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Where can one find jobs where companies hire mathematicians where they can do (not necessarily mainstream) research?
Several companies (google, IBM etc.) are known to hire mathematicians with advanced degrees (Ph.D. and so) to work in different sectors. Many such jobs are also research jobs, if not all. But I almost never find any such job advertisements in the standard mathjob sites I know of, including mathjobs.org, euro-math-soc.eu/jobs, nordic math jobs etc. Where can I find these type of job advertisements?

This question appears to be off-topic because it is about jobs outside academia. It also has too many possible answers, so is too broad.

I'd agree that it's somewhat outside academia, although not quite because many people who continue in academia for a really long tile (like me) are also exploring options outside academia.

Is this in reference to research jobs in industry for mathematicians? If so, it may be on-topic, as this is a site for anyone in or interested in research-related or research-adjacent fields.

Secondly, possibility of too many answers is highly doubtful, because it's specified to industry jobs for Ph.D. math holders, which is specific enough.

yes mostly research jobs I've meant, question edited.

I can't think of a better SE than here; Math.SE would surely vote to close this.

Related-but-no-duplicate: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/18300/pure-math-phd-careers/ I agree with @BenWebster's comment there, on why not to close such a question: What else you might do with a graduate degree is obviously of interest to academics.

"Many such jobs are also research jobs" - what's your source? Is "many" 5%, 10%, 80%? I have a little experience in one of the larger European software companies, and most mathematicians here do software development or QA, so I'd tend to the "5%" range above. See my answer here: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/18300/pure-math-phd-careers/ Being a mathematician is certainly not a problem in such a job, but a CS or physics guy would fit in just as well. This is why such jobs are rarely posted on sites that cater primarily to mathematicians.

Perhaps the OP has in mind an outfit like Microsoft Research, which hires real research mathematicians to do real mathematics research. I think this question is on topic and likely answerable.

FWIW, I agree with @Nate... just because academic research is not being conducted in a university doesn't mean it's not academia.

Industrial jobs are announced on different basis than academic ones. Typically, there is no a position to be filled. Rather (larger companies) are hiring on semi-continuous basis, and assign people to groups internally.
Sometimes there are more research-oriented openings, for example Facebook: Data Scientist, Product Science. Just bear in mind it is mostly very applied science, and in fields like Machine Learning, Statistics, maybe some Graph Theory or Cryptography.
So look at big companies (smaller companies may not have such specialized positions or money to invest in long-term development) in technology (Google, Microsoft, Facebook, ...) and their openings. When it comes to direct positions, usually you can choose only after interviews (you rarely see research positions being on the front page).
If it is nice research, or building webpages in a disguise, the only way is to ask people working at the company. Or look at CVs of your colleagues in your field who did internships in these companies (especially ones that you know are pure mathematicians or computer scientists).


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Why does my colleague, a PhD in anthropology and religious studies in a German public university, have to pay a publisher to publish her PhD thesis?
I've a colleague who's pursuing her PhD in anthropology and religious studies in a German public university, having one of her advisor there and another advisor from another public university in Austria. She told me that:
i) she needs no publications to get a PhD thesis, unlike science or engineering, and
ii) she needs to pay a publisher to publish her PhD thesis, as per the rules of her program or the university.
While I understand that regarding i), the requirement to publish articles may depend on the disciplines, but ii) strikes me as very odd, especially when she told me that it costs at least a few thousand Euros to publish a PhD thesis. Now, as a total outsider to the university, her program or her discipline, I've no clue why one has to pay to publish her thesis, but as a long time academic, I find this very odd and I'd appreciate it if someone familiar with the system can shed some light on the matter, and also let me know if ii) remains the same for other countries, in or outside Europe.
Addendum: When I wrote my PhD thesis in math about ten years ago in a public university in the US, I didn't have to publish my thesis as a book. I published papers in journals and didn't have to pay a dime for the same.

Are you saying that someone else should pay for the publication?  In some fields of study, large research grants can pay for publication.  But I guess religious studies is not one of those fields?

I had to pay a local printer to print and bind a half dozen copies of my thesis. If nobody is going to buy copies, someone has to pay…

In science and engineering it's pretty common to pay a publisher for those publications needed for a PhD thesis these days.

@GEdgar I didn't presume anything. But when I wrote my PhD thesis in math about ten years ago in a public university in the US, I didn't have to publish my thesis as a book. I published papers and didn't have to pay for the same. As for the thesis, it was publicly available in the university library database. I'm adding this bit to my OP for clarity.

@BryanKrause Thanks, but I'm trying to understand your comment better.  You wrote: "publications needed for a PhD thesis these days" - as I understand from my own experience of publishing and writing thesis in S&T disciplines, one first publish papers/results in journals/conferences in somewhat condensed form, and then write the PhD thesis in a detailed manner, to make the results part of a continued research, thus proving the results in other papers etc. But I never saw that one needs to pay that much money to publish her/his thesis. Happy to be corrected. Also, is this a recent practice?

@BryanKrause In fact (if I understand correctly), almost nobody really reads the thesis, but majority read the papers, so why officially publishing the thesis as a book anyway? It seems counterintuitive, but I could certainly be wrong. And if the journals where one is publishing is a decent journal, they shouldn't charge the author, no?

Agreed, I'm familiar with Jon's situation which was the same for me: we had to pay for a copy to be made for archive with the program. Additional copies were an additional cost, common for people to keep one themselves or give to parents/grandparents, but the total cost likely to be $100 or so for the printing and binding only. But, separately, individual manuscripts submitted to journals often have page charges or open access fees that can be thousands of dollars/euros. These are usually paid by a grant, though, not the student, but if there's no money someone would still need to pay.

If this person is in a field where people don't read papers, then they might read theses published as books instead. If they don't produce anything in a format others can read, what's the point?

Graduation requirements differ between universities and subjects even in Germany. (Plus this seems to involve Austria as well, I would expect this to be a bureaucratic nightmare.)  Even the "unlike science or engineering" statement about publications is just not universally true. I just looked up my German alma maters PhD regulations, apparently all you need to provide (apart from the electronic version) is four bound, typed copies of your thesis. No publishing of your thesis anywhere but to the university required.

In the humanities, completely unfunded PhDs are not uncommon by all means. Often, PhD students have to pay all their expenses - in addition to fees to the university (!) - out of their own pockets. Why should it be surprising then, that publishing fees have to be paid out of pocket?

(Almost) nobody is likely to read that thesis. Why should the publisher pay for a unsellable product?
That being said, in Germany, the author might be able to recoup some of the expenses by VG Wort, which represents the collective interest of authors in Germany and pays them according to publication (usually not worth pursuing for small volume writings such as articles, but in case of books - such as this - it might be worth it).
Some publishers are even happy to take over the rights to those fees in lieu of actual payment. I.e. publishing the book might not cost the author anything. [Caveat: this is old information from many years ago and might have dated, so one should seek confirmation]
Despite all, it is a nice feeling to have a proper bound book as a result of a thesis. And maybe, in some years or decades, someone actually might read it if it's well written and potentially relevant.

(A) The difference in the way of publication derives from the difference between a paper based (cumulative) dissertation, which is as a whole most often "published" solely as a cheap copy shop version that you have to hand into the university/library, whereas a monograph could also be "published" this way, which is, however, in many fields seen as a low-grade way of publishing (i.e. practically saying that you think your dissertation is not worth being read). Thus monographs are often published with "real" publishers and here of course the options vary from no/low-cost options (eg Springer) to high cost options (eg Routledge). Depending on the field, different publishers might be viewed as more or less valuable. To sum up: you don't have to pay money to publish a monograph, but not paying might come at the cost of reputation and recognition for you work.
(B) Even with the more costly publishers you might not have to pay to be published (and might even get payed) if your work is interesting enough for a wider audience and if you are ready to do some heavy editing to make your thesis more approachable to a wider readership. A colleague of mine had his PhD monograph published by a reputable publisher, payed nothing, got 50 copies for free to give to his friends and colleagues, and still receives money from the sales of the book. To sum up: whether you have to pay a publisher or not depends a lot on the market-value of your PhD Thesis.

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Is it possible to become a neuroscientist without first studying clinical medicine?
I am currently in highschool and thinking about what career path I should choose to follow. I am fascinated by the brain, and I would really love to study how it works, or how to model it with computers and mathematics.
After doing Google searches, I have found that some neuroscience degrees are obtained by studying medicine first and then doing some graduate work on the brain, other websites have told me that neuroscience is a degree in its own right that does not require medicine first. I am concerned about this because I cannot stand the sight of large amounts of blood.
I am just fine with the sight of brains and the way they feel and smell, so I would be capable of doing research directly on them, but without studying medicine. Is there a degree that focuses on the brain and nerve system that does not require treating patients or managing large amounts of blood?

Are you currently working? Undergrad? High school?

I edited your post to focus on what you seem to be asking specifically, because "how to become a neuroscientist" is probably too broad for this site. If you feel I've misrepresented your question, please [edit] your post again to clarify.

My anecdotal evidence is that I know people with degrees in neuroscience coming from biological background, but let's wait for a neuroscientist to answer.

@svavil, I am currently in high school, not working.

@ff524 No, you did not misinterpret my question, that is exactly what I meant to ask. Thanks :)

Neuroscience is interdisciplinary! To give you an idea, the neuroscience faculty at my institution (University of S. FL., RU/VH university) generally have Ph.D. in:
Pharmacology
Molecular Biology
Biophysics
Biochemistry
None of them are an M.D. so you have to ask where would medicine come in useful? Ph.D.'s do not generally interact with patients, perform medical procedures or do anything an MD is qualified to do (with respect to humans). Being said, you can have a dual MD/PhD where for example your MD is specialized health science and technology, and your PhD is specialized neuroscience. I think that for neuroscience research involving humans such as drug trials, behavioral neuroscience, etc. this is a preferred route. Some neuroscientists are then experts in computational studies as opposed to wet lab, where a data science background is helpful.
Some related publications by our faculty:
Hevers W, Hadley SH, Lüddens H and Amin J. Ketamine but not PCP selectively modulates cerebellar GABAA receptors containing a6 and d subunits J. Neuroscience. 28(20) : 5383-5393, 2008.
Segers LS, Nuding SC, Ott MM, Dean JB, Bolser DC, O'Connor R, Morris KF, Lindsey BG. Peripheral chemoreceptors tune inspiratory drive via tonic expiratory neuron hubs in the medullary ventral respiratory column network. Journal of Neurophysiology. 113: 352-368, 2015. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25343784
At least with respect to reference one, the methods state results were obtained from rats/mice, from reference two they collected data from adult cats.
You can see that an MD or medical degree isn't necessarily required for a career in neuroscience. Some career postings I can see give preference to those who know some surgical procedures (not just for humans), but at the entry level I'm seeing 3yrs postdoc experience on top of the related PhD, to which you don't have to be embroiled in clinical decision-making and large amounts of blood (maybe on mice, etc.), publication record, etc.
For your intended program, you'll largely want to refer to your university of choice, mind you curriculum and requirements can largely vary by institution!

Many neuroscientists also first studied mathematics, computer science, statistics, or psychology. Actually, there is a sub-field called computational neuroscience.

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Strange/impolite to request a faculty I've not met before to have a look at a postdoc research proposal I've written?
I'm submitting postdoctoral applications to a few places to receive external grants, and I've written a proposal all by myself. However, I'm planning to come back to academia after two years in industry that didn't go very well, and also my postdoc application subject (statistical machine learning) is significantly different from my PhD thesis topic (differential geometry and low dimensional topology) and also I was forced to divide my time in the US and Europe (in Europe now and planning to stay that way), so I'm feeling academically isolated and I'm not fully confident that the research proposal will generate interests.
So I think if I can contact a faculty member who works in the relevant directions, (s)he takes a look and gives me her/his honest opinion, I'll benefit a lot from it. However, since I'm academically isolated because of the reasons mentioned above, my only chance to write to a faculty who could be kind enough to take a look. Just to make sure, I'm not planning to work with her/him directly - I would if I could but geographical constraints prevent me. So will it be strange or impolite to try my luck this way? And what will be the best way I can write my email and its subject to make sure (s)he takes a look?
P.S. As mentioned in comments, no, my PhD advisor can't do anything here, even though he's a very accomplished pure mathematician, and I've all the respect for him.
P.P.S. The real problem is: I don't know people in person who do research in this topic.

Contacting people who know you is much more likely to be productive than contacting those who don't.

Perhaps your PhD supervisor would be a good place to start? even if the topic is unrelated they can likely give you good advice about the overall structure and general content.

@astronat, good idea. They may also be able to point the OP to someone who might help and even initiate the contact.

The way out of isolation is through people you know. I really don't understand why you are discounting your advisor or other faculty members you have interacted with in favor of cold emailing people.

If your proposal directly references someone's paper, and it's clear that you have read it, mastered it, and suggest plausible ideas on how to extend it, then if you're lucky you might get a response from that person. But keep in mind that there is no way to "make sure (s)he takes a look"; the same rule of etiquette that says its okay to email strangers also says that it's not obligatory to respond. Good luck.

Do you have any friends from your time in the PhD program? They could at least give this a first look and perhaps help your through their networks.

@Dawn Thanks for your comment - for the same reason I think my PhD advisor won't be of much help, my former pure math colleagues won't be as well, they simply don't know the field. However, I do have one or two friends who have moved onto industry but still publishes in ML. I can ask them, but it's just that I'm not sure it'd of much value - not downplaying their opinion, but I feel strongly that the people really know this specific area and published at least one paper are best suited to judge the research proposal. Unfortunately, I don't know these people in person :(

Right, but your proposal should be understandable to others without fully specialized knowledge. You also limit your risk of embarrassing yourself with the people you really want to weigh in by getting a pre-reading. Plus your current contacts also have a network of their own.

@Dawn so are you saying that I contact my former colleagues anyway to see if they can understand it, and if not, then forward it to some people in their network who are better suited to give me a pre-reading?

@JonCuster Thanks for your comment! Say I email my advisor now whom I last saw in 2013, and then emailed a few times (last being in 2016), asking to take a look on a subject he doesn't work in, doesn't know (with due respect to him) where the state of the art really lies, and why this is beneficial from a practical point of view, what will he say? He'll probably say at best it looks mathematically a decent question to ask, but there's no way he'll be able to give a critical opinion. Past PhD, things are quite specialized.

@JonCuster conts) Maybe he'll be able to refer me to someone he knows who understands the topic better, and that's not a bad thing. It's just that during my time of PhD, I kind of know what his network is like, and I don't think he knows anyone who can do this, but I'll still think about it!

@ScienceMan - in the 7 or so years since you last saw them, how many new professors are there in the department? How many students have graduated since then, and do you know what their theses are on? At the very least, you should make the easy (re)connection in parallel with other more speculative avenues.

When I was writing my grant proposal I was advised by professors to do exactly what you are describing, worst case scenario they're busy and they ignore you but it is not unpolite to ask.

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How do I explain my failed career decision to a potential postdoctoral/academic manager/employer, when I'm almost seven years past my PhD?
First a bit of chronological background:
PhD in pure math (2 publications, 1 preprint), 1 year of postdoc in pure math (unproductive) 2 years of postdoc in computational medical imaging (1 publication each, and one of these postdocs were in application of differential geometry and machine learning for medical imaging), 1 year of postdoc in computer vision (unproductive, as I was partially spending my time to move to industry - I accept the blame here, mostly as a data scientist or machine learning researcher), 2 years of failed industry experience (4 jobs, all permanent, all let go within the first 4-5 months in the respective trial periods). So in essence, 4 years of postdoc, partially productive and 2 years of failed industry experience after PhD.
What's going on now:
I've a strong realization that the traditional industrial positions are not from me, and I'm planning to go back to academia, as well as on my way to obtain my freelance status, so I'd be able to consult on the side. But since I worked 2 years in industry immediate prior, I feel I need to get a long (at least a year and a half) project to get back to the full research mode, find a line of projects and use that to get a permanent position. These projects wouldn't be in pure math, but rather in theoretical machine learning, statistics or applications of differential geometry/topology to solve data analysis problem.
Immediate next - a potential answer to a question I might be facing during my next hiring:
I'll be having a few interviews, and I'm sure some postdoctoral advisors would ask me why I'm not looking for a permanent position, since I'm already 6 years past my PhD. My honest answer would be: "Initially I thought that the academia wasn't for me, that the stakes of getting a permanent position are pretty low, and even then, I thought it wasn't rewarding enough, me being based in Europe and not planning to move. So I wanted to move to industry but in R&D and I thought I'd be doing almost fundamental research; but I was wrong - the industry mindset and environment I found to be very different than the academic one, and hence I'm realizing my mistake only now, and trace my way back into academia."
My question(s):
But if I do give that honest answer as I wrote above, will it hurt my chance to get into postdoc positions that I'd want to get into? I don't want to paint a wrong image of myself to my future academic employers, but I fear that if I tell them that I moved into industry as I thought I wasn't good enough for academia and it was not rewarding enough, then my potential academic employers might think that I'm coming back to academia as a second choice and not out of passion. But the thing is that I had to go through a two year period of self-realization, and yes I did make a career mistake, which I'm planning to rectify. So how do I convey this truth in a manner that doesn't make me look like I wanted to run away from fundamental research (in fact I didn't, I planned to do it, but outside the scope of academia, which did fail and seemed almost non-existent) and work against me in an academic hiring process?
If you want more details about the reasons for being let go:
They're mentioned as comments to the answer by @jerlich.

@CJRD Well for the postdocs, I really didn't have a choice - they were lilted time (mostly a year or two) and that time ran out on its own (as it often happens for postdocs), I didn't get fired or quit. So the real problem started back in 2018, which is when I decided to transition into industry, and hopefully finished in last June, when I was let go from my previous industrial employment. So in essence, I'd have to answer for these four industrial jobs in 2018-2020.

@ScienceMan Yes, you're going to need a really good explanation of how you ended up in four jobs in two years, and let go from all of them. Having this happen once should be totally understandable, but after the second time, it might look as if you were bashing your head against the same brick wall well past when it should have been clear that something needed to change dramatically.

@KevinArlin Thanks for your comment - I agree that I learnt my lesson late - two years too late. I'm however showing two of these positions in my CV (I tend to think there's anything wrong with it - I'm also not showing I went to high school in my CV), and if asked in more detail about if I had more jobs, say that I had two more jobs which met the same fate. But the thing I'm a bit concerned about is how a potential academic employer (postdoc for now, but permanent academic positions for later) is going to view these unstable part of my career that was all spent in industry?

@KevinArlin (contd.) But the thing I'm a bit concerned about is how a potential academic employer (postdoc for now, but permanent academic positions for later) is going to view these unstable part of my career that was all spent in industry? Are they going to think that this applicant has no clue about his future?

@ScienceMan I agree with other commenters that having spent two years in industry, not found it satisfactory, and moved back to academia, should be no problem at all. It's the extended iteration of "get job, quickly get fired" that's concerning. I was going to say that you should never leave a job off your CV, but upon investigating it's apparently totally fine to leave quite short-term positions off, so this may actually make you look considerably better--it'll look like you spent a while looking for the second job, but that's common enough.

I think the answer you have now isn't so bad. But you could be painting yourself in better light. Rather than saying jobs in academia in the pay range and stability you aspired to were too competitive, say you preferred the higher pay and stability you could access in industry. It's the same sentiment but doesn't point to you somehow failing. Many good people get bad luck and don't make it to tenure, and we all know industry offers a wider range of people a better material life in many aspects.
So for example I would tweak this to:
"Initially I wanted to move into industry for (better reasons to reference: higher pay and a more stable lifestyle, choosing where you get to live, etc). So I moved to industry. In R&D and I thought I'd be doing almost fundamental research; but I was wrong - the industry mindset and environment I found to be very different than the academic one, and hence I'm realizing my mistake only now, and trace my way back into academia."
And then maybe say that you've realized it's important to you to be doing fundamental research, so important that the pros of getting back on the academic track now outweigh the cons for you.
Caveat: I'm not in mathematics but in my field your publication record doesn't justify looking for a permanent position, and that would be immediately known to people interviewing you for a postdoc. They may instead phrase this question more like "what have you been up to?" Or maybe even directly ask, "why did you leave industry?"

Thank you for your answer - I appreciate it! Yes I think the alternate formulation would put me in a better light and still convey almost the same sentiment, as you pointed out.
I'd be curious to know what your field is though - also I'd guess normally for an academic permanent position, the publication record is always relevant. But you write it wasn't, so I'm curious.

Sorry my writing was unclear. I meant your specific publication record wouldn't be strong enough to justify looking for a permanent position, not that in general publication record doesn't impact one's job prospects.

thanks for the clarification! You mean in academia (which is indeed my goal), not in industry, right (I was hired several times for permanent positions in industry)? Well, I actually have two other preprints (all statistical machine learning related), but yes they're definitely not published yet, and I'd like to take some time (at least 18 months) focusing on my next postdoc  so that I can add say three more decent publications in statistics/machine learning to that, plus get the current preprints published.

I would add to the script something you learnt in the industry jobs, so that you can turn those two years into a positive point rather than just neutral (even if you personally think it was all a big mistake). The classic examples would be "team player" or "respects client deadlines" (but you will need concrete  examples to back that up).

@UJM Thanks! I did learn bit of Python and its libraries, and some topics on neural network. I also learnt that more clearly the difference between industrial R&D and academic R. The team player - yes, but in academic position, we're not dealing with clients though.

If I was considering hiring you, I would want to know more about why you were let go from 4 positions in 2 years. You said in the question that it wasn't for you. In my opinion a sign of professionalism is being able to do work, even if you are not intrinsically motivated to do it.

Thanks for your answer. In response to your question my response would be: 1) three of the four companies I was fired from were small startups where I was working as a data scientist, and the I was told that I asked too many questions when it came to using softwares, and in the last company, which is a major international one, I was told that even though I obtained results, it was not applicable enough in machine learning. Well in my defense, in the first 3 startups, one of the following happened: 1) they didn't give me the data that I asked for, nor they understood its importance (contd)

(contd) 2) Yes it's true that I asked few questions to a data scientist ex-colleague of mine, but I don't by any means appreciate his going behind my back to tell my manager about that, because I know my manager wasn't often present during these questions, 3) the hiring process of the startups didn't reflect properly the nature of the job, the take home tests and interviews didn't involve so much software stuff, 4) I felt strongly that everyone except myself in the company had a very low level of understanding fundamental math or stat, their incompetence was clear from our discussions (contd)

(contd) I won't probably mention the #3 one, but I want to be in a place where I'm surrounded by colleagues who're somewhat similar to me, and the startups were definitely not the places, which brings me to the last job: 4) now here my manager was a signal processing PhD guy who is probably competent but in his own areas of signal processing, but not in math/stats. He wanted to have a project in high dimensional stats, and he hired me for that. Upon starting, I discovered that he had ZERO project in his mind, and he told me to find a problem and solve it: which I did. He looked at the (contd)

(contd) results and dismissed them as being "applicable enough to machine learning", but he wanted a theoretical result and I gave his precisely that, along the way correcting a professor's mistake in a paper. But at the end, I was let go. Also he accused me of sending him long written documents proving my results when he had little time. So here's the picture again: he wants a theoretical ML result, with no specifics mentioned, no project in mind, I find results and send him in detail, the math of which is lng, but I pointed clearly what he needed to read. But at the end I was the fired one.

Okay, reading through your responses to this comment has given me another piece of advice for you: Science Man, go to a mentor in academia. Work with her/him and figure out the way these four firings can be turned into a narrative that can be explained in an interview. What you have right now is too long, and again isn't painting you in the best light. A postdoc often needs to be able to work with other people, so make sure you aren't conveying too much trouble in that area.

@Well... thanks for that advice! But the question is: how do I find such a mentor in academia? Also note that all the firings happened in industry, not in academia. I've worked well with other groups before, and at least one of them (the second postdoc mentor in medical imaging) believed in my capability and will write a very good recommendation for me. He's aware of my situation and believed it'll improve although it'll take time, but I'm not sure he'll mentor me though. I simply can't ask anyone in academia this way - everyone is too busy! I just don't know whom to ask in this case.

The set of people to choose from is: your PhD advisor, any senior coauthor, your PIs from previous postdocs, anyone you've gotten a LOR from, anyone who's ever given you advice about your career or shown interest in your next steps. From that group use your judgement about who to contact. Ask the person if they have time to meet with you and help you prep for a postdoc interview. People are busy in life in general, but still also many, many people do this. It's reasonable to at least ask.


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How to discuss lack of effort from collaborators with PI/advisor
I have been working on a research project with my advisor and a few other graduate students for a little over a year. After a lot of dead-ends and lackluster results, we eventually managed to salvage bits from said dead-ends to come up with some ideas that gave us decent results that we are now at the stage of writing up into a paper.
At some point during the project, the other students seem to have lost interest in doing any writing work. At the end of every meeting, we discuss tasks and self-assign them. Some of these are writing tasks (including lit. surveys), and some of them are validation tasks. Everyone picks tasks of both kinds, but nobody ever seems to do the writing work. This has gotten to a point where 90% of the paper is written and edited entirely by me. Since we're approaching the deadline, I end up writing everyone else's parts as well. Even so, we are only a little over half-way to completion.
I have other project that are being pushed back because of how time consuming this has become. I would like advice on how to bring this up with my advisor; I don't want to be seen as the person who bad-mouths their colleagues but I am incredibly frustrated by this.

There is actually some advantage for the coherence of the paper if one person does all the actual writing. One option might be for you to ask the PI if you could take on that task, but drop others due to your overall load. Others can contribute notes and outlines, which I hope they are already providing. And they need to provide feedback on what you write.
I've been on a project like that where one person did all the actual writing. He was chosen for his literary ability, though he wasn't the lead author. It worked out well and produced a nice paper.
If you can't live with that solution, I'd just speak privately to the PI suggesting that you are worried that the writing isn't getting done and let them find a solution. You don't need to name names. You can also say that your load is untenable at the moment.


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How to label/cite multiple images from Internet links in a paper?
I am using a few images I found on Wikimedia Commons to vizualize something I explain in my paper. However, I am not sure how to cite and label them. I am using Chicaco (Author, Year) and am unsure how it should look like, should I put the links as foot notes, should I explain where I got them from in the text, should I include links in the label under the images...? Thank you!

Usually the answer to style questions is some variation on look at how they do it where you want to publish. Some journals have style guides. When it includes images the answer usually includes be sensitive to copyright.

Since the figures are not your work, you need to cite them. Wikimedia commons pictures have authors and might even have years if you look at the edit history. You then cite them as you would cite any other web-resource, following your exact style guidelines.
Figure 5: The BGP State Machine [5].
References:
[5] Johannes Rössel, BGP State Machine, Wikimedia Commons,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_Gateway_Protocol#/media/File:BGP_FSM.svg, 2008.


text:
Personal pronouns in papers
I keep reading that we should absolutely avoid personal pronouns in papers, however, a lot of the academic papers I have read on google scholar use "our work", "our approach", "we define", etc. So, what are the rules on personal pronouns?

This is (extremely, I guess) field-dependend.

(And even within a field, it can sometimes depend heavily on personal taste. Some people like to claim that their personal views were "the rule" in this or that field, even if there are numerous examples which show that it actually isn't).

It’s a stupid rule and you can safely ignore it. Your writing may be good, or it may be bad, but it won’t be the use of personal pronouns that makes it so.

@JochenGlueck can you name a discipline in which this rule has any validity?

@DanRomik: For most (all?) subjects, I doubt that there is anything that would qualify as "rule" regarding this (although, as I said, there are sometimes people who confuse their personal opinion with a rule), but some styles of writing are certainly more common in some fields than in others. I remember taking a seminar in business administration when I was a student, where I was told very firmly not to write in first person as this would purportedly indicate that I'm trying to convey my personal opinion. (But I'm not sure how widespread this point of view is in business administration.)

@DanRomik: But maybe the topic is also quite culture depend (as there are, especially in the humanities, several fields where publishing in the local language is more common then publishing in English). I easily found a number of German online comments on the usage of first person pronouns, in particular in singular, Here is an example. According to this, while there is no clear rule, there is (and even more so, was) a widespread believe in some parts of German academia that the pronoun "I" should be avoided.

[continued] In fact, they even discuss a notion which they call "Ich-Verbot", which is German for "prohibition of I" (I term which I had, admittedly, never heard of before today). Comments on the usage of first person plural in German academia are, apparently, a bit more difficult to find (but admittedly, I didn't put too much effort into trying).

@JochenGlueck thanks, I’ll take that as a “no”. The fact that some people believe something has little to do with the question of whether their opinion has validity. Pick the top 10 nonfiction books in the New York Times bestseller list. I’m willing to bet they all use personal pronouns. Avoiding the use of “I” may make sense in certain limited contexts, but “absolutely avoid personal pronouns” is, like I said, a stupid rule.

@DanRomik: Well, I personally agree with you that such a rule would be stupid (and in fact, I did not say that there were such a rule, or that I would support one, so I'm not quite sure what point you're trying to make). But in some fields in some parts of the world there are apparently a significant number of academics who are very skeptical towards first person pronouns (OP said pronouns, but only mentioned examples in first person). This does not constitute a rule, but it is relevant information for the OP who apparently read such advice and is now trying to make sense of the situation.

Related Q&A: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/2945/20058 If you search for "personal pronouns" on this site you will find other related Q&As (not exactly your question, but you may find interesting points).

it's a stupid rule, but I've been criticised by a reviewer for using "we"... but equally, following it leads to ridiculous constructs like "in the opinion of the authors of the present work" to mean "we think"

The main advice here is to read the "guidelines for authors" of the journals you submit to. There are no general rules, but many journals have their own rules.
I think the general idea here is that scientific results and facts should be impersonal, i.e., they should hold regardless of the author, and they should be presented so that this is expressed.
Personally however I think that this can be misleading, and that authors should rather be encouraged to present personal choices honestly as personal choices, which would require personal pronouns. Same for interpretations, and also there can be space for personal opinions in papers, for example regarding what is worthwhile for future research, or what of a battery of outcomes is most important, or what practical consequences this should have. Of course arguments should be given, but I think taking explicit responsibility by writing "I" or "we" would be a good thing. But it may be against journal guidelines.
By the way, in places I find single authors using "we" to avoid writing "I". My interpretation of this is that it implicitly suggests that the reader and everyone else should agree with what the author writes, and I don't like it. The author should take responsibility, and the reader themselves should decide whether they agree. (Of course I'm not claiming that authors who use this style consciously intend to convey this "implicit message"; I'm aware many just do it because somebody told them they should avoid "I", or they see many others doing it.)

+1 for mentioning the guide to authors. Heh. My favorite is when one author of a collab paper steps out and says something like "one of  us..."

It is possible to overdo the "we" usage and result in an arrogant tone. It is possible to refuse to use "we" and result in stilted writing.
My advice, and it is just opinion, I guess, is that you should write clearly to be understood. You can use "we" if you like, or not. You can use passive voice, or not. But if you value some rule over clarity, you are probably doing it wrong.
Einstein: "It is said that E=mc^2."
There are also different sorts of papers. In pure math papers and other highly technical work the phrasing is more likely to be on the "thing itself", so the authors/creators are more in the background. Not a lot of "we" usage, generally. An introduction might include "In section 3, we show...", but not a lot more than that.
In much of the writing I do, however, more in the human aspects of software creation, I tend to use we, even when writing as a sole author. But the overall tone of that writing is to "invite" the reader to become part of the process of discovery. So, the "we" means "you and I", not "me". But clarity must still rule.

See my answer on the use of "we" as sole author... by the way, in mathematical proofs I took from George Spencer-Brown the idea to use imperative: "do this, observe that...", which also "invites" the reader.

I would argue that in some fields, religiously avoiding pronouns in writing is bad writing at best and misleading at worst. Sure, there is a notion that the results should be generalizable and objective, but if it is not a purely theoretical field where anyone could check the proofs if they so wish, the authors also assume both the credit and the responsibility for experimental results. For in natura experiments in particular, details about their conditions are indispensable. One might opt for presenting the results as "X was observed", but avoiding the notion that these results were obtained at a specific place and time could not - and should not - be done. If this impartiality is being removed anyway, why bend over backwards to change everything to passive voice just to avoid these pesky pronouns in writing?
Referencing your own earlier results is a more complex topic. If "our methodology" is plastered all over the text, it raises questions: are authors even knowledgeable about their peers' research and are they faithfully representing the most up-to-date knowledge in the field? On the other hand, references to prior research may be very natural, especially in Materials and Methods: again, mentioning the authors for every other research item listed but your own is very odd.
And finally, there are cases - niche in some fields, ubiquitous in other - where the authors are the only one working on a narrow topic or with specific equipment. Huge collaborations such as those working at LHC would, naturally, lean towards passive voice in writing, small ones would use more pronouns, but this is a stylistic choice more or less mirroring informal speech patterns. "We saw" is a natural way to describe the experiment when it had 4 people working in the lab but a bit weird one when it had hundreds of people involved.


text:
How to cite an image, created from other (non CC) images?
I want to include an image that contains 4-5 graphs from diverse sources next to each other, in order to illustrate their similarities. Since I do not own any of those images I want to include, how do I properly cite them?

Cite them individually. Why do you think it might be otherwise. Also, make sure you aren't violating copyright. Images are different from quoting a few words from a copyrighted text since they cary a lot of information.

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/31003/how-should-i-cite-3-images-that-were-used-to-compose-a-new-image/31006#31006 related

I think you are confusing between two mostly unrelated issues: 1. citation, and 2. the copyright status, licensing, and reusability of an image.
For 1, there is no question that if you include an image from another source in your paper, you should cite the source the image originally appeared in. So you should cite the images in the composite image, probably each of them individually, and also the source of the composite image if you didn’t create it yourself.
For 2, there is the question of whether you even have the right to include those images in your paper in the first place, since they are copyrighted and not licensed for free reuse. For something like reusing a graph from another paper, this probably falls under fair use, but I’d suggest that you look more into this, and consider contacting the copyright holders to ask for their permission to use the images if you are unsure.
In any case, the thing to remember here is that there are two separate potential pitfalls to watch out for: 1. including an image and not citing the source, and 2. including an image when you don’t have permission to. In the context of academic publishing, not including a citation would probably be seen as (by far) the more severe transgression of the two, so that’s the one I personally would be more careful about avoiding.

+1 great answer

If you want to use pictures from external sources, you have to be carefull to do it right. A lot of journals are either Open Access and the images can be used under some form of CC license with the proper attribution, the terms of which can be found on the creative commons website. If the image in question is not CC licensed, you have to make an inquiry with the journal if you are allowed to reproduce the image and under which terms. Some require only proper attribution (they will tell you what kind of attribution they require, it will vary across journals), others will ask for payment (depending on the projected reach of the paper) and you might have to fill out a longish questionnaire to determine how much and if you need to pay. For non-academic image sources, the rules might be different.
So please make sure you get the specific terms for each image you like to reproduce beforehand, and make sure that you cite each source for each image properly and give the necessary attribution (as @Buffy pointed out in the comment)!


text:
Is it worth publishing a book chapter through InTechOpen open-access publishing?
There is already a post on A.SE about the InTechOpen platform, which is currently listed as a predatory open-access journal. That question is 3 years old and since then the platform has changed a lot, for instance a number of highly respected colleagues have published there (in my field in mathematics). Moreover, the only accepted answer in the aforementioned post is a short "no", which does not address any specific concerns.
In light of that, my question is this: Is it worth publishing a book chapter through InTechOpen?
Advantages:

Many prominent researchers in my field have published there (*)
The quality of the articles is high in general, the papers are enjoyable to read and have excellent content (at least in my field)
It is a great opportunity to summarize the current state-of-the-art research in a specific area, knowing that InTechOpen publishes all books open access and you can even find hardcover editions in libraries/bookstores

Disadvantages:

The publishing fee for a single 20-page chapter is $1500, way too much (this is why it's considered predatory)
I receive unsolicited mail from InTechOpen, inviting me to publish there, which is a big red flag for me

However, in light of (*) and the huge visibility that it offers (thousands of views each week), I am considering that it might be a price worth paying.

Please do not ask questions that request updates on closed questions.  If you want a question reopened, you can ask on meta.

The answer to your question is no, because the first two advantages you list are not, in my opinion, true.

@AnonymousPhysicist The truthfulness of a statement has the advantage of not being subject to opinion. If you go on the publisher's webpage you will see that even Nobel Laureates have published articles there.

"Worth it" is a personal judgement. Is spending $1500 on a bicycle "worth it"?

"The publishing fee for a single 20-page chapter is $1500, way too much (this is why it's considered predatory)" That is not enough to consider it predatory! What about Nature charging authors 2000€ just to get the peer review? then the publishing fees are still very high. And open free publishing costs would be 9500€.

Here's a somewhat more recent question that shows a better (IMO) reason to consider InTechOpen predatory than their publication charges: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/138840/17254

@Klangen Three Nobel prize winners publishing a total of four papers is not "many prominent researchers."  Keep in mind many prominent researchers publish more than ten papers per year.  Here's some context.  https://www.natureindex.com/news-blog/journals-publish-most-nobel-prize-winning-research-papers-physics  Further, we do not know if Intechopen published those works with the permission of the Nobel prize winners, or without their permission.

Also, all four examples are quite old.

The usefulness of publishing in a predatory venue depends on which institution you wish to work in the future. If in the future, you wish to work in a highly-rated institution, I would strongly advise against publishing in such predatory venues.
You see, most of the prestigious people that you have seen publishing in these journals are people with established careers who have nothing to lose, or in many cases they did not even know that the journal was predatory. This is not a joke, I know quite a few reputed scholars who got confused and only realized after agreeing to publish that the journal was predatory!
Another reason is that often students do co-authored papers with established professors who then submit to these journals without careful investigation. Because these professors are also often busy, it can happen that the student informs the professor by email about the name of the journal they want to submit, and the professor was too busy to carefully double-check the journal, and says yes to go ahead. I know it seems crazy, but I have seen it happen with my very eyes.
There are other established professors who have chosen these predatory venues because they have some conflict, or a bone to pick with some gatekeeper colleagues at established journals, and they see these venues as an easy way to circumvent the issue.
If you are still in your early career, and you want to apply for well-paying jobs at a well-ranked institution, the mere sight of your CV with a mention of a paper included in a predatory journal might be enough to get you immediately disqualified.
Personally, I would not take the risk of publishing there. But I certainly am not going to judge others for their choices, and I hope everything goes well for you in the end.

Thank you for this reply. Why is it that "the mere sight of your CV with a mention of a paper included in a predatory journal might be enough to get you immediately disqualified"?

There are different reasons, but the two most common ones are the following: (1) high-ranked universities are desperate to stay high in THE rankings, which put a lot of importance in the number of published SSCI/SCI/A&HCI papers. Predatory journals normally fail to be included in Web of Science lists. Univs cannot prevent tenured profs from publishing in predatory venues, but they can shun new applicants for doing so, since these people would not contribute to better rankings. (2) Some profs absolutely despise predatory venues, and it only takes one objection to reject an applicant.

Most professors will not disqualify you for one or even two papers in predatory journals, most are aware these are designed to trick us into submitting there, but this answer is still valid.  Some professor may take a hard line on this and why risk it?


text:
How to get recognition (e.g. in Google Scholar) from all the citations to my website
If you search my website (https://example.com) at Google Scholar, you get 400+ results. There are dozens of papers that mention my website because it shows valuable and concise data about thousands of plant and animal species.
The papers cite my website with the main URL (https://example.com) or some specific URL (https://example.com/item/macaca-silenius).
Can I make my Google Scholar profile show that my website has been mentioned by 400+ papers?
I have already created a profile at Google Scholar with the name of my website and with a verified email at my domain.

Did you consider publishing a scientific paper that describes your website?

Since your goal is larger than a simple web page provided from a leading company abusing its dominant position, I would suggest excluding their product from your question. Because your goal is just to get recognition, not to use a certain product.
Plus, google Scholar does not certify anything. It's just a collection of information available on other publishers sites...

This is probably not possible. Google Scholar doesn't mention anything about citations to web pages on their citations page. Like Louic suggested in the comments, if you want this recognition is could be worthwhile to publish a paper on your data set and try to have people reference that from now on. But that will unfortunately not retroactively fix this. You can show the citation count on your website if you feel so inclined.
Remember that you do already get recognition by people actually citing your website. I do not think many people value citation counts of a website on Google Scholar.

Good answer (+1). One might further add that Google Scholar explicitly mentions that they "provide a simple way for authors to showcase their academic publications" (source). A website does not fall under the usual definition of "academic publication".

@lighthousekeeper elsevier.com is a website, nature.com is a website, mdpi.com is a website. I think it's settled that academic publishing is done almost exclusively through websites these days.

@Andrei obviously elsevier.com is a website for publications, but nobody cites 'elsevier.com' when you cite an article that is published in an Elsevier journal, you cite the specific publication. That's different from what the OP has, where the website is (basically) just a big data set. Here the website is much more the publication.

@Jeroen That's actually not true. The website is not what it's published. The data on the website is published, and I am assuming that OP had some contributions to that data in some way. I don't think that all those citations would not exist, if all those authors would have access to the same data OP colected, but not from a website. The website is most certainly not the publication.

@Andrei - There is a big difference between a big publisher (Elsevier) and OPs website. Nobody would cite 'elsevier.com', but people do cite OPs 'whatever.com' as a website. I did not say that the website is the publication, but it is in nature much more a publication than the website of a publisher. Anyway - this is a technical discussion that doesn't add to the answer so let's not continue to much.

@Andrei But OP wants to have the citations of his websites recognized by GS. Since a website is not an academic publication, it is not in the scope of GS. GS also does not collect citations of elsevier.com.

First of all, you are getting recognition, that's what citations are. There isn't much other recognition that you can get on top of that.
Nevertheless, there are ways to increase the visibility of the recognition you already have. You should create a Google Scholar account with your own name. It wasn't the website that did the work, it was you. Then it would help if you would provide clear instructions on your website as to how should your work be cited. Unfortunately, there isn't a lot you can do to change how others cited you already, but at least you won't have this problem for the future.
Publishing your work in a peer reviewed journal is not necessary to get citations, although it makes it easier by fitting into the norms of academia. Contrary to other suggestions, your work is already published on whatever.com and it doesn't need a republishing on a different website (e.g. nature.com) for it to be considered published.

Andrei, the other answers/comments are not suggesting that the work is not yet published. They are suggesting they are not published in a paper specifically, which would give the opportunity for a Google Scholar citation count.


text:
How good is an LoR based on a correspondence on one's paper?
I am applying for Fall 2018 for Ph.D. Programs in Physics. I came across a paper in my late sophomore year which I found extremely interesting so I wrote a mail to the author expressing my thoughts about his paper which included a slightly new interpretation of one key constant appearing in his paper. He was very glad to read my mail and responded quite enthusiastically--further suggesting that I should send my note to a Journal. I didn't send it to any Journal because I thought it was too unimportant to be separately published.
Then, coincidentally, I met with the guy when he visited my University to deliver a guest-talk, in my early final year. Since I knew he was coming, I had been playing around with the calculations and arguments related to his paper and I found a newer way to derive what he had derived in his paper using fewer axioms. So, I met with the guy and told him about my results. This time also he was very enthusiastic and glad to meet me. He again strongly suggested communicating my results to a Journal.  We then had many discussions over email regarding my new calculations and his suggestions. We recently found an even more simpler proof of the same results and I am in the process of submitting a paper on the same to a Journal. I have also been in contact with the guy regarding several versions of the draft for this paper.
Thus, I thought it would be nice if he writes me a reference letter indicating what he liked about my thinking and arguments, and how important he thinks are my results. Moreover, it would show that I like to explore papers out of my interest and work on them without any academic obligations. But when I wrote to him about it, he told me that he would write me a reference letter if I want him to but he would not be able to write anything quantitatively (to quote, "for example, you were in top 10% of my class or something like that") and thus, he doubts whether the LoR would be really helpful. I think that even a qualitative LoR will do good, thus, I am thinking of asking him to write an LoR anyway.
So, before I do that, I would like to know whether such an LoR would do any good or not? And worse, can it somehow backfire? Also, I would like the answer to consider both the scenario -- this being my fourth LoR and this being one of my three LoRs.

Honestly, the guy sounds like he has a screw loose. If he doesn't understand that his letter about your research potential (that he has seen in action) will actually be more meaningful than generic comments like " you were in top 10% of my class", then I don't know what to say. I wonder if spelling it out for him would help?

@Mad Jack: I was thinking this also. When I found myself in a position to write letters for students (back in the mid to late 1990s and early 2000s; I'm no longer in academics), pretty much everything I read about what makes a good letter is when you can say something specific about what the student has done that makes the student stand out (in a good way). Sometimes I had a really good student who I knew would succeed, but I found it difficult to come up with something specific like this. However, a letter for a student like this pretty much writes itself . . .

Agree that it would make for a very good and interesting letter. Is he very young and early in his career maybe? I've never seen an interesting letter mentioning grades or percentiles, in Europe.

@Mark Actually, on the contrary, he is a very senior Professor--probably an Emeritus one I guess. He even did a Ph.D. in high energy theory from a US Ivy League in his days. So, I am thinking the custom might be different in those days and he might have lost the contact with letters and stuff in recent years

Or worse, I am overestimating the excitement of my work and maybe his enthusiasm included a fraction of formality and he doesn't really think my work is something he could strongly write a letter for and thus, is trying to dodge the proposal. :/

@Dvij Did you work together on the paper and did is he co-author? If so, he should be positive about your work, I'd guess...

@Mark No. He is not a co-author.

From your description, it sounds like this individual has effectively functioned as your research mentor for this project.  A letter he writes for you could certainly be quite valuable as part of your application.  Graduate schools are looking, more than anything else, for the potential to do cutting-edge research as a Ph.D. student and after.
So I would recommend definitely using his letter.  However, keep in mind that this letter will not be able to cover much beyond the quality of your research output.  Your contacts with him have been much more limited than would be typical if you were working with an on-site research supervisor.  Most letters of recommendation submitted through online application management systems require the recommender to give quantitative evaluations of students' skills, relative to some other population of undergraduates.  This professor is saying that he is going to have to select the "don't know" option in multiple categories when he submits his recommendation.
That is not a big deal, but it's not nothing either.  Moreover, this professor is not going to have any way to comment on your classroom performance.  So if you do get a letter about him that points to the high quality of your research, you should make sure that you have at least one other strongly complementary letter that addresses the matters which the first letter cannot.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
Is there any clear evidence that private universities tend to be better than public ones?
I keep hearing from Americans that on average, private universities tend to be better than public ones.
This study by Klafke et al. concludes:

A recurrent problem reported by the students, especially by the public undergraduate, is the disconnect between what is taught and the practical reality of the job market. This can happen because students from private colleges are eyeing the market. If they wanted to enter the academic life, they would have to migrate to the public tuition, where research is encouraged.
Public undergraduates consider some professors lazy, self-centred, and
selfish, as they are very rarely fired. This damages not only the
quality of the learning-teaching process, but their relationship
itself.

On the other hand, this study points in a different direction.
This study compared the efficiency of Italian public and private universities, and found that private ones are more efficient.
Here's one of the results:
table
Despite the fact that in Italy (like in Europe and East Asia) the best universities are public, whereas America has both private and public top universities.
Is there any other metric we could use for comparison? What do you think?

"disconnect between what is taught and the practical reality of the job market" suggests a disconnect between what some students think is the purpose of a university degree and what some faculty think is the purpose of a university degree. Many of the latter might say that universities are not trade schools and are not solely or even primarily about preparation for work or career.

@ToddWilcox Agreed. I would add that don't think this disconnect is the fault of the students. When I was in growing up, I was repeatedly told by teachers and school counselors how important it was that I get a college degree so I could get a good job that paid well. No one ever mentioned that I should go to university so I could get a liberal education and be an educated citizen in society. So I don't think we can blame students for coming into university expecting to prepare for a career.

Note: The Klafke paper is in the context of Brazil. To my USA eyes, the abstract quoted here was quasi-incoherent. While Brazil is in Latin America, referencing "Americans" at the start of the question is a bit of unintended misdirection --  conventionally "Americans" refers to people from the USA (the one country with "America" in the name).

I do not think it is possible to answer the question in the generality that it is asked, since the answer will depend a lot on the situation in a given country. E.g. in Germany most serious degrees come from public universities, because they are well-founded enough and people do not have to pay for attending courses.

The problem here is that you are viewing "better" is a single-dimensional metric, but then shift the goal posts even in your question. Initially, you define "better" as in "perceived job market value for graduates", but when you say "the best universities are public" you probably, at least implicitly, mean "they are most famous for their research contributions".

Define "better"...

@ToddWilcox "Many of the latter might say that universities are not trade schools and are not solely or even primarily about preparation for work or career."  Since 1944,  Universities have been trade schools.  Why?  Because PEOPLE NEED JOBS  Delusional academics have be pretending it's 1823 (when only the children of the rich could afford to be academics) ever since.

"On average" deeply ignores (1) how horrible a statistical metric that "average" is, (2) that there are tiers of state universities, (3) there are a LOT of state universities in the US, and (4) that private universities can be anything from Harvard to Stanford to Bob Jones University to Naropa University.

@RonJohn While I agree that faculty and staff at universities should not be 100% academic about university education, I also note that in the 25 years since I graduated from a university, I've hardly used any of what I was taught there directly. Put a different way, employers often prefer candidates who have a college degree even when that degree has little or nothing to do with the job they are hiring for. So needing a degree to get a job is not exactly the same as needing applicable preparation and knowledge from that degree.

@ToddWilcox you're right, but also wrong. It's good that I took a Shakespeare class as my only Junior level Liberal Arts elective (it was so much more enlightening that reading it in HS).  And I've never used any of the Calculus, Differential Equations or Numerical Methods I learned as a Math major.  But all that math, combined with the courses I took in Computer Science, have been instrumental in my career as a programmer and now system administrator.  My first hire wanted experience in what I learned as a STEM major.  They would not have hired an English or Hummanities major.

@RonJohn you are probably ignoring that Naropa University provides you a secure job as well as a high income. I mean, buddhist monks become rich even in a country as poor as Thailand https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-40678511 you can imagine how rich they are in a country like the US, where rich californian are eager to embrace them.
So, what is your point with Naropa University? It is a great trade school, although a trade school different from what you would expect, with the alumni and their net worth is in the same league as Stanford Engineering

@EarlGrey Napola is different, not bad.

When was the last time a university went bankrupt? Unfortunately the education market has too much government intervention so even "private" institutions are effectively government enterprises. See: https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/93668/can-a-university-continue-with-their-affirmative-action-program-by-rejecting-all

Americans say many things ... https://www.theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation-where-this-r-1819576527 "‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens"

Different strokes for different folks. It depends on what you mean by "better". Different students have different desires and the US provides a wide range of possibilities. This answer applies to the US, only so far as I know.
Most public research universities are very good. Many private universities are very good. But they are different. The research possibilities are probably better, in general, at public universities, but the undergraduate classes tend to be very large with not a lot of contact with professors (more with TAs). Private universities tend to have smaller classes, maybe 30 or so, with more contact and personal attention possible.
At any university, the education is what you make of it. Yes, you can get a wonderful undergraduate education at Yale, but not everyone does. There are some very foolish US politicians who spew garbage but have degrees from Ivy League universities. It has been said (apocryphal, perhaps) that there is no one dumber than a C student from Yale. And, BTW, The Ivy League is an athletic conference.
The excellent private research universities are often old and have "deep pockets" provided in part by contributions from wealthy alumni over the many many years. They can afford to hire great faculty, and often do. And, due their age, a reputation can build on past accomplishments. But public universities have the backing of state taxpayers who, at least in the more enlightened states, value an educated populace - for many reasons.
At public research universities, in the final year or two, students have more opportunity for close contact with a research focused faculty member. This can be important for some, but not all, students.
My undergraduate years were at a very good private place that, at the time, had only about 2000 students. Classes were small. Faculty was focused on teaching. I never thought a lot about research in those years so it didn't matter to me that my professors weren't primarily researchers.
My graduate years were at good public universities where I was a TA. Classes were large and I, as a TA, handled most of the student contact, rather than the professor. Graduate classes, however, were small.
The fact that some might consider faculty at a public to be "lazy, etc." doesn't make it true. They are busy, but with research, not with student contact, for the most part.
Note, however, that the US also has a lot of smaller public universities that value teaching over research. The university systems in both New York and Minnesota, for example, have smaller teaching focused colleges, much like the typical private university. Costs are a bit less (for residents) than private places.
I live in a town with a public teaching-focused university. My neighbor told me that the expectations for faculty advancement there depended on contributions to teaching, research, and service at a 60/30/10 ratio IIRC (or close to that). Reverse the first two numbers, more or less, for a research university.
The US has thousands of colleges and universities. They range in quality from terrible to excellent.

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+1 for "depends on what you mean by better", and once you've said that the rest of the answer is superfluous.

I keep hearing from Americans that on average, private universities tend to better than public.

I am surprised to hear this. Rather than judging the assertion itself, it may be helpful to understand the likely causes of the assertion:

The most famous, very top undergraduate programs are indeed private. For example: the entire Ivy League (which includes Harvard, Yale, Princeton), MIT, CalTech, Stanford. Of the public schools, only Berkeley regularly appears in the top 10.
At the secondary level (high school), private schools are widely considered better (in reality, this is certainly true in some areas, dubious in others).

Given these two things, it is easy to assume that private is better than public as a general rule. But it is hard to make general statements. Berkeley (public) is in an entirely different class than Hillsdale College (private). To do an apples-to-apples comparison, you have to control for many different variables. It's probably more productive to consider your personal options and goals rather than trying to get a general answer.

Field dependent, of course. Michigan and Wisconsin have always beet "tops" in math, UIUC in CS. Etc Etc Etc

Absolutely. But people who know that Michigan is tops in math probably aren't making silly assertions like "private is better than public."

These days you will find that the "top" state universities get an amazingly small amount of funding from the state itself. Across the entire UC system (not just Berkeley), state "General Funds" accounts for about 10% of the total budget, less than tuition.

I think the ancient private universities, with special government given land rights, endowment funds approaching the GDP of small nations, and histories longer than the majority of democracies on the planet are a bit of a different breed than most "private" institutions.  They are private in that they are not beholden to the state they reside in, but they act a lot more like a pseudo-governmental NGO than a Corporation.

It's also important to note that almost all "private" institutions are unfortunately dependent on various government handouts and are thus not truly "private". See: https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/93668/can-a-university-continue-with-their-affirmative-action-program-by-rejecting-all.

For that type of analysis, one should probably group universities into three categories, rather than two:

Public universities.
Private not-for-profit universities.
Private for-profit universities.

I would strongly advocate that the results for private not-for-profit and for-profit organizations would differ a lot for many reasonable "efficiency metrics" (maybe relevant).
Regarding metrics themselves. I believe that there cannot be a universal approach. And some aspects of university "effectiveness" are more quantifiable than others, and it is hard to put the weights on different contributing factors (like what is more important: average salary of graduates after 2 years/10 years or number of papers published or satisfaction of students measured by surveys).
There are multiple schools of thought on how to measure it (and whether to measure it at all), and I would start with "Performance measurement in universities" by J. Higgins, following the references of this paper and other papers that cite it. Ultimately, in my opinion, the value of finding a perfect metric is essentially flawed due to Goodhart's law:

Every measure which becomes a target becomes a bad measure.

...but that does not mean that we should not try to evaluate and measure things, constantly changing the methodology and goals (while still retaining as much raw data as possible).

Pedigree matters too. At least in India, if you are from an IIT or any top-tier university, you get paid three times more than anyone else from any other university, even though they are doing the same job.

Here's the situation in my contry (Mexico); a lot of people brag when their children (aged from 6 to 15 years old) attend a private school instead of a public one, arguing that private education is of higher quality, that they teach English and other language, and that kids on the public system are "poor and nacos" (yes, it is a shameful, racist, but sadly widespread belief), but we all know that studying in a private college is way worst than attending a public one. Even the kids from private institutions take the admission exams to attend a public college (the spaces available to study there are limited, so usually a high percentage of students fail to find a place). The problem with private colleges is that their fees are ridiculously high, and the courses they give are a joke compared to the ones offered by public ones (see for example the weird curriculum of a data science bachelor's offered by Tec de Monterrey, the most expensive Mexican college. They don't even have calculus nor probability courses. Contrast it with the curriculum offered by UNAM). You can check out this ranking of universities in Mexico; as you can see, most of them are "autonomas" (that usually mean they are public). So, in general, a private college is the second, less attractive option.
Talking about how valuable is the degree obtained to get a job in real life, of course the graduates from the expensive places (like Tec de Monterrey) have it easier to get the administrative/managerial job posts (remember the nasty "poor and naco" stigma), but they are generally not well prepared for jobs relating to health sciences or STEM (indeed, you can see that private colleges focus on careers like law, business administration or accounting, it is rare to see careers like chemistry or physics).
Personally, I attended public schools all my life, I can't deny it has a lot of deficiencies, but I can also say that my peers that were before in a private place were in general slower for learning stuff by themselves, wanted the exams to be an exact copy of the homework, prioritized memorizing over understanding, and think that the teacher/professor is one of their daddy's employees, so they tend to be dismissive and insolent.

The very final point — treating teachers as employees — may be rather a feature of class.  I've experienced the same in a public secondary school in The Netherlands that happened to be a school where much of the "elite" sent their kids.

It's probably because the Mexican elites just send their kids to study in the US, so the local private colleges are of poor quality.


text:
How to deal with bad undergrad researchers
I am a grad student in the life sciences. I have to mentor several undergrad students. One student in particular is just so bad and is always getting confused with protocols. He can't follow a protocol from start to finish without getting help from me or others, even if he has done it multiple times. I'm having to spend several hours babysitting him when he has to do simple procedures, even after nine months in the lab. I've often had to stay behind until 8 p.m. to catch up on my own work. He is utterly dependent on me, to the point where I feel suffocated.
I'm fed up. What can I do?

Did you talk to the head of the lab about this situation?

No, I haven't. I didn't want to let them know yet since they'll be the ones writing recommendation letters.

I think it is a mistake and you may have to share part of the blame once the head learns about an ongoing problem in the lab and the fact that you did not want them to find out about it.

"they will be the one writing the recommendation letters" Are you worried for your own rec letter or for the student?
Do not take thing personally, do not worry too much for the student (the world is full of people not able to conduct themselves proper experiments, but there is a place and a need for them as well, even when the degree is "experimental xyz"), have an honest talk with the student, do not give (or take) blame, just present the facts, the student is a young adult, up to them to decide how to proceed.

@Miracle if you werent babysitting him, would he fail the lab course or destroy equipment? Because if it is the former, isn't that his own responisibility?

I guess despite the inconvenience, I didn't want to get him in "trouble" which is why i haven't gone to my PI, but I see I will have to. He is working on a part of my project. So its not a course so to speak. I would have been done months ago, but the point is for them to gain research experience.

"What can I do?" apply the Golden rule and think how you would want to be treated if the roles were reversed.

We all forget too quickly how it felt when we didn't know how to work in the lab. Others treated us like stupid, when just had not yet learned the skills. If you become a professor, you will end up spending a big part of your life just training people who don't know how to do things. And the older and more experienced you get, the harder it becomes to remember how it feels to be on that first step. So yes, you are training the other person, but you also need to train yourself in the art of training others.
With that out of the way: nine months is an awful amount of time, and what you are supposed to do is training not babysitting. Either the student develops independence, or they find someone at a lower level who can supervise them, for example, a more experienced undergraduate. By rejecting them from your supervision, you are not condemning them to lower-level status or ruining their career, but telling them that there are skills they need to learn before they can work under the supervision of a graduate student.
How did you end up with this student? Did you ask for undergrads to help you, and you hired this one? Then you can also fire them. Did your advisor assign this person to you, as part of research money the advisor is getting? Then talk to your advisor about reassigning the student, perhaps to a two-undergraduate team where this student reports to an undergraduate, an that second undergraduate then reports to you (or another grad student.)

My advisor assigned him. I wanted to try other alternatives before bringing it to my PI.

On top of what others have said, remember that one of the best ways people learn is by being made to do it themselves. There's no problem with telling someone to figure it out on their own after you've given them appropriate scaffolding. In fact, you might be making them codependent if you make yourself too available.
Tell the student you're leaving at 5:00 PM (or whatever is appropriate for you) and they need to have it done by then. Or if this is the kind of lab where you can leave the undergrads on their own, tell them you're going home and they need to finish themselves. Even if you have to be in the lab, tell them you're doing your own work and unavailable to help them that day. Even if they break stuff and waste lab supplies, they're also wasting money by taking up your time as a grad student or faculty (and arguably a lot more, because salary is not cheap).
Our rule of thumb is that undergrads should work on a problem for 10-20 hours before bothering the grad students about it. Grad students should work on a problem for even longer before bothering their advisor about it.
If they don't get anything done because they spend a week mastering simple procedures... well... that's undergrad research for you.

undergrads should work on a problem for 10-20 hours before bothering the grad students about it. Grad students should work on a problem for even longer before bothering their advisor about it. This is solid advice.

Undergrads are often under-committed and overloaded with coursework. They want to experience research due to an idealized notion of what it is and are then overwhelmed by what is actually being asked of them.
It’s perhaps not too late to have a meeting where you manage expectations. How many hours/week are they devoting to the project? What are they good at? What can they expect from you in terms of mentoring? It’s useful to have a written “contract” (could be just an email summary). Some labs even have students sign those, to lend them more weight, though I personally don’t. Mentoring plans are super important in my opinion.
If you both see that you have widely disparate opinions about your work relationship, you should definitely contact your PI and let them know.

David mentioned setting boundaries, I want to add that setting expectations is also important.
I often have a talk with them beforehand letting them know how I will be annoyingly micro managing the first few times I teach the protocol. I expect detailed notes, then I will shadow the next few times also expect annoying nagging. Then I expect the student come to me with questions, and don't be afraid to let them fail.