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Undergraduate doing a research term - supervisor has not assigned me any work to do other than reading, after one month. What can I do to fix this?
I am an undergraduate student, and am using a term to study with a professor. We got along well in his class and I thought he had a keen interest in helping students.
From what I understand, initially I was supposed to work on a project that some other group would deliver to us. We waited until a week and a half ago, and abandoned that. In the meanwhile, I have basically been reading full-time. Unfortunately I find it very difficult to read for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week and so have been losing a lot of motivation at work. Typically when reading technical stuff, there is something I can apply it to which makes it easier to remember and motivate for. Instead, I am reading through entire textbooks, cover to cover.
I have asked my supervisor what sort of project I can start working on, but he has instead told me to continue reading and that I need to be "more proactive". Is it normal for me to have to propose my own projects when I have no idea what the state of the art really is? I feel as though he is blowing me off. I have proposed projects before but he has said that they aren't relevant enough to the field.
The last working month has been one of the most miserable experiences of my life and it's been negatively effecting my professionalism, work ethic and personal relationships. What can I do to rectify this, given that I've already spoken with him? Do I need to resign?

Start to meet weekly with your adviser to discuss what you've read, bring a few specific questions. Typically, when a professor wishes a UG student to be 'pro-active' it means to figure out how to keep yourself occupied productively and keep moving forward. If there are group meetings and various topics are discussed (like, 'someone should check out X' then check  be the one to check it out. If other members are doing some projects, if possible watch over their shoulder (politely) to learn how things are done. However, a different group may be better for UG.

As an undergraduate, it is not normal for you to be expected to come up with the research project on your own (that is what getting a PhD teaches you!). When I started out I was typically assigned a graduate student advisor who would let me work on their project or would work directly with me to propose another.
There is typically a lot of reading that you will do when first starting out, but not applying it directly to a project or research proposal after a month indicates that something needs to change.
I would first talk about these matters with someone who understands your supervisor (graduate student, postdocs etc.) to understand more about your supervisor's expectations. Then have a talk with your supervisor with your concerns (they are valid!). If your supervisor continues to not be helpful I would consider finding another. It's tough to start over, but it would be better in the long run if you can find a better lab that is more nurturing to your growth as a researcher.

Lots of reading is a normal part of research. You could do with changing your reading technique because, as you say, reading from cover to cover isn't fun. I've had the same experience myself.
However, as an undergraduate researcher, you should not be being expected to find the research problem entirely by yourself. Your description sounds to me more like appropriate for someone two to three years into postgraduate research. From what you say, it sounds like your professor is not really doing his job properly. I would suggest, as a next step, talking to your personal tutor (or whatever your university calls the person who keeps an eye on your studies).

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How can I let google scholar find conference name of an arXiv paper?
I uploaded a paper to arXiv, and google scholar made its index.
The paper is then accepted for a conference, but the website of the conference does not have any link to the pdf of the paper.
The search result of google scholar shows that the paper is on arXiv, but it does not show the conference name.
As arXiv suggests, I put the conference name in the "comments" field when I submitted to arXiv. However, it seems like google scholar cannot recognize it.
How can I tell google scholar the conference name of the arXiv paper?

Does the conference web site list the title of your accepted paper?

Google scholar crawls the web automatically and indexes all the papers that it finds. Your paper will not be listed with the conference name before it is actually published. And since the conference has not taken place in your case, it will not be listed as such (and how should google know that the ArXiV paper and the official versions are exactly the same - which they probably aren't?).
So you have to wait until the official version of the paper appeared (e.g., on the publisher's web page). You can then tell Google Scholar to merge the two papers into one in your account.

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Is there a place in academia for someone who compulsively solves every problem on their own?
To be honest, I'm not entirely sure how I'm still in grad school.
I've been researching under one professor's wing for two years now, ostensibly shooting for a PhD (note: no topic yet), and I have accomplished nothing except write a lot of code, fill a bunch of notebooks with theorems and scratchwork, and whine a lot.
Insofar as I can surmise, my precise set of skills is good for one thing
and one thing only: Solving problems that have already been solved...
but only from scratch, my way. And I'm too stubborn to know when to give up.
For homeworks I go in completely unprepared and take them like a puzzle,
and somehow, this usually doesn't work out too poorly
(note, I am a physics student, so these homeworks are of the mathy,
proofy, yet still occassionally handwavey kind).
I hack and hack away at a problem unassisted for hours to days
with no progress until I finally make a crack in the wall and
can see the light shining through. Then I beat it eight ways to Sunday,
making my solution simpler and simpler until I am satisfied that every
step has both a clean form and a clear motivation.
My test-taking strategy is similarly devoid of preparation, and also fortuitously manages to work out well.
As far as I can tell, my strategy works in these cases only because
homeworks and tests are problems which are hand-crafted to be surmountable.  In these cases, my stubbornness alone is enough to pull me through eventually.  It was enough, in fact, to pull me all the way through primary and secondary school and to my Bachelor's.
But obviously, grad school isn't about homeworks and tests.

For one, I can't read academic papers in my field.
Or rather, every academic paper I try to read goes one of two ways:

If it is a very abstract and theoretical paper, then I can't read it
because I'll get too easily excited; I'll get to maybe the second page
of definitions and axioms before my head is flooded with ideas and I
absolutely need to pull out my notebook and begin trying to gain an
intuition for them.
(This seldom goes anywhere and I usually just end up tiring myself out
after several hours of hacking on some theorem orthogonal to the paper)
If it's an experimental paper, I can't read it because it means
nothing to me. There are no ideas I can synthesize from "we did X
using Y and found Z." My mind races about other things as I'm reading
and I can't shut it up!  In the end, I don't remember a word I read.

And as far as it concerns me,
computational papers and applied theory
might as well be experimental,
because ultimately there's a point where
everything goes into a black box and the result pops out.
This is a shame,
because I know that these computations can
expose new and interesting emergent properties of the theory;
but sometimes it's just too difficult finding the ladder down from my ivory tower.

My research is going about as well as one would expect
for somebody who can't read any papers!
For any problem I've ever worked on for research, I've always begun with
trying to solve the aspects that stand out to me; enumerating the set of
solutions to some nasty-looking equation, or devising an algorithm to compute
something which is faster than the obvious brute force strategy.
Months fly by and I either fail, or I
successfully, unwittingly, and needlessly derive my own formalism of
e.g. the theory behind HNF matrices and unimodular matrices after
several strokes of dumb luck.
In all cases, papers already existed which solved these problems.
I just couldn't bear the thought of having to seek them out and read them!

I've discussed various aspects of my struggles with my parents
and a number of faculty (including, of course my research advisor)
and everyone I've talked to has advised me to continue.
I gathered from these discussions that
feelings of inadequacy are rather par for the norm in grad school,
and that evidently my classwork has impressed a portion of the faculty
who still appear to have confidence that I can succeed...
But unfortunately, as far as I can see, I am a one-trick pony.
Is there really any place in academia for somebody who is incapable of
recognizing and building upon the existing work of others?

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Read Richard Feynman's memoirs - he learned a similar technique as a post-doc after prompting from his sister, in order to master conference papers outside his core expertise.

You ask if there is a place in academia for someone with your characteristics.  I would like to answer a different question -- how can you channel your talents and disposition so as to get through what is needed in order to earn a PhD (in a reasonable amount of time)?
I see some things in your self-description that I recognize in my son, who has ADHD and OCD.  I couldn't possibly say whether you have either or both of these conditions.  One way or the other, though, some aspects of the treatment and coping mechanisms that have been helpful for my son might be helpful for you.  So I will share what has helped him, and then speculate a bit about what might help you.
You described impulsive and compulsive behaviors that get in the way of your functional ability to read papers.
Part I - Impulsivity
(My mind races about other things as I'm reading), i.e. difficulty maintaining focus while experiencing distractibility
Two things help my son with his impulsivity (which is a primary symptom of ADHD):

A medication called Tenex.  (If you and your doctor decide to give this a try, I should mention that a number of specialists have told us that the extended release version, Intuniv, should be avoided.)
Structure.  I'll give you an example.  My son is currently in 8th grade.  This weekend he had to write a short memoir sort of essay for homework.  Working on his own, he had written about half of the story, got distracted, lost interest, and wanted to turn it in in its incomplete form.  I looked at his planning sheet with him.  He explained that he had changed his mind about the outline he had made.  But he didn't have the patience to re-do the outline.  Okay.  I had him tell me briefly his new outline, and I jotted it down at the computer where we could both see it.  Then I scribed for him as he dictated the remaining part of the story.  If he started to get bogged down in unnecessary detail, I reminded him of where we were in the outline, and if necessary suggested a succinct way of getting from Point A to Point B.

How would this apply to you?  One idea that occurs to me is that you could assign yourself a paper to read, with the following structured activity: Write an outline of the paper.  Without satisfying yourself as to every step in the math underlying the paper, simply write down an outline of the paper, in broad strokes.
If you're able to do that, great!  Of course, there will be times when it would behoove you to go into a section, or a whole paper, in depth.  But I would like you to be able to choose when to do that, and not feel that you have to do it with every paper you pick up.
If you're able to start doing this type of skimming reading without too much trouble, then you won't need to read Part II of my answer.
If you find skimming a paper intolerable... then we could say that perhaps you're experiencing an OCD-like symptom that's interfering with your functioning.
Part II - OCD-like symptoms
(I absolutely need to pull out my notebook; [I] needlessly derive my own formalism)
There are two things that have helped my son deal with his OCD symptoms.

Medication.  The most common medication for OCD is an SSRI, such as Zoloft or Prozac.  Note, SSRIs are slow to take effect, and it can take 2+ months to ramp up safely to the dosage levels recommended for OCD.
Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP).  First I will describe how the therapist and I helped my son go through this protocol, and then I will suggest how you might adapt it for your needs.

In the first treatment session, my son described specific OCD symptoms he experienced, and the therapist wrote them down.  In the second session, he ranked the items on the list according to how impairing they were.  These two steps together are called "mapping the OCD".  In the third session they selected one of the least impairing symptoms and constructed a homework exercise.  In my son's case, the first symptom chosen to work on was this: when my son walked past a dandelion flower, he felt an overwhelming urge to pick it and flick it away with his index finger.  So the exercise was to go outside once a day, find a dandelion in bloom, and stand there looking at it, without picking or flicking, and record on his homework grid his "temperature", i.e. how strongly he felt the urge to perform the ritual.  You record your temperature at intervals.  Eventually your "temperature" starts to go down, because your body can't maintain the heightened alert state all afternoon.  The grid we were given to work with suggested time points (in minutes) of 1, 2, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30.  However, my son's inner clock runs fast, and we found that the suggested pace was too slow for him.  We found that generally, his "temperature" starts to go down after about 20 seconds.  Sometimes, we see that it goes up again before it really tails off -- in other words, we see a two-humped curve.  But as long as we haven't bitten off more than he can chew, it really does always tail off.  The key is to go very step by step in the sequence of exercises.
You go through the exercise every day.  After a few days, or a week, we found that it would start to get easier.  My son was usually ready to move to the next exercise in the sequence after about 10 days.
For the last four months (treatment began 1 1/2 years ago), he has been working on one of his most challenging symptoms, his spider phobia.  I selected a bunch of photographs from books and the internet, and ranked them according to yuckiness.  We worked on them one at a time.  It would take one to two weeks for him to desensitize to each photograph.  Yes, it is slow going, but he has improved remarkably.  No more screaming and running away if a small to medium-sized spider happens to amble across the kitchen floor.
How might you adapt this?  I will assume for the purposes of this answer that you don't have a lot of OCD-like symptoms.  (If you did, then the standard protocol would be directly applicable.)
If you are able to convince yourself that the urge to discover the intermediate steps (the ones the author didn't write down) will subside if you allow some time to go by, then I think you may be able to leverage the ERP concept.

If you get evaluated and end up with a diagnosis (possibly one of my son's conditions, possibly something else), you can get assistance to help you be more successful in your studies, from the student disability office at your university.

Addition about how to find a therapist who can do ERP, if one is interested in pursuing that treatment modality (copied from the comments):
Unfortunately, there is, in the U.S. at least, a severe national shortage of therapists trained in diagnosing and treating OCD and specific phobias, but the good news for you is that it's easier to find someone who can treat adults than children. Take a look at the International OCD Foundation website.
When I was having trouble finding someone, I called up the OCD Foundation, and amazingly enough, their executive director took my call himself, and got me unstuck. One thing to watch out for: in my geographical area, at least, for every therapist trained in doing ERP, there are at least 10, maybe even 100, who will blithely say they can diagnose and treat OCD, despite never having been to a single workshop on ERP. However, ERP is the only therapeutic treatment that holds up in studies.

-1. Suggesting medication as an answer to this question seems rather extreme to me. Surely there are other ways to try out first?. Even if nothing else works not everyone would trade a better focus for the possible side effects of the drugs. Also advising to follow the doctors opinion doesn't seem right to me. The treatment will often depend on the doctors views, so what really matter is the OP view's on that matter.

@OlaM - You lost me a bit somewhere in the matter.  I would like to clarify that I am in no position to suggest that OP take medication.  However, I see nothing wrong with informing OP of medications that some have found helpful.   Decisions are of course up to  OP + family + doctor, working together.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

Unfortunately, there is a severe national shortage of therapists----which nation are you assuming the OP is from? I assumed he or she is European, but I don't know the exact nation.

@Dilworth - Sorry.  Okay, I added country to my answer.  It's the U.S. // I would be surprised if other countries did not face similar problems.

"Is there really any place in academia for somebody who is incapable of recognizing and building upon the existing work of others?"
Before I answer, this sort of person is extremely rare and is probably not the person asking the question.  It is, however, very common for student who have difficulty with something to believe they are "incapable" when there is a possibility of improvement.  For these students, I would recommend seeking advice from a local expert, which might include your institution's counselling service.
The answer is no.  Success in academia requires the ability to work well with others.  It also requires the use of multiple strategies in order to succeed.  I would guess that most professions and social groups also need individuals to be flexible in order to succeed.

-1 In my experience there is a lot of people who are low on some set of skills (like working with others) and as long as they have enough of other skills they are fine.

@Ola You can name a single physics paper of this century that contains not a single citation? (because that is what the original problem implies) I seriously doubt it. If you're not in a really, really new field there will always be some prior work that you can build on. Yes you could reinvent all of this, but in practice that's a futile endeavour - things are moving too quickly.

Re: "Success in academia requires the ability to work well with others." -- I'll note that my communication skills are not exactly up to par, either!

@Voo the fact that OP is not using work of others does not mean he never will. Where I work everyone aims to be super productive from day one. Apart from this one guy who refused to do any work, as he said he needs to understand the systems first. I am not sure how he managed to stay without adding any value for a whole year. But then he was happy to start. And is now one of the best employees who answers everyone's else's questions. And to answer your question - you can find an example of a paper with no references on this stackexchange :)

@OlaM The question is "If you cannot read papers and work with others can you work in academia?". The answer to that is no. If the question were "Can I work in academia if I couldn't read papers and work with others in the past?" your comment would apply. And I scanned through the answers here, but I don't see any reference to a paper without citation (that would be incredibly weird in physics!), just post the name or link itself.

@Voo https://dx.doi.org/10.1002%2Fandp.19053221004. It's actually 111 years old, not quite of this century; but still relevant enough I daresay... (Of course you are right though: even Einstein did build on a lot of prior work. If anybody can be said to have invented almost everything he needed for his research himself it would be Newton – and he's the one who made the famous shoulders of giants quote!)

@left Interesting find, wouldn't have expected that. Although I think you agree that this is more a testament of the more relaxed conventions about citations back in the day (the first paragraph of the paper alone would require a few citations in this day and age I'd say)

You don't have to read papers to cite them... You can just redevelop the background and then cite the person who has priority. You also might be expected to throw in a bunch of background that you never used or cared about just to get published.

This doesn't answer the question. @Anonymous physicist may have misunderstood the question. The OP didn't say anything about his or her team working abilities. The OP claimed he or she cannot read and build on the scientific results appearing in published papers.

@Dilworth I disagree, reading and building on published papers is an example of working with others, including the authors of those papers.

No. Working with others means interacting with live people in a day to day basis. Building on the results of possibly dead scientists doesn't fall in the standard meaning of "working with others".

As a fellow Ph.D student in a field close to yours, it seems to me you are underselling your skills too quickly; it's not clear why you are so confident that the skills you mention cannot be applied to real research, or why you have effectively given up on reading papers. An ability to reinvent interesting and non-trivial wheels is a great ability in fields close to mathematics (as physics is).
That said, certainly you will need to develop some kind of way that you'll be comfortable reading papers in a productive way if you want to be a good researcher, it seems. I suppose a strategy that might work in your case is to focus on some particular open question (that is not extremely difficult, as judged by, say, your advisor) that interests you, and then attempt to solve it. You could get such an open question from your advisor, or from some other faculty, for example. Ideally, you should be able to come up with open questions from studying other papers, but perhaps in your particular case it may be helpful to get this help from someone else as a way to "kickstart" your research.
About reading papers, this should not present much more difficulty than reading textbooks, and surely you have read some (portions of) textbooks in the past, right? Perhaps a good strategy would be to approach paper reading as textbook reading. In the very unusual case that you don't read textbooks at all, I suggest the following approach to reading papers: Lock away your notebook and pencil; print out the paper, and go read it in a park, or some place you have no quick access to writing tools. In this case, it is possible that you may be better able to "force yourself" to read through the paper, even if ideas are flowing in.
In any case, the problems you mention having with reading papers are good problems to have in my opinion. You just need to control your excitement, and artificial ways of doing it (as mentioned above) might be useful at the beginning. Best of luck!

Heh, same problem applies to textbooks, pretty much.  If I'm "just reading" then I get nothing out of it, and if I read with any sort of goal, I eventually start to get this "racing" feeling that feels like... some sort of adrenaline rush? Whatever it is, it is not particularly conducive to reading!

You have to start changing your perspective on how you think about acquiring knowledge, if you want to become a good researcher. You say you get nothing out of it, but perhaps that is because of the way you have conditioned yourself to feel when you approach reading a paper. That is, my guess at this point is that your problems are entirely psychological, and could be dealt with if you get some sound advice from a professional, which I am not.

While I am not myself an academic, I have just been reading Metamaths by Gregory Chaitin (about Chaitin's constant and his approach to research), and in it he says:

I don't think that you can really understand a mathematical result
  until you find your own proof. Reading someone else's proof is not as
  good as finding your own proof. in fact, one fine mathematician that I
  know, Robert Solovay, never let me explain a proof to him. He would
  always insist on just being told the statement of the result, and then
  he would think it through one his own! I was very impressed!

This does not provide an answer to the question. Once you have sufficient reputation you will be able to comment on any post; instead, provide answers that don't require clarification from the asker. - From Review

I understand this sentiment, its true. But as @Ric comments its not an answer, more like a start for a good alternate answer.

It seems like a legit answer to me, though perhaps not a complete one.

I think there are three things one should think about:

research area
advisor
future aims

Research Area
In science research, there are fields which are more "theory based" and fields which are more "problem driven". I worked both in differential topology and applied discrete optimization: While my topological research required a huge amount of reading (during which I often proved things I later found hidden in some paper), the applied discrete optimization allowed you to find a problem, grab a tool and start hammering on it: And you often really found something new because there is a huge range of possible problems and possible tools to apply (and improve). So I would ask myself: Is my area of physics really the right subject for me?
Advisor
Advisors have vastly different expectations and can be extreme helpful or just the opposite. If you have an advisor that gives you a problem for which he knows that it is unexplored (may it be far away from the main line or not) and you can put your effort into it, it may be the right thing for you. If your advisor expects you to read much and find your own problems, he/she may not be a good fit for you.
Future Aims
What are your options besides an academic career? Would you be happier working in some company where you face concrete, manageable problems every day? To say whether it is a good idea to get a PhD depends largely on the alternatives you have in mind.

Tell me, do you want to be in academia or not? If not, then leave academia even if you are the most suited personality for it. If yes, then stay in academia even if people like you are not welcome. When the place for people like you isn't carved out in academia, cut one out for yourself. Follow your curiosity. Curiosity has its own reason for existingTM.

Your weakness is your strength too. There is a positive term to describe that "stubbornness" of yours - Academic Guts - which means going into a problem and not giving up on it.

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure how I'm still in grad school.

We deserve the place we are at, whether moon or gutter. You are in grad school because you earned it.

I've been researching under one professor's wing for two years now, ostensibly shooting for a Ph.D. (note: no topic yet), and I have accomplished nothing except write a lot of code, fill a bunch of notebooks with theorems and scratchwork, and whine a lot.

Writing a lot of code is something. Just in case you like writing code, think about becoming a Software Engineer or a Computer Scientist. "Filling notebooks with theorem" is how an outsider would describe your work. I, too, have filled a lot of notebooks (even though I'm a Software Engineer), and my manager never liked it in the first two years. I paid heavily for that - denied promotion and on the brink of getting fired. But after two years, finally, the results came, and those filled notebooks helped design the best possible solution to the team's problems... Solutions that were good enough, that when my manager formed a new sub-team to solve a critical issue, the sub-team was composed of only Senior Software Engineers plus me.
You can stop whining - it never helps.
Why are you shooting for Ph.D.? What do you want to achieve through Ph.D.? Do you know what you want to do? If you don't have an answer, give yourself some time and think about it.

Insofar as I can surmise, my precise set of skills is good for one thing and one thing only: Solving problems that have already been solved... but only from scratch, my way. And I'm too stubborn to know when to give up.

You concluded that your skills are suitable for solving already solved problems because you re-solved the research papers. In other words - you like attacking problem statements. Always those problem statements come from research papers in your case. Go to a professor and ask him what problem (s)he is working on. That way, you will get a problem statement to attack, and another researcher would not have already solved the problem. Working on an unsolved academic problem sounds like Ph.D. to me.

I can't read academic papers in my field. [Either] I can't read it because I'll get too easily excited [Or] I can't read it because it means nothing to me [and] my mind races about other things as I'm reading.

It is a sign that you don't have a clear goal. You probably need to focus your field further down. When reading papers, your mind races everywhere because you have not fixed the purpose. Fixing purpose is more important than improving focus. If your goal is fixed, where can your focus go?
Stop reading just any research paper. Fix your domain. Analyze yourself and see what kind of problems you like to solve. See what specific fields you like in Physics. If you like too many, pick one and do well in it rather than scattering the power of your mind all over the place.
I want to share an anecdote with you from my own life:

I could never fix my field of study in life (even when I was done with my undergrad). I always thought that if I kept doing something in field X and never touched field Y, I would miss all the fun in field Y. With this, all my life until undergrad, I neither thoroughly enjoyed Xs nor Ys. I was like an oscillating pendulum - suffering initially with severe mood swings and later with severe depression. I lost my friends, and they often left me with suggestions of seeing a psychiatrist.
Totally fed up with my life, I took a year off after my undergrad. During that year, I went through a lot of self-help material, and whenever I had any insight into my life, I wrote it down in a diary. However, the turning point came when I met one particular farmer.
This unsuspecting farmer had the answer to my every single question (Not kidding at all - He discussed Math, Physics, Politics, Life, Death and even told me the limit of the universe!). Regarding my indecisions, he said to me that when all his friends chose to become industrialists, politicians, engineers, and whatnot, he left his home searching for peace and studied life. He then decided that he would continue with the profession of his ancestors - farming. Now, after almost 37 years since he chose to be a farmer and live a happy and prosperous life, those friends of his often come to his place and in the evenings relax in his fields, saying - "We have been fooled. You are the only one who is actually living the content life."
The simple point - Do one thing and do it well. Even if you want to become a good farmer, you will need to be educated about almost everything. Pick one field for yourself, and soon you will realize that to be good in your area, you will eventually need to know everything because everything is connected. However, when your field is fixed, your awareness of everything will expand in a controlled manner, unlike how it is happening with you now when your mind just races.

If I have to show it with a drawing, below is the depiction of a mind whose purpose is not fixed. This mind jumps all over the place - races faster than light - and doctors call it ADHD†. (The line shows the location of your thought.)

Below is the pictorial representation of another mind. This mind has its purpose fixed. This mind commits no mistake because it is entirely focused on the task. This state of mind is also called Meditation - all the attention focused on the one point.

...ultimately, there's a point where everything goes into a black box, and the result pops out. This is a shame because I know that these computations can expose new and interesting emergent properties of the theory. Still, sometimes it's just too difficult finding the ladder down from my ivory tower.

You are right - there are exciting things to be discovered in those "black boxes." I can understand you when you say that it is just too complicated. The fact is, everything worth doing takes effort. Do you want to stay on the surface and do simple things? Or do you want to delve deep and do difficult things that can cause paradigm shifts?
Even better - how about not worrying about the ease or difficulty of the problem and just solving them because you enjoy solving such riddles? That is the only way forward where you will be happy. Let me tell you another story -
In my grad school, I decided that I would master "Data." During that time, the word "Data" meant nothing more than "Databases." Everyone, including professors, TAs, and classmates, told me that there is no sense in studying Databases as it is a very static field. There isn't much growth and not many avenues to explore. It was upsetting and slightly discouraging that the area I chose for my study after the year-long break after undergrad was not considered good by people.
Little did everyone know what was going to happen. I invested my entire Master's in studying the ins and outs of Data. I took every course with the word "Data" in its title - even against everyone's recommendation. When I was just about done with my Masters and beginning to look for jobs, thanks to Google's work and white papers, this new term called "Big Data" was hugely hyped, and industry was abuzz with it. One of the top three jobs at the time of my graduation was Data Scientist. The same set of people who disagreed with my choice earlier later told me that this field has a lot of scope.

Is there really any place in academia for somebody incapable of recognizing and building upon the existing work of others?

The answer is simple and has already been given at the top - If you want to do something, do it. Honest efforts never go to waste. Hard work will surely pay. Don't be tied to the materialistic dividends of hard work. The immediate result of honesty and hard work is peace and satisfaction. Good things take time. Your habit of doing things by yourself will show its effect in some time. After hundreds of self-solved research papers, for example, you will get so familiar with the proofs that you will not just read the equations; instead, you will visualize them. That will be a gift unique to you. Who knows what beauty will come out of that Pandora's box?

Update (Dec 3, 2022): I came across this beautiful article today that explains my point from another perspective. People complain of attention deficit. This person was hyper attentive.
Update (Sep 3, 2024): Here is a video by the same person on the same topic.

†Some readers have an objection to me stating that the behavior of a person with an unfocused mind, with their thoughts jumping all over the place, is (the root of) ADHD. I have been provided links to three research papers that seem to substantiate the same. Below are specific sentences from those papers:
1. Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder is not a single pathophysiological entity and appears to have a complex etiology. There are multiple genetic and environmental risk factors with [a] small individual effect that act in concert to create a spectrum of neurobiological liability.
2. The structural aspects include changes primarily affecting but not limited to the prefrontal cortex, corpus striatum, and cerebellum [...] Larger studies should be conducted to have a better and definitive understanding of the pathophysiology of the disease.
3. At this stage, no definitive conclusions can be offered regarding the utility of meditation-based interventions for children with ADHD and/or their parents, since the methodological quality of the studies reviewed is low.
In response to the linked papers, I have the following points to make:
1. It is pretty obvious to me that our actions are a direct result of our thoughts. You can evaluate the same yourself. Ex: A person who has chosen to live kindly and makes conscious efforts to be kind in thinking, is incapable of performing a cruel action. Simply because the basis of being cruel is missing in them.
2. Not a single one, out of the three papers given the link to, makes a clear or authoritative statement that the brain's structure is the primary cause of ADHD. I think it is completely fair to expect that if the understanding of ADHD, or any disease for that matter, is clear, then the paper would have strong statements about the same, rather than soft statements like the three stated above.
3. 'Fuzzy logic' is no logic. When there is logic, there is no fuzziness. And even further, correlation is not causation. Some humans may be prone to exhibit hyperactivity, just like some people have long strides because they have longer legs. But, in the absence of a clear demarcation of the physical and conscious aspects, the solution of a non-physical "disease" is impossible. And to be even more clear, 'attention' or its deficiency is conscious/non-physical; 'activity' or hyper-ness of activity, is physical.
4. I wish to emphasize once again - Meditation is not a treatment of ADHD. Meditation is the opposite of attention deficiency. The root of the definition of meditation is - 'Focus one's mind for a period of time.' and that is the literal opposite of attention deficiency.

I like this answer, but you may have misconstrued "ADHD" a bit.  It is not a state of mind.  It is a physiological condition that affects some people which could be described, in part, as making them much more prone to certain states of mind than the majority.  This does not mean they cannot turn "races faster than light" into "meditation", it just means in order to do so there are some issues they must deal with that the majority of people do not, and that approaches which work for the majority may not work for them and vice versa.

@delicateLatticeworkFever: Attention deficit is a result of lack of purpose. When the purpose is fixed, the attention stays fixed too on the purpose. For the condition I was in, I had to take a full year off (as I mentioned in the answer). I was lucky that I didn't go to a doctor. Doctors, in general, treat symptoms and repair human body while mind is not even a part of body (Brain is). The most striking thing i learned was - Whatever a person does not understand about life, he has a mental "disorder" in it. Of course every individual needs different treatment because people have ...

... differing level of awareness. And it is easier to be fully aware when you are already motivated to be aware. Hence the difference in approaches for different people. (If you want me to, I can go in further detail.)

@delicateLatticeworkFever: Attention Deficiency is a state of mind while ADHDisorder is a term by some people. The right treatment of Attention Deficiency is to clear your mind. The mind that has been treated of its Attention Deficiency will be in the state of Meditation.

Mind/body dualism is a philosophical opinion I don't share, and not worth arguing about. In any case, it certainly doesn't prove or disprove the existence of ADHD as a physiological condition, unless you happen to believe your mind does not require a body to exist. Which is an even more tangential opinion. Like global warming, there is a pretty high degree of scientific consensus and evidence here, e.g., regarding unusual levels of dopamine re-uptake. Anyone who wants to go to the library and do their own research is free to do so. I am not arguing for or against any particular treatment.

To stretch your position to an extreme -- that mental disorders are really just "people not understanding about life" -- my father is in long term permanent care because of a significant brain injury suffered in a motorcycle accident.  His "mind" was very seriously affected and he is, e.g., aphasic, which is a mental disorder.  There are various treatments that have had a degree of effectiveness, but to say the problem is because he "does not understand about life" is totally ridiculous.  I'm actually not sure that classifying ADHD as a "mental disorder" is at all useful, BTW.

@delicateLatticeworkFever: Mind/Body dualism is not an opinion. However it can be understood only after Mind and Body are properly understood. Your father's condition is due to a brain injury (as you have said yourself), not a mental disorder.

@delicateLatticeworkFever: After your comment, I googled Aphasia. From what I read, it is a communication disorder (not a mental disorder) that results from damage to the parts of the brain (not mind) that contain language.

@delicateLatticeworkFever: On a lighter note... "You know you are out of your mind?" "Yes. Took me practice of a lifetime."

Perhaps we can then agree that "mental disorder" is a somewhat pejorative,  rhetorically loaded term, which I why I used "physiological condition".   Physiological, as in, possessing defined physical characteristics in the brain.  ADHD is no different in that sense, hence the global warming analogy.  If your religion, philosophy, or fossil fuel addiction problematizes this, the problem is you, not the phenomenon.

Sorry for the (very) late reply, but the idea that ADHD can be solved by just "clearing your mind" is nonsense. It's the equivalent to saying that "standing up" solves paraplegia. ADHD isn't a state of mind, it's a medical condition. Meditation can help deal with some symptoms, but it doesn't change the structure of the prefontal cortex or how fast neurotransmitters are reabsorbed.

@displayName No, rapid reabsorbtion of neurotransmitters is not what makes someone a genius and it IS a problem, even for geniuses. Your claim is completely unsubstantiated. No offence, but it's pretty obvious you have no idea whatsoever what it's like to have ADHD or how it works. A drunk person can choose to take a bus or a car, a person with ADHD can't choose how their brain chemistry works.

@JSLavertu: I figured we would reach here. You may ignore my answer.

@displayName Reach where? A point where what your opinion about ADHD clashes with the reality of people who actually have it? You wouldn't tell a clinically depressed person to "just stop being sad" so why do it for people with ADHD?

@displayName I see you chose to delete your comments. Sadly, I doubt this indicates you changed your mind about the claims you made...

@JSLavertu: Please give me some links from where I can read about what you have stated.

@displayName I've seen your message and I intend to link some resources. I just haven't gotten around to it yet, it's on my list though!

@displayName Here are a few articles that give a good overview:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/1824-7288-36-79
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40474-019-00182-w
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00787-017-1008-9

"We deserve the place we are at, whether moon or gutter." This statement is so out of touch with reality. So children living in poverty don't deserve to go to university because their parents can't afford it? And children of millionaires deserve guaranteed acceptance to top schools despite academic records just because their parents paid for it?

@DanicaScott: 1. Please read the statement in full context. It was said to someone who said he isn't sure how he is still in grad school. He thought he did not deserve to be in grad school. 2. If it were a trust fund baby saying that she doesn't feel like she deserved an admit to a top school, I’d concur with the person and tell them to earn their place rather than have their parents buy it for them. 3. Everyone deserves an education. If it were in my hands, I would make primary schooling and higher education completely free.

@DanicaScott: I get the impression that you have high regard for top schools. I don't. I have high respect for a mind that exhibits love, kindness, empathy, and compassion towards other human beings. People’s degrees, their dress, their current salary, their bank balance, the brand of their car, the size of their home, and other similar parameters do not really make an impression on me.

@displayName Did you ever get around to reading the links I provided? I'm curious to hear if it has changed your perspective.

@JSLavertu: Two of your links allowed access to only the abstract of the paper. I could get full access to one, though. I appreciate your willingness and humility to discuss something with a person who doesn't share your views. (1/2)

Let us both leave this deliberation, hoping that as time passes, the other person will be more receptive to what's being said today and arrive at a holistic understanding of humans and the human mind. (2/2)

Obsessiveness, independence, originality, and a compulsion to work things out for yourself seems to summarize your self description.
These sound like ideal properties for a wannabe researcher to me. The biggest problem in getting students to transit to original research is their lack of
these qualities, since passive learning has been too rewarded in their undergraduate studies.
Progress is made by getting a different understanding of a topic to other people. The best way to get that is to work out the details for yourself.
One approach to learning new material is to find out the main results in a topic and then work out the proofs of why they are true for yourself. You can just treat them as big homework problems. Do this enough and you will get to the edges of what is known and then prove some new things.
As others have said, you might be best working in a young area eg combinatorics, computer science, information theory, Ramsey theory.

Excellent point about working in a young area: there's less to reinvent and more to simply invent.

Assuming you want to stay in academia I would not give up because of the reasons you described in your question.
Firstly, many scientists have very much ‘their ways’ to approach problems. This might be more acceptable in academia than in some other workplaces where you’re expected to do what you’re told.
Secondly, I think you underestimate how difficult it is for other people to stay focused on scientific papers. It seems better to me to lose focus because you’re so excited about the paper then because you start to think about a different topic. At the same time you might be underestimating your talents (you know about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome ?)
If academia is not right for you most likely it will become clear in the form of external cues like missed deadlines on your projects. Or you will start to feel you are wasting your time. But it is also likely that you will find ways to leverage both your own talents and work of others.
Some examples that come to my mind are Edward Hallowell who has ADD and is very successfull in his field (I read some other of his book, not the ones about ADHD/ADD, but remember that he said he learned how to compensate for his traits). It’s a bit different area, but I remember reading how Richard Branson said having dyslexia really helped him to run his businesses, as he would not get bogged down by details.

You seem to enjoy doing research and you seem to be productive, at least in terms of results in you notebook, not yet in terms of publications. So I think academia is a good place for you.
However, you feel some obstructions with acquiring other's results: You feel distracted by your own thoughts about the things they mention and you don't feel attracted by certain fields of publications.
A solution to the latter is to specialize in a different field, as already suggested.
A solution for the former is to actually learn how to learn from other's writings. This is different from learning in lectures. In lectures, you get small chunks of information, didactically prepared. You can reproduce these chunks in the exercises, exams and own thoughts. This is one thing.
Learning from publications is a different way of learning. It is naturally more challenging. There is a greater distance between you and the authors: They (and their referees) might find some information straightforward, so they omit them. Also, they might use slighly different conventions than what your lecturers used. For proper understanding, you have to fill these gaps, e.g. find some textbooks that follow the same notational custom, answer yourself the question, why an assertion, that is called straightforward by the authors, is actually true. Also read their references; maybe not thoroughly, but try to understand why they cited them!
This is hard, unpleasant work. We feel better with the light bulb moment. So at the beginning, you are tempted to get distracted by things that promise you a more instant feeling of success. This is a usual burden. It disappears as you get more experienced: You get used to the gaps, you recognize more and more gaps you have already bridged. So reading becomes less painful.
Also, your distractions can be your friend as you are in the happy situation of "related distractions", not the stuff usual procrastinators do (housework, answering on stackexchange). So write your thought down, but not into your notebook but on a sticky note at the margin. Then try to rediscover your thought somewhere (or in one of its references). Found it? If not, put your sticky note in your notebook for later thinking, because at the moment, your objective is to read a paper, not to solve own toy problems. If you have recognized it somwehere, stick the note there on the margin. Then continue reading.
This is for dealing with the "micro structure", the proofs, the definitions, the details. There is still the "big picture" a publication is intended to convey. Try to get some impression of the big picture prior to focusing on the details. Do not try to read a paper word by word from the first to the last page.
Read the introduction first, especially the outline of the content. Then browse the paper: Does each section actually deal with the issues promised by the authors in the outline? What is the "story" that links them? E. g. can you tell "in prose" in one sentence the story that links the issue of sequences, the real numbers and differentiation in your calculus course? Write your own abstract about what is happening in the publication. Learn to identify which parts of a paper you can safely ignore. Then dive into the details with your pen and your sticky notes, not earlier.

I am unsure what you mean by "try to rediscover your thought somewhere", can you rephrase?

If you need a lemma in your thesis, you should try to cite it from some other publication, even if you can prove it on your own. This keeps your own publication brief and digestible for the readers. Also, citing is faster than TeXing. So you have to keep track about what and who did something related to your work, especially who already had your ideas. It's also cool to write something like "J.D. proved something similar, but I need a more general case of the lemma which I prove subsequently".

Based on

In all cases, papers already existed which solved these problems. I just couldn't bear the thought of having to seek them out and read them!

and

If it is a very abstract and theoretical paper, then I can't read it because I'll get too easily excited; I'll get to maybe the second page of definitions and axioms before my head is flooded with ideas and I absolutely need to pull out my notebook and begin trying to gain an intuition for them.

it seems like you are trying to understand the paper in a very extensive way, which is greatly commendable. In my opinion, you fit well into the area of research, you just have to make use of your behaviour and strengths:
Step 1: Narrow down the field of physics you are really interested in.
As mentioned in your question, you need some time to work through the papers and problems because you learn and work in detail. You need to concentrate on one particular field in order to keep a focus in a wider sense.
Step 2: Work through the latest important papers on the chosen research field and - despite your post - finish them, even if it takes months.
As you work on the papers and try try "to gain an intuition on them", you have to go back to the paper after "tiring yourself out after several hours" and continue. After completing a paper you will certainly have an understanding about the theory behind it. Additionally, you will certainly encounter some (theoretical) problems. This is where the next step starts:
Step 3: Start building your own work/dissertation upon the encountered problems in current scientific knowledge of the chosen field and the (maybe quite small number) of papers.
If you really chose current research topics, you will have encountered problems that others have, too. Furthermore, you simplified the (current) work of other researchers and maybe you also have solved non-trivial problems on the way. Build on that and stay in contact with your dissertation supervisor about the work you have done.

For any problem I've ever worked on for research, I've always begun with trying to solve the aspects that stand out to me; enumerating the set of solutions to some nasty-looking equation, or devising an algorithm to compute something which is faster than the obvious brute force strategy.

If focused into the right direction, this can be very helpful for others and you will definitely will solve problems that others don't already have if you work on current problems. Any research field stops at some kind of state-of-the-art where your simplifications can be worth its weight in gold for further improvements in this particular field. Additionally, your work is your work. You stated that you "couldn't" bear the though of having to seek" papers out that already solved a problem. When you solve a problem your way, you don't necessarily have to search for a paper that did just the same thing. As long as you didn't plagiarize, write it into your dissertation, if it has something to do with your chosen topic.
With your method of reading papers you can be an expert in one particular field, you just have to choose wisely regarding what papers you pick.
And as always: Ask your supervisor for a "push" in the right direction. Use your motivation in your favor and you will produce great results.

Solving in a better way problems that have already been solved leads to solving unsolved problems. This was exactly my experience in math. I completely reconstructed something from 30 years ago without ever seeing it, but I found something they missed. That was my dissertation. Then I developed a framework for working with a concept from 80 years ago (still in current use)  that looks nothing like it but is equivalent. The advantage is that my theory is coherent, and that led me to solve another unsolved problem.
In some ways reading other papers too much can be a disadvantage because it stifles your creativity. But whenever you find something new (at least new to you), you are obligated to look it up and see if someone has done it already. It can be painful to see that the work has already been done, but I've found that I always end up doing it slightly differently, and sometimes it's possible to combine the two versions to get something better.
Anyway, the moral is that a person like this does have a place in academia provided that in the end they've played the game and cited everything relevant.

I also do not like reading papers.  In graduate school, I managed to read two papers from one end to the other; in total they amounted to less than 20 pages.  The following things allow me to nevertheless be a functional academic.
(1) Google.
Note: you often don't have to read the whole paper to learn whether or not it solves your problem.
(2) MathOverflow (I assume there's a physics version)
(3) Walk down the hall and ask someone who might know
(4) Attend seminars and ask questions, this is a good way to accumulate information
(5) By working with collaborators, you can borrow their literacy.
There are also some advantages to not reading very much.  One is, you don't have your head clouded with all the failed attempts at solving a problem, and can just try something new.  Sometimes the ability to try something too simple to possibly work is just the thing, this has happened to me at least twice.

Hopefully, the situation you describe is a bit of an exaggeration, or idealization. While it's good to have curiosity and not want to simply take "authorities'" pledge for the truth, it is crushingly inefficient to not be able to benefit from prior work by other (often very, very insightful/smart) people.
It is certainly true (in my experience, in mathematics, in the U.S., ...) that much of the "published literature" is not written to help beginners, nor, perhaps, to help anyone at all. In our contemporary situation, the main point of "publication" is to secure incrementally greater status for oneself, in the eyes of university (and funding agency) bureaucrats. The incidental benefit-to-others is not really a fundamental criterion.
So, yes, much of the literature is not at all helpful, and is not written-up in a friendly way. So, small wonder if you find it difficult to extract anything useful from it. Bingo.
Nevertheless, perhaps more "hidden" due to professional pressures, people have come up with many good ideas, which you'd be sorry to have missed out on...
E.g., the patent unhelpfulness of much of the "refereed literature" must not deter us from pursuing insights written up by capable people with similar interests.
Yes, it is tricky to find congenial sources. Some on-line forums are friendlier than "the refereed literature", for sure.
So, if you're an independently wealthy hobbyist, sure, do whatever you want. But if you are fatally enamored of your subject, in addition to your own reflections on it, you'll really want to be able to benefit from the insights of other people in your field. Again, yes, much stuff is badly written. Unfortunate, yes. But/and part of the skill-set of the best professionals is being able to see through dubious presentations to the underlying idea...
That is, in mathematics in the way that I most like to think of it, the written documents are narratives of an idea, rather than being the idea itself. Thus, even if a thing is clumsily portrayed (from some subjective viewpoint), one can/must "see through" the clumsy narrative to the underlying idea. (Don't let yourself convince yourself to ignore great ideas of others that may be badly narrated...)

You are doing everything right. No need to question yourself. The problem is not your attitude towards knowledge and problems but the general laziness of the todays research approach in physics. Most papers are plain bad and/or wrong due to the high stress researchers feel to publish and show "results" of their work. If you struggle to read to the end of any paper, that's probably not your fault. Currently, there is no major spirit in the physical community to "work up from scratch". It's accepted to continue from some high level statements that are not very well understood. Fundamental understanding has never emerged from such doing and that's probably why most (theoretical) research is rather "technical" today, e.g. calculating some minimal corrections to cross-sections. Although, this level of extreme specialisation has been very important for large-scale experiments due to the need to manage the huge workload, it sometimes lacks the aspect of creativity.
This is ultimately boring for someone like you, that seems to strive to understand everything in detail. I advise you not to stop on that approach and to keep being passionate about physics. Sooner or later your fundamental understanding will give you a lead.

-1 for dismissing a whole field as lazy, "plain bad and/or wrong", while simultaneously being too lazy to give a citation for your plain bad and/or wrong claims.

To possibly shed light on his opinion, the answerer linked some videos in comments on the question, which were largely about biases in experimental results (e.g. publication bias, p-hacking).  This stuff doesn't really come as news to me, though I am uncertain that the similar claims can be said for theoretical papers.

Or rather, I get the impression that most physicists do put effort into verifying/rederiving formulas before using them.  But they perhaps are a bit more pragmatic about it, whereas I always end up going whole hog.

@ObviousThrowaway - One of the people I have learned the most from about my son's OCD is the former clinical director at a center for Tourette Syndrome and OCD in London, Ontario (http://www.leakybrakes.ca/).  She told me she has OCD, and when she is able to harness her perfectionism, when she's editing and proofreading, it's a strength.  But when it slows her down and prevents her from functioning effectively, that's a different matter.  My hope for you is that you learn how to choose when to go whole hog.  The in-depth work you know how to do is a strength.

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


text:
Editor not replying to emails long time after submission
My problem is the following.
I submitted a paper to a journal of Elsevier almost a year ago.
Although I have written many times asking about the status of the submission, my emails have been systematically neglected and I have not received any news since last November of 2018.
In view of the long time lapsed, I wrote to the editor asking him to sure a date for an answer so that I can free myself of the commitment acquired with him so that I can submit the paper to another journal.
One more time the email was neglected.
The results of this submission have been already presented in congresses with very good reception of the audience. Now, due to a long time lapsed, I am at risk of missing them.
What can I do?

What news did you get in November 2018?

@Allure He informed me that he didn't have yet a referee's report.

Even if it is a good journal, they can nowadays have problems finding reviewers.

The way I see it these two scenarios are the most likely:

They feel they're being pestered by you and so are ignoring your emails. This would apply if by "many" times you mean you wrote them so many emails that they got annoyed. It's also more likely to be the case if, in your field, the average review times are up to 1 year (e.g. mathematics).
The other possibility is that the editor is busy/inactive, and isn't paying much attention to the journal.

Your options are:

Wait and see what happens.
Write to the journal office and ask for a status update. Check the journal's website and see if they have a contact email. If they refer you back to the editor then the chances of #1 having happened increase (although it's also possible that the desk editor is simply not very motivated and is passing everything on to the editorial board).
You can also ask the editor-in-chief instead of the handling editor.
Withdraw and submit elsewhere. If you choose this route, look around at the editorial management system and see if there's a withdraw option.

I also asked the editor-in-chief and the email was also ignored.

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


text:
Do I stand a chance of receiving a research internship at a 3.57 GPA?
I am an undergraduate who will be looking for winter and summer research internships next year. My current GPA is 3.57/4 and have two excellent quality research papers written as a first author. I wanted to ask if I stand any chance for the internship I am looking for (it is at a T15 school for mathematics) The professor (say Mr. X) under whom I am looking for an internship is an alumnus of my school and has good connections with the professors of my college so I can expect really good LORs from them. Apart from that, the research papers I've written as exactly in line with the research work of Mr.X's work. I'm worried about the GPA. I can definitely improve it to a 3.7 maybe but I'm unsure if that's still enough or not.

Nobody here can answer that. Maybe. Possibly. We don't know any better than you do. Sorry. Good luck.

@Buffy Thank you Buffy for your response. I'm assuming that research internships are extremely unpredictable and no one can exactly predict whether you'll get into the internship or not.

Reviewing applications is a pain. Tons of work, tons of time. If they felt they could make it easier by saying "only apply if your GPA is 3.7 or greater", they would, to save their time as much as yours. If it's not that simple, then the only way to find out for both you and them is to go through the application.

As an aside, if you think about your professors as "Mr. X", you may want to work academic social etiquette to avoid needlessly antagonizing people when applying for positions. A "Dr. X" or "Professor X" would be a more appropriate title.

Even though no one here can say with 100% surety or guarantee your placement, your profile seems to be a good one if not the ideal. That could enhance your chances of selection. You have good grades, research exposure, letter of recommendations and so on. But bear in mind that there is always a pool of applicants out of which you have to stand out. So, even if you are not selected, you should take it positively.
I wish you good luck!

I understand it! I can agree that it may not be the perfect profile that the professors are looking for but hopefully something works out. Thank you for your kind words.


text:
Can academics make a living solely out of publishing?
I live in the developing world where most of the population cannot afford to go to university. Unable to pay tuition, I relied on online material to study. However now even that is difficult because a lot of high level resources are paywalled.
Recently I wrote an article in my field of interest and it was selected in a contest, which I am very proud about. If I am able to consistently write such expositions, will I be able to make a stable income? I have zero idea how much professors, researchers and others get paid for each article they publish on prestigious journals. If $ per page or article is high enough I may finally have a chance at making enough money to pursue higher education.
On the other hand I am worried that judges might not take my work seriously given that I am not in university and am a random person from the global south. Do I need to be in college for my papers to be considered in the first place?

"However now even that is difficult because a lot of high level resources are paywalled." LibGen and SciHub can get you quite far. I would go so far as to say that the resources you can find there are very much sufficient at your level. (Yes, these websites presumably violate copyright law, but one can very much question whether a person in the global south who cannot afford to go to university needs to take copyright law all that seriously.)

While not answering your original question, you should know that many authors will be happy to give a free copy of a paper to a student or serious researcher who is financially constrained.

In some fields, such as mathematics, nowadays most essential stuff is not behind paywalls, but is either on peoples' homepages, or on arXiv. The stuff behind paywalls is ... by this year ... primarily there as status-enhancing, etc. Although having other serious people check one's work is good, that's no longer what "peer review" really is...

Generally - no they can't.

partially related: How common are cash-per-publication incentives in different countries?

Academics are not article writers for popular magazines or journals. They don't get paid per article. Most of them teach on the side or supported by research grants. However if you write books that sell enough, then you can make a living on that.

I'm afraid, I have bad news for you.
First of all, you can publish without an affiliation. I did publish my first two papers without belonging to any university at all.
However, you are not going to get paid. I never met anyone in academia, who got paid for their paper at all (maybe there are exceptions, but if there are, they are rare). Instead, researchers are paid by their universities or from scientific grants they won. Having papers published will eventually help you, when applying for paid positions and grants, but they won't win you any money in the short run. I wish I had better news for you.

Outside of the Western world, many countries pay researchers a bonus for publishing papers - enough that it's a substantial source of income for some.

Not only will the venue not pay you if they want to publish your work, in many cases they actually charge you a substantial fee to publish your paper with them.

Nice answer. I suppose, the only ones economically benefiting from academic work are the commercial publishers. Generally, I'd say, academia is a low to moderately paid profession, unsurprisingly, as its productivity is not as determined as it is usual for industry. Often, you are in charge of applying for conference and publishing fees to be funded. Living from just writing academic books is also not the most viable strategy.

@JackAidley yeah and there are stories and stories about how this obviously incentivises bad papers

As other answers have pointed out, publishing itself doesn't usually pay (and sometimes it costs you). However, it is possible to become an independent or freelance researcher.
Here is an article in Nature discussing the phenomenon.
The difference to what you sketch is that you're not being paid so much for the article, as for the research that the article reports on. In short, if somebody needs something figured out, and they are willing to pay for it, they can pay you to find out.
This seems to be a pretty challenging career track, and it has the common downsides of being a freelancer: you need to find a steady stream of clients, and a lot of it depends on your network and your reputation. You also have a lot less freedom to pick abstract or theoretical topics. On the other hand, if it works out, it comes with a lot of freedom, and it may be a way to be a scientist without the formal credentials that university jobs require.
A lot of freelancers (like artists) divide their time between paid work and personal work. The former pays the bills, and the latter helps you build a reputation, and satisfies your need to do more fundamental and meaningful work.

Sometimes it costs you? When does it not? Are there fields where reputable journals publish without charging the author? What fields are those?

@terdon, in theoretical physics some of the most reputable journals don't (e.g. SciPost, which I would recommend for their great philosophy and open-access publishing in general!)

@terdon It's the same In Astronomy. Some journals are financially supported on the country-level and researchers from those countries can publish for free.

@terdon Mathematics, although usually not open-access journals.

@terdon Pretty much any traditional (non-open-access) journal in the fields I know (mix of chemistry and physics) fits that description. Article processing charges are mostly a thing for open-access (by necessity) or predatory journals (because they can, I guess?).

Yeah, I'll add that I've never heard of CS conferences or CS journals charging for publication, though the conferences of course have a registration fee if you want to actually present the paper.

In math you pay to read the articles, not to publish in them (there may be exceptions). Obviously the journal must be paid for one way or the other, unless it is funded by some kind of outside grant; an all-volunteer staff is unsustainable, even before you ask about concrete expenses.

It's possible to make money from submitting papers, but if you're at the point where you are paid to submit, you're also likely past the point where money matters to you, because you'd have to win a Nobel prize first.
More realistically, if you write lots of good papers, you can get a full-time position at a university and get paid to write those papers. (Or get a PhD studentship and get paid to pursue higher education.)
Finally, it's possible to make money from writing for science communication / science journalism outlets.

In your question you talk of publishing by "academics", and it seems at first that you are asking about people employed at academic institutions. However, the main part of your question appears to relate to the related issue of whether it is possible for someone (not necessarily at an institution) to make a living by writing about so-called "academic" matters ... perhaps science, humanities, economics, political science, etc.
If you mean the latter, the answer is definitely yes although you won't get paid by peer-reviewed journals. However, there are many financially successful authors of expositions of academic topics for lay-people, some notable examples being Philip Ball, Giulia Enders, Michael Mosley, and Donald Matthews ... along with many others. Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, there is no published data about just how many unsuccessful would-be authors there are with the same kind of aspirations as the successful authors that I have listed.

Yes, academics can make a living solely out of publishing. But not academic publishing. If you're a historian, for example, you can't make any money writing academic history papers, but if you're good at writing, and lucky, and choose your subject wisely, then you can do very nicely writing popular books for a general audience. Having said that, for every author who succeeds at this there will be another 99 who fail.

Since you ask mostly about papers, the answer is no, as others have stated. However, in rare (very rare) cases an academic can get quite rich from publishing textbooks; especially university texts for elementary courses. The first course in Economics or in Calculus can be worth a lot of money, but for every hundred or so attempts, one might (might) be successful at that level.
But it certainly isn't something you can build a career around. You normally build the career first and then get lucky (very lucky) when you exposition is widely adopted. But at five or so US dollars per volume sold, it takes a lot of sales to make you wealthy. And a given "edition" of a popular book has a very limited lifetime and requires continual updates.

Some secondary school texts are also lucrative. Texas, for example, has a statewide process for selecting books to be used in schools. Getting a book approved by them assures a lot of sales, and not only in Texas. But still rare, with lots of luck involved. Many attempts, few successes.

I buy a textbook for $150, and only $5 goes to the author?  That's only marginally better than the reward for writing papers (zero).

If you can convince the publisher that the book is going to be a success then you might get 10%. The problem with the business model is that most books are commercial failures and the revenues from the few successes go to subsidising the failures.

@MichaelKay, true. Also it is a fact that for most textbooks the actual market is small relative to the production cost. Unlike, say, novels by semi-famous authors.

Not that different from my experience except that (a) I wrote my XSLT book in 2000 when computer book sales were much higher, and (b) I worked on it much more intensively for a much shorter time, about 4 months. The royalties were useful (it's still selling today after 4 editions) but the main financial benefit was to establish name recognition from which I set up first a consultancy and then a software business. Big caveat though - there is nothing academic about any of this.

The other answers are correct that very few, if any, people get paid to publish in academic journals. In fact, some journals charge authors money. The people who do get paid are the best known scholars in a given field. For instance, people may be invited to write hundred page review articles of a given field and may be given a fee.
There are, however, some other possibilities. There are online writing sites where you can make money. Two that I know of are Medium and Substack. Each has its quirks and possibilities. Whether you can make a living at either depends on how much money you need to live. Cost of living varies a lot. I do know one guy who writes a lot on Medium and manages to have a nice supplement to his Social Security payments. But he spends 30 or more hours a week on the site.  Some people make a lot on Substack, but I think most of them were already well-known before starting that.
In general, cost of living is lower in the developing world (although there is a lot of variation, even within that world). And, of course, there's also variation in what any individual considers enough money.
The academics who make a lot by writing (and there aren't many) are the people who write textbooks that become very widely used. Paul Samuelson wrote Economics which has been through 18 editions, and sold over 4 million copies. But writing a textbook is a ton of work and getting one published if you don't have a PhD is hard (although you could self-publish).
You could, however, self-publish a smaller book (or books) and try to make money that way. It's not easy and there are quite a few upfront costs, which might be prohibitive for you.
Sorry.

"some" journals? What are these journals that don't charge? In my field, biology, I have never heard of a journal that doesn't charge you to publish.

I don't remember fees for any of the articles I submitted as a solo author.  I don't know the situation for those I submitted as part of a team.  But the idea that journals might pay the authors is still not realistic.
And I know some journals waive the fees for authors from developing countries.

Really? What is your field? In biology, publishing a paper is usually a few thousand dollars, several thousand when looking at Nature or Science. Are you really saying that in your field, you have actual respected journals (not arXiv or conference proceedings, actual journals) that don't charge for publishing?

I did work in  psychology, education, social work, HIV, and other things.  (I was a statistician for a research company, then for a hospital, then for researchers).  But, again, only a few of them were where I was sole author.

It might be a good general question for Academia:  "What's your field and do journals usually charge for publication?"

@terdon No, that's not correct at all. While routine article publication charges are the norm if you opt for open access, APC is rare if you do not select OA. Neither Cell nor Nature have any fees if you do not opt for OA. Science has no OA and never charges. Journals may have color figure fees, voluntary page fees, and overlength fees, but that's different.

@terdon if a maths journal asks people to pay a fee for publishing, it's more often than not a scam. There are a very very small number of OA journals that survive off authors paying a fee. And in fact I can only think of less than 5. The most prestigious journals in maths publish papers that are scores of pages long, even more than 100 pages, and certainly do not charge fees. And most OA journals I know of in maths do not charge fees either, and they are definitely reputable. Here's an article, 140 pages https://doi.org/10.4310/ACTA.2023.v231.n2.a1 in a top-3 journal, & also OA with no fee.

@terdon "By special arrangement with the Institut Mittag-Leffler, International Press provides fully open online access to the entire content of Acta Mathematica — from its first issue of 1882 to the most recent.
Acta Mathematica was founded by Gösta Mittag-Leffler in 1882. It is owned and published by the Institut Mittag-Leffler, an international research institute for mathematics under the auspices of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Acta Mathematica is one of the most prestigious mathematics research journals in the world,...

... and consistently ranks among the top ten journals in the mathematics category for impact factor." — literally Nobel Prize-adjacent.

Correction: By "There are a very very small number of OA journals that survive off authors paying a fee" I meant "OA reputable journals".

Here's an idea. Many years ago my mother and another woman, her friend, were in the same situation, with little prospects for going to university. Living in a Central American country their opportunities were quite limited. But they came up with the idea of approaching the President of their country with the aim of somehow securing a scholarship. After presenting their case, the President was most impressed with their dignified desire for an education, and in short order had secured from the Senate not only a grant for both of them but also at a prestigious American university in Florida, which at the time was quite generous in accepting them. Had they not taken the bold step to appear in front of the country's President, they probably would not have achieved their degrees. Luck favors the Bold, my good man or woman. Carpe diem!

Another direction for you could be contacting actual professors from another country.
Finding good and motivated students for doing research is often hard for the new proffesors, so they might be willing to spend time sharing materials and teaching you.
Established professor will not want to spend his time on you, but new professor just might.
A simple way to identify a new professor is looking for someone with many papers as first author and only few where his name is last. Or just reading his biography.

If you publish enough, you may be able to gain employment as an journal editor in your field.
Here's the idea:

Publish enough to establish yourself in the field.
Review papers for journals in your field
Develop relationships with editors
Get the job

It might be hard to go from step 1 to step 2 without an affiliation. To overcome this, many institutions can give you a title, like "research adjunct professor", without pay. Just need to develop a relationship with a collaborator.


text:
How should I choose a good research project group?
I have an opprotunity to join one of several research groups during my undergraduate (physics) degree, in a different university. I therefore do not know the people nor the professors very well.
I'm trying to choose between the research groups. I've met and spoken with 3 professors who lead 3 different research groups. They all truely seemed genuine and very helpful. We discussed the nature of the groups, some ideas I could work on, etc.
They all work in different subjects (astrophysics, complex systems, optics), all of which I know next to nothing about, other than standard science-education type of content.
I also felt a connection with them of varying degrees. I 'spoke the language' of the astrophysics and complex systems researchers more, while with the optics researcher, I didn't get his explainations very well. The Comp Systems researcher is known to be a good teacher.
However, in terms of acclaim, from Google Scholar it looks like the optics researcher is by far the most accomplished (his h-index indicates this too), with the atro researcher a not-so-close second and the complex systems guy in last place.
The optics researcher was very very kind and gave me tips, but again, I really didn't get his explainations very well, and I know next to nothing about the field, while the other researchers managed to give me a decent view of what they were doing.
How could one, in a situation like this, try to choose? I feel like I really do not know enough to make an informed decision. I'd love to hear guidelines and tips for how to asses this sort of choice, especially when knowledge is limited due to lack of experience in these fields.

Too personal and too many variables. Which would you actually like to do?

Yes that's a fair criticism, I was contemplating making it a bit less specific but I decided the question itself is general enough. As for which I'd like to do, it might be the complex systems research. I'm just don't know how much the status of the researcher is something I should consider, if I want to show this research off on my resume for example.

It seems too early to worry about things like h-index and other status indicators. You want someone who can work with you, not just write a bunch of papers. More important, you want something that interests you. Otherwise it is hard to succeed.

And, as a limited temporary situation it really doesn't matter that much - you will get experience one way or the other...

H-index aside, my advice would be to choose a professor and topic based on:

What you want to learn more about right now:
Choose a topic you're interested in. If you're going to be doing research in a specific area, it can be difficult to stay motivated if you're not particularly interested in what you're studying/researching.

What will be useful for you in the future:
Choose something to create a strong knowledge or skill base for later learning. Reflect on the things you want to learn whether that's the scientific knowledge you wish to gain, coding skills, writing skills, experimentation, etc. Especially if you want to go to grad school, developing these skills early on can be a great advantage, both for your academic growth and your CV.

Fit with the professor:
At the undergraduate level, it's unlikely that you will be expected to be very independent. As a result, you may be quite reliant on the professor you work with (which can be a good thing because it will allow you to learn a great deal from them). My advice would be to choose the professor with whom you have the best rapport, who you feel would support your learning best, whose explanations you understand, and feel most comfortable asking questions to.

Best of luck!


text:
Proper Format for In-text Topic (Analysis) Tags for Interview Quotes
I am editing a dissertation in the social sciences using the author-date format of Chicago/Turabian. The author was asked by his mentor after his defense to add topic tags to the quotes that came from the interviews he conducted for his research. These are the same tags he used to analyze the data. I have been searching all over the place and cannot find any discussions of the proper format for tagging the topics in an interview. I can think of a number of options (using a simple made-up example):
* "I didn't like it." (Negative Assessment)
* "I didn't like it" (Negative Assessment).
* "I didn't like it [Negative Assessment]."
* "I didn't like it." <Negative Assessment>
* "I didn't like it" <Negative Assessment>.
* "I didn't like it <Negative Assessment>."

There are more, but those seem the most likely to me. What have you seen? Is there an authoritative voice on this, even if it is outside of Chicago/Turabian? Thanks!

Someone else might be able to answer your question more fully, but two things occur to me.
The list
Your description of the problem sounds like something that is likely to arise very frequently in conversation/discourse analysis. That led me to search for journals that publish in the area of conversation analysis, and that in turn led to a blog page from 2013 that has a partial list of such journals. Lest the blog disappear, I have reproduced some of the journal names here. You might try looking at some of the papers in them to see how they deal with the problem of "tagging".

American Journal of Sociology
American Sociological Review
Communication Monographs, Discourse Processes
Discourse Studies
Human Communication Research Issues in Applied Linguistics
Journal of Communication
Journal of Pragmatics
Language and Communication
Language in Society
Qualitative Research
Research on Language and Social Interaction
Semiotica
Social Psychology Quarterly
Sociology
Text and Talk

Even if some of the journals are no longer publishing, previous papers are likely to be a useful resource.
Theses
The second thing worth considering is that very few universities insist on having dissertations conform exactly to a citation style or editorial style (e.g., MLA, Chicago, APA) that was originally developed primarily for publishing journal papers. Dissertation are not journal papers, and exact conformity of a dissertation to a journal style is not only usually impossible, but also frequently not useful. For example, it can be very useful to have footnotes in some psychology dissertations (and no doubt others) despite the general avoidance of footnotes in American Psychological Association (APA) journals.
Thus, it might be that the best course for you is simply to choose a style that makes life easy for a reader (which is possible the top priority in a dissertation ), and is consistent throughout. Finally, given that you are editing for another person, it would be useful to check the stringency of the formatting guidelines published by the examining institution.


text:
What are the main differences between Graduate school in the UK vs US?
I graduated from a university in Canada, and I have been focusing on applying to North American universities even though my GPA isnt the highest.
I recently started searching for MSc programs in the UK, and I noticed that entry requirements are much easier. For example, for the course-based , we don't need to secure a supervisor yet students still work on a research project. Whereas when I tried applying to McGill university in Canada, I was told that not having a supervisor will not allow me admission to the program.
Why is admission to graduate school much lenient in the UK compared to the US/Canada? are schools in North America known to have the best reputation in research? why aren't many people going to study in the UK if things were that easy?
I'm interested in knowing the main differences between the UK and North American universities.

Could you specify whether this is in the humanities or sciences, roughly speaking? (In the latter case: lab-based or not?)

I don't think your measure of 'easiness' is really correct. Finding a supervisor isn't a measure of how strong a student you are, it's a measure of how the course works and so in what circumstances a supervisor will take you on.
You haven't said what you mean by 'graduate school' in North America. Usually you would compare doctoral programmes, and there you'll find the UK 'harder' on average, because a US programme begins with taught courses that don't form part of the UK programme (as much).
A taught MSc in the UK is only just above undergraduate. You essentially do a typical undergraduate year of taught courses (which may be very very similar to ones taken by undergraduates) and then spend the summer doing a 3 month research project. You therefore don't need to start with a supervisor, as you have 8 months to find one, and you will always be allocated someone. Just below this are a selection of 'undergraduate masters' courses, where undergraduates study for a fourth year, beyond the normal degree programme. They basically do the same as the MSc except for missing the final project (or doing one instead of one of the taught modules).
If you looked at an MSc by research, I doubt you could get on to that without a supervisor. That is closer to doctoral study. Slightly up from that is an MPhil, which is roughly the first part of a PhD, and actually is in some subjects.

So essentially a taught Master is a course-based (with a final research project) program. Is the taught MSc program considered like a preparatory program for when students decided to pursue PhD? because when I was browsing the KCL website, they had a Postgraduate section which consisted of MPhil/PhD, MScRe, thus I was confused as to which program I should be applying to If I were to plan on pursuing  PhD afterward.

Any of the masters options are potentially suitable for entry to PhD. However, an MSc(Res) will give you a much better head start (all other things being equal), but can also take the longest (some are 2 years). Which is best really comes down to your circumstances, and possibly exactly what field you want to go in to. The real distinction between undergrad and postgrad in the UK is the funding mechanism.

@emma If your main objective is pursue a PhD afterwards, get advice from the institution on that. A PhD in the UK does not necessarily require a masters as a prerequisite, and some masters courses will be more useful than others in improving your application.


text:
For Grad School Statement of Purpose, do I have to precisely state what research theme I'm interested in?
I am applying for a MSc research degree. So far, I haven't secured a supervisor, but I am interested mostly in cardiovascular research and there are only 3 of them in the entire department.
Since they might not agree to take me (I've spoken to them), the program advisor suggested that I still apply anyway and hopefully some other PI will accept me (essentially I'll accept the offer to work in any other research theme as long as I get admitted to the program).
Then comes the statement of purpose, my friends in grad school recommended that I make it generic. However, a generic letter must still include my specific research interest, right? and If I were to write that I am solely interested in cardiovascular research, other PIs in the department may pass on me.
I googled and searched for how to write a proper statement of purpose but haven't found a clear answer to my question. From your experience, how long was your letter of intent and what exactly included ?

2 pages. what it exactly included? A summary of my intellectual history, why I want to join and roughly what topics I would consider+names of possible advisors.

Precise?  Yes.  Accurate?  Not necessarily.

@JeffE could you elaborate on why it doesnt have to be necessarily accurate?


text:
Doing math research without lecturing
Is it possible to become a research mathematician without lecturing duties? I couldn't find any information on this.

Perhaps you could let us know what kind of research you're interested in doing and where you're interested in doing it?  Not all mathematical research happens inside of academia.

The answer to your question is yes: there are research-only career pathways for mathematicians. One way of achieving this is to secure a job in a research-only institution, e.g. Max-Planck Institute in Germany, Academy of Sciences in Russia and other post-Soviet countries, or one of many government research labs / institutes in the USA.
Looking for a research-only career in a University can be much more challenging, if at all possible. This would usually imply buying off your teaching duties from a sequence of successful grants, and supervising many PhD students (which also involves a fair amount of teaching).
I can also recommend this article.