text:
What is the point of a non-confidential reference letter?
In this question, it seems that most people think it is acceptable for candidates to see their references. I find this very strange, as in the vast majority of case I have come across it is expected or required that all references are confidential.
What is the point of having a reference that the candidate is able to see?
The person reading such a reference has no way of telling whether any praise is genuine or simply included to please the candidate. Likewise, the chances of negative points being included are minimal, even if they are very important. Thus the reference becomes little more than a vague sign of support. I understand that in business that is generally sufficient, but in my experience academic references are relied on much more heavily to discriminate between candidates.

See, e.g., this question and my related answer. Maybe it could be a possible duplicate.

Other answers on this site have suggested there are significant cultural differences around the world in how letters work.  In the US, letters a major determining factor for employers / admission committees.  In some other parts of the world, they are not; and in some cases they are only expected to be a pro forma "Yes this person did work here" sort of thing.  The difference could be correlated with whether or not letters are confidential.

And as with many things, people on both sides tend to get used to their own culture's approach, and think that the other way is bizarre or unworkable.  Kind of like the question as to whether retail prices should be quoted including or excluding tax.

@NateEldredge About the cultural difference, one thing that neither me nor my other colleagues understand is why one's chances of being hired should depend on someone else's capacity for writing good recommendation letters.

I would actually ask the opposite question: "what is the point of a fully confidential reference letter?" because I am genuinely curious to understand why on Earth is that important to hide your opinions about someone once you agreed to be a reference.

@GennaroTedesco The most significant argument in favor of confidential letters is that they allow direct comparisons with other students/faculty. I can understand the view that I should be open with you about my opinion of you; it's harder to argue that I should be open with you about my opinion of someone else.

@GennaroTedesco Whether you hide anything or not isn't really the point. The person reading the reference needs to know whether you are hiding anything.

@JeffE That's a very weak argument given that probably many applicants come from different universities, and personal comparisons with other students or faculties would be pointless. Could you please expand on that?

@JessicaB Either I want to give someone the greatest possible chance to be hired, and then I would hide every possible negative impression or refuse to write a recommendation letter if I cannot be positive in any way, or I want to give someone the least possible chance, and then I would give my negative impressions, whether they can read them or not.

@MassimoOrtolano I write several letters for undergraduates applying to graduate school, PhDs applying for academic jobs, and current faculty applying for tenure, every year.  The undergraduates are all from my department; they typically know each other and (more importantly) students I have worked with recently.  My letters usually include direct comparisons with those former students.  ("This student reminds me of X, who is now in the PhD program at MIT and just published their third Annals paper.")  (1/2)

Faculty letters are written mostly for people not from my own institution, but they all know each other professionally, because they've all published at the same venues, and everything is on the Web.  My letters for faculty candidates include direct comparisons both with other people on the job market and with other recently hired assistant professors in the same field. Likewise with promotion letters. Having served many years on admissions, hiring, and tenure committees, I find these direct comparisons immensely valuable in the letters I read. (2/2)

@JeffE I understand your point. In my case, given that in my country recommendation letters are generally not required in applications (and thus ignored, because otherwise the committee would risk an appeal, see e.g. this answer), or when required they should be from external people, the only recommendation letters I write are for people who applies abroad, frequently in fields different from mine. So what you say would not be applicable to my experience.

@MassimoOrtolano: "why one's chances of being hired should depend on someone else's capacity for writing good recommendation letters" - while I agree with your sentiment, to be fair, the same can be argued about most forms of external evaluation that involve reports in prose form, either as a final result or in between.

@NateEldredge It also seems that apart from cultural differences between the US and Europe here, it is also a matter of differences between fields. All positions I have applied for in math have asked either for letters of recommendation or for names of recommenders who would be asked directly for such letters if the candidate got to a later part of the process. But looking at the rules for applying for various grants not aimed at math, it is clear that math is more or less unique in this.

In Australia, letters are mainly used to catch mistakes when a decision has almost been made, or to distinguish between the top two candidates when it is close. They are often called for after final interviews, and mainly used to gauge the enthusiasm of people who have worked with the candidate. I was recently asked to write a letter for a student applying for a position in the US and was surprised that the sort of thing I was asked about was the sort of thing candidates would be asked to write about themselves in Australia (e.g. has she demonstrated that she can do this or that?).

@JeffE Does your comparison sometimes say things like "X is a much stronger candidate than Y, who is now a PhD student at Z"? I have no experience with writing reference letters, so I'm simply curious. I always assumed that comparisons don't tend to put someone else in a bad light, and that if the student is stronger than others it would be stated along the lines of "X is the strongest student I have supervised".

From the perspective of UK higher education, the 'point' of a non-confidential reference letter is that there is no such thing as a confidential one; any data held on that student (such as references) can be disclosed by the institution holding it.
How does the old saying go? Dance like no-one's watching, writing an email like it's being read aloud in a deposition.
References are a tricky grey area, and I do preach caution in case a student ends up seeing what you have written - which can be embarrassing, or even libelous if you can't prove statements that purport to be truth.
I do not think that this undermines the referencing process, however; if you can make true statements about a candidate, including your opinions about them, then, in my opinion, you are within your right to do so.  After all, your student has asked you to do this.

Well, the US has a similar disclosure law for student records, but we work around it.  When a student first applies to an institution (before letters are submitted), they are given the option to waive their legal right to see their letters.  Then the reference writer is told (usually by the institution) whether or not the student has chosen the waiver.  If the student didn't choose the waiver, the writer can decline to submit a letter at all.  So in practice, letters are confidential after all.  Is this not possible under UK law?

The thing about using the DPA to see your references is that there is nothing stopping the institution you are making the request against from telling the author of the reference that you've done it. I suspect anyone pulling this trick would find it hard to get anyone to write a reference for them in the future.

@NateEldredge No, it is not possible to waive your rights under data protection act.

@MJeffryes if I'm not mistaken the thing stopping them telling the referee that a request to see the reference has been made would be... the Data Protection Act.

@Deleuze You might be right about that. But even if it is unlawful, it could make its way back by the grapevine regardless.

I don't see it as a problem that the receiver of a reference can release its contents, because they are the ones interested in knowing that they have not been released. If they want the reference to stay confidential, they can do so.

@NateEldredge IANAL but if your "DPA" stands for the UK's Data Protection Act then I am not sure your most recent comment is phrased correctly: e.g. https://www.reading.ac.uk/internal/imps/DataProtection/DataProtectionGuidelines/Writingreferences/imps-d-p-references-dp.aspx (Although the details seem to bear out the general thrust of your comment)

@YemonChoi: Thanks, I misunderstood previous comments.  Removed mine.  In that case, I'm with JessicaB in that I don't see how the law is relevant here.  Even in the US, when we send confidential references, we don't expect to be able to legally enforce confidentiality; we rely on the ethics and professionalism of the recipient.  So wouldn't this be the same in the UK?

Regarding the point of non-confidentiality eliminating negative comments: even when references are confidential, from the reference writer's perspective, if one can't write a positive letter one shouldn't agree to write a letter at all.
What can possibly be the point of a confidential negative reference letter besides career sabotage?
The other part of it is that it's useful for the candidate to see the letter to have a better sense of what impression they leave on the people they work with/for.


text:
Number of pages for a Cover-letter to apply to postdoc position
A friend and I are arguing about the number of pages needed for a coverletter, to apply to postdoc in electro-engineering.
Usually, the postdoc offer (what I called a job offer) says up to 3 pages.
My friend fills the 3 pages for the coverletter.
To me, he should stick to one page , presenting himself, his work and why he is the most qualified for this position like any regular jobs actually.
I feel I'm right but as I do not have much experiences applying to postdocs, I cannot validate my claim.
Any insights are more than welcomed.

Are you talking about cover letter or CV?

Hi @scaaahu, I'm talking about coverletter.

Please follow the link. Everything is properly mentioned as follows.
http://www.nature.com/scitable/ebooks/english-communication-for-scientists-14053993/118520525#headerAndCitation

The structure of a letter written for an entry-level position will differ from the structure of a letter written by a master's or Ph.D.-level researcher.
Typically, a more advanced position will require a lengthier cover letter.
In all cases, however, remember that your readers are extremely busy. Therefore, keep your letters from extending beyond two pages, unless the job advertisement specifically requests more details about research or work experience.

Hi @mithun, many thanks for your link. However, this very much schlolar link does not help. My friend and I are familiar with writing cover-letters. What I want is a fact, yes or no on the 3 pages, based on your experiences. Your answer is here, off-topic , this is why I'll downvote your answer and ask mod's to close it, tonight 8PM CET , unless you amend it and provide a better answer.
My tone may seem callous or rude but I'm asking you to do better. Thank you for your understanding.

@Andy K I read your question. Did you carefully checked the link. I think, you did. Maybe you missed the following lines.  "The structure of a letter written for an entry-level position will differ from the structure of a letter written by a master's or Ph.D.-level researcher. Typically, a more advanced position will require a lengthier cover letter. In all cases, however, remember that your readers are extremely busy. Therefore, keep your letters from extending beyond two pages, unless the job advertisement specifically requests more details about research or work experience."

I'll be honest with you, I did not read everything. However, I thank you for your answer. Like it or not, Q&A are tricky place where a question goes to look for that article without being precise on what to look. My tone sounds overbearing and I'm sorry for that.
Many thanks again for your comment I'll include in your answer.

@AndyK It's my pleasure to know that you got something from the link. Since I got many help from ACADEMIA.SE I tried to help you. :)

Like a CV, it should be as long as it needs to be. For a post doc, you need an intro paragraph (what job you are applying for, who you are, where you are coming from). You also need a paragraph that describes what you want to get out of the post doc. Finally a paragraph (or two) on your thesis. That is likely a page. If you did research during undergrad or an MS, then you need to include that. If you have a side project to you PhD or have already done a post doc, then you need to include that research. If the position has a teaching requirement, you need a paragraph for that.
I would be surprised if a Post Doc cover letter hit 3 pages, but trying to get it down to a single page seems hard.

Yes, cover letter should be one page and that should always contain what you have mentioned in your question. It may be extended up to 2-3 pages. But mostly it is asked to restrict a single page. Do you know why? Because, this tells everything about you in few sentences. Moreover, a cover letter is always kept in the top of application whether it is a hard copy or soft copy. So if your cover letter tells anything impressive about you then reviewer will go inside with much more interest. Just like abstract of a paper. So you should be very concise and more focus when writing a cover letter. It is not a good idea at all to elaborate everything in cover letter just to increase the page number.

You have a chance of couple of sentences to persuade him/her so be specific what you really want to

cheers @bantandor

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text:
How to handle 2 years hiatus after PhD?
One of my friend has a 2-years gap after completing his PhD in 2014, gap due to personal reasons, family-one mainly.
He is now trying to get a postdoc position in electro-engineering.
To me, this two-year gap is hard to justify as he has not produced any relevant papers, nor really gained much sought skills as he had to take care of his family.
I'm not familiar with academia but I'm familiar with recruitment in tech. I advised him to find an angle where he can put his two-years gap in a way that would work for him, instead of letting this 2-years gap being an hindrance.
My question is the following:

Except to be involved in side projects or do side researchs that he can put on a cv, to help him find a postdoc, are there any other things he can do to make his cv better and make this 2-years hiatus less visible?

Many thanks for your feedback

Hi @gnometorule my friend started his application a few months ago and the recruitment are not even considering , answering him...

Universities are often very aware of the equity issues facing academics (usually women) who have career gaps due to family responsibilities such as maternity leave. A two-year hiatus is not ideal, but rather than trying to hide it in a CV, it might work in his favour if he lists it explicitly in his CV, e.g.:
2014-2015: career hiatus due to family care responsibilities.
If he can be clear about what these caring responsibilities entailed, all the better, as people reading it will be more inclined to believe he is not bullshitting. E.g.
2014-2015: career hiatus to to family care responsibilities (primary carer for our baby, now in day care) or (caring for a terminally ill father) or (unavoidable primary care for a mentally ill sister, now recovered).
It will probably help if he can make clear that these care responsibilities are now over, but if not, it is still worth being up-front.
If your friend can add to this by showing evidence of relevant activity during the hiatus, this will help too. Activity could include publishing papers from his PhD or adding to his skills by completing Coursera courses.
While looking for an academic position, your friend should also, if possible, improve his CV by working in a voluntary position in a research group -- perhaps the group with which he did his PhD or someone to whom his PhD supervisor can recommend him. This can usually be listed on the CV as an "adjunct" or "visiting" academic position. While acting in such a voluntary position, he should make sure he impresses the people he is working with to get favourable reference letters and should aim to be doing publishable work.

Hi @significance, many thanks for your answer. It is a great one. I appreciate the fact you are saying that my friend should be honest on the reasons of his 2-years hiatus.

The volunteering portion of this answer seems bizarre to me and potentially not legal and would be a huge liability. You certainly shouldn't claim a job title such as "adjuct" if you actually have no position.

@AustinHenley I see no suggestion of deception in the final paragraph. The suggestion is to seek out opportunities to improve ones resume, with some suggestions on how to do so.

@AustinHenley To volunteer in a research environment, you usually need to have a formal arrangement with the host organisation. You will be given some position title when you do so, and this (whether it is "adjunct" or "visiting fellow" or whatever it may be) can be listed on your CV.

I'm Andy's friend. Sorry I can't comment, so I write it as an "answer". So, what's about writing a line in the CV and the a small paragraph of explanation in the cover letter? I actually can't explain it in the CV, I need more space...

Hi @significance, would you mind checking my friend's comment (check for Patou355), please? He is the friend I'm trying to help  ... Many thanks in advance :)

@Patou355 I don't know what to advise on that without knowing the details. If you can keep it to a CV line, that would be better, but if you really feel it needs more explanation, then it depends on the specifics.

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text:
Is my paper under review (or similar) for too long and if yes, how should I react?
I submitted a paper to a journal, and I suspect that it is handled too slowly.

How can I decide whether my suspicion is correct? What handling times should I expect?
Given some expected handling times, when should I act? How much leeway should I give?
How should I act? Whom should I contact and what should I (roughly) write?

Note that I am interested on how I should approach this situation in general, and do not seek specific numbers for my specific situation.
I am therefore looking for general answers that are independent of such factors as the field or individual journal (but mention them if they are relevant factors).
This is a canonical question on this topic as per this meta post. Due to its nature, it is rather broad and not exemplary for a regular question on this site. Please feel free to improve this question.

I like the idea of canonical question. Is this question exclusively about response time following initial manuscript submission or does it also include revise and resubmits?

@JeromyAnglim: I don’t see why resubmissions should be excluded. In my experience, there is little that differs for them (which may be just my field, however), so there is little reason to treat them separately.

"Factors" probably include the editor being sick (and then unable to assign reviewers), or stepping down (which may mean restarting the entire process)...

@Anony-Mousse: only if the authors are informed about these events.

They likely are not, but it is still a factor that affects time... you probably only find out when complaining that this happened.

In general, a (decent)slow review is a good sign, the referees are spending more time on the paper as they think it is publishable.

@MikeyMike: In my experience, the time an individual referee takes to send in a review mostly depends on their priorities and duties rather than on how much time they spend on the paper. (Also see this question.)

It might take a long time to find appropriate reviewers. Therefore, waiting for an answer longer than expected is not very extreme. Quoting this answer,

Depending on the scope of submitted paper, editors sometimes have hard time to find a suitable reviewer. During the process, a considerable amount of time might be needed.
The reviewing process starts when editors send the paper to the first suitable reviewer, and ends when final review is complete. Usually, it is not a single reviewer, but several reviewers.
Unfortunately, some reviewers might reject to review the paper for various reasons

Q: How can I decide whether my suspicion is correct? What handling times should I expect?
A: There is no certain way to decide whether such suspicion is correct or not without contacting the editorial board. Expected times might be stated in the journal's web site, however stated durations might vary.
Q: Given some expected handling times, when should I act? How much leeway should I give?
A: It is natural to act if a considerable amount of time passes after the expected response time (ERT). But please keep in mind that again, this depends on the amount of ERT. For instance, if ERT is 3 months, it is not preferrable to send an email about the status in 100th day. Waiting for about twice the ERT might be a good measure.
Q: How should I act? Whom should I contact and what should I (roughly) write?
A: Only office to contact is editorial board. Writing an email to the editorial board, addressing your issues and asking for the status of your paper would be sufficient. However, if you need an immediate feedback because of various reasons, that should be stated in the mail. As an example:

Dear Dr. [Name Surname], I have submitted the paper entitled [title of the paper] to [journal name] on [date of submission].
As stated in your website, the
expected response time is [duration]. Since it is passed [duration]
months after the expected response time, I would like to ask the
status of my paper, which is currently under review. Please note that
I have a time restriction for getting an official review. Therefore, I
may suggest experts of the field to help the process, if you are still
seeking reviewers. Otherwise, please update the expected response time
so that I can plan ahead.

If you have no time restrictions, you may simply write the same mail without mentioning the time restrictions.

The answer varies from field to field. As a former journal publisher the timeline for physics journals is:

A few days: The journal acknowledges receipt of your paper (not every journal does this).
A few days: Editorial “shuffling” where your paper bounces between editorial board members until one of them agrees to handle it. This might take a few days to a week.
Reviewer invited: Typically within two weeks.
Review complete: This is the largest variance part because some reviewers agree to review but don’t actually submit one, some reviewers decline, some reviewers never respond to the invitation, and so on. My personal guideline was to invite new reviewers if the previous reviewer had gone seven days without answering the invitation. Each time I invite new reviewers, I budget thirty days before I receive a review. It can be faster than this but taking longer is more common. Order of magnitude estimate for the entire stage would be 50–60 days.
Decision made: Depends on the editor, but less than a week after the final review is submitted is typical.

This can vary a lot between fields however (math for example takes much longer). There’s also a large variation even within physics, depending on how the journal is set up. Some journals have all submissions directed to the editor-in-chief who then assigns an editorial board member. Other journals might have the journal office decide which board member to handle the paper. Yet others might say, we wait for ten papers, and then send them all to the editor-in-chief in batches.
For physics I suggest contacting the journal asking for a status update if:

If your paper goes more than two weeks with no sign of it getting to the reviewer invited stage. It’s possible the paper got lost in the system, the handling editor needs to be prodded, etc.
If your paper is in the reviewer invited stage for more than six weeks. You might spur the editor to stop waiting and invite more reviewers. At worst you might get a reply such as: “We invited X reviewers but none of them responded.”
If your paper is in the review complete stage for more than two weeks. This could mean the editor is slow at submitting a decision, or it could mean the editor is waiting for more reviewers. You might get an early peek at the likely decision if the editor decides to send you the reviews that have already been received.

For other fields, this will need to be adapted depending on how long it takes to review on average. If unsure about the estimated time, I’d check with my peers.
The person to contact varies depending on the journal. If you’re in direct contact with a member of the editorial board (he or she acknowledged receiving your paper, asked for clarifications, etc), that’s the person to write to. Otherwise, write to the journal office. Most journals will have an email address, and the person answering that email is an employee of the publisher. He or she will know who to pass the query to.


text:
Dealing with someone who asks many questions during presentations
While giving a presentation there is one person in the audience (X a PhD student and a friend) asking all sorts of questions, even unrelated ones. They are also eager to answer questions of others while just in the audience. X attends almost every talk in the department (info from colleagues) and shoots out his questions. During my first few weeks I consider this as good academic practice but had to change my opinion when the same occurred during my talk, with  about 7-8 questions asked during a 30 minute talk; some of them were blatantly off topic (like asking why I used this numerical method over the other, which I haven't even heard of). We attended a thesis defense in our department in which the protocol suggests that the defense committee should ask questions first in the time allotted to questions. X couldn't wait, asks during the talk and this annoyed the committee, one of the stood up and asked X to stop!
I talked with X, and they said they are doing this to push the presenter to their limit and described the thesis committee as a bunch of idiots. X said they were very shy in their school years and worked really hard to reach this level of confidence.
My analysis
Although questions are welcome during the presentation, X seems to ask questions for asking sake. They used to ask questions to compare a certain method or phenomenon with their line of research which the presenter has never even heard of.
How to deal with him if this continues (sure it will!) during one of my presentation? I don't want to offend, as they are one of my few mates on  campus.
Side Note:
X's questions are not dumb questions in reference to some comments. They are sometimes off-topic, sometimes seeking explanation on a particular terminology(during the talk). I feel the questions are being asked simply for the sake of asking a question.

"That is an interesting question, but it goes in a different direction from my talk and it would take me a while to answer it thoroughly. We can discuss it later."

Essentially a dupe: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17022/useful-strategies-for-answering-dumb-questions-in-a-talk

@xLeitix The said question is about asking a dumb. question This is not exactly the case here.

@Sathyam I think it's close enough that I don't see the answers to this question being different to the other one, but let's see how the other community members see it.

@xLeitix I believe this question is significantly different because the "dumb questions" answers focus on how to answer an unusual or off-topic question well, while this question is more about how to deal with a flow of too many questions.

I like @jakebeal's answer, but if he's  a friend, as you say, you should have another 1-on-1 with him as well. Tell him to just not do it during your talks, or to at least limit himself to a question or two, that you look forward to discussing with him personally outside the talk, but also that you'll act as suggested in the answer (not get into detail during the talk when the questions disrupt its flow). As a friend, I'd also consider telling him that, in your opinion, such behavior doesn't make him popular among his peers.

Small remark... Whenever there is a talk, there should be a chairperson (or a head of committee if it's a defense), and it's their job to deal with a member of the audience asking so many questions. The speaker has other things to worry about, especially if s/he is an inexperienced speaker such as a student. So there is someone else here not doing their job.

Maybe I missed it somewhere. Is X a student, or a faculty member? (I'm assuming the former, but my answer would change if it was the latter.)

@J.R. X is a PhD student.

Sathyam, Yes, and by the sounds of it, I can think of a few other choice adjectives as well. I don't think it's the job of a PhD student to "push the presenter to his limit," and he maybe he should expect a "tough crowd" when it's his turn to get behind the lectern. In any event, if the pattern happens often enough, and he's been called on it by faculty before, maybe a student could request that he be barred from attending a session. The faculty might go along with that for a little while until he learns the difference between an appropriate and inappropriate question.

Note: asking about something the speaker hasn't heard of doesn't mean it's off topic.

@Kimball Well I agree with you. 3 or 4 questions are understandable, but as I mentioned, X not only to want to get his doubts clarified but demands explanation about what if.... and he wouldn't literally stop.

Ok, given that this sparked some relatively interesting discussion I retracted my close vote.

You are not obligated to accept somebody disrupting your talks, particularly when the questions are off-topic and when much of the audience appears to be disapproving.  The basic solution is to act as a moderator for your own talk.

For questions during your talk that you find disruptive, a simple solution is simply to say, in a calm and gentle voice, something like:

I'm going to defer that question for now.  We can come back to it at the end.

During a question period, if a person is dominating the discussion, you can say something like:

I think some other people may want to ask questions as well, so I'm going to ask you to hold your questions for a bit while we hear from others.

The key here is to be firm, gentle, and impartial.  Your voice should make it clear that it's not about this particular questioner or about you being defensive, just about keeping on topic.
After you say something like this, most people will leave the question and let you come back to it later.  If the questioner does not, simply repeat yourself, remaining as calm and unruffled as you can, and then move on.  If the person continues to be disruptive after that point, it will be clear that they are making an unusually large problem, and others are likely to help intervene.

I agree with you, but in seminar classes, or seminars for PhD students, ( lab progresses and meetings also) people are usually encouraged to ask as much as question as they can, if moderators dont see problem, maybe OP is overreacting,

IMO this is a professional way to approach the situation.

[1] A little tip I picked up from boardroom presentations when I was in industry...
Imagine you are a keynote speaker at a conference.  Begin your presentation with the words "I will respond to any questions at the end of the presentation".  If anybody, including X, attempts to ask a question, repeat the words "I will respond to questions at the end of the presentation".
Create a final slide, after your summary, that says, simply 'Any questions?'.  If his motivation is to disrupt, X will probably ask far fewer questions this way.
[2] If X asks why you have chosen methodology Y in preference to methodology Z, think about the reasons you did use methodology Y.  It is perfectly acceptable to answer that this is personal preference.  If you haven't heard of methodology Z it is also fine to say that you are familiar with methodology Y but you may consider using methodology Z in the future, when you are more familiar with it.  (Do not commit to using methodology Z - your way may be better).
As the person marking your presentation, I would not penalise you for this unless methodology Z was mentioned in the assignment brief.
[3] Some knowledge of Education Psychology would suggest that X's attempts to show off his expert knowledge and belittle other people by exposing the limitations of theirs are strongly suggestive of low self-esteem (or psychopathy but let's stick with the most likely scenario).  The facts that he claims to be attempting to 'push the presenter to their limits' and to have lacked confidence in school strongly support this.  These actions may not be intentionally malicious but they may make him feel that he is a comparatively strong student and deserves to be on the course.
It appears that X is mistaking arrogance for confidence and if your friendship is strong enough, you may be able to, subtly, point out that his actions are not always interpreted by others as being assertive and confident but may be seen as arrogant or just plain annoying.  Since this is a relatively new friendship, I appreciate this may be difficult, especially if you are both male and have been conditioned not to discuss such things.
However, many people who lack self-esteem respond disproportionally to praise so you could try 'Parenting 101' - pile praise and compliments on X, or at least make sure he realises you are 'impressed' when he does things you approve of (but try not to be TOO obvious) and withhold comment if he does something that most people would deem to be inappropriate. If X is seeking attention and validation, ignoring his unwanted behaviour will gradually make those actions unfulfilling for him and he will stop.
[4a] In conjunction with [1], it may be worth framing your answer as a question: you can respond to the first question with "Why do you ask that question?" If he answers, you are then in the rôle of questioner and have shifted the balance of power in the discussion. This will allow you take back control and regain your confidence.
[4b] For the sake of completeness, I have seen a misogynistic office bully silenced by the following technique but I would NOT be inclined to use it with young people (and as a lecturer it would be inappropriate).  As his peer, if you are feeling particularly evil, you could build from [4a] and make ever more in-depth enquiries until X reaches the limit of his knowledge, which will usually take 3-4 carefully considered questions.  There is a delicate balance to be struck here: don't try to make him look stupid - apart from being morally wrong, that will just make you appear vindictive.
This is a very risky strategy.  You would probably only have to do it once but it may put an irreparable strain on your friendship.  However, if X is as disruptive as you suggest, it may earn the respect of your class-mates and have you considered that X may be the very reason you have few other friends?

Generally an insightful answer, but I'd hesitate to go with a strategy that, in effect, allows @$$holes to turn oneself into the same. If nothing else, that kind of action expresses legitimization of the meta-situation in which it is about inter-personal violence (whether physical or psychological) rather than about the science/understanding/human-enterprise. Don't go down that road... Just enough rhetorical persiflage to disrupt a bully's riff is the right amount.

There is an "Aikido" version of the last technique: in other words, it does not do harm if the person does not mean harm. It is offering to explain the person some outlandish method that they likely never heard of - if they are interested in knowledge, they will listen. Fine! If not, it will expose their ignorance, but they clearly were disingenuous in the first place, and brought it about themselves. There is no moral obligation to play too nice with a person that is not; nice people are sometimes treaded on by bullies because the later detect the former's reluctance to get into a fight.

My main suggestion is that you complain to your advisor or the professor running the seminar. Ask them to have a word with X and get him to tone down his aggressive questioning, both during your own presentation and during others'. As his peer you are not very well positioned to make such a request of him, but it's certainly the job of the professor in charge to help maintain a healthy and productive atmosphere during talks.
A couple of other thoughts:

From your description of X (describing the thesis committee as a bunch of idiots, making a nuisance of himself during presentation, etc.), I'm guessing he won't last long in the graduate program, so the problem will likely solve itself in due course, and maybe even sooner rather than later.
This is a borderline unethical idea, so use it with great caution and at your own risk, but I'm thinking that X just might benefit from being given a taste of his own medicine...


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Whether to ask journal editor to review two papers simultaneously because the papers are mutually dependent on each other?
Having read this earlier question I find myself in a similar, but different situation and would like to ask your advice.
My colleagues and I have created a new medical imaging system, and have performed a series of standard tests on this system. We want to publish two papers - one describing in detail the design of the system including some key performance parameters, and another describing in more detail all performance (with a brief summary of the design). Ad the device is now commercially available, there is significant interest in the community to have more details in peer-reviewed format.
Both papers were submitted to the same journal, and were reviewed by different reviewers. Comments were along the lines of "this would be great if it contained [more of what is in the other paper]". In other words - neither paper is currently accepted because it is missing information that is in the sister paper.
Unfortunately the journal in question has a hard limit on length (5000 words including reference) and figure/table count; combining the two into a single paper would seriously hamper our ability to communicate the details that would be of interest to our target audience.
So here is the question: would it be considered acceptable to contact the editor, explain the situation, and request that the two papers be published side by side in the same journal? It would largely address the reviewers' concerns. The alternative would be to request an exemption from the word / figure count.
I don't know whether either of these things is commonly done. Your advice is appreciated.

What did the editor say? Is one editor handling both submissions? Did you provide with each submission the other manuscript as supplementary material?

At this point I think they were handled individually - my question is whether it's OK to point out to the editors that they should be treated as a pair. How common is that?

It's pretty common in the non-medical literature that I am familiar with (engineering, applied math, etc.). You should feel free to talk to your editor(s) and show them the papers and how the reviews dovetail.

Whether if it is common or not, directly contacting the editor and explaining him the situation is far the easiest and a potentially fruitful way to handle the situation. Your other choice is to the two paper into a single manuscript, either by finding another journal with larger page-limits or editing the text shorter. I cannot judge whether publishing the  results in two papers are justified, but the first approach definitely worth a shot.

Honestly, it sounds a little like you were trying to Salami-slice your papers, and the reviews are showing this. If the design is not interesting / understandable / plausible without knowing the analysis, and the analysis is not understandable without the design, then the solution should be that you make this one larger, better paper, and not that you somehow make the reviewers aware of the other publication. One of the fundamental rules of scientific papers is that they are supposed to be self-contained - every paper should, by itself, be understandable and add something to the state of the art.
If the journal you are submitting to requires papers that are too short, you can always go for a journal with higher page limits.

Thanks for our thoughts. I would much prefer a single paper - splitting was really done to accommodate what are in essence artificial limits. I am looking for "what is done" so we may approach this in the most practical way. There is a clear reason for wanting to publish in this particular journal... but having options is a good thing.

It is hard to judge without seeing the manuscripts, whether the split is justifiable. There are cases when splitting the manuscript actually does good for readability. I have seen papers where the review process forced the authors to jam together several different studies, and they were not pretty to put it politely.

@Greg I agree, but two (presumably) separate set of reviewers asking for the other part are at least a good indication that the split in this case wasn't all that natural.

Is it really expected that papers in science are supposed to be self-contained?  In math, many papers are written with the assumption that the reader has read (and understood) certain previous works.  Though I hate when papers just refer to other papers for notation without bothering to recall it.  (And often the cited paper will not be easily accessible.)

@Kimball Yes, at least in my field the basic assumption is that papers do not assume specific knowledge about the author's earlier work to be useful. Of course they do sometimes expect non-trivial prior knowledge about the research field, but even that is somewhat frowned upon. Referring to a different paper for non-standard terminology would be pretty close to an auto-reject. If this is different in maths I cannot tell, but it would seem at least mildly surprising to me.

Hmm... that must be nice.  I guess this is how people in science fields can read so many papers so quickly (that, plus them often being much shorter).

@xLeitix: "two (presumably) separate set of reviewers asking for the other part are at least a good indication" - not too reliable, maybe. Quite some reviewers seem to automatically ask for getting any mentioned other paper B (or complain about its unavailability) on the assumption that it contains more information helpful (but not indispensable) for understanding paper A, which is not necessarily the case. It's like a trigger, a bit like in an oral exam: When you mention some X and imply there's more information available about X, the reviewer/examiner will ask about X ;)

@xLeitix On one hand I see the logic of your argument. On the other hand reviews are often not really reliable sources of opinion on editing and rhetorical decisions. In technological fields it is very common that the implementation and technical details of a certain device is far beyond the interest and comprehension of the readers who will be the ones actually using the device. See MRI, NMR, etc. In this case strictly focusing on two topics in separate manuscripts is actually a good way to do it, and the "i want to know all" is the sign of poor craftsmanship.


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Is there a potential problem where supervisor is close to someone working in similar area?
Is there a potential problem when an academic supervises a Ph.D. student in a very specific  area in which someone close to them is also active and working (and supervising Ph.D. students who are publishing in that area) at a different institution? What if the two students are producing very similar work, at the same time? Is it right that my alarm bells are ringing?

I don't see a conflict of interest at all, nor do I see why it is important for him (genderless) to mention that his spouse was also in the field.

Thanks. What about if the other supervisor's student has produced work that is very similar to that of "our" student?

I think you can safely turn off your alarm bells.

Related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/21006/10643

Thanks, both. Yes, I did see that question, and figured that it described a sufficiently different situation in order to justify posting.

By 'area' you mean 'field'?

Yes; UK language...

All right, English is not my primary language and thought you meant geographical location.

Sorry, I meant "I'm using the English term for 'field'", rather than "We speak English on here!" ;-)

I can think of multiple sane reasons not to publicly state romantic or marital involvement with a fellow researcher. There surely is no obligation to do otherwise.
Now, in the situation you described in your comments, you mention the possibility that one adviser is leaking unpublished results of her/his students to her/his spouse's students without the consent of the person who did the work. This is indeed problematic, regardless of their marital status.
If you are worried about this situation, discuss confidentiality with your adviser, make sure you are on the same line and consider sealing an informal agreement of non-disclosure with her/him if deemed necessary. This can be independent of the spouse situation.
One potential conflict of interest is if both were acting as reviewers for papers or grants submitted by each other, or if they were members of the hiring committee that evaluated each other's application. Since married couples have a reciprocal interest in their spouse's employment and wealth, there would be a quite probable conflict of interest.

It's not considered a conflict of interest for an advisor to personally work in a field similar to his/her students' - it's expected.
It's also not a conflict of interest for an advisor to have friends working in a field similar to his/her students' - it's likely.
Similarly, it's not a conflict of interest for an advisor to have a spouse, child, or immediate family member working in a field similar to his/her students'.
The exception to the above would be if the advisor actually does something that harms his/her student in order to favor him/herself, a friend, or a family member.

Thank you. Of course, supervisors are expected to work in the same area as their student, and to have friends working in the same area. The specific question centres on the fact that there are two students, at different institutions, who are working on very similar topics, and who are being supervised by a married couple who have, until now, disclosed nothing of the arrangement (they have different surnames, which helps). Your final bullet point is, I think, crucial, in terms of how supposedly confidential insights might be shared between students (even inadvertently, or in good faith).

@GeneMachine I don't see why it's any different from, say, two close friends at different institutions with students working on very similar topics. Which happens all the time.

I know; I am in that very position as a supervisor. But I would not necessarily share insights from my student's work with my friends (pre-publication)...

@GeneMachine "I would not necessarily share insights from my student's work with my friends (pre-publication)" - that is unethical behavior (assuming it's against the student's wishes) regardless of your relationship with your friend - it would also be unethical for you to share these insights with a stranger. The conflict of interest is a red herring.

I'm not sure it is a red herring, given that one person might have a vested interest in ensuring the success of another person's Ph.D. student...

@GeneMachine I am really not sure what you are concerned about here. Doesn't the fact that they are personally tightly connected make it less likely that the spouse will take some over-dinner conversation and use it to scoop her own husband (and his student)?

@GeneMachine In all of the cases mentioned in my answer, the advisor has an interest in another person's success (including, possibly, his own). But if an advisor scoops his student to serve his own interests, we call that unethical behavior, not a conflict of interest.

I guess I just find it rather odd that the supervisor has - not once - mentioned that their spouse works in exactly the same area, and then (possibly coincidentally) the spouse's student produces a piece of work that is very similar in scope and approach to that of our student...

@GeneMachine I don't really find that odd. (1) I wouldn't assume that they talk to one another about the details of what their students are working on, (2) If "your" student's advisor found out that his spouse's student was (coincidentally) working on something similar, if it isn't public information he wouldn't be allowed to tell his student anyways until the work became public.

I think your assumptions might be a little optimistic. But thank you for the detailed discussion.

@GeneMachine: Who someone is married to -- or dating, living with.... -- is their own business.  It is not the business of their colleagues and they do not have any professional obligation to divulge this information.  You sound like you're insinuating that information about your student's work was passed from your colleague to his spouse and used by one of her students.  If so, that's problematic, but not because of anything about spouses or "conflicts of interest".  I would suggest taking that language out of the question entirely.


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References/resources on problems surrounding peer review in physics?
I was watching this video on YouTube (this is the second part of it) and it motivated me to ask this question.
From the videos:

....that's the good aspect of peer review. It should work to sift out problems with the interpretation, problems with the results. It should work to improve a paper. The problem is ..... there is a huge volume of stuff and we are increasingly getting swamped. .... here is one of the worst examples of where peer review has entirely failed. ....

The examples he talks about is discussed in this blog post.

When you zoom in, you can clearly see that it is photo-shopped.

...this is one of the top ranking journals in the fields...
Now here is the really troublesome aspect... if they had done it better
  (you can see a much better photo-shopped image in the blog), how would we know.  Not only is money spent in that lab, other groups would chase this up and that's the worrying aspect and it builds and builds. Science is like that.
In the past if the referees didn't pick it up, that was the end of the story. We now have something called the post publication peer review. There are sites ( PubPeer) and there are blogs (ChemBark, Chemistry Blog) where people upload paper and say well this looks like a great paper or in many cases they go "there is something I don't quite get here" and that leads to lots of comments from people in the field and I think this is where we are evolving to... away from the traditional peer review system. The publication is seen to be the start of the scientific process and not the end, where you generate debate.

My questions:
Are there other such examples in physics? Can you point me towards a blog/site or something of the sort that goes through these things?
Are there any blogs, articles or essays that discuss problems surrounding the peer-review process (in relation to physics). How it can improved, where alternative methods like post-publication review are discussed ? I know ChemBark for chemistry, I am looking for it's "equivalent" in physics.

A mathematical 'equivalent' of this question can be found here http://mathoverflow.net/questions/176372/proof-correctness-problem

You may also be interested in Retraction Watch, which is in principle multi-field, but tends to have biology and chemistry papers, mostly.

Welcome Panda Bear! I have edited out the question about post-publication peer review, since we require one question per post and that one seems to be independent of the rest of the post. Please post it as a separate question if you're still interested.

The most (in)famous of these in physics is Jan-Hendrik Schon, who got ~10 papers through to Nature/Science until finally someone found several reused images. A rather enjoyable book, Plastic Fantastic, was written about the case. I second the recommendation of RetractionWatch, which I too keenly follow. I think that faking it in physics is less common as you often need to back your claims theoretically. That said, it is very easy to find faulty data due to incompetence (without malicious intent, just the pressure of publish or perish). Most don't want to publicly ridicule such research.

You can read only the physics category on Retraction Watch if you want: http://retractionwatch.com/category/by-subject/physical-sciences-retractions/physics-retractions/

After reading review of the book Plastic Fantastic(by Eugenie Samuel Reich), I think it is something suited to my taste.

The "Sokal affair" may also be enlightening -- a physics professor.

@MarkJ That has nothing to do with physics, that's more about post-modernism and the obscurities, lack of intellectual rigor,etc., associated with it. It is very interesting nonetheless.

@MarkJ "problems surrounding peer review IN PHYSICS"

Recently there have been a couple of high-profile retractions of Majorana papers that might serve as a case-study of how post-review can work in physics.

The methods of scientific misconduct in physics are not different from what you see on chembark (photoshopping, data creation and so on). This years nobel prize in chemisty went to a physicist as it happened often. The methodogical overlap is huge, mostly the topical focus is different, collaboration is frequent as interdiffusion of scholars between both branches. Also physics is such a broad field that the role of peer-review in different subfields has different importance.
Jan Hendrik Schön was an exceptional case, from which one can deduce the differences in revealing scientific misconduct and the role of peer review in physics vs. other scientific branches.
There are not much cases like Jan Hendrik Schön in physics, as we have a very strong post-publication review system in physics/chemistry many scientific branches lack: the industry and the mathematical and experimental interdependence and overlap of most theories in neighboring subfields. It's stronger than the peer-rewiew system at the journal level and one of the reasons why physics is called a "hard science". This is really the crucial difference to other scientific branches and the reason why you will not find much important scientific misconduct by physicists in top journals. Hiring of top researchers by industry and patents are a strong incentive to avoid scientific misconduct. And top research in physics is correct, reproducable and valuable research, in branches like psychology or philosophy you really have problems to identify and judge good research by clear criterions. This is due to the nature of the topics. Jan Hendrik Schöns research career was finished, he will never do fundamental research again or wright a paper. He probably knew that is was just a matter of time considering the importance of his results that someone in academia or industry would reveal his misconduct, probably career obsessed and blind.
The case of Schön started in the physics community an open-ended discussion wether peer-review at the level of the journal is the place to detect such cases, there were not much widespread cases like this before (I can't remember). From the discussions I had it seems most physicists agreed that not peer review at the journal level was the problem in this case, but lack of review of his collaborators before submission. Unfortunately in the aftermath he was the only one sentenced and losing his PhD 2013. Take a look how much co-authors he had on most papers. Schön's other collaborators were cleared of all wrongdoing by an committee appointed by Bell Labs. They are nowadays professors at ETH Zürich and Stanford. They could not identify the fraudulent data or would have to invest to much effort?
To this it boils down, how much effort do you have to invest in peer review and what is the status quo of trust and mistrust in your subfield? Is mistrust prevailing? For some branches the status quo is problematic. In physics we can tolerate such a case of imperfect peer review at the journal level from time to time due to much stronger other inherent mechanisms other scientific branches lack. The subfield of priming in psychology for instance had to undergo rather exceptional processes to regain credibility and will have to do so on.
Of course, also other branches develop technological relevant ideas, prototypes, patents and are funded by industry, but the crucial point is that often published results in physics journals turn into an product within a decade. This time scale is important, as it has strong implications on the quality of work of experimental physicists as the case of Jan Hendrik Schön has shown. In other scientific branches, e.g. psychology, you nearly never have to fear this kind of very strong post-publication review (where experimentalists in industry and academia will try to analyze and rebuild your experiment bit by bit, much stronger than any review by an editor or collaborators) or discovery-idea-patent-product will last several decades (e.g. drug development in medicine), so nearly as long as the career of most scholars and some decide to take this risk. In physics/chemistry, for widely studied and interesting research topics, your chance is zero, misconduct in the long term (which means 10, max. 20 years) is scientific kamikaze.
Please don't interpret my words as an underestimation of peer-review done at the journal level (in non-industry relevant fields it is the most important level), I'm a strong advocate of open access and open data and in my opinion the best hindrance of scientific misconduct would be if search engines like google scholar would directly link comments on arxiv to specific papers in the search results. If a bunch of co-authors decide to falsify data professionally (not like a school kid in the picture above), then only other research groups trying to reproduce this results can reveal the misconduct, post-publication review. In physics this will happen for sure. On retractionwatch you can read stories about journals that are not inclined to publish comments of other authors proving the bad quality of their peer-review. In physics comments have always been a vital part for public discussion of competing theoretical models and experimental data. But nowadays the publishers rely more on a more profit oriented model than decades ago. So central uncensored websites like pubpeer are really necessary from my point of view seeing a rise of plagiarism and misconduct, although their importance may vary strongly from branch to branch. Physics, in my opinion, is not in trouble, actually the time scale described above has become even shorter since the rise of the internet due to better and faster access to software, data and knowledge. Unfortunately in humanities the phenomenon of "copy, shake, paste" vice versa seems to have risen.

See the comment at my answer below.

hmm interesting! sorry for the late response.. seems u didnt get the bounty...

I would like to slightly disagree with the Hauser's answer regarding the possible methods of scientific misconduct in physics.
Unfortunately, in more theoretical parts of physics some people can manage to pretend that some complete and utter nonsense represents a new result well enough to fool the referees and editors and thus beat the peer review system.
A prominent example of this (to our luck, very rare, at least AFAIK)  phenomenon is the Bogdanov affair, see also e.g. the web page by John Baez on this and the Nature article on the ensuing scandal; a sample of the works involved is available through this Google Scholar query. The Bogdanov (a.k.a. Bogdanoff) brothers got their Ph.D.s using the papers in question, one in physics and one in mathematics, and in early 2000s have published a number of strange -- to put it very mildly -- papers in a number of reputed physics journals, including Classical and Quantum Gravity and Annals of Physics (and e.g. the Annals of Physics paper is still there -- it is not withdrawn until today). The papers were not just wrong -- they turned out to be downright gibberish.
In the light of the Bogdanov affair it is not a big surprise that sometimes peer review also fails to detect even a really large-scale plagiarism, as in the infamous case of more than 60 works by a group of Turkish physicists who plagiarized earlier work, see e.g. the Nature article and this post at Peter Woit's blog for details.
Unlike the Jan Hendrik Schön case, AFAIK the papers by Bogdanov brothers did not involve experimental data or predict outcomes of reasonably doable experiments, so their case is pretty much a pure peer review failure at the level of the referees and editors (and of course a failure of their thesis advisors too).
IMHO, the Bogdanov affair shows that the argument regarding going to production and post-publication review from the Hauser's answer does not seem to work well in the more theoretical parts of physics, especially when the authors make no readily verifiable experimental predictions.

In any scientific branch you can "beat the peer review system", but the point is, in physics it doesn't stay undetected very long, and so you loose your scientific career. And that's why it doesn't happen very often. Even the purely speculative stuff of this twins no experimentalist being interested in got detected and debunked. Now deducing and claiming from this that the mechanisms I described don't work for >90% of theoretical physics because of this single case is the utterly wrong conclusion. I think you either misread my answer or didn't read it completely. The collaboration of theorists

and experimentalist is essential for physics. Big bang theory is for TV, where these two clowns also ended http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1279525/Igor--Grichka-Bogdanoff-French-twins-unrecognisable-plastic-surgery.html I didn't ever hear of them doing physics over 15 years :)

@Hauser: My point is slightly subtler and I still fail to see how your argument defeats it: if some folks publish a wrong (or gibberish as in the Bogdanov case) paper make no experimentally verified predictions the fact that their work is wrong may go undetected for quite a while. If I recall correctly, it took far more time for the community to debunk the Bogdanov affair than the Schon case. So IMHO post-peer-review etc. works well enough only for the papers making claims (be they theoretical or experimental) being interesting (indeed sensational enough) for people to verify. ...

@Hauser: ... So I am afraid there is a certain number of wrong, gibberish or plagiarizing papers with run-of-the-mill (rather than sensational, as in the Schon case) results can pass peer review and rest undetected for a fairly long time.

Please answer the question (it's how review works in physics) and try to see the whole picture in this branch, what you say applies for every other scientific branch, where much more articles are poor and uninteresting and you could find dozens of such cases still doing research. This "affair" was over after few years. Show me other cases similar to Bogdanov/Schön which were debunked after 20 years in theoretical-experimental entangled physics and don't base a suspicion on

single case of two clowns never be heard of in physics community apart from voodoo big bang speculation dozen "researcher" might be interested in. Your answer is a lenghty comment misreading my answer and claiming things I never said. What are you trying say? That one can put a paper about voodoo big bang theory through "peer review" of 3rd class journals and therefore most of theoretical physics strongly interlinked to exp. physics has a not working peer and post-publication review

system? Serious? Every kid knows that there cannot be a perfect peer review system at the journal level preventing cases like this in any scientific branch, even physics has corrupt journal editors and poor reviewers, nonetheless you have to explain why this branch has so much success, progress and scientific knowledge compared to branches with mediocre peer-rewiew and not post-publication review at all. You make a mountain out of molehill discrediting this whole field with a suspicion, not being even wrong for false reasoning although I gave many arguments and links which you seemingly didn't

read. In other STEM branches over 70% of results cannot even be reproduced, in computer science people have written bots to fabricate articles and they were accepted... How does this compare to physics and why we don't have such problems in this branch?

The OP asked for examples of problems around peer review in physics, and I provided such an example which exactly answers the OP's question, that's pretty much it :)

Seems pointless with you. You've read a single wiki article, a single case of two clowns, you generalize it and claim that one can publish such nonsense anywhere in theoretical physics. That's exactly the opposite way how scientists come to their conclusion. But don't worry, this site is now full of 1st semester students with clown names putting their nonsense 2 cents without any experience on every question. Keep trying to learn...

hmm didnt know about the Bogdanov affair. Quite interesting!

@PandaBear: Thanks. By the way, here are the links to an interesting story of a peer review flaw in math: http://arxiv.org/abs/0709.1291 and especially http://arxiv.org/tb/0709.1291.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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Clarification needed: Job market paper
During my ongoing academic job search, I'm seeing that some universities require a job market paper as a part of application package. While I read a bit about the meaning of the term, I'm still somewhat confused about it and hope that more experienced people on this site will clarify that.
Question: What exactly is a job market paper? Is this term interpreted differently across disciplines and fields of study (and to what degree)? Is it closer to research statement or writing sample?
Note: my main discipline is information systems (a multi-disciplinary field of study with a focus on management science and other social sciences; in addition, my own current focus is computational social science, complex socio-technical systems and data science) and I do have both research statement and writing sample (a slightly abridged review of literature from my dissertation).

From a quick Google search, my first impression is that this so-called job-market paper (JMP) is something specific to the field of economics. I'm not sure if this relates to your fields of interest, though.

It seems pretty clear that it's supposed to be a paper, published (or publshable) if possible, so that makes it quite different from a research statement.  A dissertation chapter would probably be suitable.  But it looks to me like, compared to "writing sample", the emphasis is perhaps more on research content than writing quality. So your literature review, which doesn't represent your original research, may not be a good choice.  Then again, I have never seen this term used until now, so I am also just guessing.

Of course, you can always contact the search committee and ask for clarification about what they are looking for.

@MadJack: Thank you for your comment. Perhaps, you're right. However, while such requests are indeed popular in economics, I have seen requests for JMP from business schools, which is very relevant to my discipline.

@NateEldredge: I greatly appreciate your comments above, which contain many useful insights.

@shane: I appreciate your clarification.

I can elaborate on JMPs in econ/b-school hiring more if interested. Generally, a JMP is your best unpublished research paper to date. If you get a flyout you will probably be asked to present the paper. Seminar participants will expect that the paper is in the same condition as any other working paper. I would suggest that you scope out departments' recent jr hires and try to see if they indicate somewhere what their JMPs were.

@webelo: Thank you very much for the clarification (+1; if you'd like to post your comment as an answer, I will be happy to upvote/accept it - alternatively, I can combine information and advice from all the comments and post it, but that will take some time). I already took a look at several JMPs. It all now clear to me. The only related question that I have now is whether it is OK and/or advisable/beneficial to post (IMHO, that is not publishing) a JMP to a e-repository, such as arXiv, figshare or Zenodo.

Oh, and one more question: are JMPs publishable via traditional outlets after their use as JMPs?

@MadJack, the JMP sounds exactly like what's required in my field (a humanities discipline).  We just don't call it a "job market paper".  I think it's just the term that's specific to economics.

Elaboration on Above Comment
In economics and certain business school fields, a major part of junior academic hiring is the job market paper (JMP). The JMP is an original piece of research by the applicant that constitutes their best research to date. It is meant to serve as a signal of the candidate's potential for becoming a good researcher.
Bob Hall makes a number of nice points here, which I will condense and expand upon. Answers to the two questions posed by @Aleksandr Blekh after my comment are in bold below.

It should highlight the original contributions of the research.
Write "for a wide audience of highly trained economists" (replace "economists" with the appropriate noun).

Don't take this the wrong way, JMPs are a great place to showcase one's technical skills.
However, think very carefully about who might be on your committee.
Hall says to write for JPE or AER. More generally, think of the journal in your field that everybody at least skims through. Write as if you're submitting to them.

The JMP need not be published. (See also discussion in penultimate paragraph below.)

If you get a flyout you will probably be asked to present the paper at what is essentially a working paper seminar. Participants will not expect that it is complete. You can always substitute out a work in progress but it is far better to have one close-to-publishable paper than one publication and a half-baked paper (this is when all of the faculty who aren't on the committee will see you).
People are looking for good ideas, all of the finicky stuff that goes into a publication can be ironed out later (assuming your idea is sound!).

Hiring committees will probably only look at your JMP so that is what you should focus your efforts on.
Yes, do post your work to repositories where others in the profession will see it. This is probably a good way to gauge whether your paper is ready - are you willing to post it in a semi-official place like arXiv where you can't just take it down and post it back up willy-nilly?
For most people the JMP is their first publication. So, yes, do expect to publish the JMP in a traditional journal.

Some concluding notes about why economists bother with this JMP business in the first place (and a method to gauge how much this applies to your situation). Very few economists are coming out of grad school with publications. Ergo, hiring committees can't do the thing where they just scan down the list of previous publications and sum up the prestige (economists - of all people - would if they could). So instead candidates get one shot at wowing committees with their JMPs.
Therefore, if you can already signal to hiring committees that you're awesome (or not) in some other way (i.e. past publications), then the JMP may be something of a formality. This also motivates another reason for not using published work as a JMP: If you already published something in a good journal, the committee can easily incorporate that information into their deliberations. Using another paper gives them a second piece of information to go off of. I would also speculate that using a prior publication might be a negative signal in the sense that it suggests that the candidate is a one-hit wonder (of which there are many).
Best of luck! Let me know if anything needs to be clarified or amended.

Wow! I didn't expect this one coming :-). What an excellent answer - clear and comprehensive enough; the explanation of the logic underlying the JMP requirements is an icing on the cake. I greatly appreciate your answer (+1 and accepted) as well as kind words and wishes. Do you have any particular advice on converting dissertation into a JMP?

The link to the hints by Bob Hall is dead but I assume this is meant: http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/lettau/student_tips/piazzesi_jobmarket.pdf


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How to react to flawed preprints?
Suppose you were to find what you think are serious flaws in a preprint (arXiv or something similar). What should you do? Now, after the obvious first step of contacting the authors and letting them know, what should you do if you were basically told off ("thanks for your interest" without addressing any of the technical concerns)?
Were this a regular journal, one might write a letter to the editor, or a comment (one might go this route even without contacting the authors in the first place), but how should you deal with preprints, whose contents is in a way still evolving? Would a "comment" paper uploaded to the preprint server not be considered rather aggressive (I don't remember seeing anyone doing this)? Is there anything one can, or should, do before the (eventual) publication of the paper in some peer-reviewed venue?
Stretching this well into the hypothetical, suppose that one did write a "comment" paper and uploaded it onto the preprint server. Would the authors of the original preprint be ethically obliged to cite this and address the concerns raised therein when submitting to peer-reviewed journals (assuming that they were to submit after being let known of the existence of the comment)?

This is an interesting question. I did see a number of "Comment on..." on the arXiv, and instinctively it did strike me as aggressive, but I'm not sure that's the way everyone sees it. Some comments are definitely aggressive or even insulting, but others seem more civil so I'm not sure it would necessarily be taken the wrong way.

You might consider how you would react if someone contacted you about one of your preprints.   Extend the thought experiment from including your normal reaction to not reacting (because of family issues or other reasons that lower the priority of responding).  How would you want that person to treat your situation?

What field?  I think that matters quite a bit.

I have seen an example of this where the arXiv paper already has 10+ citations (but it's not published in a peer reviewed journal yet, after sitting on arXiv for a long time).  To extend your question: is one morally obliged to do something about it and prevent others from (unknowingly) using flawed results?

You have no need to do anything. By contacting the author, you pointed out what you believe to be a flaw. It could be you are incorrect, it could be that they deal with this in a future version, it could be that they simply don't care. To me, this situation is akin to the following xkcd comic:

People perform research, good and bad, every day. Once it's published you can feel free to write an article refuting their conclusions, but until then it's just informal academic discussion, and there's nothing you can really do about someone else being wrong.
Disclaimer: Some disciplines may treat preprints as actual publications, and if so, the preceding does not apply. I do not know of any fields for which this is the case, but then again, there's a lot of things I do not know.

I love your disclaimer.

Theoretical Computer Science: we cite arXiv preprints more than often, we consider them to be correct in most cases.

I think that in many disciplines (such as those based largely on clinical trials) researchers simply accept that a lot of false results will be published.  In others (math!) the attitude is quite different.  That's not to say that math papers are never wrong (laugh); it's that people consider the publication of wrong papers to be a problem for the field.

As I understand it, the point of distributing (including posting, as on the arxiv) preprints is that one wants to both speed up and enhance the publicity of their paper and the feedback they get on it.  A very common practice is to post preprints on the arxiv, see what kind of reaction you get, and then submit them for publication anywhere from a week to a few months afterwards.
So I think that it is fair to assume that if someone posts a preprint on an electronic server, they are interested in feedback from any interested party.  Thus you were being helpful in contacting the authors about what you perceive to be a problem in their work.  I think that in most cases, what the authors do with your feedback is their business, up until the point where it becomes submitted -- and you are an editor or a referee -- or published.
In particular, there is no "standard temporal scale" for modifying arxiv preprints: there are some famous examples of papers on the arxiv that have been known to be flawed for years but have not been "withdrawn".  I would advise against that, but that's the authors' choice.  At what point to make what you regard as less essential changes is really nebulous.  To give one brief example, I found a lapse in the exposition of a paper I submitted to the arxiv last month just a few days after submitting it.  I really wanted the paper to be understandable to everyone, so I did upload a new copy.  More recently I discovered that a result that we attribute to mathematician X was also earlier done by mathematician Y (the two works were independent and use different methods).  I certainly want to straighten this out before publication.  But I have not yet uploaded a new version of the preprint: it's a judgment call.
Maybe the authors are addressing your comments.  Maybe they happen to know that they're right and you're wrong.  Or maybe neither of you is wrong and you're just not understanding the language in the same way.  (I have seen this happen again and again.)  It's hard for you to know what the authors are doing, and I wouldn't assume that your criticism hasn't gotten through: a bland acknowledgment of receipt is a pretty good first response to an email like that.
Should you upload a critical arxiv preprint yourself?  Probably not, most of the time.  Exceptions:
1) The mistake in the author's preprint is specifically detrimental to your own research.  For instance if the information that the author's preprint is critically flawed is important to the refereeing of one of your papers, that's a reasonable call to action.
2) If the paper does something extremely important and is getting widespread "public" attention.  For instance, if the preprint purports to solve the Riemann Hypothesis, everyone else believes it, but you have identified the flaw, then you'll be doing the community a great service by getting this information out.
These exceptions are fairly exceptional.  Even in those cases I would counsel repeated contact with the authors rather than uploading the preprint straight away.
Important Note: I fear that my advice may be somewhat field specific.  In mathematics, we really don't place a premium on openly critiquing each other: all other things being equal, that's a distinct negative.  There are some academic fields where pointing out the flaw (or arguable flaw) in someone else's work is a really good paper of yours.
Finally, you ask if the authors would be ethically obliged to cite your hypothetical preprint.  I think this is easy: you are ethically obliged to cite any source that you have specifically and substantively used in the course of doing your work or (especially) that has made you modify your work.  So the authors would have to cite your preprint if they respond to it in any way.  If their perspective is that your criticism is without merit, they do not need to cite it in their submission and it may in fact be inappropriate to do so.

Thank you for a comprehensive writeup! You say that in mathematics you don't place a high premium on critiquing each other openly. So are you saying then that you would not point out the flaws of a published paper, either? I am basically asking how much you would change your advice if instead of a preprint, I was talking about a published paper and asking whether or not to pursue a short comment-type publication? Would you suppose that a perceived critical flaw would constitute a reason, or would one "need" one of the "exceptional reasons" (as you put it)?

@amlrg: By that I mean that I would essentially never publish a paper which was primarily a critique of another paper.  Pointing out the flaws is a different matter: I have corresponded with authors and editors about flaws in published work, which has resulted in the authors themselves printing an erratum (often mentioning me).

If you're curious about published papers, you should look at other questions on this site: it has been treated.

Thanks for the clarification. The published papers have indeed been treated elsewhere, but I felt that telling your opinion on those here would add to the information contained in your answer: that for you preprint/published does not change the situation much. Now I realize that we are coming from different fields, for your first thought was that the authors are probably thinking about my comments, whereas the thing that popped into my mind was that they might try to ram the paper through to a journal that will accept it as is. I most certainly hope you are right.

@amlrg: I certainly have no way of knowing the authors' intent in this case (less than you, since I didn't see their reply).  However I think they have the right to respond to you, or not, as they choose. Going ahead to publish a paper that someone has already pointed out to you is wrong is a clearly poor choice: if they do so, then it will be pointed out that their work is wrong and they will either have to retract the paper or (much worse) gain a reputation for being unwilling to admit their mistakes.

What if you email the authors pointing out a fundamental error that invalidates their preprint, and they respond with a cursory "Yes, we are aware that our preprint is fundamentally flawed and are working on a revision" - then a year goes by and they put out several papers on unrelated subjects?

@tparker: I have seen your "What if..?" occur in practice.  I think it's not great, but neither is it a definitively dishonorable practice on the authors' part: it is simply not part of the rules or norms of the arxiv that you must take down a paper that you know to be flawed by Time T, for any value of T.  I presume that a positive proportion of papers on the arxiv are flawed, do not get published for that reason, and remain uncorrected.  It makes you remember that the refereeing process -- which is slow and highly imperfect -- remains a necessary step.

There are plenty of papers on arxiv.org titled "Comment on... "
e.g. http://arxiv.org/abs/0811.3876 (and also some titled "Response to ...") some addressing paper not yet published.
Regarding the last part of your question:pointing errors in a preprint is not rudeness. Ignoring such concerns is rude. A real life story is that of the flaws in two papers of Daniel Biss found by Nikolay Mnev (it seems that at first his private communications were ignored) and that forced Mnev to put a paper on the arxiv.

That there are comments on arXiv does not mean that the comments are directed at arXiv preprints. In your example, the comment was indeed written to address the problems of a paper that had already been published (although the arXiv title does refer to the arXiv title of the other paper, rather than the peer-reviewed publication). In any case, I have met people connected to the Ising debacle (your example), and it seems to be a rather long-standing feud and does not therefore set a good, general example.

I should also add, that I am not really interested in the highly specialized fields where arXiv preprints might as well be considered the main publication (say, theoretical high energy physics, or some branches of mathematics); In these fields, if arXiv is indeed essentially a journal of sorts, arXiv comments would perhaps not seem too out of place. Rather, I am interested in cases where preprints are essentially a way to disseminate the research to a larger audience, but where almost everyone will be citing the peer-reviewed version. I think this is the more typical usage of preprints.

I extended the answer. The Biss-Mnev story is told here:  http://books.google.com/books?id=mXWr00HurmMC&pg=PA97.

I had not heard the story before, it was quite interesting. Thank you. It, however, is not related to what I am asking. My question is specifically about preprints (as opposed to peer-reviewed published material) and if it is appropriate to write public formal comments pointing out their problems. Were the preprint published (i.e. not a preprint), there would be clear venues (comment/letter to the editor), as the paper would have taken its final form. One should point out problems in published work, like your story suggests, but the situation is not as clear for preprints.

This doesn't really address the question at hand.


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Should you list irrelevant work experience on graduate school applications?
(1) On graduate school applications that ask for a work history, is it permissible to omit jobs--such as waitressing, temping, working retail--that have nothing to do with the program to which you are applying?
(2) If so, where is the line drawn to make a job something you are truly expected to report on the application? If you babysit now and then, do odd jobs for a day, or "help out" in a store for a few weeks, are admissions committees truly interested in knowing that? More to the point, is it dishonest to leave it out?
For an idea of the specific context, here is text from one graduate school's question about employment history:

"[List] employment experience (including part-time) since secondary
  school""

I ask about the general case here.

Related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/61537/including-a-non-relevant-work-experience-in-statement-of-purpose-for-higher-stud

1) If we're asking, we want to know. It's fine to list workplaces that seem irrelevant -- for the (professional) graduate program I teach in, a little workplace seasoning is a distinct plus no matter how connected it is to the program. Moreover, some of our applicants are surprised by the variety of experiences we find relevant. (Retail? You bet. Sales? Absolutely. Office temping? We won't have to teach you what a memo is, good.) So yes, it's "permissible" to leave these jobs out, but you're more likely to hurt than help yourself thereby.
2) Rule of thumb: if you wouldn't put it on your résumé, we don't need to know about it. If you babysit regularly enough that you have certifications and know CPR, sure, tell us about that. Help out the neighbors with their kids occasionally? We don't need to know, and we'll suspect that you're trying to pad your application.

I agree; it would be easy for a candidate to think something isn't pertinent when in reality there are subtle connections. If nothing else, someone might avoid the appearence of doing nothing for an entire summer, when in reality they were, say, cutting grass at a golf course. All that time on the mower may not help the applicant in their graduate chemistry program, but at least they've made it plain that they weren't just being lazy for two or three months.


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IEEE transactions specific: Is it necessary to number unreferred equations?
Question: since the equation number is mainly a tag for referencing, I usually omit the equation number whenever an equation is not referred throughout the paper. Is this in violation of any standards, in particular those of IEEE transactions?

since the equation number is mainly a tag for referencing,

In fact, a reviewer or someone else writing another paper might need to refer to any of your equations, even those you don't refer to. Thus, better number all the equations.
The IEEE Editorial Style Manual specifies (p. 16):

Consecutive Numbering:
  Equations within a paper are numbered consecutively from the beginning of the paper to the end.

Note also that the typesetter would probably put all the numbers anyway.

Thank you very much for prompt reply! So is it safe to remove unreferred equation during the final submission... The "Consecutive numbering" in the style manual could also be interpreted as the numbering must be consecutive whenever there is one.

@TroyWoo No, it is not safe: someone writing a follow up paper might need to refer to any of your equations. As I said, better numbering all the equations. IEEE would probably number them anyway.

In my previous publication, if I were to number all equations, I would have 70+. I ended up with 20 referred equations, and there is no warning from the editorial staff. But I suppose you could never know whether someone else needs to refer to one of those unnumbered equations. I will keep the numbers in the future. Thank you for your kind reply.

@TroyWoo Luckily equation numbering is automatically generated by LaTeX (even by MS Word, I think), so having many numbers is really not an issue. Papers with 30-40 equations are quite common, and 70+ is certainly not overwhelming.

I completely agree with you.


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Difference between article and letter in Nature
As I was reading today an article from Nature I was wondering: Does anybody know what's the difference between article and letter in the Nature Journal?
The blog of Nature points out the following:

Articles are original reports whose conclusions represent a substantial advance in understanding of an important problem and have immediate, far-reaching implications.
Letters are short reports of original research focused on an outstanding finding whose importance means that it will be of interest to scientists in other fields.

Source:
http://blogs.nature.com/nautilus/2009/12/difference_between_nature_arti.html

They have a difference in the allowed length, and the importance of the results. Articles are longer and supposed to have "far-reaching implications". In other words, no chance to get an article unless you revealed that the moon is actually made of cheese or the like.
Letters are shorter, yet still very prestigious.

How is prestigiousness measured? Is the impact factor of Nature letters higher that Nature article? I cannot find any information in the website

@Millemila prestigiousness is a subjective factor and cannot be objectively measured. Both letters and articles are considered as publications in Nature and feature the same IF.

Thank you. Should I choose if it is a letter or article at time of submission? Should I format it as a letter? Or will the editor decide after a first inspection if it will suit a letter or an article? I cannot really find anything about it in the Nature website.

@Millemila as I remember you decide yourself and edit the manuscript accordingly. There should be guidelines for authors on their submission website.

As per another answer, this one is now outdated. You may want to update.

In case anyone like me is trying to find information about this now, Nature has retired the shorter letter format (though they may still have it for their subsidiary journals e.g. Nature Astronomy).
For more information see doi: 10.1038/d41586-019-03167-2.

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