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Is attending conferences while teaching considered an absence?
Is attending conferences considered an absence? If not, then is there a limit on how many conferences a faculty can attend?!

Are you asking this as a student or as a teacher. Faculty usually do not have "absent days". Sometimes we get vacation and sick days, but attending a conference would not usually fall into either of those categories.

If I attend a conference at a time when I have classes to teach, then I would be expected to arrange for someone else to teach the classes in my place (unless a class is small enough that I can reschedule the missed class meetings).  Ordinarily, the "someone else" would be a colleague for whom I would substitute some time when (s)he is at a conference or otherwise unable to teach a class.

@StrongBad as a teacher.

At every institution I have worked at (in the U.S.), I have to get a "travel authorization" signed by the department chair before I travel. Presumably, if I tried to travel too much, the chair would start to refuse to give me authorization. The signed authorization shows that I am not absent from work and that I am in fact on university business while I am traveling.

While I have never experienced a department that defined "absent days", if your department regulates these things, you need to ask you department chair what the policy is.
Departments that I am familiar with expect you to either teach when you are supposed to, arrange someone to cover the teaching, or rearrange the session. In some situations an out of class activity wold be acceptable and in rare cases outright canceling of the class. One should try and keep these to a minimum, but to the extent that the students are not complaining, you can probably get away with it.
I have never seen a department which limits the number of conferences, but if you are rarely around, it will probably come back to bite you. In general, if you are worried about these things, you should ask a senior colleague.

Any educational institution would be pleased to have publications with its affiliation. This goes for conferences too. As long as you are able to compensate your classes, your institution would be able to provide you with an OD (on-duty) leave that considers you present while you can be absent in order to attend your conference. The remaining procedures depends on the regulations imposed by your institution.

This advice strikes me as strange somehow. Can you say more about the experience it is based on? Have you served as instructor of record for many courses? What sort of institutions are you familiar with?

"an OD (on-duty) leave that considers you present while you can be absent" - is this a convoluted way of saying that you are on a business trip?


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How can I overcome the setbacks of a negligent supervisor after earning a PhD degree?
I'm legitimately looking for advice and to try to take control of my life and my job prospects post-graduation, but also feel that I can't portray the challenge of my situation honestly without recognizing that my supervisor really does carry quite a lot of blame here.
If it helps, she is pretty universally recognized as terrible at her job at this point: Everyone I have ever known who has worked with her has had challenges, with several of her former students straight up refusing to work with her ever again, and the chair of my department disclosed to me when I spoke to him about my concerns that she received a zero on her last performance evaluation.
Anyway, I am currently nearing the end of my PhD degree (criminology) and am worried about how a poor history of publishing and working with my supervisor will reflect on me when I look for work after completion.
In short, I have had a very, very challenging time working with my supervisor, who has been extremely negligent throughout the course of my degree and to an extent that I didn't fully grasp the scope of until it was too late for me to change supervisors.
Among other ways in which she's impacted my degree progress, she spent years promising me a data set that she never delivered on (forcing me to completely redesign my study five years into my degree) and waited 18 months on signing paperwork that would see me paid for a policy report I wrote with her, only for that report to never be published.
In nearly every meeting I have tried to have with her, she has made clear to me that she is too overworked and/or in too much emotional distress (she is currently going through a nasty divorce) to have time for me right now, and can I please check in with her later. I won't go on - but it's been quite a lot of this, for several years now.
My department is aware of these issues with my supervisor, but they haven't been able (or, probably, willing) to do much to help me, beyond assisting me in restructuring my committee. I have managed to restructure my research to the point where completing my degree finally feels like a possibility, although my dissertation is pretty bad.
What I am concerned about now is the extent to which my poor experience with my supervisor will impact me while I'm looking for work. I don't have a lot to show for the work I've done with her, as she did not take the necessary steps to see many of our projects through to completion. Combined with the fact that I'll be producing a poor dissertation I don't feel confident publishing, I am worried that this entire experience will give me a fairly worthless PhD degree that I can't sufficiently back up with the skills and experience that I should have earned while in my graduate program.
The truth is, though - I do actually feel that I am a very competent researcher and teacher. I have a lot of experience working independently and "figuring things out on my own" (grant writing, web design, reference management software, statistics software, etc.) due to her negligence. I just worry about not having the output to back any of my claims to be good at these things up when I'm interviewing.
Is it at all acceptable to bring up a bad relationship with a supervisor in a job interview? How much can I expect this to reasonably impact me while job searching, and What are the best ways to compensate for this and sell myself for my abilities? I'm prioritizing work in industry (research and policy-related) over academia, if that changes any answers at all (this experience has burnt me out too much).

Can you get reference letters from people who would able to explain the situation? That way the potential job is made aware of the situation by someone with less at stake. It could even be framed showing your resilience to a difficult situation.

Are you planning to stay in academia or move to the industry?

Blaming others is rarely a positive strategy, and it is usually not a good idea for student to criticize their supervisor, or for that matter for supervisors to criticize their students.
The general opinion (at least in physics academia) is that good people find a way to do good work.  Possibly the work is not as well received, or as prolific at it could have been, but as a PhD graduate you’re supposed to have demonstrated some research independence.  Thus I would stay away from pointing fingers, and instead focus on the quality of your work, how you could improve or expand it if you had greater access to data or resources, and how other future projects that could be realized in a different (and presumably better) environment.

If this is advice for a job interview, then I think it is good. But if it is advice for how to cope mentally, or what mindset to adopt, then I don't think it is good. From what OP wrote, it sounds like the supervisor genuinely was very difficult to work with. OP should not blame him or herself! "Good people find a way to do good work" probably has some truth, but it sometimes happens that the supervisor is so bad that anyone would struggle.

@toby544 not denying that some will struggle, simply pointing out that bringing up a bad relationship is rarely a good path when one should focus on acquired skills and highlight how past work is good.

"good people will always find a way" seems a bit of a selection bias. The good ones who found a way, the others didn't continue and are lost somewhere. Also, I don't see anything fundamentally wrong in criticism, be it of the supervisor or of the student. But I agree with the point that pointing fingers won't get you anywhere!

@Mayou36 this is a really interesting comment  It is true there are (rare in my experience) situations where the burden of a poor supervisor will lead to a situation from which the student cannot recover.  I still think this is very rare: most people will struggle at some point in their PhD, irrespective of the relation with the supervisor, but PhDs are sufficiently long-term projects to allows students to still do "good work": even the OP is convinced of that much in their case.  Bringing up a bad relationship remains unhelpful IMO: better look ahead and see how things can improve.

This is pretty much the just-world fallacy: 'If you're good enough, things will magically work out for you somehow; and if they don't, then you're not good enough.'

@anomaly it does not mean what you suggest.  Not all good candidates will find an academic position: there aren't enough positions for that.   However, candidates who do find positions are good, and those who have done no good work will generally not find positions.  In particular, I do not know of any example of a candidate who have gotten a position by suggesting they did not have suitable supervision.  The OP believe they did good work, and that's the starting point, not blaming your supervisor.

When you go for a job interview, they don't really care about your past achievements. They are really trying to judge what you are capable of achieving in the future.
You will be asked about previous work, but your results are less important than demonstrating the skills that will be necessary for the job. They will probably prefer to hear that you had to work independently, rather than being spoon-feed by a supervisor.
An interviewer may ask about how you dealt with problems. They want to hear that you showed initiative and perseverance, and didn't just give up or wait for someone else to solve it. You can also talk about what you should have done, with the benefit of hindsight.
You may also be asked questions that sound like direct criticism. If so, they do want to hear the reasons why, but they also want to discover how you handle criticism. Don't be defensive and blame everything on other people, talk about what you've learnt and what you'd do differently next time.
With a bit of preparation, you should be able to portray yourself as a stronger candidate because of your experience of adversity.

+100 very important points.

"When you go for a job interview, they don't really care about your past achievements. They are really trying to judge what you are capable of achieving in the future."  It's easy to say than done, so most HR consider past achievements and extrapolate to the future.

Your best bet, when moving from academia to industry, is to demonstrate transferable skills. No one (outside of academia) really gives a toss about how many publications have your name on it.
Whining about your supervisor won't impress any recruiters (no matter how justified your grievances may well be!). Everyone has to deal with rubbish bosses/colleagues from time to time.
What you need to do is (without sounding bitter/nasty) highlight how you managed to deal with a challenging situation: how you developed greater autonomy, how you adapted your strategy to changing circumstances, how you had to think out of the box to find extra resources, etc.
Make sure you play the ball, not the player. Be factual about the challenges you faced, without rubbishing your supervisor as a person. Be magnanimous, and focus on the positives, e.g. how you did manage to finish your PhD in the end.
Good luck, and don't look back. Focus on where you want to go from where you are.

To put it short, removing the elephant in the room, you think you are a good researcher and teacher, you learned all the tools to do research, but your research is not good enough?
You are on very solid ground, unfortunately the project(s) you were following did not go anywhere. But you can always present proof of the work done, you can say (and write in your CV) that you wrote that policy report: it is not published, but clearly it is under final internal review just before submission, or at least this is the stage you left it.
But there is one thing that you can work on, and it transpires from your question, you are worried somehow to be judged. Unfortunately, this is a reflection of your feelings towards your advisor, where you think that there is a lot to be judged (and acording to the background you describe you are right, unfortunately) but stop it from dominating your thought.
For example, you say you do not feel confident about publishing your results. Clearly, low-impact results will not land you a publication in an high-impact journal, but the results are only 10% of science. 90% of science is how you got to the results, and that's where you can prove yourself.
Think about this: if the research is good/interesting, it will be read independently from your marketing or the evaluation on your person (horrible advisors and horrible academic got plenty of citations ... independently from their moral status). If your publication is "bad"/uninteresting, it will not be read. The peer reviewer will not judge you, future reader of the published publication will not judge you. The publication will be simply ignored.
But you can still prove you published some research, and you can prove you did all you could do to make it correctly.

And almost all research is barely read anyway.

@curiousdannii You are an optimist :D !

As an opening observation, while it is a great shame to have had a poor experience with your supervisor, and the lack of progress that this entails, at the end of the day, it is only 3-5 years of your life and career, and you can certainly recover from that.  So I would start by looking at this as a situation where you had a setback, but that is just a small part of what is hopefully a long career.
As to how to approach this in a job interview, you are right to seek assistance because it is something that is fraught with danger.  On the one hand, it is certainly acceptable to disclose setbacks and difficulties that you have overcome.  However, your interview panel will not be in a position to assess whether your diagnosis of your former supervisor is accurate, so it raises the "red flag" of a person who assigns blame to their previous supervisor in circumstances where it is unclear whether that blame is warranted.  Irrespective of whether you decide to raise this issue, in the circumstances you have outlined, I would strongly recommend that you seek a written reference from the chair of your department, particularly since this person can attest to the fact that your supervisor did not assist you properly during your candidature.  You should also consider listing the chair as a reference in your application.  This will allow the interview panel to hear about your circumstances from a senior academic in your field, who can attest to the difficulties you have overcome.
Furthermore, if you choose to raise this issue at all, I would refrain from giving any long or detailed explanation of the circumstances.  Even your exposition in this question is TL;DR --- most people will gloss over it and just understand that you had difficulties with your supervisor.  An interview panel will not be able to assess the merits of your viewpoint, so you are better off just saying in general terms that you had some delays and difficulties in your PhD candidature and you exhibited the perseverance to overcome them (and get the chair of your department to act as a reference to back this up).  In terms of compensating for this, it generally helps if you are able to exhibit a sympathetic view of your supervisor, notwithstanding your difficulties.  This might entail recognition of the difficulties and competing priorities that your supervisor was acting under, and showing an understanding that you were just one of many job-tasks that your supervisor had to deal with.  If you can demonstrate that you are sympathetic and thankful to your supervisor, notwithstanding her deficiencies, it will go a long way towards showing that you are the kind of person who can understand the challenges that your managers will face in assisting you during your career, in circumstances where they have a number of roles and tasks.
Finally, notwithstanding that you had a bad time with your supervisor, I recommend that you try to adopt a gracious and positive attitude towards her for whatever work she undertook in supervising you.  Professional academic  jobs can be difficult, and not everyone is good at their job, but people generally try their best.  Thank your supervisor for the time she devoted to your candidature even if she made a mess of it.  If she is receiving bad performance reviews (as you say in your question) then she is probably under a lot of stress, and some thanks for her effort (even if the results were poor) may go a long way to helping her cope with difficulties in her career.  And who knows, you might be a struggling academic yourself one day, and you might also want that kind of charitable attitude from your own students!

"Even your exposition in this question is TL;DR --- most people will gloss over it and just understand that you had difficulties with your supervisor." I don't agree at all. I thought the exposition in the question was clear and not too long, and even a person skim-reading it would realize that the supervisor did not do his or her job properly.

I don't think the person reading it will necessarily conclude this, since they know they are only reading one side of the story.  In such cases people tend to take these stories with a grain of salt, since they know they are not also hearing the description/explanation on the other side.

I was talking about this particular case, not such cases in general

The strategy for getting back on track will depend on whether you are going for a job in industry or academia. You say at the end:

I'm prioritizing work in industry (research and policy-related) over academia, if that changes any answers at all (this experience has burnt me out too much).

This implies to me that your goal was academia, but you are now thinking about industry mostly because of this bad experience. You should at least try to look for academic jobs, and not assume that you wouldn't be competitive. This also probably varies from field to field, but I would not necessarily assume that industry is a better place to be if you are feeling burned out! If you're feeling burned out, concentrate on getting yourself in a good place to apply for jobs, regardless of which path you take.
The best thing you can do for any job is document your experience and accomplishments. If you have experience teaching, make sure to put together a teaching portfolio for possible academic applications. Line up references. If your chair or department helped restructure your committee, make sure that you get letters of recommendation from your other committee members. If you learned particular methods make sure that you can talk about them intelligently and talk about how you applied them in your dissertation. This is concrete evidence of your capability. I didn't publish a chapter from my dissertation until a couple of years after completing my PhD, but I was still able to talk about the methods and research in job interviews.
Applying to Industry Jobs
Getting back on track for an industry job probably will not be as difficult as you think. In most industries, having the credential and strong references is the most important thing. (Obviously, the credential implies specific knowledge and training.) Having publications is probably helpful, but you can also say (and intend) to prepare chapters for publication.
Applying to Academic Jobs
If you intend to apply for academic jobs, there are still a few things you can do.

Even if you have no publications yet, that doesn't mean you never will. Start trying to turn your dissertation into journal articles. Put these anticipated articles on your CV as "in preparation".
You say you have gotten good at grant writing. Does this mean you have grant awards? This goes on your CV. A history of grant awards is well-regarded.
You have experience teaching. Apply to teaching positions. You will have the resources of a university, can continue to network, and work on getting new research underway while you work on #1 (getting your old research in publishable form).
As already mentioned, get letters of recommendation from your committee members other than the problematic supervisor.

Good luck!

I work in industry. Our recruiters often instruct candidates to use the STAR approach to answer behavior questions. For example:

Situation: Did research on criminology. Did not get the promised dataset.
Task: analyze Hannibal Lecter's behavior.
Action: collected different data to unblock yourself; met Hannibal in prison.
Result: publish papers.

Just state facts, don't blame anyone.

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Maximizing chances of answer when contacting authors
I plan to perform a meta-analysis for which I will need to contact some authors (not professors) because their articles do not mention the outcomes relevant to my study, although they most probably have measured them.
I am very new to this field and I would like to know which way of contacting them I should privilege, to ensure the best chances that they will share the relevant data with me. Is a simple, polite message sent by mail enough or are there other tips that would help me achieve this goal? Are there namely other ways than an email?
I am not asking for general advice about how to address an academic. Rather, I'd like to know if there are some specific tips that could be useful in the particular situation when you want to get data from an author. For example, if the author has a Researchgate account, is it better (in terms of answer chances) to use RG messaging system, or to send a mail ?

Write very clearly, make it as easy as possible for them to deal with, and maybe give them a date by which you need the information (something like 4 weeks in the future)

@toby544, that looks a lot like an answer.

And undertake to acknowledge them appropriately in your work.

To contact a researcher you should use their public facing address. Check on their university or research institute web site and see what method they have listed to contact them. This is the method they have advertised so it's probably the best method, especially for a first attempt.
After that, use good "business communication." Polite but not cloyingly so. Provide a brief explanation of what you want, that you are requesting data, who you are, and what you plan to do with the information. Include specifics as you can. Don't "bury the lead" meaning don't force them to read through a lot of text to find the purpose of your email.

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Self plagarism with co-authors
I think we can all agree that if I am presenting work that is intended to be new ideas and I present a previously published result of which I am the sole author, that this is self-plagiarism. The clearest example of this is reusing an already published result in a journal article without attribution.
If that already published result is in a co-authored work, is it still self-plagiarism, or does it somehow make it worse?

Job talks are intended to be new ideas?

I think presenting this question from the position of the "at worst" scenario makes this question a bit unclear or misleading. I mean, also, on your commute to work you "at worst" commit murder, but that doesn't seem to be the best way to judge the ethics of the situation or compare it to another. Someone's power point failing to mention their own paper for a slide figure is maybe self-plagiarism by a strict definition but probably the least impactful type. The Q&A that motivated this one is about someone passing off work as their sole work, which isn't really related to that sort of mistake.

@AzorAhai I am confused (and I think I have confused you). Where did I say job talks are new ideas, because that is not what I meant?

@BryanKrause does the edit make it better?

You talked about a job talk, then said "[I]f I am presenting work that is intended to be new ideas...."

@AzorAhai got it. I can see the jump now. I was trying to get away from the confusing job talk part and focus on the self-plagiarism of co-author issue.

Yes I think it's more clear, but I'll be quite puzzled if anyone answers anything but "yes" and I'm a bit confused why you've asked the question because I think with these edits it makes it clear that you are talking about a different circumstance than the possibly more questionable one addressed in the other Q&A.

This question falls into the far too common trap of worrying about the label "(self-)plagiarism" instead of the actual issue: Is it ethical to present your own previous joint work without explicitly acknowledging your coauthors?  (In my opinion, the answer is "Obviously not.")

@JeffE In other words, yes, it's worse?

@sgf In other words, it's bad.  Whether it deserves the label "plagiarism" is irrelevant.  Whether it's "better" or "worse" than other violations of scholarly ethics—copying a third party's text verbatim without attribution, faking experimental data, using human subjects without informed consent, submitting a paper without the consent of all authors, gift authorship, and so on—is a fun discussion to be had over beer, but also basically irrelevant.

The essence of plagiarism, self or otherwise, is an intention to mislead by passing something off as your original work when it is not. You can never be guilty of self-plagiarism if you say/write something along the lines "As I [and my colleagues] showed/claimed in ...".  If you repeat as an original comment something that is not original, it is irrelevant that you wrote its true original form with the collaboration of others.
That said, I am beginning to question the premise of this question. What kind of 'job talk' is that demands wholly new material never before published? That means material never before subjected to peer review - surely of lesser quality than peer-reviewed published stuff? And, anyhow, it is surely a practical impossibility to cite full references in a talk: your audience would either sleep or find something of more interest on their phones.

I apparently have confused people. I believe job talks are not new material and I don't see what I wrote that has confused people.


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Dissertation formatting: should foreign words and Latin abbreviations be italicized?
In English language non-fiction books, it used to be common that foreign words were italicized, including abbreviated Latin words and phrases: op. cit., et al., ceteris paribus, ex post, and so on.  In books published in the last 20 years, I notice that this convention is less common and, instead, most books use plain text for foreign words.
Question: Should foreign words be italicized in a dissertation (field: Computational Social Science)?  Can you think of a good reason for not doing it?
In my opinion, using italics for these is both helpful to readers and appropriate for a dissertation.  I'm inclined to adopt this convention.  Since I'm using LaTeX, it is easy for me to do, so there is no issue of extra work or inconsistency.
Our university formatting requirements for dissertations are silent on this and many other detailed issues.  My adviser has no opinion, other than that he wants 100% consistency.

Context: I am already going above and beyond the minimal dissertation formatting requirements.  All my cross-references are active hyperlinks.  I have a full glossary. I have customized URL formatting so that the are visually nice and don't distract from surrounding text (e.g., in bibliography).  In this context, italicizing foreign words is a very small matter.  I'm posting a question here because I'm genuinely curious about what other people do and their opinion of whether this formatting convention adds value to any reader, not just my committee.

What have your recent predecessors in the department done? What do your examiners do?

As far as I know, no recent dissertations in our department have italicized foreign words. My committee members publish in different fields and venues, and adopt the formatting rules of those venues. In other words, they have no position on this one way or the other.  They may not even care.

In that case, I'd be inclined to do what recent predecessors have done, and leave them roman.

Obviously, since your dissertation guide is silent about those things, the publication style you're using should govern that. I remember reading specific guidelines on the very same issue in the APA Publication Style guide / manual (which is likely what you're using, if I can guess).

Since you're using Latex you can mark the foreign words using some sort of a macro and decide if you want to italicize them or not later in one go. As a traditionalist I prefer to do, but you may find that actually it is more pleasing on the eye not to do so, particularly if you are using a type where the italics are very strongly distinct from the Roman. As an aside I had a physics lecturer once who ardently maintained not only the acute in the word "régime" but also the circumflex in the word "rôle"! This underscores that deciding which word is really a foreign one is not so easy in English.

In general, unless your particular institution's style guide has something to say on the matter, this is entirely up to the author to decide. The primary reason not to do so, I think, would be that there are so many foreign words that it becomes impractical to italicize them all (in other words, the italicization becomes too prominent).
Additionally, one can make the argument that over time foreign words appear enough in a foreign language that they end up "borrowed" by the other language. For instance, if I were writing in the humanities, I'd be inclined to italicize Weltanschauung but not schadenfreude or angst.

+1.
In addition, the last point ("I'd be inclined to italicize Weltanschauung but not schadenfreude or angst.") could be a challenge in terms of the consistency (as those who read the thesis might not use the same criteria as you).

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Students changing the result of an investigation
It is common to see students at the laboratory (electronics, specifically), altering the values or disregarding them trivially just because the values won't fit into the other data, instead of reporting and documenting them and disregarding them using a proper (statistical is an option) method. Disregarding the data almost randomly could lead to misinterpretation of it, and loss of important information and knowledge for the student.
On the other hand, when the laboratory practice is similar (or the same) to the old semester one, they will just come into the lab to show they are present (and avoid being marker as absent), and ask the students of the previous semester for the data and document it that way.

How can one deal with this type of students?
Is there a book/guide for some sort of "Research Ethics" that deals with these kind of issues and could provide more examples and situations like these?

 (This could be out of topic depending on how the reader see it)

 There are another less common examples, like when a student reads an article and when referencing, instead of citing only this article, cites this article and the articles cited in this article, like if he read them all.

@NateEldredge I don't mean it that way, but a general process, you already made it clear I should stick to my institution codes. I just removed that item because I just realize it sounds too severe.

You know the answer to your question: This is unethical research conduct, and you need to talk about what is ethical in your class and in your lab sessions.
What is ethical and unethical is not inherently obvious. We have resolved that certain things are ethical/unethical because we care about truth, and we have seen over centuries of doing science that certain things (like omitting data points that don't fit a preconception) distracts us from finding truth. But that is a historical perspective students don't have without education. So educate them.

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Should I Address a Letter to "Professor" xyz when they are actually a "Lecturer in Discipline"?
I am writing thank-you notes to Professors before I graduate from my Bachelors' program. I am unsure how to address letters to two specific individuals:

One is listed as a "Lecturer in Music" on my school's website and has no vita published online. He has a DMA (Ph.D equivalent for composers), but I can't determine if he has held the title of Professor at another institution. He has been at my school for 10 years, so this is unlikely.
The other is listed as a "Lecturer in Discipline" on my school's website but his vita, which is on the same webpage, lists his title as "Adjunct Assistant Professor". He has his Ph.D in Economics. He has held Assistant Professorships elsewhere but his career has largely been in the private sector.

I feel like I shouldn't be listing either of them as "Professor" in my recipient addresses, but I don't want to be disrespectful. I call them Professor in person and in class.
What would be the most appropriate way to address these letters without ruffling any feathers?

If you call them professor in class, I'd suggest addressing them as professor. I'm a tenured prof. in a music department where we (the students, the other faculty, and I) address our lecturers as "Professor X" all the time. Any tenure-track/tenured prof. who gets his or her feathers ruffled because someone calls a lecturer in their dept. "professor" needs to check their ego at the door.


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Is it ethical to publish a paper about porting an existing software package to another programming language?
In short:
I have ported a package in another programming environment, and I want to write a paper of my ported package. Would it be considered cheating?
In details:
I have implemented a package in Python, that is modeled after an R package, which means my package has the design and APIs similar to original's.
The authors of original R package has published an official paper about the package on Journal of Statistical Software. And now I want to write a paper about my python package.
The point is, since the design and APIs are similar, the structure and content of the my paper would be similar to that of the original package's paper. For example, in the original paper, the authors explained what Corpus class is, and in my paper, I would explain that my python-version Corpus has similar attributes.
The biggest differences are brought by the environments and dependence, and some language-specific details.
So, would it be considered cheating if I write the paper of ported software? Of course, the relative sections of my paper would include the comparisons between two packages and I would cite the original paper as appropriate as I can.

In which field would an implementation be worthy of scientific publication at all?

A publication can be used to let other people know of your package. Probably not publishable in a research journal, but surely as a letter or on a specialised venue.

Your paper must clearly delineate what is your original contribution and what is the same as, or based on, the previous package. So if you write about your Corpus class, for example, you must say that it is modeled after the R package's Corpus class. Otherwise it is "cheating," as you put it.
(It's also not clear to me that a straightforward port of an existing package would be considered a novel research contribution by most venues for publication. But that's an entirely different question.)

I am citing tm paper, e.g., while talking about the design about Corpus class. So I am free from "cheating", "dishonest" or "academic misconduct", right? (PS: And I think the paper is not meaningless since some implementations and usages are more or less different in two packages, and the APIs are similar, but not the same.)

@fyears It's not enough to just add a reference to the tm paper, you also need to make it clear what is original and what is based on tm package.

The description of a straightforward port will probably be rejected by a research journal in my opinion, too. A paper is not a usage manual. A detailed comparison between the two packages is already a step forward, but probably still not enough in my view. Best would be if you added something of yours, such as a better algorithm, a nontrivial implementation detail, highly improved performance, or a more expressive syntax which is made possible by the features of Python.

@FedericoPoloni Your comment above sounds another good answer.

@scaaahu I wanted to take your advice, but then reconsidered. First of all, I am not confident enough to be sure that it is sound advice -- there are journals devoted specifically to software, and the criteria may be more nuanced than what I get as someone in a different subfield. Second, as noted by ff524, the OP asks for something slightly different.

@fyears That said, I don't want to detract from the value of your work -- good-quality open source software, integrating as many features and packages as possible, is important and useful for the scientific community; I wish this kind of efforts were recognized more.

@FedericoPoloni I understand. I just thought your comment is a good suggestion for the OP as how to go further so that his work would be more than just a port and the documentation would be more than a users manual.

If the "original" software was published in JSS, and you consider JSS appropriate for your software paper as well: why not ask the JSS editors?

Just to add to ff524's answer, the Journal of Statistical Software (JSS) does have precedence for publishing articles that are simply "ports" of other current software. For one example see An SPSS R-Menu for Ordinal Factor Analysis (Mário Basto & Pereira, 2012). This article doesn't rewrite the package in a new environment, but simply creates a set of GUI menu's in SPSS to call the R package - which is considerably less work. (This would be equivalent if you simply used RPy to call the R libraries directly from Python.)
It is hard to say whether you could get such a paper published in the JSS or somewhere else. As a positive, I would imagine there is a large user base (not necessarily statisticians) that are using Python for text processing that could use such a library. On the downside as others have mentioned its original scientific contribution is questionable in light of its redundancies with the R package. (I personally would rather do such things in Python, but you need to remember the editors of JSS are statisticians who may not hold the same views.)
I would suggest you write the paper anyway and post it publicly online, as in a paper form it tends to be a gentler vignette to using the software than the doc's typically afford. Even if you can't get it published it still provides positive exposure for your work - and will still be cited if someone uses your library for academic work.

Rob Hyndman also has a recent blog post about publishing an R package in JSS. Most of the advice would be applicable to any software.

Every scientific work is normally always based on some previous works.
These previous works must be cited. Cite paper, conference thesis or in the worst case website or "personal communication" of the original software saying that this is the initial version that you have ported. If you do this, it is completely honest to write the article.
I am not sure if just porting to another language brings enough scientific novelty but say porting the old forgotten 1965s piece of code in FORTRAN into C++ using object oriented design and some new advanced algorithms probably is.

+1! A direct port using the same patterns etc, but just in a different language is not something I'd consider worth writing a paper about. Maybe a blog and putting it on Github. (Like RxJava, a port of C#'s Reactive Extensions to Java)
Ofcourse, if OP thinks there's more to his port (e.g, there were some language-design issue that had to be overcome or he improved on the way the original SE's did it), than he could consider the paper.
I'd myself probably opt for a blog on the topic unless it's really something special.

As long as you give proper credit (cite the previous work and make clear that your package is based on it), I do not see how publishing a paper could ever be construed as “cheating” on your part.  The more likely question is if and where you could get it published.  It is not dishonest to try and publish something even if you are not sure it is “worth“ a paper.  It is the journal's  (i.e. editor's / referees') job to judge that.
That said, in my field (physics), what you describe would likely not be considered “enough” for a paper.  There are journals that publish papers which “only” introduce a new program package (Elsevier's Computer Physics Communications comes to mind), but I do not know if they would accept a “translation“.
Again, all this would depend on your field, but in my environment a typical approach would be to include some applications of your program, and try to publish in a “standard” journal (i.e., one not focused on software).

I'd counter some of the other answers and say not only should it be fine, but there's a range of avenues you could explore for publication, as long as you consider the type of publication and journal carefully. (As well as following the advice already given about citing the original work thoroughly and highlighting differences in your implementation.)
Consider that many journals may have additional manuscript types that authors can submit instead of a traditional Research Article. They're often called Technical Communications or similar, and are intended to be short articles on a technical development that is novel and useful to research. This type of article might be best suited to your contribution.
The Software Sustainability Institute also lists a whole range of journals appropriate for publishing scientific software.
Software (including ports, new versions etc.) may not be "pure science", but it is certainly useful for researchers to know about, and I feel it should definitely be written about and published where appropriate. (And not just on github or on blogs!)

If it is considered cheating or not depends on the field of work. In my opinion the fact that you implemented their algorithms in a new language confirms that the algorithms work. Regarding originality, what you should do is offer more than a simple explanation of why you did this in the first place: for example, Python is a faster language than R, or the way it is implemented in Python offers significant speed improvements due to the fact that certain data structures are faster, and come up with some numbers, tables, and charts that prove this assertion. Even if the code is basically the same in pseudo-code, therefore no novel contribution, the additional information about why you did this porting and the data that confirms it is faster (at least in some cases), should be enough to warrant an original contribution. This original contribution is typically required in Computer Science papers (maybe not in Statistics papers), even though it's not required in Physics (you can publish papers that reproduce certain experiments and confirm them or not, or just add small twists to them).
After looking at your library, I see some things that are lacking in order to make it a good proposal: a good documentation, examples. It just says you can implement term-document-matrices with it. Please have a look at numpy or scipy or pandas packages how they present themselves to the pubic.

As xebtl says, assuming you cite your sources appropriately, no it would not be considered cheating, but it might be difficult to publish a paper about it.
In general, an article about porting an existing package to another language might be publishable (in some computer science-related journal) if you discuss the challenges you faced and how you overcame them, and perhaps made recommendations about enhancements that you think should be to the language. This would be of more interest if the language is still evolving. Python is a fairly mature language, so it might be more challenging to find an audience.


text:
What should be the order of the authors in a paper?
Should the first author be the one that worked the most? And then by the amount of work order (descending), but the last one the most-senior researcher?
Are there other ways? Which ones?
Does it vary from field to field? I've heard some areas or even some conferences always ask for alphabetical order. But then there are evaluation committees that count for how many first-author or last-author publications does a researcher have. Can someone provide exhaustive insight into how this is done across many fields?

I always consider the most work is done by the author with the fewest titles...

Also possible duplicate of https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/119201/75368

@Anyon, I don't think so. This is more about explaining the order, more than just the first author.

This is field dependent. Look for other similar questions here for answers.

Yeah, for the one mentioned by @Buffy I think it is. Thanks!

@Buffy yes, it's field dependent, but I'd like to know how it varies.

Just local conventions in an academic silo, I'd guess. No real rhyme or reason. Ego has a part to play, of course.

Ask a hundred academics and get one hundred differing answers. Disciplines do differ.

Some base in on who did the most work.
Some base it on who developed the idea.
Some base it on a hierarchy  (my lab me first).
Some do alphabetical.
Some do "equal author contributions."
Some horse-trade, I get first on this as you got first on last. Many types of horse-trade exist and some move outside the domain of the research.
Some do it based on need. I need to be first to keep my job but you do not. I need it for tenure and you are tenured.
Some do it based on who wrote most of the paper.
Some do it on random numbers or similar.
Some decide in advance before the process starts.
Some give it to the person who made the big breakthrough.
Some give it to the organizer who pushed everyone and harassed everyone to get it done.
Some people just do not care so give it to the person who asks first.
Some give it to the person who got the funding.

My process is that you essentially know by the end of a research process and writing of a paper who should be the lead author and then the horse-trading begins. I have fun with it and I really dislike teams who spend more time on discussing this than the research.

It very much depends on the field. In pure math, for example, authors lists are universally alphabetical. When John Doe puts these papers on his CV, they show up as

John Doe (with Albert Aagard, Joe Hilbert, and Zoe Zorn): "Acylic graphs have no co-orbits of degree 18", Journal of Improbable Results, vol. 2789, 2019.

(i.e., the list of authors as given is not even in the order that's printed on the paper). Many other communities have varying other conventions. For example, they may sort the author list in order of contribution, or they may put the senior author last. It really all depends.

Usually first author = writer, grad student, main worker.
second = other grad student who did some work
Third = advisor
(This assumes single group work.)
If two (plus groups), it will usually be something like:
worker1, helper1, advisor1, worker2, helper2, advisor2
With 2 being another group, for instance the measurement group as opposed to the synthesis group).  You can use your brain to extrapolate to more than two groups or to situations where there is more than one worker/helper/advisor or some roles are missing.

That may be entirely true in some fields and entirely false in others.

Fair comment.  My answer applies to experimental physics, chemistry, bio, geo, and associated applied fields like engineering and medicine.  It does not apply (perhaps) in some fields like math, CS [and the questioner is a CS].  Or in 100+ person mega papers in physics or bio.

Since I voted to close, I won't give a formal answer, but the answer for your paper is whatever is the custom in your field. In CS it is normally alphabetical. Also, not including advisors on doctoral work can be the standard or forbidden. My doctoral students (CS) never include me on that work, nor would I expect it. Likewise math.

That's because math is still not part of "Big Science".  Kudos to math.  Science, however, is part of Big Science.  CS...donno.

That order is not true in all parts of engineering...


text:
How to find a job without recommendation letters?
I am currently almost homeless and without job. Can someone please help me in right direction of finding an academic or non-academic job? Minimum salary will be acceptable.
I hold a PhD in mathematics. I am 43 years old and I am from middle east but citizen of a European country (Germany). I have been away from academia for 4 years (mostly to take care of parents) and I can not get any recommendation letter.
I can teach and have experience in teaching most mathematical topics up to PhD.
I have been applying for many teaching jobs around the world with no luck. With no recommendation letter my applications don't go through.
I also have a few unfinished research projects.

Edit: addendum in response to Buffy's answer.

If you are just four years past finishing your doctorate it isn't too late to re-connect with your previous professors, and maybe your advisor. If you wait much longer it will be, however.

In fact I got my phd before I was 30. So it was, relatively, a long time ago. Contact with my previous professors isn't a possibility.

Another thing, not very palatable, is to get some low-level position in a decent university where you can do more than is required by the job.

I have tried applying to many "low-level" positions but recommendation letter is a real obstruction.

Further down the list of suitable options is to look at good secondary institutions, rather than universities. There are many of them that find people with doctorates to be very desirable. The job is mostly teaching, and mostly introductory subjects, but it can pay the bills.

Secondary institution as a high school? I am trying to find a position in a high school too but a "license or teaching certificate" is needed in most cases and in my situation it takes time and money to get that.

get connected to a research group so as to get some papers into publication. Initially they might be joint papers, of course.

I have a few publications which I guess are relatively good. I try to publish preprints too. But it is getting hard because I will be out of money very soon.
What surprises me is that when I look at my cv it doesn't look extremely bad but still I have got not even one interview or any offer. And asking people in the subject to write recommendation letter has not been successful.
I was hoping maybe someone with similar situation who managed to solve his/her problem can help me by sharing a bit of his/her experience.

I'm so sorry about your situation but I don't think this site might help you to find a job. You better talk to at least your PhD adviser if he/she is still in academia and see if he/she can help you to find a job somewhere.

What is the reason why you cannot get letters of recommendation? Your advisor retired/died? Or is he/she still active but refuses to write one? Did you collaborate or interact with other researchers during your phd?

@Federico Poloni : they are still active. I guess they don't write a letter because they have such a high standard. Unfortunately I didn't collaborate with anyone when I was active in research. That was one of my terrible mistakes.

You didn't collaborate with anyone, so you just published all your papers by yourself and did not work with anyone else at any point at any time to the point where they would remember you?

@Tom people do remember me. It is just that they don't agree to write letters for me.

Hello, I am also sorry about your situation. You didn't mention in which country you can afford to move, but can't you become a civil servant in Germany ? In France I know that it is possible to become a civil servant without letters, there are competitive exams each year with a fixed number of positions (for math teacher, for administrative clerck...) and those who have done well enough get the jobs. Is it the same in Germany ? There are lots of administrative jobs that people never hear about which are not too boring, and with a decent salary.

@Archie I can not find information about public exam to become a civil servant in Germany. But I will research it. Also if I get an offer I will be able to travel to any country my citizenship allows.

@Archie: while I haven't tried to land any such job in Germany, I'd expect public administration here to be the most nitpicky imaginable about formal credentials. I may be wrong, but....

In my country where school grades,diploma,certificates are not the basis and most of the company are looking for a fresh graduate with experiences. I got my dream job (as a programmer) by making reputations here (stackexchange/stackoverflow), very few tutorials and teachings in YT and unfinished projects in Github. If I were in your situation where my money is running out, I will even do cleaning jobs just to survive for a moment. Also, you don't need recommendation letter if you are fine yourself, make them recognize you every letter in your CV.

"I am from middle east but citizen of a European country (Germany)." How well do you speak German? A collegue of mine is in a similar (although less desparate) situation as you. In his case, lacking German skills are a major impediment on the German job market (academic and non-academic). How about you?

If you are published, how about contacting your co-authors?

Are you "almost homeless" in the true meaning of the word? I. e.  not enough money to eat healthy and dependent on the society?

The situation is difficult so the solution may also be difficult. I can offer only a few suggestions.
If you are just four years past finishing your doctorate it isn't too late to re-connect with your previous professors, and maybe your advisor. If you wait much longer it will be, however. The best way is to visit your old institution in person and spend a couple of days talking to people and reminding them of who you are. You can also talk to them about research ideas - theirs and yours. But you can also let them know why you have been away and that you'd like to get back into academia. If you were once well regarded then you still are, but they need a reminder. Such a visit might be the best "vacation" you've ever had.
Another thing, not very palatable, is to get some low-level position in a decent university where you can do more than is required by the job. If you can let the tenured faculty know of your skills and interest, maybe you can be given interesting tasks that will lead, after a while, to good letters of recommendation. It may not be possible to work up from a low level position to a better one at that university, but you may be able to leverage it for a position somewhere else.
Further down the list of suitable options is to look at good secondary institutions, rather than universities. There are many of them that find people with doctorates to be very desirable. The job is mostly teaching, and mostly introductory subjects, but it can pay the bills. If the place is also located close to a good university, you can make yourself known there and try to get connected to a research group so as to get some papers into publication. Initially they might be joint papers, of course.
But don't let your age be a deterrent. You will get older no matter what you do. Many people don't start their career until your age, in fact. But take a long view into following whatever opportunities present themselves, always with a view to a higher level position.

Can someone please help me in right direction of finding an academic or non-academic job? Minimum salary will be acceptable.

If you really are just looking for anything at all to bring in a little bit of money to get back on your feet, I'd suggest looking for work as a tutor. You don't even necessarily need to apply for this job. In many cities I've seen freelance tutors advertising their services on paper flyers on noticeboards in cafes or shops, or you can post on local message boards like NextDoor or Craigslist. Look at ads for other tutors for inspiration. With your academic credentials and teaching experience, you could charge a fairly high hourly rate.
If you prefer a more structured environment, you could apply to be a tutor at a large tutoring company like Kaplan. They will not require academic recommendation letters, but they may ask you to demonstrate your competency at standardized tests.
Somebody else had suggested teaching at a secondary school, and you mentioned the lack of teaching credentials as an obstacle. Depending on what country you're in, private schools may not require any official teaching certification, and they may be happy to employ an instructor with a PhD because it will make them seem prestigious.

And in some (many?) schools and systems, you can start a job and earn the license/credential over time.

Thanks for the links and suggestions. I will check out Kaplan.

@Buffy: In Germany that would be the Quereinsteiger and Seiteneinsteiger programs (for normal school).

@HGeometer Good luck! I applied at Kaplan myself some years back. One thing I remember them caring about a great deal was clear handwriting on a whiteboard, so consider practising that before your interview.

You mention that you are German citizen. A few thoughts that are rather specific to Germany (assuming that is where you are as well):

In Germany, Arbeitszeugnisse are [still] more usual than letters of recommendation, even though for academic positions letters of recommendation will be accepted in lieu. The Arbeitszeugnis is a letter by the employer certifying what the employee did and how they performed. At/after the end of an employment contract, the employee has a right to get one of these, and it must be both truthful and reasonably positive.
If you were previously employed in Germany, it may still be possible to get one. As is is a legal right, the employer cannot turn down the request unless they gave you one already when you finished there.

almost homeless

Time to talk to the Sozialamt at your community center/town hall. That's probably not going to be fun, but it may be crucial.
Also organizations like Diakonie or Caritas or if you prefer one without Christian affiliation, the Arbeiterwohlfahrt may help you by having people who know how to talk/write to the Sozialamt (I don't know whether other religious communities have similar organizations, they may, or they may also have similar help organized on a more informal basis).
These organizations also offer postal addresses in case you do become homeless - the postal address is crucial in order to get a job.
Mathematics teachers at school are scarce in all Länder. Some Länder offer training programmes for professionals in certain subjects (including STEM) who did not do the university courses to become a teacher.
This will obviously require excellent command of German, written as well as spoken.
If you look for possiblities to get back to academia, consider also Fachhochschulen (universities of applied science) if you can land an industry job. In contrast to universities, Fachhochschulen want industry experience.
Germany has lots of small to medium-sized companies, and also quite a number of universities outside the big cities in rural areas. The rumor has it that they have difficulties finding people - this may be your chance, at the very least as a (re)entry into the job market.
I'd roughly say: the larger the company/university where you apply, the less likely I expect them to be willing to overlook your difficulty in producing recommendations.
And in contrast to many other regions world-wide, rural Germany has IMHO a very acceptable living standard almost everywhere (and maybe a much better wage : living expenses ratio).
You can tutor students and pupils. Mathematics is quite in demand in that respect.
In order to do so legally, you'll need to sign up as freelancer with the tax office and with the pension cass (while freelancers in general are not required to contribute to the governmental pension cass, freelancing teachers are unless they have employees). This option has burocratic consequences such as being required to do tax declarations and earlier deadlines for these tax declarations. Ask e.g. the local IHK what (free) information is available for possible founding of such a small scale business. The IHK is not exactly for freelancers, but they'll know about courses (free and paid).
Since you are mathematician, the DMV may be helpful (i.e. I'm chemist, and the GDCh has a tiny but helpful subsection for freelancing chemists and people who think about becoming freelancers in chemistry).
Still thinking in direction of teaching: I have no idea whether something like being a certified instructor with the carpentries helps (that's where I volounteer). The course has certainly helped my teaching, and it may show that you are serious in wanting to become a teacher.  Also, if you volounteer with them (which costs you time, and you'll have to be able to pay upfront for the travel until the reimbursement arrives) you're going to meet different univeristies/institutes in person, and moreover they'll see you working. It may be worth while thinking whether such opportunities could get you over the lack of recommendation obstacle.
That is also a community where related jobs (worldwide) are reqularly posted on their mailing lists. Of course you can sign up for the mailing list without being an instructior, but I'd expect your chances there are much better if you are known in the community.

Thanks for your answer and the suggestion. Going to the Sozialamt is not what I would do as it will have severe psychological impact on me which at this point I can not handle. I am aware of self-destructing consequences of such a decision.

@HGeometer I understand the (perceived) social stigma of taking support from the Sozialamt and that you want to avoid this. But: You said that you're are "almost homeless". Becoming homeless will definitely have a "severe psychological impact" on you as well – please trade this off against your aversion against the Sozialamt. Moreover, being homeless will make it far more difficult to find a job.

@HGeometer I think this decision is not just self-destructive but foolish: You payed a good amount of money during your work life to make a system work that help people in your exact situation. You have fulfilled your part of the social contract as long as you were able to and it’s absolute fine to now rely on the other side. That’s  the very reason why our system is designed as it is.

@HGeometer: of course going to the Sizialamt is your decision. And it is appropriate that you do not take this decision lightly. I may add that I know people who decided not to get involved with those Ämter when they could have gotten financial assistance - but with them it was never looming homelessness. Still, you may want to talk first to one of the caritative organizations (maybe not AWO Frankfurt right now...). You may get information there how unpleasant the Ämter are going to be, and they may also have Seelsorge ("light" psychological counseling) in addition to practical advise...

@cbeleites supports Monika : homelessness can be solved. I have hundreds of math books and will sell them to get a good small car and will use it as home if I end up without jobs in summer (not a solution but still doable). By the way, can you give examples of universities/colleges in rural area where they have problem to get scientists? Because many of universities in Germany are in small towns and as I am told, for most people academic jobs in Germany are difficult to get.

... But: if you are seriously running out of money, there may be no way around getting help from the Sozialamt. In addition to homelessness, health insurance gets very ugly if you don't pay them. And if you are not assisted by Sozialamt (or Arbeitsamt), you're personally responsible for paying them, there is no way for you to get out, you'll be charged 1 % interest per month (and on top of that, they may not pay for medical treatment while you are in arrears).

Homelessness: I admit to having a slight nomadic strain somewhere in me as well (I've been living in a van for a couple of months while traveling). In my experience that works well when on outdoor-ish travel, but I'd guess that living in a car when on job search will  in all probability sap energy that you urgently need to get a job. Plus, living in a small car is far more complicated than in a van. IMHO this is not a practicable plan.

As for towns: yes, the universities are of course in or close to towns. (After all, there istn't that much of Germany that doesn't have at least a small town within, say, 15 km). But there are small towns and there are also regions where rents get cheap quickly outside mid-sized towns. One example of a rural university location would be Witzenhausen (https://opentopomap.org/#map=14/51.33627/9.86229). That's the organic agriculture faculty of the Kassel university. Also there are FHs e.g. at Weiden (42k inhabitants),  Halberstadt (40k), Köthen (26k) or Zittau (25k) and so on. I have no idea...

... whether they have difficulties getting scientists. But I do have the idea that these regions aren't partiuclarly hip, and all those FHs have students that need to lern maths. And a while ago I read an interview with Sartorius (Göttingen) and Ottobock (Duderstadt and Göttingen) that they start a new place in Berlin because of difficulties of getting the staff they need for their new digital projects to come to Göttingen (not even Duderstadt). Maybe it wouldn't hurt to find out whether they need a Mathematician...

Search for non-academic jobs using your local jobs portal. Why non-academic? Because these jobs are much less likely to ask for recommendation letters.

Polish your resume. Make sure to write it so it's understandable by a non-academic. Get help if you need to, either from Google, or from your alma mater's career services center (if they have one).
Go to your local jobs portal. There should be plenty of them in Germany. Use Google to find them if you don't know what they are.
Search for jobs that require a degree (preferably a PhD) in mathematics. Find something you can do, and apply.

Here're a couple of examples of results from such a search. You'll likely want to apply to more than two jobs.

Since you're searching for jobs around the world, I'll add specifics for the US. This may be similar to other countries, but no guarantees.
Many school districts in the USA will accept a Masters degree in lieu of a teacher's certificate, and a private school isn't required to have teachers with a teaching cert.

Although private schools are not required by law to hire only licensed teachers, in most cases, a license is preferred. Private schools are more autonomous than public schools as they can create their own policies and standards. With that said, a school can decide to hire you with or without proper teaching credentials. The choice is entirely up to the individual school. Since most private schools prefer certified teachers, many schools will hire an individual without the proper certifications under the stipulation that the candidate continues his/her education.

https://www.teacher.org/how-to-become/
The same article states that you can do online teaching without a cert, but the basic teaching cert is just an exam that you can take. They name the Praxis exam, which actually has a variety of versions. It's not exactly cheap, but it's not outrageously expensive, either. If you don't live in the USA, you'll probably spend more to get to a test facility than the test costs. From my little bit of research, it doesn't look like they have online or international testing.
https://www.ets.org/praxis/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praxis_test
An aside
You may want to consider teaching one of the non-English languages you speak to get a foothold into a school. American, and other country's, schools might be more interested in that than your math skills. The first step is to get you into the system, then you might be able to demonstrate how good you are at teaching math, but they may think a local math teacher is just as good as a foreign math teacher, due to them not knowing you personally. Once you become a local teacher, you should have a better time changing subjects than just walking into it "from the outside".
I spent 20+ years looking for a job within the US, but where I'd have to relocate to take the job. I never got a single job I applied for that was more than 200 miles from my then current location. It wasn't until I actually moved to a new location and proved that I was local did I get a job. Most hiring managers seem to automatically, and unfortunately, discredit or discount you for not being local unless you have something they "can't live without". This "special ability" in your case is your ability to speak languages that are foreign to the school's location.
Again, I'd suggest you use that to your advantage. It might not be what you want to do, but it might help you get a job. Maybe you find you really like it, maybe you switch to math the next year, maybe you find another job somewhere else and get paid better in the industry, rather than academia. That's for later, though.

Applying to North American schools and colleges is what I am doing most because at least they send non-automatic rejection letters. I appreciate your suggestion about languages. I will be emphasizing it in my applications.

Do American schools really hire people speaking language X without knowlege of teaching language X? Does not seem very good to me

A recommendation letter is not always a pre-requisite to get a job. A company looks for dedication in an employee. Rather than applying online, show up with a hard copy of your CV. Maybe do some voluntary work (if applicable) for them and try to get their attention with that.

Hm, I am not sure if someone who is almost homeless can afford to do voluntary work.

Not many places of work, even in academia, have volunteer opportunities. And even if they did, you'd have to volunteer for them for quite a while to get a reputation good enough for anyone vouch for you, let alone someone in the right dept. to hear about it.


text:
Are summarized reviewer comments a thing?
I recently got a rejection from an Elsevier journal. What struck me as odd was that each reviewer comment was three sentences each. To me they look clearly summarized, possibly by the editor. This is also suggested by the wording ("[...] from reviewer (sic!) pointy (sic!) of view [...]"). Colleagues argue that this might just be the way some people review papers.

Is it common that the editorial office summarizes the reviewer comments?
Would I have received more complete feedback in case of a conditional acceptance?
How can it be justified that Elsevier doesn't pass on the feedback to the authors? Personally, I review papers ''for the love of science'', not to support a listed corporation.

Additional information: Three reviews/summaries in total, one of them enthusiastically positive.

How many reviews did the rejection letter include? The wording you pointed out is not unusual for reviews, it comes from a tradition that shuns the words "me" and "I" in scientific communication.

@lighthousekeeper 3 reviews, labeled #1, #3, and #5

Is it common that the editorial office summarizes the reviewer comments?

Yes, in addition to the actual reviewer feedback. It basically never happens that the actual reviewer feedback is hidden from the authors, and I don't see a point for doing so. If that happened to you, it's possible that there is a mistake, and you should ask the editor about that.

Would I have received more complete feedback in case of a conditional acceptance?

Rejection letters are often short, because the reviewers might have particular high-level concerns that make a more detailed assessment of the paper pointless, for example, if the manuscript is either poorly written or out of the scope of the journal. (A good editor would desk-reject such a paper, but that's a different story.)

How can it be justified that Elsevier doesn't pass on the feedback to the authors? Personally, I review papers ''for the love of science'', not to support a listed corporation.

If your assumption is true, I don't see a point for that. However, take into account that the editor is typically not a representative of Elsevier.

many thanks for your explanations. three coincidentally extremely short reviews would be rather unlikely, I suppose. I might ask the editor, but I moved on in the meantime, so it would just be out of curiosity.

"It basically never happens that the actual reviewer feedback is hidden from the authors, and I don't see a point for doing so." I imagine this could happen if the original reviewer feedback was so strongly worded (usually in the negative sense) that the editor didn't want to pass it on in that form.

@darijgrinberg one of the reviews was short yet very positive

@darijgrinberg It's a possibility, but I believe that the sane thing to do for the editor in this case would be to disclose that it's a summary rather than the actual review.


text:
Publish a paper of my master thesis
I finished my master thesis in a high ranking university. The thesis idea is simple and not novel, however the results are higher that the state of art.
My supervisor is one of the top in the field. When I asked him to try to publish a paper of my work, he refused and he said the work should be "novel".
I am pretty sure that he is addressing TOP conferences and journals only. But, what I think is publish the paper in middle-tier conference or even workshop, so I can boost my profile.
Is it possible to submit it without adding his name?
Any ideas or advices?

If your supervisor is one of the top people in the field and doesn't think the work merits publication, I would heed his advice. Furthermore, publishing work without his consent that he has helped you with (even if you don't include his name) is a very bad idea. Why don't you talk to your supervisor again and ask him his opinion on publishing in a lower-tier journal?

I am pretty sure that my work could be accepted in a middle-tier conference or a workshop. But I believe he doesn't like to target non-high (top) places. Furthermore, the work is mainly done by me and my advisor (PhD student). Definitely, everything is decided by the professor (supervisor).


text:
Professor asks me to apply earlier than initially planned. How to respond?
The professor has accepted me to be is RA, but we had initially agreed that I should apply for Fall 2022. Now he suggested "You may wish to apply for the summer 2022 session if you can manage that." I don't want to apply for summer 2022 to have adequate planning time. How can I best respond to this request?

Summer 2022 is still 6 months away - what do you mean by 'adequate planning time'?

I have a project I'm working on at the moment

If you are going to work with your professor you will be communicating with him. So why not start communicating openly right now?
Find out why he would like an earlier start; explore why you might find that difficult or not; come to an optimal solution for you both.
If you can do this honestly and cooperatively, it augurs well for your future working relationship.


text:
How common is it in STEM fields in the US that the tenure track offer goes to the second person in the list?
I had a tenure track interview at an R1 university a few weeks ago, and today the department chair wrote to me that

We were impressed with your candidacy and still have the possibility of making an offer of a position, but you were not identified as our top candidate.

Firstly, in your experience either as someone in the search committee or as an applicant, do they send this kind of email to any person who isn't the first choice (all other short-listed candidates), or only to the second person?
Secondly, in STEM fields, (more specifically physics) how probable is it that the offer can go to the second person? With my limited experience in the US system (I moved here less than two years ago), my understanding has been so far that getting an in-person interview is so tough, getting an offer is tougher, so it's not very probable that people get more than one offer and decline the other one. Is this a correct statement?

The department chair was unprofessional.  Telling someone you're not their first choice and then offering them a job is not an encouraging way to hire.

Yes, traditionally this has not been done, but actually I think being transparent is a good practice.  Suppose you weren't told anything and then got an offer 4 weeks later.  The only possibilities for the delay are that you are the second choice, or the university has very slow hiring processes.  I wouldn't care about being the second choice, but I would be concerned if the university has bad bureaucratic processes.

Thanks @AlexanderWoo, this is also a very good point. I also don't care being the second person, given that all the other short-listed people are amazing and deserve an offer. I also wasn't sure this email means that there might be a chance that I'm second, or it's common to send this to everyone in the list. But if I understood you correctly the whole thing is uncommon, so I can't read much into this, right?

Thanks @AnonymousPhysicist for the answer. I still don't know how to feel about this. I considered this as an unofficial rejection email, but not as a hope that "you might still get an offer".

@AnonymousPhysicist He gave information, what might be unvaluably important for the OP. My first insight is not about the professionality/unprofessionality scale, my first insight is that the Prof was very, very helpful to the OP by giving him information about the decision mechanism (and its result). Of course, only if the feedback was not a politeness formula, but the reality.

I had the same experience, and I much preferred it to the endless silence I got from most of my applications. I don’t know why people think it would be so offensive to hear that you weren’t the top choice; I think most of us understand that faculty hiring decisions are complicated negotiations among many people involving many factors, and that it’s not a judgement of personal value to put you second. (Anyway, I learned this about three different jobs I’d applied for, was eventually offered two of them, and found out that the same person had been first choice at both of those.)

As far as the comments that telling someone they aren't first choice is insulting, nearly all searches will end in one of two outcomes: the posting attracted more hire-worthy candidates than open positions, or there are fewer hire-worthy candidates than open positions (the other outcome being that the numbers match exactly which is rare).  The former case is far more complementary to the runners-up than the second case.

Note that at least the quoted statement does not say that you are ranked second, it just says that you are not first. In my slightly cynical view this can just as well be a polite no than a statement that you barely missed.

@xLeitix this is indeed my suspicion and one of my questions. I don't know they would write this to anyone in the list, or just to the second person, and this is why I asked it here.

I was hired once for a tenure-track position.  I assumed that my presentation must have went over well, but I was hired for other reasons that are complicated.  For a non-academic job, I was clearly the 2nd choice (or 3rd), but I was hired, and glad to have the job.

Q:  Are you asking about your probability of getting a job you want, or what you should do if you are offered the job (i.e. would this interaction make you NOT want to take the job)?

@JosephDoggie my question was really what I asked. I didn't know how common or rare it is that people in the waitlist are contacted by the chair at the same time the offer is made. I also didn't know (and many comments here helped to clarify) how common it is that the top candidates get more than one offer and would be able to decline. As I mentioned in my question it was more as a general question and not for my specific case.

I have never heard of anyone sending an email to a candidate telling them they like someone else better but if that other candidate turns them down, they might hire them as a second choice.  (Who wants to be told they were a second choice?  It strikes me as a pretty odd recruiting scheme.)
But I can tell you that top candidates get lots of offers and they can only accept one.  So, even top 10 R1 departments (like the one I was in at Michigan) routinely strike out on many of their offers and have to work down their list or accept that they just couldn't hire the people they wanted.

Thanks so much for the answer. I'm not sure this is common to send such emails or not, this is also my first experience.

The formulation in the OP was a bit weird, but in general I don't think it's that rare to tell a candidate that they're a second-choice. Something along the lines of "You are our second-choice, and we have sent an offer to our first-choice. If they decline our offer of fail to reply within a week, then we'll offer you the position.". It's an honest answer. Better than not informing the candidate at all, and making them wait an extra week before telling them they don't get the job.

In Germany it quite usual that one knows if one is hired as second or third on the list. Maybe even the norm...

"Who wants to be told they were a second choice?" Well I would not mind hearing that from an R1 university. Why should the applicant expect to be told that he is the super-best, especially given the scale of the competition for STEM academic positions?

@КряжевАрсений Okay, but at Michigan, when they decided to make an offer, they generally asked at a dept faculty meeting that anyone with time should reach out to candidate to express unbridled enthusiasm.  (They still lost out a lot of the time.)  Apparently, the practice of telling candidates they're a second choice is more common than I had imagined.  At Michigan, to the best of my knowledge, they never did that and instead just stalled the second choice, e.g., by telling them decisions weren't yet final.

@Dirk I think the difference is that in Germany the "Dreierliste", the list of the top 3 candidates for a professorship, is an official document that needs to be created and forwarded to the administration which then formally decides and sends the offer. Even if that information is not publicly available, a loosing candidate could theoretically sue to get access to that list, so you might as well tell them. In contrast, elsewhere the second place might only be finally decided on when the first candidate declines, which would give everyone some plausible deniability.

@mlk: I think it's rather a cultural difference, you know, "unbridled enthusiasm" in the US vs. "directness" in German-speaking countries. Having lived both in the US and in Austria, I can confirm that this is not just a stereotype, but a cultural norm that people have come to expect and rely upon.

My experience (in physics) is that:

such an email is unusual, or at least unusually blunt.  Typically it’s not necessarily hard to figure out who’s shortlisted if units keep a public list of seminars.  Candidates can often figure out for themselves the relative rankings from the time it takes the unit to get in touch with candidates, but it is rare for this information to be volunteered so explicitly in an email.
It is not that rare for selection committees to miss out in their preferred candidates, especially these days. Top tier candidates will statistically get multiple offers as they will be at the top of many lists.  Offers are declined for multiple legitimate reasons, including incompatible deadlines, startup, start dates etc.

I have come to believe that this internal ranking does not matter much.
My observations are that these rankings are often “political”; committee members may support one rather than another candidate for a number of irrational reasons.  Also, offering to person A over person B does not guarantee that person A will do better,  no more than being drafted in the second round means a player will do less well than another drafter in round 1.  It all depends on the individual.
Unless a unit is truly desperate, they will not offer a job to an inferior candidate: after all the University is about to invest in someone that could work there for 30+ years, so it’s usually better to cancel the search than hire a dud if you cannot find someone that will fit the job.
Thus: the competition is so intense these days that if you get an offer you are very much likely deserving of the position, irrespective of the original ranking.

As I read the question, you were a final round candidate.  The message means that (a) you are not being given an offer at this time, and (b) if enough other final round candidates decline, you will be given an offer.  Note that there are usually only 2-4 (and most frequently 3) final round candidates for a single position, so "enough" is rarely more than 3.
(Note I think it's much better to give candidates this information rather than the other usual alternative, which is to tell candidates in this position no information at all for a few weeks.)
As far as how likely it is that the candidates preferred to you all decline, this very highly depends on how many other positions with similar hiring preferences there are, and how attractive the offer is.  Even when there are many more applicants in the market than jobs, it can frequently happen that several jobs want the same candidate, because they happen to all be looking for similar things in candidates, in which case their evaluations of candidates are quite likely to coincide.  Then it comes down to how likely that position is to be the candidate's first choice.  We have had searches here where all our final round candidates declined our offer one after another, and we had to reopen the final round.  (In fact, that's how I was hired.)  The market is tighter now, but that also means people who might not have applied for our job 10 years ago would apply now, and we are still probably close to the last choice among our most attractive applicants.  (For one thing, we typically are only able to offer about 80% of the salary many competitors can offer.)

In physics it would be very rare for a postdoc seeking their first professorship to have two offers at the same time.  Offers can be turned down because the university does not offer enough money, either for salary or research.  This is rare.  The only case I'm personally familiar with was not technically a physicist.
People who already are permanent professors and seek a position at another university always have two offers: they can choose to keep their current job.  That's when they occasionally turn down job offers.

Thanks so much for the answer. This is also what I have observed so far. Just getting an interview is extremely difficult, let alone getting more than one simultaneous offers.

In math years ago we had a first choice turn us down. We were clearly a relatively likely "yes" for him - when we made the offer we suspected he might turn us down in favor of a better offer. That said, the job market is much tighter now.

At Michigan in the CSE (computer science and engineering) department where I worked, they constantly lost out to other schools fighting over new AI PhDs from Stanford, the one school they thought was better than Michigan.  Other schools apparently also thought AI PhDs from Stanford were the cat's meow.

I'm not sure how common it is in physics, so I guess it's safer to assume it's not super probable the job could go to the second person.

I’m very surprised, in math most people who get a TT job have multiple offers.

@NicoleHamilton The job market for AI PhDs is completely different from the job market for physiccs PhDs.

It is not that rare.  See this rumour mill site (archived to last year to show who was offered and the outcomes): http://particle.physics.ucdavis.edu/rumor/doku.php?id=archive:2021. You can browse previous years.  Admittedly this does not comprehensive covers universities, positions or fields, and the candidates shortlisted are pretty much all stellar, but clearly the top candidates at one place will not so rarely be ranked at the top elsewhere, and as mentioned elsewhere these top tier candidates can only accept one position.

@ZeroTheHero It's also well known that candidates send false information to rumor mills.

True but not in a systematic way.  My experience is that the rumour mills are largely fed by faculty, not by prospective candidates.  In a way there is nothing to hide in most cases, and without necessarily being broadcasted the shortlist is rarely guarded as closely as the Kremlin codes.

@ZeroTheHero thanks for your comment. The rumor mill couldn't give me enough information, while it's still very useful, at this point the information I have from the words of mouth from people is a lot more than what the rumor mill is showing. But my questions were a bit more general to understand the situation better, because as you said the names there are usually stellar candidates :)

(In Sweden) If the university is funded by tax payers, all notes, rankings and evaluations must be available to public. This is to ensure there's no corruption. Hence, making the rank public is not strange from that perspective.

is this before or after the competition is closed?

good point - I suppose it is only required to be available after.

In Canada we certainly have to destroy our personal notes, although I think a digest/summary of the unattributed comments is kept for the records.

@ZeroTheHero: Sure, in Sweden also, there are two different principles involved; GDPR, for protecting the individuals privacy, but also a principle that all information which underlies government decisions must be made public. But it all gets complicated when international relations are at stake: https://apnews.com/article/f3219da7e5b9ee74e7002746255dc9a6

I have seen many of these instances even for my personal applications. First, they really like your application, which includes CV, research, personality, and many other things. For sure, they have given the offer to someone else but have seen some degree of uncertainty with that person due to many factors such as asking for a higher salary, spouse hiring, a larger startup, a higher rank if the position is an open-rank one and so many other behind-the-scenes variables. At the same time, they also don't want to lose you! So, they just wanted to avoid a situation where you accept an offer from somewhere else if the first candidate does not accept the offer. They may think that you will not accept their offer in that case and are just trying to buy some time.

authors: Арсений Кряжев


text:
Is a Master's degree in Business and Finance from a university in Poland a respected degree in Germany?
I have been accepted to a Master's program in Business at a top University in Poland. I looked up on Anabin and I do see this university listed there, but this of course is not the whole picture.
I looked up the rankings and although Polish universities fall behind Western universities in the rankings (due largely to the way rankings are calculated), the university I am accepted to is the top ranked university in Poland, depending on which ranking system you use.
This question is more about how Germans feel about it, as it is listed in Anabin so it meets the hard requirements.
Suppose that I wanted to get a job as a business executive like a CFO or CEO, or perhaps some sort of business consultant in Germany, what would employers think of a Polish degree?
I am not from Poland, and I am not Polish; I am American and I considered studying abroad because it is less expensive to live and to study, among other reasons.
I also have the opportunity to go to a German university to get a second Bachelor's degree in Engineering, so I am considering that as well.
I am just trying to make the best decision for the future.
Will I be looked down on for having gone to a Polish university, or will they look and say something like, "Great I see you have a valid degree, this means you met the requirements, now how well do you speak German?"
What do Germans think of Polish degrees, besides it being a valid degree? Do they respect it as perfectly fine (even at large corporations), or do they think it is less than respected? How to Germans actually feel about it?

Well before one gets hired as a C-level person, one’s accomplishments will far outweigh where you did a degree. Will it make it harder to get your first job? Perhaps…

So are you saying that a Polish degree would make it harder to get a first job in Germany? Or are you just generalizing?

It is likely that many potential German employers are not aware of how good (or bad) a Polish university is.

Do you have first hand experience of this, or how did you arrive at this conclusion? Thank you

I hire a lot of people in the US. There are many universities and colleges in the US. Many good ones are really only known regionally. Do I have to research them if I haven’t heard of them. Others might not bother.

I can't give you advice specifically for business and finance, but I think it's worthwhile to point out the following general cultural difference that might be surprising to an American: Generally speaking, university rankings are not a big thing in Germany at all. As a consequence, many Germans will hardly bother whether you got your degree at a "top ranked" or a "low ranked" uni or wherever. Caveat: there will, of course, always be exceptions. For instance, I'm very unsure whether people in consulting (which you mentioned in your post) might tend to have a different view on rankings.

Also not an answer to your question, but maybe a worthwhile frame challenge: You say you have the option for a Master's program in business and finance and for a Bachelor's program in engineering. Those seem to be quite different paths to go, and each option seems likely to leave you with solid options for a career or further studies. May I suggest that, instead of focussing on uni rankings and prestige and on want somebody in Germany might or might not think about a certain degree in Poland, you could (and maybe should) rather focus on what you think which path you will like more?

@JochenGlueck I am focusing on what path and I fully would like both paths, but also want a path that will not deny me future opportunities so I don't want to waste my time. Hence the question.