, nor will you be misgendering or deadnaming your colleague. Whatever you do, don't use her old name/initial. This would be exceptionally rude considering that not only do you know what her new name is, but she has also explicitly instructed you to not use her old one in this context.


What can be done about a disruptive classmate? There is a classmate who repeatedly interrupts the flow of lectures in various ways. We assume he has learning difficulties of some kind due to how he acts and because he has an assistant with him in most lectures.

Generally, it will be things such as asking an excessive number of questions. Often, in the middle of going through something, he will interrupt and ask the lecturer to repeat something said or written half a page ago–or will interrupt to try and jump in with the answer to the problem we are working through as a class. Or a question on a semi-unrelated topic, or on a different method of solving the problem will be asked.

The issue with these questions is they will be blurted out in the middle of an explanation, breaking the flow, and are extremely common, taking valuable time away from the lecture.

Additionally, he will often tell the lecturer to stop or go back a page so he can take a photo of the screen with his phone–and will often take up to 4 minutes before the lecture can go ahead.

Our lectures are recorded and posted on the student's area of the university website within a day, and previous years lectures are also available–with both the written and spoken information.

Overall, I would say these disruptions take up around 15 minutes of each 50 minute lecture.

It is probably useful to note here that I myself have learning difficulties–which means these are incredibly distracting and disruptive to me personally, more so than my classmates–although in conversations I have gathered that several others are also feeling this is impacting negatively on their education.

You would handle this the same way you would handle anything in class that impacts your ability to learn.  You contact the instructor, and suggest that there is something disruptive going on.

We have a saying here: Don't throw out the baby with the bath water. I don't want to minimize the problem here and do accept that the student is, perhaps unknowingly, going beyond acceptable bounds, but students in general, who ask a lot of questions can be an asset to a course.

I was one of those students, in fact, but didn't just blurt out questions or behave in a disruptive manner. But I did have my hand up quite a lot of the time. When I was a kid, my mother though I was a pain in the butt because I asked so many questions: Why ... Why ...

But when I was a graduate student, my fellow students thought I was a lot smarter than I really am because I asked so many questions in graduate level math classes (Measure Theory, Topology, ...). In fact, those other students were often too reticent to actually ask the questions that they, like myself, needed answering. I found later, when teaching, that very few students are willing to interrupt you when you make a mistake, or ask a question when you have made an unwarranted assumption. The students that are willing can actually be an asset, provided that the flow isn't unnecessarily interrupted - unlike the description given by the OP.

But occasionally the flow needs to be interrupted because the instructor has taken a wrong turn or made an invalid leap - or just one that the students don't have the level of knowledge to follow.

The required balance here is normally manageable if class sizes are reasonable. But when they reach a hundred it is pretty disruptive to ask questions or do much of anything at the moment. Hopefully in those cases students can learn to record and save their questions and issues for a smaller "recitation" section. I strongly disfavor such large classes because in these sorts of situations it is all too possible for a student with a serious question to not have it answered at all. Maybe worse is when that individual student gets and answer and other students don't, when all needed the extra information. That can be managed, I've found, but it takes attention to process to assure that bringing everyone up to speed actually happens.


Is it ok to mention assistance in grant writing on your CV? On behalf of my advisor, I recently wrote a grant to obtain some specialized and expensive hardware. Is it ok to mention this on my CV, even though the grant is in my advisor's name and if yes, what would be a good way to word it ?

You can list on your CV whatever you think is useful information for the reader. In your case, whether something is useful depends on what your position in life is. If you're a full professor with a long history of funded research, what you describe is likely not useful to list on a CV. If you're a graduate student with an otherwise relatively short CV, then that's a different story. I would suggest wording such as

  Co-authored the proposal for grant XY-1234-5678 (PI: Professor Z).

Now, whether an entry such as this has any impact is a different issue, but it is certainly not going to hurt.

I wouldn't put this on a CV, but it is something that you should bring up during an interview as an example of your experience with the grant writing process.

To elaborate on this:

An individual is either a PI/Co-PI on a grant or they aren't.  Some readers might read your CV and think that you're claiming undue credit.

In recent months I've interviewed many candidates for a faculty position.  Some of them had helped to write grant proposals in this way (and we would discuss this in an interview), but they didn't put those grants on their CV.   Other candidates had submitted proposals as a PI/Co-PI, and they appropriately included this information on their CV's along with whether or not the grant was pending or had actually been funded.  Listing proposals that were not funded is not something that I've seen on CV's that I've reviewed.


Which is more important in determining author order: time spent or results obtained? This is in the field of life sciences, i.e. a field in which the order of authors is not determined randomly but reflects author contributions (whatever that means); in other words, being first author is better than being second, which is better than third etc - except for the very last authors, who are generally the lab heads.

We're publishing a paper and two teammates have a disagreement on the order in which their names should be listed. We basically explored several strategies that were at the time all quite reasonable, so there was really no way to determine if one made more sense than another. We found that testing strategies one by one rigorously (one person per hypothesis to validate/debunk) was the most productive way to move forward. Our paper describes several mechanisms that we demonstrated could work for a certain problem.

Team member A tested several hypotheses, including one of the four that made it to the final paper.

Team member B tested more hypotheses (they were working on the project full-time, as opposed to A), and demonstrated that they were not scalable / valid strategies for our purposes. Interesting, useful for us, but not paper-worthy.

Each one of them has a pretty strong claim for having a better authorship position:

Teammate A designed and 100% tested one of the strategies that did work and that we chose to report in the paper, so their contribution is quite obvious. On the other hand teammate B spent more time on the project, debunked working hypotheses (not publishable but it had to be done at some point) and helped with the validation of other designs that worked - a contribution of 40-50% of the work on two different parts of the project.

Obviously results include a part of chance (picking the correct hypothesis/molecule/group/dataset), but time spent on the project is not a perfect metric either (working smart matters more than working long hours).

Without asking for a definite answer, how do you generally weight the importance of "what the paper shows in the end" vs. "the important but not article-worthy preliminary work"? In other words, how do you measure "contribution"? I would like to come up with a rational and objective way to determine who contributed more significantly - at least by the journal's standards.

In my field, this would clearly be shared (first) authorship.

As for the exact positions, in my experience one of A and B would also have been spending a lot of time as a de facto project lead that determines the course of the project and does most of the writing. In fact, in my field this would almost always be B, unless A somehow has the capabilities of effectively leading multiple projects and delegating vast proportions of the work in those projects.

I don't place a lot of value on happening to find the right solution for a problem. The way you describe this, it seems almost stochastic: A proposed four solutions and got lucky, B proposed more solutions but didn't get lucky. Obviously the situation and value of contributions changes if B could not have found the solution, but A (possibly because of greater experience) could have.

Two other considerations: first, exact position on a paper can have very different values for different people. A first first authorship can be absolutely vital for scientists who are rounding off their PhD or postdoc, whereas scientists who aren't rounding off could also obtain this in a next project. Second, maybe there are ways to even out the author contributions? One way would be to do another project together and flip author positions for that one. Another way would be that the person who doesn't get author precedence can present the work at conferences for the first year. And maybe there are better ideas that someone in your lab can come up with.

You have answered your own question: 'working smart matters more than working long hours.' In your example you state one person 'made a contribution of 40-50% of the work on two different parts of the project', presumably less than the other person. This is telling.

The only metric that is accepted is the contribution to published work. This is supported by the fact that we never include all the contributions by people which made a publication possible; if so then your authorship would be several billion names long [reference every paper written since the mid-20th century].


Should co-first authors be listed in alphabetical order? The field of research is the biological sciences.

Graduate student B worked on the project for 2 years: he did experiments to gather genome-wide data and analyzed part of that data. He defined the direction and feasibility of the project, and developed the methodology; if it were not to him, there wouldn't be a paper.

Post-doc A picked up the project for 1 year after graduate student B left the lab, analyzed the data, wrote the paper, contributed 4 key figures (exactly half of the figures) and at least half of the scientific conclusions.

It was agreed upon that A and B would be co-first authors, but currently they are listed as B, A, et al.

Do you think A would be entitled to feel some kind of injustice at not having his name listed in alphabetical order? Is there a consensus that co-first authors should be in alphabetical order and is the editor likely to point this out?

[edit] Additional information:
In this field, you can specify 'co-first authors' at the time of submission, and it is written as such under the author's list on the final publication as "X an Y have contributed equally to this work". Which of course is a big source of conflict.

Thanks :)

I don't see any way to view this other than as a misunderstanding or miscommunication.  (Not necessarily an innocuous misunderstanding: perhaps someone is trying to pull a fast one of some sort.)

I am a mathematician, so maybe I am especially sensitive to logical issues, but I can't think of a situation in which someone tells me something that sounds like a logical contradiction in which I wouldn't just say, "I'm sorry: I must be confused because that sounds contradictory.  Could you please explain it again?"

My only guess at the resolution of the contradiction is that someone is in fact trying to change their mind about the ordering of the authors.  I know little about the conventions and nuances of author ordering (because in pure mathematics the order is almost always strictly alphabetical), but I do think I understand the meanings of all the terms involved, so I can only imagine that if you submit a paper to a journal saying "by Bravo, Alpha, Charlie....Please note that Bravo and Alpha are co-first authors" then the editors will respond by calling attention to the contradiction.  What else?

I've been in a similar situation. Getting offended won't help anything. Alphabetical order is just as arbitrary as random order.

But on your personal CV and website, feel free to list yourself first if you are indeed a co-primary author.


MFE program entry chance If one applies to a bunch of universities, in two programs each, One is  Masters math/stats and the other in Masters Financial eng/fin math/ computational fin. If it fair to assume that one will get into a university with better reputation (overall) with the math/stats application than with the MFE applications?

Surely this depends on the strength of the candidate and their interests. IF they can prove theyre interested in math finance or finance in general, then theyre more likely to get into the MFE. I'd hope that the top institutions don't only choose candidates based on Maths knowledge, but also on there interests. I'd like to think that lecturers want to teach students who ask interesting questions on the finance side as well, rather than delving deep into the theoretical side.

I just finished an MFE, and it turns out that the theoretical maths is almost useless in practise. Its nice to see how it all works, but what is more useful is having a feel for stylised facts related to metrics such as volatility, and also the understanding of different products. I'm not saying the technical maths is useless, i'm just saying I cant see many people using things like levy jump processes in practise. The point is, you should have an interest in finance, and not only apply for the good potential salary after, because if you don't enjoy going to work, whats the use of the salary? You'll go through 5/7 days of hell earning £ which you can spend on 2/7 days, and you can see that this isn't the ideal balance (5>2 =D). Sorry if the end is abit off topic


Personal contribution in N-author articles vs single author articles In a given field there are essentially two types of articles, N-author articles and single author articles. Related to this fact, I wonder how a committee when evaluating someone for a tenure promotion establishes the personal contribution of an N-authors article? Just to give an example, suppose that we have two candidates which one has in total 20  articles, all co-authored, and another candidate which has in total 15 articles, with only two co-authored articles, and the rest are single authored. Assume also that both candidates have published their work in the best journals in their working field.

Based on your experience and on my example above, how is in reality determined the PERSONAL contribution of an N-authors article? Would this contribution just be 1/N? Which of the candidates in the example which described above would be more likely to be selected for a promotion? How in reality are seen single author articles published in the best journals in a given working field?

An observation: Usually people who work with several co-authors tend to have more publications than someone who works alone. Also in many fields, in an N-authors article, the author names are put in alphabetic order.

EDIT NR.1: My question is mostly related to theoretical fields, such as mathematics, theoretical physics and computer science. In these fields usually the number of co-authors is N<10.

There isn’t a precise rule about such things, but to the extent that one can formulate a general principle, I’d say that the credit for an N-author article would almost always be greater - often significantly greater - than a 1/N fraction of the total credit. That is why collaboration is generally a profitable activity - it allows two or more people to leverage their skills and abilities and together create something that is worth more than the sum of its parts: the very definition of synergy.

Another synergistic effect in collaborations is that your coauthors will be going around giving talks and telling people about your joint paper. If effect, you get double (or five, or ten times) the “marketing” or “buzz” about your paper for the same effort on your part: the credit you get is higher simply by virtue of more people getting to hear about your paper. Moreover, when your coauthors give talks about your paper they can say flattering things about you that you probably wouldn’t dare to say about yourself, or that if you did say about yourself people wouldn’t be as impressed by (and it works both ways, you say nice things about your coauthors’ contributions when you give talks about the joint papers of course).

I estimate that close to half of my papers are solely authored, and the others are joint. I enjoy both styles of work, although I think these days I most enjoy the freedom that comes with writing papers by myself. I often reflect about the (small) injustice that comes with the fact that those papers usually take longer to make a splash than my jointly authored ones, for the reasons I mentioned above. Oh well. Not every decision we make is driven by some ultra-rational cost-benefit analysis. Do what makes you happy, and what you feel you are good at. Some people excel at collaborating, others are solitary thinkers.

My experience is with pure mathematics, and applies mostly to papers with 1-4 authors. In math, for papers where the number of authors is, say, 6-10 (which are quite a rarity), the credit might start getting seriously diluted, to the point that I’m not sure how much of what I wrote above is accurate - probably it would depend quite a lot on the specific details of who the authors are and what their paper is about.

As mentioned above, it depends. First authorships matter, last authorships matter, solo authorships matter, authorships without your supervisor / mentor / head of department matter, impact factors matter. I've even seen mentions of a points system, where each publication was awarded some number of points and you need to have so and so many to pass your habilitation (which is something like a tenure evaluation in Germany).

So, what can be recommended? Try both. Being on a huge paper in a highly praised journal, even if it's a collaborative effort with 100 people, will do you some good. Publishing a paper completely on your own, even if the target journal is less well ranked, will do you good. How much good it is, depends on your area.

Some journals, esp. in biomed area, have a thing called author contribution list, where is stated who did what. Similar statements are sometimes required for all of your publications by some hiring committees.


Can a university retract a degree for actions taken after the degree is awarded? I was looking at this question on The Workplace, where in the asker was considering doing homework for students for a fee. My initial thought was that it's possible he went to the same university*, and if discovered they would attempt to revoke his degree. I considered that this would be analogous to failing and expelling a current student who was found to be breaking the academic honesty policy. I know that some universities have recently retracted honorary degrees awarded, but of course, the course work was never done to deserve these degrees. So my question is...

Is it possible for a university to retract a degree that had previously been awarded for a full course completion if the individual does something that would clearly harm the university/violate the ethics of the university?

*this is completely speculative, and the question is theoretical at best

It would depend on the jurisdiction. In the US, you have a property right to the degree that you earn and pay for (regardless of the ultimate source of funding -- the student has the responsibility to pay), and as long as you don't violate the conditions for obtaining the degree (various forms of dishonesty in admissions and satisfaction of the degree), improper actions after the fact don't license depriving a person of what they have earned. In Europe, the legal basis may be different. Whereas in much of Europe state law governs revocation, in the US revocation is governed by university rules.

In the case of Dutch psychologist Diederik Stapel, the thesis data had been destroyed so it was impossible to prove fraud in the thesis, and also impossible to disprove it (Stapel short-circuited the university's proceedings by returning his degree). It appears that there are, in The Netherlands and possibly other European nations, vows that you must take in order to receive the degree, to act honorably (defined locally). "Not committing fraud in the future" is a likely candidate for such a vow.

Of course it is possible.  They granted the degree, they can revoke it in some form as well.  These are informal, unspoken social agreements.  There (likely) is no agreement that says otherwise.

In practice, however, this may be poor policy.  It would be better for the University to create a list of those who are in good standing, and suggest nothing more about those who are not -- for it was equally a failure of the University for granting the degree.


I haven't received the support promised in my funding letter. What should I do? It has been 4 months that I have started my master's degree in North America. I got my funding letter from my supervisor when I was in my home country, in my letter it was written that I will be a fully funded student. Now I am here and he does not pay that amount money. even for my first semester, I paid all of my expenses and tuition fee from my pocket. I finished those amount of money that I brought from my home country. now my supervisor does not pay properly. Life became difficult for me, even the university restricted my access to add and drop due to the hold. I am a good student who cares about studying, I hate thinking about money and tuition fee. I am not the guy who can study and do research like this. My prof pays other classmates more than me. This situation really disappoints me and overwhelmingly hard for me. Several times my parents wanted to send money but I did not let them. (transferring money is difficult from my home country.)
I feel like crying these days and I could not stop it.
Do you have any recommendation or sample letter? how can I make him understand?

+edited: I tried to talk my classmates about this issue. But when I am explaining this issue to them they think that there is something wrong with me and my classmates do not offer any collaboration with me such as publishing something or studying together. This payment issue affected my self-confidence completely.

Based on a conversation in the comments, so you have basically no reason to see this as anything but a mistake. You were never told you would be paid anything less than you were offered. You have not communicated to anyone that you are being paid less than you are supposed to be paid. Most likely no one knows you are not being paid correctly.

You have done a very silly thing by letting this go on so long. Go talk to your advisor face to face as if your advisor is a normal human being, let them know you think there is a mistake because have not been paid the amount you expected to be paid, and ask who you need to talk to in order to get this fixed or whether you have misunderstood something. If you cannot meet face to face, you can say the same thing in an email.

There is no need for this to be damaging to your relationship, there is no need for you to accuse anyone of mistreating or abusing you, there is no broken relationship already. It sounds like there is an administrative error that needs to be corrected. Administration in a university is complicated and involves people that don't know you or your advisor personally at all, they may have nothing in their records to show what you should be paid. The likelihood of mistakes increases dramatically if you are supposed to be paid from more than one source.

Only if your advisor refuses to correct the mistake and refuses to let you know who you need to talk to to correct the mistake should you assume any malice.

I am sorry you find yourself in such a situation. Unfortunately, salary abuse of overseas students and postdocs is becoming increasingly common. Typically the whole "scheme" relies on your silence and submissiveness, which means the most efficient way of defending yourself is by being vocal about this.

You say you're avoiding approaching the topic directly because you want to "preserve your relationship" with your adviser. As you noticed currently your relationship is openly exploitative. There's no way of changing that without displeasing your abuser. In fact I believe your relationship with your adviser is already broken, regardless of whether this person smiles back at you at the intersections and/or taps you on the back.

You must find out the extent of this situation. Reach out for other overseas students and postdocs and inquire them directly. If they seem to avoid the topic altogether, they are likely in a similar stand. Go immediately to the administration and open out. Find the Principal. Have you considered contacting the Consulate of your country? Usually the right phone call can solve almost any situation.

You might like to read about my recent similar experience as a postdoc.

Since you're a Master student, if you conclude the situation won't change, I strongly suggest you to quit, take some time off to digest this mess, and try again elsewhere. Life's long and you don't want to let the bad attitude of others to ruin your plans.

Start now! Good luck.


Why would a professor (say in pure math) want to take PhD students? Why would a professor doing pure math/ theoretical computer science want to take PhD students?

I understand that in computational and experimental sciences taking students is at least beneficial to them. However, in subjects like pure math, it is not obvious to me that there are any significant advantages to take some PhD students. It is probably expected from the department that you will take some students, and it is nice to have someone who can type things up for you. But other than that, I don't see any reasons.

So, why would they want to do that? What are they expecting from their (prospective) students?

They get to train the next generation of mathematicians. They get to establish a relationship with young students, guide new researchers when they are up-and-coming and those people become their students. For the rest of time those researchers will be the person trained by Professor Stella and that is intrinsically valuable for several reasons:

Some people like teaching. I love teaching, and if I leave industry and go into university research it will be largely because I want to teach. The ability to work with and mould young minds really appeals to me, and I get value out of knowing that I've helped people learn.
You develop an attachment, and a sense of pride, in your students. Their accomplishments become, not quite yours, but close to feeling like yours. If you’ve ever served as a TA, you’ve probably worked for a long period of time with a struggling student. Maybe you felt a twinge of pride when they finally got it, or got a good grade on an exam. When you’re an advisor, you get a lot more than a twinge.
They are part of your legacy. They will tell stories about being your student for another 20+ years after you pass away, they will toast you at banquets in their honor and thank you for making them the researcher that they are today.

What a professor expects of you is that you try your very best to be a good scientist, that you do interesting work, and that you continue to carry on the torch of mathematics for another generation after they are gone.

Other answers dance around this, but do not state it explicitly.  Professors are the managers of academia.  Their own individual scientific / mathematical contribution is expected to be limited.  Instead, they are expected to lead group of researchers in the form of Master's students, PhD students, post-docs, and, if they are more senior, assistant / associate professors.

The only professors who really get the freedom to think deep thoughts all day are professors emeriti.


Will I be paid a percentage of the fee that readers pay to download my article? I am a fresh PhD student and I have a question regarding the scientific publication process.

Let's say that I have submitted a paper to a certain journal in Springer, Elsevier etc... and it has been published.

The editor will charge 31.95$ to anyone who would eventually download my article.

How much do I get from it (as the article's writer) ?

How much do I get from it (as the article's writer) ?

Nothing.
Moreover, through subscription fees, your university is very possibly paying a substantial amount of money for access to your work.

Cf. my answer to the "How much do Springer-Verlag authors make per book sold?" question:

  If the Work is sold electronically as part of a Springer e-book package, Author will receive an equitable share of royalties from the income generated by Springer from the e-book package. The share formula for each individual title within the e-book package will be determined by Springer no later than April for the preceding calendar year. This amount will be paid in addition to the royalty described above and shown separately on the annual royalty statement.

The same stipulation might hold for articles, too.


How to deal with a student who harasses the (inexperienced) teacher during class? I am a young teacher at college. I have to go way too long, I know but I have the following problem.

In one of my classes, I have this guy who pecks at me for everything I say. He is surely conceited, but it hurts like hell when he makes fun of me in front of the whole class.

However, I take no note of it in class, but later I feel very sad. This makes me frightened to go to that class at all.

He is overconfident and imposing and seems to have got a big gang behind him. He is a threat and he disturbs me. Please help me tackle this situation.

As a first step you could ask one of your more experienced colleagues to observe your teaching. Let the students know the colleague is there to evaluate your teaching. While it is obviously not a formal evaluation, it is an evaluation of how you handle a difficult teaching situation. You want to tell the students that you are being evaluated so that the trouble makers feel like they can sabotage you. If they do not know why they are being observed, the trouble makers may behave better. The goal is not to "catch" the student behaving badly, it is to have an example of bad behaviour so you and the evaluator can work through possible responses after the class.

Hopefully the trouble makers will try and "undermine" you and act out. With first hand knowledge the colleague may have specific suggestions of how to deal with the student. If the student does not act out you can then discuss the types of behaviour the student shows with the colleague.

Ideally the observer would be from your department, but if it is difficult to find someone, the observer does not need to be from your department nor understand the material you are teaching. They do not need to commit to the entire lecture, 15-30 minutes is often enough. The key thing is they need to be experienced enough to be able to provide suggestions and someone you respect enough to take the suggestions on board. If they understand the material even better, but you want someone that you respect with the needed experience.

That can be brutal.  Two possibilities:

You have just stumbled upon a "worthy opponent" which offers you the best opportunity for your academic life:  a chance to master the skill of dialectic in a war for nothing less than your intellectual integrity.  This requires building the skills of ruthlessness and patience.  Take care not to let ruthlessness devolve into cruelty.  And you'll have to master timing for it not to blow up in your face.  Forewarning:  this could take months.  Time it for the end of the semester.  :)
Don't fight him in the slightest, but humor him.  But do talk to the Chair.  Try to engage him/her on the problem since they are responsible for assisting you in exactly these issues by position of their office.  If they can't help you, you can be sure that they don't deserve the office, because this is one of the most important issues for building the integrity of a university program and it is their job to help their faculty.


After a PhD in biotechnology/engineering - more opportunities in industry or a postdoc positions? Currently, my fiancee are both currently pursuing our PhD's in bioengineering and materials science and engineering, respectively, at the same university. She wants to eventually have an industrial research position and I want to do a post-doc with the intention becoming a professor. We are ~3 years away from needing to have the serious version of this conversation, but which route of the two would be the bottleneck in our eventual decision? Are there more industrial jobs available than post-doc positions? Are there any other dual-academic-career couples out there with advice for us? I hope the content of this question is appropriate for this stackexchange. Thanks so much.

I don't know much about bioengineering and materials sciences. In my area (CS) there are many more industrial positions available than academic positions.

However, industrial positions often tend be clustered in regions, and there might not be too many academic jobs in those regions (or they might be very highly competitive).

Sadly though, I suspect that basing your decisions on where you might do a postdoc is a problem, because a postdoc itself is a temporary position, and so you're really only deferring the real problem. One argument would be that if postdocs in your area take a while (say 3-4 years vs 1-2), then you might as well operate as if that were the permanent job, and then reevaluate after your time is done and you're on the academic job market.

Good luck: two-body problems are tricky, and when one partner is on the academic track it gets even trickier.

The main advice that I have on this topic is that it can be difficult to return to academia after a stint in commercial enterprise (i.e. "industry"). There are exceptions -- some people do publish from commercial positions, or otherwise develop some exceptional expertise that gives them opportunities as academic researchers. My impression is that returning to academia is easier for engineers than for basic science researchers (such as biologists, like myself).

The flip side is that if you want to go into industry, you might as well get started ASAP, unless you think your post-doc project will make you an attractive candidate for companies.

So at least for biology, my understanding is that if you shouldn't leave academia until you are sure that you want to. This is especially important for biologists, since there aren't very many "biology" jobs outside of academia, so leaving academia often means leaving biology.


A famous scholar sent me an unpublished draft of hers. Then she died. I think her work should be published. What should I do? A famous scholar sent me an unpublished draft of hers. It was to convince me that a certain philosophical position is wrong (the paper debunks that position). Then she died. I think her work should be published.

What should I do? Who should I contact?

The first thing to do is to contact her estate. You can probably reach someone through her last affiliation. I assume that they have control over all of the papers and effects of the deceased.

Since you say she is famous, there my be some posthumous attempt to honor her in some collected publication, but the estate, possibly a spouse, should have knowledge of that. Her last employer might also.

But start there.

And, of course it is possible that it has already been submitted somewhere and publication is in process. The estate might even welcome contact with interested people in finalizing publication as needed.

Even if she was retired her department chair will know how to contact her family.  They almost certainly announced her death and talked to the family at that point (been there, done that).   They may also have more information about her plans.


How can I timestamp my paper without violating double-blind review? I submitted a paper to a top tier conference and it did not get accepted. The paper contains an original idea, and I am afraid that the paper could get plagiarized between the time I send it to another conference after incorporating reviewer's suggestions and making some modifications. Such things have happened in the past to a few students in my department.

I had considered posting the paper on arxiv as a means of timestamping before sending it to the aforementioned conference, but didn't, as this would have violated the double-blind review requirements of the conference. (The conference chair replied to my query as follows:)

  The submission of a paper in the arxhiv.org system is not strictly
  speaking a double-submission, but rather a violation of a double-blind
  submission required in this conference, as the reviewers will be able to
  find your name (and those of the coauthors) if they do a simple search
  in Google. Thus, I am quite certain it will be rejected, and I do not
  consider it an acceptable practice in this conference's submission to be
  fair with all the submissions in order to handle them equally during the
  review process by the reviewers.

Hence I had not posted it on arxiv. Now this paper has been rejected and I would like to timestamp this paper now, while still being able to send a modified version to some conferences in the future (including those that follow a double-blind review).

Is there a mechanism by which I can timestamp my paper that does not violate the blind review requirements?

Edit: The paper was in computer science, if that matters.
A related question "How can I time-stamp my data without publishing it?" asks about ways to timestamp while keeping the information in the paper private or hidden to avoid plagiarism. However my question is about ways to timestamp such that it is still possible to publish the information while not violating blind review.

The most typical way to time-stamp a piece of work is to place it in a public repository: arXiv is a good example when it applies; many institutions also have a technical memo or technical report system in place.  Although this may technically violate certain interpretations of double-blind submissions, as noted in the comments blinding of authorship is pretty iffy in many cases.  Moreover, in practice this will only be violated if the reviewers actively go looking, particularly if you put it in an institutional repository rather than a global one like arXiv.  I would thus advise that if you are worried about date-stamping, just do it and let the double-blind nitpickers complain if they even notice.

One other consideration: certain publications (particularly certain journals) do have a policy against accepting material that is already available online.  While this is in my view an insane policy, if you find yourself dealing with such, one way to handle with it is to put up a shortened version of the work, i.e., extended abstract, as the date-stamped pre-print.

Check out this paper:
B. Gipp, C. Breitinger, N. Meuschke, and J. Beel, “CryptSubmit: Introducing Securely Timestamped Manuscript Submission and Peer Review Feedback using the Blockchain,” in Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL), Toronto, Canada, 2017.
https://www.gipp.com/wp-content/papercite-data/pdf/gipp2017b.pdf


Will minor mistakes in my bachelor's thesis harm my future career as a researcher? I'm in a total disaster right now because it feels like I have no chance of being a researcher anymore. Months ago, I submitted my Bachelor's thesis. Days later, I realized that I printed a wrong version of it (the version before the final) so I asked permission from my adviser and the librarian if I can replace the copies because of the mistake. They allowed me.

Weeks later, I realized that there was a term in my abstract that might need to be cited. But for the record, I cited this term in the body of my research. I consulted my adviser whether or not I violated something with that. She said that it was okay because I already cited it in the body of my research. However, I insisted and ask if I can add a citation just to be sure. She said okay. So I had to replace my copies of thesis again.

Lately, it occurred to me again that there was something wrong again. I think that I failed to cite a secondary source in the 'limitations' part of my thesis. Although I already have cited this secondary source as a secondary source 2 sentences before the sentence in question, I still feel that it was not sufficient because we had another similar quotation from an author in the sentence in question. I don't remember exactly why I failed to cite the secondary source in that sentence again. But as far as I can remember, I accessed the primary source. Maybe that is why I did not cite the secondary source.

But it still bothers me because even if that's the case, it might still look like I copied that part of my thesis (although not verbatim, but it totally bothers me still). That's the only problematic part of the whole research. I would like to correct this and give a more sufficient citation  for the secondary source, but as I have mentioned, I already corrected my copies twice and they might not allow me anymore. I am so devastated right now, I am afraid that this might bar me from doing research again. Or worst, they might take away my degree which I really worked hard for.

How do you think will my adviser react to this? The last time I amended my thesis, I said that it will be the last time. But this mistake is unbearable and I can't live a day without thinking about it. What if the other faculty members will know? What will be their reaction? I have a perception that academicians are perfectionists and might persecute mistakes like this even when done unintentionally. I don't know what to do, I really don't know what to do.

I have a perception that academicians are perfectionists and might persecute mistakes like this even when done unintentionally.

I am pleased to report that your perception is wrong! Academics are human beings who tend to be rather understanding of other human beings who, like themselves, occasionally make mistakes.  In fact, if you browse other questions on this site that are tagged errors-erratum, you will find that mistakes happen quite often in academia, just as they do everywhere else.

One slightly ambiguous citation in a thesis is

not going to bar you from doing research,
not cause for taking away your degree, and
not even cause for anyone to think poorly of you, assuming the rest of your work is good.

If it bothers you, put a corrected version of your thesis (and/or an erratum) on your personal website, just to set the record straight. (And realistically, if anyone happens to read your thesis in the future, they are far more likely to read your easily accessible online version than a printed copy in the library.)

Don't overthink, you seem to be a good researcher, just try to work on the proof-reading side. Read your thesis, article or whatever 100 times before submitting.
It is human to err, and the thing you are worried about is not worth noting even. Same thing happens with good researchers even, and the academic people are not that rude that they might put a full-stop on you, they do know that such small mistakes happen and is not an issue.
Cheer up, focus on work but do a good proof-reading next time.