text:
Is 100 hours per year of teaching a heavy load for a lecturer?
I have recently been appointed as a lecturer in a scientific department. This is a permanent position. The responsibilities of the position include: teaching, conducting high level research, administration tasks, mentoring and supervising students. The teaching load is 100 hours/year, which I found a little bit excessive.
My question is: are 100 hours of teaching a heavy load or is this common in academic institutions (universities)? In particular, scientific departments (chemistry, mathematics, physics ...).

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There is a problem with  this question in that the position is traditionally called "assistant professor" in the US system while "lecturer" in the US is a teaching position. Your position is not teaching only I understand.

From the description of the position it sounds like it's akin to a UK or Australian Lectureship - but as @dilworth says, it would be useful to clarify what country it is in.

The load seems reasonable for an established lecturer, but is a little heavy, by UK standards, for a first year lecturer. It might be worth asking for a partial teaching (or marking or tutoring) release for the first year.
Many universities, including those in the UK and US, talk about the split between research, teaching and admin. A split of time of 40% research, 40% teaching, and 20% service is not atypical at a UK Russel Group university. In the UK, the work year consists of about 1800 hours (37.5 hours per week times 48 weeks a year). With a 40% teaching load, you should be doing 720 hours of "teaching". I have never heard of a Russel Group university with a teaching load lower than 30%. The non-Russel Group universities I am familiar with don't go above 60% teaching time.
Teaching obviously consists of more than just standing in front of students lecturing. My UK university work load model credited us with time for supervising undergraduate final year project students, our mandated office hours, marking, tutorials, and lecturing.
We typically had 40 office hours (2 hours per week of the two 10 week semesters) and 150 grading hours. This left about 530 hours of traditional teaching time (tutorials, lectures, and practicals). For every hour of tutorial and lecture, we are given either 4 or 8 hours of prep time depending on if it is new teaching or not. This means an established teacher would have 132.5 hours of lecturing a year and a new lecturer would have 66.25 hours of lecturing a year.

4 or 8 hours prep time?!?!? We get 4 for a brand new course, 1 else (even if you're taking over from someone else, which means you have to prep a lot yourself).

@JessicaB The question is: "What is included in prep time?" You might need to design weekly exercise sheets, you might need to write a script/lecture notes, maybe you need to discuss with TAs or students, etc. If it is only "read the text you will write at the black board once", then 8 hours is of course a little bit much...

@Bemte Writing exercise sheets and lecture notes is included within that time. So is getting to and from the lecture, and dealing with students' queries after the lecture or at any other time. We don't have any TAs to talk to.

@JessicaBjess so are you standing in front of students 300+ hours a year, or is your research/teaching/administration breakdown different. What I didn't mention was that the workload model was developed such that we could justify 40% teaching time with our 100+ contact hours a year.

@JessicaB: Would agree with you. I've heard maybe double time in preparation ( 2 hours preparation per hour lecture time ). Time needed can of course vary if you need to reinvent and reproduce everything ( brand new course ) or just get to learn already produced material.

How much you get and how much it takes are two very different things. I reckon it takes me about 16 hours to develop an hour of teaching the first time, and maybe  4 or 5 to refresh it every year. Now am I credited with that in my workload allocation? Not a chance. This is why we all work 60 hour weeks.

RCUK grant applications usually regard a working year as 1,679 hours (36.5hrs a week * 46 weeks), not 1,800

Amusingly (I guess) my reading of the OP was "100 credit hours", or say, 50 hours per week, and I thought "hmmm, seems somewhat excessive". My U.S. lecturer position has me in front of students 360 total hours a year (or I guess recently reduced to 312).

From a Spanish perspective, 100 hours per year is tiny. In the University of Barcelona, most full time lecturers are expected to deliver 240 blackboard hours a year. Even part time lecturers teach up to 180 hours a year. The only kind of lecturers that teach less than 100 hours a year are those in the lowest ranks of part time lecturers, who just teach 2 or 3 hours a week (60 or 90 hours a year).

What are the publication expectations? We are expected to put out at least one paper in an >15 IF journal every 3 years.

Full time professors may get teaching load reduction for great research productivity. However, at Barcelona University (the case I know) the most productive researchers still have to teach 120 hours a year, which is a large reduction but still higher than the 100 hours/year asked by the OP.

I'm in mechanical engineering at the University of California, Davis. Here are the typical "blackboard" hours per year (9 month positions):
Research Faculty (60% research, 30% teaching, 10% service)

1st year: 84
2nd and on: 126

Teaching Faculty (70% teaching, 20% research, 10% service)

1st year: 210
2nd and on: 252

Full time lecturer (100% teaching)

378

I'm non-permanent at a similar institution and have 120 hours of lectures a year. Clearly, your place is more friendly.

My teaching load is not measured in hours,  so I'm not sure if it compares directly with yours. In any case, my "blackboard time" is about 130 hours per year (4 classes). On top of that, preparing assignments and exams, marking exams, office hours, mentoring of graduate students, committee work, and a research program.
Many departments I know have a lighter load, that would imply close 100 hours per year.

In which country and discipline, may I ask?

Canada. Area, Math, but what I say applies with very small differences to any other area.

I'm not so sure. I've 80 "blackboard hours" per year in Austria as a postdoc. Other answers here suggest an even larger variety: 240 in Spain and even ~ 600 in India.

The median teaching requirement among top-30 math departments for full professors would likely be 2/1/1 on quarters or 2/1 on semesters, which would correspond to 120-135 blackboard hours. Some are as high as 180 (2/2 teaching is not at all unreasonable). Some departments in the top 10-15 have reduced their requirements in the past few years to 1/1/1 or 1/1, which would be 90 blackboard hours. This is about as good a deal as you will find is the US.

The bare data of "100 hours" is not very meaningful. In France (continuing the big list), the legal workload of a lecturer or professor is 192 hours of teaching per year, in all departments in all universities. There are serious caveats:

This number of hours corresponds to a number of "travaux dirigés", which google translates as "tutorials". It is understood that 1h of lecture is equivalent to 1.5h of tutorials. Therefore a professor (presumably in extremely good standing with their department) could theoretically teach 128h per year, assuming they focus on lectures and nothing else.
It is also understood that 1h of blackboard time corresponds to roughly 4h of total work time, including preparing the course, the exams, proctoring, grading, etc. Because French universities are dramatically underfunded, this also includes idiotic stuff like filling Excel tables with students' grades or booking lecture rooms yourself. So 192h is really 768h in theory. Multiply by 2 to account for research (the people who wrote the law are probably idealists) and you get 1536h, which is almost equal to the annual legal working time in France (1607h).
This workload has no provisions whatsoever regarding supervision of students: undergrad projects, master's theses, PhD theses. We do all this pretty much on a volunteering basis. Or it counts as "research", who knows.
Some administrative duties - heading a lab, a research team, a department, being responsible for a degree, a very large course, being on the administrative board, and so on - carry a teaching reduction. The reduction is somewhat laughable compared to the amount of work necessary for these duties.
Someone reasonably senior and with a good research record can get access to teaching buy-outs using grants or special kinds of sabbaticals that I don't feel like detailing. I know people who haven't taught the full 192h/year in years.

Having been appointed lecturer in France some time ago, I can only say that I wish my teaching workload was only half of what it currently is. I'd have to say that 100h/year is a rather good deal.
A humorous anecdote: in a committee constituted of international experts evaluating candidates for a three-year grant (that contained clauses for the aforementioned buyouts), a German colleague asked if the 192h mentioned on the applicants' files were referring to the entirety of the grant's duration, which was already funny in itself. For comparison, this third of 192h/year (64h/year) is what we ask of PhD students here.

Since this is turning into a big-list summary of practices in each country: in Italy, the typical load is:

120 or more hours/yr for a professor (full or associate)
70-80 for a tenure-track position
60-66 for a junior research position.

80 and 66 are hard limits, at least in my institution, 120 is not --- some take more hours of teaching (kind of) voluntarily, and some get away with fewer --- especially those that have administrative roles. This applies to all university staff; in the Italian system there is no separate lecturer position focused on teaching.
Our system, though, requires you to spend more time on exams than in other countries; for instance, for some courses I have to offer the students up to 8-9 attempts per year to take the exam.
This, plus lecture prep and office hours (which are not counted in these calculations) means that you spend more time teaching than those numbers seem to imply.

This document of Poltecnico di Milano seems to say that the minimum amount of teaching is 350 hours per year? https://www.polimi.it/fileadmin/user_upload/il_Politecnico/statuto_regolamenti_eng/8_Regulations_teaching_commitment.pdf

@Michael Yes, but that does not count only teaching, but all time devoted to students: lecture prep, office hours, supervising undergrads and graduate students, giving exams, sitting in graduation sessions. In Pisa we have the same guideline for professors (associate and full: lecturers/assistant profs are not considered "professori" in the Italian system, but "ricercatori"); I think that it is a national legal requirement. That amount of time seems more or less accurate, but since in practice no one keeps a detailed timesheet of these activities, it is often just a requirement on paper.

In China's practice, the main part of the work of a lecturer in an institute of higher learning is to teach, so 100 hours is only the workload for him within a semester. The good thing is that at least the teacher can have more exchanges of ideas with the young people.

My experience in UK Russell group university engineering:

Every Lecturer is expected to teach 2-3 modules. Each module has ~35 contact hours (lectures, tutorials, labs). So, 100 hours sounds about right.
In addition, we have 10-12 undergraduate/graduate(MSc) project supervisions that we need to meet on a weekly basis.
We also have weekly tutorial meetings (some academic some pastoral).

When you bring funding, you buy out teaching and this goes down.

In institutes of technology in Ireland a lecturer currently delivers 17 contact hours per week for two semesters of 13 weeks each, giving 442 contact hours per year (this applies in institutes that are semesterised, which is the majority of them). For several years until recently the weekly load was 18 contact hours.
There is also the more junior Assistant Lecturer grade in the institutes of technology, which basically means that there are an extra 2 contact hours per week, giving 494 contact hours per year.
I should clarify that these are hours in a classroom in front of students: preparation time and setting, marking and administration of exams and assessments are separate from this, as of course is research.
Contact hours in universities in Ireland are another story and they vary somewhat beween universities and departments. When I lectured in a maths department in one of them, I typically had 6 contact hours per week giving about 156 contact hours per year.
So 100 contact hours per year would probably not be considered excessive by an Irish academic.

In New Zealand, in my department, we also have 100 contact hours per year. These hours only include lectures and not tutorials or laboratories.

So you have to give tutorials and labs on top of that? How many additional contact hours would that make for?

Yes. We have tutors for first two levels, but not for the 3d or 4th year where we generally have one lab/tutorial per week. I guess if one of the courses is without tutors it would lead to an additional 12 hours per course. Our semesters are 12 weeks. Also, we have office hours.

So basically then about 124 hours (12 hours per tutorial, one tutorial per semester, 2 semesters per year)?

My problem is that there doesn't seem to be an international standard to compare teaching loads of university staff on an international level. For US faculty, I have often read about the X-Y scheme, where X denotes the number of courses taught in spring, and Y the number of courses taught in fall. But how much workload or classroom hours does "one course" imply? Most people here talk about hours of teaching per year - but how do they spread over the year, considering semester weeks and breaks, preparation time and actual classroom hours?
In Germany, we talk about classroom hours. University professors typically have 9 classroom hours per semester, professors at universities of applied sciences 18 classroom hours. One such hour equates 45 minutes and is only to be done during semester. There is two semesters per year, lasting approximately 15 weeks each. Preparation times and exams are in top of those classroom hours. In other words: a university professor would face about 200 classroom (60min-)hours per year and is still expected to mostly focus on research, while preparatory/exam time comes on top of those 200 hours. A professor working for a university of applied sciences would look at 400 hours with almost no research obligations.
Is this anyhow comparable to the amount of hours discussed above?

In the US, most courses are "3 semester credit hours", which equates to 3 hours per week in the classroom for a roughly 15 week semester.  Under this scheme, a single course would involve about 45 hours in the classroom.  For someone with a (fairly standard for average research universities) 2+2 teaching load (2 courses in the fall semester and 2 in the spring), this comes out to 180 hours per year.  Most faculty in the US teach at institutions that are not research universities with loads of 3+3, 4+4, or even 5+5.  100 hours per year in the classroom is extremely light by US standards.

That's not much, to be honest, many university lecturers in India are expected/made to deliver 100 hours in 2/3 months.

How many times each year?

I would suggest to compare this workload within your university and with those closest to your situation(recently hires, salary, benefits etc). If this workload turns out to be same as everyone else's than accept it. Good luck with your job.

I am a lecturer in the UK, and my teaching load is 200 contact hours per year. I think this is higher than average in the UK because our university is post-92 and quite teaching-oriented.  This is also (supposedly)  lower than average in our university because I have an additional workload allowance for research.

At my university, a typical teaching load varies from 200-300 hours/year. If you are worried that 100 hours is excessive, being a lecturer may not be the right fit for you.

In some countries, e.g. the U.K., "lecturer" is an academic rank, analogous to "assistant professor" in the U.S.


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Will it hurt me if my advisor's last name is before mine alphabetically?
I'm a graduate student in theoretical particle physics, where the standard is that all author lists are alphabetized. However, even in other disciplines of physics, it's quite common for author lists to be ordered by the amount of the contribution. At some point I will probably be judged by people who are not entirely familiar with the standards of particle theory, and even if they are they probably have subconscious biases towards earlier authors.
I also happen to have a last name that's around the middle of the alphabet. I can feasibly find an advisor whose name is after mine, but the most natural choices (including my current advisor) all happen to be before mine alphabetically. My current choice makes me a bit worried because most of his other students also have names before mine alphabetically. I'll probably have a number of publications with other people in the group, and it's not unlikely that I'll be the last author on most or all of these.
Is this something that I should be seriously worried about? (My heart tells me no, but my brain isn't sure.) Will I have much more trouble in the future than comparable candidates who are listed earlier? Or is it a fairly small effect which is much less significant than choosing a good advisor in the long term?

I can feasibly find an advisor whose name is after mine - no...just, no!

@TCSGrad Maybe that's not exactly the right way to say it. There are good choices for advisor who have last names after mine doing things that interest me. It's just that none of them are at the top of my list of people who I think "I want this person as my advisor" in absence of this consideration. Anyway I realize this question objectively comes off as a bit silly, and indeed that's my hope.

If you have not yet published anything, now is the time to change your name, perhaps to Logan Aardvark.

Alternatively, if you feel uncomfortable being the last author, feel free to add my name at the end of the list in any paper of yours. :)

Change your name to Logan Aingi.

Hmm.  Are you also worried about getting undue credit and an unfair advantage by having your name appear first?

Trust me, you don't have it that bad. :-P

Yes, there is a subtle unconscious bias. Even in a field where author names are always alphabetical, papers will be cited in talks as Author1 et al, so if you happen to be Author1 your name will be slightly more disseminated.
Is it true? Yes. Is it fair? No, not entirely. Is it a big deal? No. Should you change your advisor as a workaround? No.
The best way to overcome this bias is going to conferences and getting your face and name known to other people in the field. So it won't matter if your name is Aardvark or Zwingli, because people will know you anyway and know that you did some respectable work.
Another thing you can do to reduce the impact of this bias on your CV is adding a statement on the lines of the following sentence that I put in mine:

"As is common practice in mathematics, the author order is usually alphabetical and does not reflect a difference in contribution. "

(by the way, I can relate: I have been alphabetically last author on 86% of my joint papers).

In fields where author's names are listed alphabetically -- like mathematics -- it is a very bad practice to say "Author1 et al".  More strongly, barring exceptional circumstances when you refer to a theorem by multiple people you should say all the people's names whenever you say any of them.

And a big +1 for the suggestion of simply adding a line to your CV to clear up any misconception that people in other fields might have.  But I would put things more simply and more strongly than you have. I would suggest something like "The ordering of the authors' names does not connote differences in contributions.  It is strictly alphabetical."

I have no idea about its credibility, and I'm certainly not trying to discourage Zhang's or Zyskowski's out there. But you might find this article interesting:
L. Einav, L. Yariv. What's in a Surname? The Effects of Surname Initials on Academic Success. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 20 (2006), 175-187.

We present evidence that a variety of proxies for success in the U.S. economics labor market (tenure at highly ranked schools, fellowship in the Econometric Society, and to a lesser extent, Nobel Prize and Clark Medal winnings) are correlated with surname initials, favoring economists with surname initials earlier in the alphabet. These patterns persist even when controlling for country of origin, ethnicity, and religion. We suspect that these effects are related to the existing norm in economics prescribing alphabetical ordering of authors’ credits. Indeed, there is no significant correlation between surname initials and tenure at departments of psychology, where authors are credited roughly according to their intellectual contribution. The economics market participants seem to react to this phenomenon. Analyzing publications in the top economics journals since 1980, we note two consistent patterns: authors participating in projects with more than three authors have significantly earlier surname initials, and authors writing papers in which the order of credits is non-alphabetical have significantly higher surname initials.

It's absurd and ludicrous to take this kind of bias into account when choosing your advisor, though...

I knew about this paper; that's actually what led me to ask this question. However, it is good to hear that it's not something I should be concerned with in terms of picking an advisor.

"... or Zyskowski" -- or "Żywotny".

Based on my own experience, even if your last name comes before your advisor's, your own research community will regard any joint work with your advisor to be primarily your advisor's work, despite your advisor's protests to the contrary, until you start publishing independently.  The Matthew Effect is a much more significant than your position in the alphabet.
(My name comes before my advisor's, and I've advised students with names before mine and others after mine. I work in a field that orders authors alphabetically.)

No, not so true, surely not in my subject (boundary math/CS). It quite depends on the advisor and on his attitude, and especially in small communities like ours, the students get recognized very well by their contribution.

Yes, surely in your subject.  I'm a theoretical computer scientist.

Ok, then it's clearly a very varying thing.

@tohecz: I am also in mathematics, and I agree with JeffE's answer, at least up until the "advisor's protests to the contrary part".  If I read a recommendation letter from someone that I trust and she goes out of her way to explain the student's contribution to the work and explain that it was substantial, then I will believe her.  But across all of mathematics there is a certain positive "percentage discount" on joint papers with one's thesis adviser.  As a thesis adviser, I don't find this practice to be especially irrational.

I work in a field [chemistry] where historically (before academic search engines), the advisor's name was always first, since that was probably the person you had the best chance of identifying when you went to your local library and sat down with the print version of chemical abstracts.
The modern practice is to list authors by intellectual contribution (which usually puts the adviser last, but not always). To add to the confusion, some advisers still operate by the older method.
Many journals now want a statement of author contributions to appear in the text. This type of statement removes any ambiguity over who did what, and resolves both the author ordering problem and the sadly still recurring vanity author problem.

For example: B.N.N. designed the synthesis and prepared key intermediate 1. J.V.V. prepared derivatives A and B. B.N.N. and J.J.V. characterized the compounds. H.G.T. and A.B.C. coded and compiled the computational models. B.N.N. and H.G.T. designed the study and wrote the manuscript.

Please, always specify which subjects your post applies to. I have never read or written an aritcle with other than alphabetical order of authors.

Yes it will. The problem is not the alphabet, it's the advisor and others, the readers. I am not at my library so I can't link to the psychologic rules behind it.
but
as you asked 'Is this something that I should be seriously worried about?' the point is, you can't avoid the problem - live with your (his/her) name (hair color, size and, and, and), and think about doing the best ...
You can't avoid psychological problems, so better not to take care, if you can't change it.
I answer with a tautology: Take an advisor who is good.

Think about:
Frank Wilczek,
Edward Witten,
Athony Zee,
Bruno Zumino,
Barton Zwiebach. etc.
Their last names initials are W or Z.
(They are in HEP theoretical physics, particle physics, like you.)
They hardly get anything for the authorship sorting. But they are doing fantastic well outstanding. They are hired by TOP institutes. Keep their names in your mind. Keep it up.

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How do authors deal with figure copyrights when writing review articles?
Assuming I'm writing a review article and I'd like to use figures
after [1]" or similar? How am I expected to deal with copyright?  Obviously a review article is going to use existing figures, more or less--that's the point.  It seems from sites like IEEE that the expected practice is to pay, per figure, for each graphic used.  Is that really how things work?  Or is there some "fair use" clause that can be invoked?

As a practical issue, you will probably want to contact the publishers of the papers anyway, in order to get the original high-quality image files.

I somewhat doubt that you "obviously want to use existing figures" in a review article. At least in my field, a review article is more than just summarizing previous work. Usually, much more time is spent on comparing and contrasting these works, so in all the review articles I wrote and recently read, the problem really never even came up. If you feel you need to copy & paste an entire figure, chances are you are too close to the source material to produce a review that actually adds value.

The rules vary widely by publisher here. It also depends on whose work you're "copying." If it's your own graphic, then there's usually no issue associated with it. However, if it belongs to someone else, then you should either request the permission from the rights holder, or redraw the figure yourself (if it's a schematic, then this would eliminate copyright issues).
Similarly, a journal or publisher may allow you to reuse people's work from within the same publisher's journals without fee. But again, this is something the individual publishers determine.

Usually you have to obtain a permission (there are exceptions, for example if you "redraw"¹ content). Your publisher may request permissions for you! Here is a how to for the most common way, if you have to do it on your own:

Search for the title of the paper containing the figure you would like to reuse on Google (for example: An RNA-Sequencing Transcriptome and Splicing Database of Glia, Neurons, and Vascular Cells of the Cerebral Cortex)
Identify the website of the journal and click on it (sometimes the first result refers you to a reference aggregation site, researchgate or personal webpage) (in my example this would be http://www.jneurosci.org/content/34/36/11929 )
Look for a button or link saying "Rights and permissions", "Request Permissions" or similar. Every journal has it at a different spot and sometimes it is hidden behind some floating "Info box" (Tip: Search for the words right or permission in your browser) (see screenshot for the location in my example)

Following this link you are usually taken to the Copyright Clearance Center on copyright.com which can automatically proceed most of your requests
Follow the steps indicated at the Copyright Clearance Center, indicating how you want to use the content (in your case this would be "Republish in a journal/magazine) (in my example I have to identify the correct publication first, then enter the year of publication, and afterwards choose how I want to use it)
You will eventually get to a page where you have to select which rights you would like to procure (e.g. publishing worldwide, doing translations, modifying the figure and son on). Important here is also do select your role in this process too (on whose behalf are you requesting copyright) (see screenshot for the categories to be filled in in my example)

Afterwards a price should be quoted for you, which may be 0 if you are allowed to reuse without paying.
Accept the conditions and terms on that page
Print a .pdf copy of the confirmation for your documents. Usually they'll also send you an email. You will likely be asked by your new publisher to send them this permission statement.
Make sure to acknowledge the publisher in the figure caption. Example: Figure 1: description of figure. From Crowell et al. 2014 (reference), with permission from StackExchange (publisher).

If you cannot find a Rights or Permission link on the webpage of the article try the following:

Identify the publisher of the journal in question
Search on Google for the name of the publisher together with "Reusing figures", "Permission and Rights" or "Permission request" or similar. Major publishers usually have instructions on how to do this somewhere on their web page.

If you cannot find that information either or if you have a specific question write to the publisher's permission department (most of the times you can find that email address on their website). From experience I can say that they are slow to answer and that they usually send you a generic "please do it the usual way" email first. Just write them again in that case. Consider that this takes time (they give 30 business days (~ 1.5 month) as expected answer time), so don't do it last minute.
As aeismail mentioned there are good chances that you can reuse your own, previously published content and content published in the same publication you plan to publish your paper in, without to much hassle (write to the publisher's permissions department).
¹meaning: substantially change so that it can be considered a new work, see also Figure reproduction, adaptation and redrawing by Wiley.com

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text:
How to cite a conference paper in an "extended" journal version?
I recently presented a paper at a conference which was published in its proceedings.  Now it is time to submit an "extended" version with "30% new content".  The new content isn't a problem, I've added several figures, a couple of genuinely new findings and some helpful illustrations that I developed while preparing my talk.  However, the instructions from the publisher state:
In the extended paper clearly cite the conference paper and list it as one of the references.
In my opinion, this can be interpreted in one of two ways:

Write a new article that assumes knowledge of the proceedings.
This is kind of a scary option because it implies that it really has to be a new work.
Explain that an earlier version exists and what's new here. This is a comforting interpretation but seems kind of uncharacteristic for the style in most journal articles.

What's the best path to follow here?

I write something along the lines of:

This paper is an extended version of work published in [1]. We extend our previous work by A, B and C.

Note that some new figures etc. will probably not really count as new content (this would probably be called new presentation rather than new content). New findings and new data, that's what people will really be interested in.
One common pattern that I often see in my field is that the conference paper has most of the ideas in place, but a rather cursory evaluation. The journal extension then has the ideas of the conf paper + whatever input came out of discussions at the conference + a more or less large-scale validation. The "nucleus" of the paper is reproduced more or less in verbatim. To be fair, I am not sure if this is even ok from a copyright point of view, but it certainly is common practice in my field FWIW.

"New findings and new data, that's what people will really be interested in." - actually, this may be quite field-dependent; I have come across various instances where, for instance, the extended journal paper described all elements of a visual notation rather than just showing some exemplary ones, or where it used the additional space for describing several different examples rather than just one minimal one. I'm not sure whether that counts as "new findings and new data", I would cautiously rather call it a "more thorough explanation of the old findings and old data".


text:
Doing extra research worth the effort?
I am currently doing research for my masters and also doing a full time job from 10 to 7 excluding the weekends.By the end of our research ,all of the students would get at least one good paper. I am also expected to get one. I have two more opportunities for research.
One comes from one of my semester projects on computer simulation.My professor told me that I might get a good publication out of it if I extend it a little.I have done most of the work on this project.I only have to do about 20 or 30 percent more work on it.
The second opportunity is regarding GPU acceleration.I haven't started work on this one.
I was wondering that will it be worth the effort if I choose to go ahead with these research opportunities? I am free on the weekends but I am worried that I might get burned out if I work all the time. Would it be beneficial for me if I plan to go into teaching in a few years? Would it be beneficial if I plan to go for a PhD?

Why the close votes? Seems like it is reasonable to want to know when doing extra research during a MSc program will be beneficial.

Doing more research and get publication are always good, especially if you want to go for PhD and/or follow academia path. However, as you're working full-time, I wonder if you can do intensive research as it's a very hard work. So, my answer is: Yes, it's worth to do more research but you need to reschedule your time and prioritize which activity you want to do most: work or research.


text:
When does a researcher become a computer scientist?
When do you call a researcher a computer scientist? Are Master degree holders computer scientists? Are Phd degree holders computer scientists? Is there a certain level of experience after which the researcher will be called a computer scientist?

I reaaaally doubt that you will get a constructive, objective and useful answer to this question.

When do you call a researcher a computer scientist?

A runner is someone who runs; a writer is someone who writes; a researcher is someone who does research; a computer scientist is someone who does computer science.  So if you're doing computer science research, I will call you a computer scientist and a researcher, even if you aren't yet published, even if you work full-time as a plumber, even if you're still in junior high school.

Is there a certain level of experience after which the researcher will be called a computer scientist?

No.  There is nothing you can do to make other people call you anything.
But to call yourself a computer scientist, the only requirement is that you are doing computer science.  So in that sense, yes, there is a certain required level of experience: More than zero.


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Is it okay for a reviewer to share an under review manuscript with their colleagues?
In a research meeting I mentioned I was doing some peer-review for a conference and disclosed the general topic it was about, without any further details. Immediately my colleagues demanded I disclose information about details of the paper, authors, and they even suggested I should share the paper with them immediately, and they swore "they would not share it with anyone".
I refused and said this was unethical behavior. They all got really angry and took it personally, saying that sharing a manuscript under review was completely normal and ethical, and even recommended and the problem was simply that I did not "trust them".
What is your experience with this? What are your thoughts?

"they swore that they would not share it with anyone" -- "they said sharing it was completely normal". See the contradiction? :)

Do you already know that this paper wasn't publicly shared, e.g. on a pre-print server?  Either way, it'd seem like a courtesy to the author to let them know that people are interested in their paper, potentially allowing them to share it or engage in discussions about it at their discretion.

Consider the paper as not existing, except for the purpose of your review. Unless you are permitted to have sub-reviewers with permission of the editor, in which case you act as intermediate editor, you must not show the paper to anyone and should not actually even mention its existence. You never know how competitive a topic is. Your colleagues have a very loose understanding of ethics.

It's not just a matter of trust. It's a matter of contamination. We alter our own memories all the time. It's very easy to think that we came up with an idea that someone else originally came up with. I know, I do this all the time. This is why maintaining a proper boundary is so crucial. It keeps people honest, even at the subconscious level.

@Walter, I don't agree with that. You are paid by someone, generally the taxpayer, so everyone has to justify how and where they spend their time. What do you answer in a status update meeting when it's your turn to describe what you did yesterday if you were peer-reviewing? Nothing? You make something up? What is unethical is to hide that you are peer-reviewing while getting paid for it in your job.

Where did you get that this happened at a conference/meeting? This happened, as stated in the question, at a research meeting where everybody is present (status update, to be more precise) and I don't see how this has to be kept a secret. The journal/venue/topic is relevant because we all belong to a group/institution and we are not welcome to spend our paid time peer-reviewing in all journals/venues/fields, so it's important to mention it. If we accepted all peer-review invitations, we would not be doing anything else.

While I agree with @Walter that you should be very careful what, if anything, you disclose about a paper that you are reviewing (and that it's probably best to disclose nothing), I think that calling it 'unprofessional' and 'borderline unethical' is a judgement call at best, and calling it 'stupid' is just uncalled for.  I think that it is enough to say that it was an error, and leave the editorialising at that.

Ask the author, person in charge, for permission.  Either way problem solved.

Echoing the other answers: NO, "sharing" is not ok, especially with people whose interest is manifestly acquisition of information, rather than helping you give an expert review. Obviously. For that matter, this episode should cause you to seriously question the morality/ethics of the people who tried to bully you into "sharing". They are cheaters... sorry. Yes, we all have to learn how to "get along" with cheaters, but/and it is important to know who they are, ... and now you know, sadly. My sympathies.

+1 for outright calling his/her colleagues what they are; OP should be constantly vigilant henceforth knowing they have dubious ethical standards.

Do not share this manuscript.
It is one thing for you to solicit input, under an agreement of confidentiality, when you recognize there is another expert who can help with the review.
It is totally different when someone demands that you share it, not because you are getting help with the review, but for their own edification.  The manuscript is confidential.  Keep it that way!

The bullying, manipulative approach doesn't help the offenders' case, either. It may be they are legitimately able to help give expert analysis, and it may also be perfectly normal for them all to share their papers with each other (regardless of ethics or how it's done elsewhere.) But the demand of trust, the contradictory statements, and the general sleezy tone makes it sound more like "used car salesman" than "trusted academic."

Sharing articles like this does happen, sometimes it's fine, but it probably happens more than it should. If in doubt, the simplest course of action in this situation is to get in touch with the editor for whom you are carrying out the review. Ask them if they are happy with you sharing the manuscript, or selected details from it, within your research group. You then don't have to shoulder the blame if the answer is "no", you can just blame the editor.
Note that some journals provide specific guidance. The instructions for a review I carried out recently included this:

[I]f you are planning to get help with your report from a colleague (e.g., as a way of providing mentorship and training with reviewing), we do ask that you keep any such consultation to a small number of people (1 or 2) to respect the confidentiality of the review process. On rare occasions you may also want to consult with a colleague outside your group to gather additional input, and in such situations please contact us beforehand to verify that there would not be a conflict. When you submit your review, we will give you an opportunity to acknowledge anyone who did assist you to give them credit for their contribution.

To be honest, if as an editor I received a question per this suggestion (the simplest course of action in this situation is to get in touch with the editor for whom you are carrying out the review. Ask them if they are happy with you sharing the manuscript, or selected details from it, within your research group) I would wonder what part of confidentiality the reviewer didn't understand.

"Sharing does happen" -- all sorts of bad things happen all the time.  People get robbed.  That doesn't mean the poster should share the manuscript or that it's OK to share it.  "sometimes it's fine" -- What's your justification for saying that?  The peer review process is supposed to be confidential.  I do agree that asking the editor is a fine idea.

@FredDouglis I mostly meant this in the sense that OP has initially refused but their colleagues do not seem to be taking no for an answer. If they have a refusal from the editor that is much harder to argue with.

I think asking the editor is insulting, time-consuming, and embarrassing. The rules are quite clear.

@D.W. Maybe I've been a bit too relaxed in what I have said, but as demonstrated by the quote in my answer, there are certain situations where it is acceptable to pass on a manuscript to colleagues. I agree with the points made in AliceD's answer, which maybe puts it better than mine.

You'd really be insulted if someone said, "I'm unsure about the analysis in section 2, but my colleague invented that technique, so I'd like them to weigh in"? This seems like a win for literally everyone involved: better reviews for the journal (and author), easier time reviewing for the reviewer, etc.

+1 for quoting specific written guidance. (This answer would be better if you could add a citation to attribute the quote to its source).

@Matt, yet that's not what is going on here.

My bad--I thought you were replying to scenario described in this answer. I agree that "GIVE ME THE PAPER YOU'RE REVIEWING" is totally insane.

@FredDouglis: I don't think your attitude helps: if you discourage "if in doubt, ask the editor" people will do things you'd have wanted to avoid - and you won't even know about that. It may be that in the case of the journal you are editing, the confidentiality agreement is strict and clear - but I've also been reviewing for journals that say you may ask more expert opinion on particular points of the manuscript (typically after discussing this with the editor - so I conclude they were different journals from the one user2390246 refers to). While I agree the scenario in the question is ...

... clearly outside the ethical "share the manuscript" scenarios, I'd also say that you need to allow people who are new to reviewing to get their bearings (otherwise you'll soon end up either with crappy or with no reviewers because they were never allowed to learn how to do a review). And the way to do that in the most confidential fashion is to ask the editor.

@cbeleites, i was assuming that the requirement for confidentiality was either explicit (as is common) or implicit,  and that it was obvious from the discussion that it was not being shared to solicit expertise.

The above answers are valid and I support them fully. By the sound of it your co-workers were demanding to look at it, whilst the review process is indeed a strictly confidential process.
Nonetheless, I just wish to add an exception to the rule:
Sharing a manuscript under review is fine when inviting others to look at it too as part of the review process. Typically, the big chief honcho of a research group is constantly flooded with review requests and often they can't handle it on their own. In this context, it is actually great when busy folks share this burden, because multiple parties benefit:

The department's head as it reduces workload;
The postdocs, grad students etc who are helping out with reviewing as they learn how to be a good referee;
The manuscript's authors as they will receive a much better review because multiple people have looked at it, instead of just a super busy head-of-department who hasn't have the time for it.

Count me among those who consider garbage the practice of farming referee reports out to postdocs and grad students. If one cannot write the report, one should turn the request down. It's perfectly reasonable to suggest to the editor using a postdoc or grad student as a referee, but when Professor X agrees to review a paper, one expects that it is Professor X who reviews it. This answer gives a lot of good reasons for declining the referee request and suggesting someone else as a reviewer.

@DanFox If Professor X passes on to a grad student, who perhaps has never reviewed a paper before, they can oversee the process and at the very least provide some quality control. They may well add their own insights as well. I don't see where the great harm lies.

@DanFox - I concur with user2390246 - if a bunch of postdocs and grad students have had a look at it, the review can be discussed in the group. I've learned a great deal from such a process for sure. Of course the invited referee should agree with the final review report.

AliceD, all true, but also already noted in the earlier responses.

@DanFox I completely agree. I actually find that behavior as unethical and corrupt as ghostwriting. When you submit to a highly-ranked journal, you expect that your manuscript is reviewed by an expert in the field that the editors contacted, not by someone else, particularly a student. I often hear that this is done for the benefit of students but I honestly don't think so. I think it's pure greed. If a professor thinks that student is qualified to make the review, then he should recommend the student as a reviewer so he can get the credit. Let's see what the editor thinks about that.

@Pablo once my supervisor was confident I was up to the task he recommended me as a referee for the journal. So from that point on the journal contacted me repeatedly and directly to review. So it is a process that goes a step further then simply passing on the review to one of your students. Instead, it's about training and recommending good referees to the journal.

@AliceD, I understand your point, but that's still unethical and no author likes their work sub-reviewed by a student. There are many ways to train students to do good peer-review that don't involve playing around with the real process of publishing. For example, giving an already published article, or an article for a local workshop you are organizing to all of them, and then comparing and discussing the reviews. It would be the same as arguing that writing an article where your supervisor gets the credit is good for you, cause you learn to write...

@Pablo - I get your point too, but the sharing of referee tasks is so commonplace that I am actually flabbergasted by the heated reactions to this practice :-)

@AliceD I think the commonplace nature is very lab-specific. In large labs with PIs who see themselves as big-shots it might happen a lot; in my own experience I have never worked with a PI who farmed out refereeing. I'll also say from the other side that it can be really obvious sometimes when a reviewer was a student and probably not actually one of the people originally asked to review...

I suspect it is also very discipline-specific.

@Pablo: "you expect that your manuscript is reviewed by an expert in the field that the editors contacted, not by someone else, particularly a student" - while the professor may be an experienced expert in the general field, one of their PhD students may indeed be the more knowledgable expert concerning a particular problem that the manuscript is about. "he should recommend the student as a reviewer so he can get the credit" - this may be field-specific, but I have yet to meet someone who'd care about getting credit for reviewing. It's a service to the community, to keep things running. ...

... There is simply no expectation that the outside world will ever take note of the fact that someone has done a given review - and this applies even in cases where the list of reviewers is public, and the reviewing system provides a way to indicate who actually wrote most of the review. At least, that is my experience. "Let's see what the editor thinks about that." - while that sounds like a decent procedure, I fear it is actually destined to produce worse results than the alternative. I for one cannot imagine a situation where an external editor could possibly have a better insight in ...

... the current and overall topics that each member of a research group is knowledgable about than someone from within that group. To me, it seems like the editor may have a good grasp about the approximate boundaries of expertise of the group as a whole, but they simply cannot be qualified to do the micromanagement involved with assigning the single reviews to the best-fitting members in the group.

@Pablo, wrt. rewieving by an expert (and in full agreement with O.R.Mapper's point): as PhD student I was explicitly reminded that I already hold a professional degree (my Diplom [Master's]) and are therefore considered a fully responsible professional in my field. And that reviewing is part of the professional tasks. I'd now say the more so, as PhD studtents typically are not asked to review out of the blue but either because they are author to a paper with related topic or have been suggested as reviewer for the manuscript (e.g. by their supervisor).

Honestly, it seems whoever told you that has a very particular definition of what "professional" means. Did he also consider you "a professional" when it came to salary, office, and travel, or in that case you were just "a student"? Just asking. By definition, a graduate student is someone who wants to become a researcher and the PhD is the "certificate of achievement". A graduate student, particularly at the beginning is unaware of the literature, the state of the art, etc... and handing over reviews to him is bad for both the community and, particularly, himself.

@O.R.Mapper I have heard the argument of "I do it for the community" many times before, and I can't but laugh. Accepting to peer-review an article improves your networking: you are known by publishers, you might be invited to be an editor in the future, etc... Basically, the more you review, the more authoritative you are considered in your field (makes sense). It brings lots of opportunities. Question: don't people list "Reviewer for Journal X" in CVs? The problem, as usual, is that too many people want the reward (status) while convincing others that doing their work is good for them.

@Pablo: "I have heard the argument of 'I do it for the community' many times before, and I can't but laugh." - I have done plenty of reviewing, and I have always considered it a mere service to the community. I fail to understand what you find laughable about that. "don't people list 'Reviewer for Journal X' in CVs?" - I have not heard about that idea yet. In the research environment I know, it is understood that reviewing manuscripts is a normal part of one's work, everyone does it from time to time, and no-one would care about it enough to actually list any particular venues. As always, ...

... this may differ by field. But I can definitely tell you that, say, in all doctoral theses of colleagues that I have read, one's scientific merits were exclusively the list of publications, grouped by publication type. Reviews were nowhere to be listed, and while my publication list was looked at and commented on during my own doctoral exam, no-one even mentioned reviews. Many of the points you list may be true even across all fields - and yet I think reviewing is totally insignificant in goals like networking or being known, compared to other methods of being scientifically active.

I have peer-reviewed (when and if I could) because I consider part of the job and I think the issue is really easy. You get an invitation. Are you qualified, have time, and willing to do it? Yes: then you accept it and do it properly. No: then decline it and, optionally, suggest someone else you think is qualified to the editor so that they can contact them directly and repeat the process. Any other approach, like passing it around to students while you are still officially the reviewer is unethical and corrupt and does no favor to anyone except the person who is "officially" the reviewer.

Unless there's some explicit okay to the contrary, you would normally regard a review as completely confidential. Even if it weren't a formal requirement, in my mind it's what the author(s) have a right to expect. If they want to share it ... there are often ways to do so, and if they haven't done it, it shouldn't be your choice to share it.
On occasion I have shared the general topic of a paper under review where that was relevant. That is, I have once or twice said something like "Oh yeah, I agree topic X is becoming more popular lately - I refereed a couple of papers on it just recently".
By contrast, anything that would give explicit details of the contents of a paper or identify its authors (even with blinded reviews it's often pretty obvious who the authors are) would contravene the either the near-universal expectation of confidentiality or more typically a journal's explicit requirement of it.
In short -- don't share it. If you think there's a really good reason to, ask the editor -- who will almost certainly tell you no, and for good reason.

Maybe there's another alternative: the OP's colleagues could send the author requests for a preprint of the paper. If the author says yes, then there's no harm done imho.

My PhD advisor was reviewing a paper and wanted me to look at the math (it was complicated); he still got editorial permission first. I did look at it, and I found a simple problem (the paper's authors used a $log_2$ result as if it were a $log_{10}$ result and got a [beneficially] wrong answer).
I was 'raised' to never share anything about a paper under review, including the topic! Plus I have known an unethical professor that used an idea from peer review to write a very similar paper. So suppose the paper you are reviewing is rejected at this journal for some reason, but the author still should retain all rights to his idea. He may get it published elsewhere.
But by showing it around you have effectively published his idea behind his back in a way others can steal it. One of the people interested in this can write their own paper, and perhaps with better contacts, reputation or just better writing, get published and steal the credit from the original author.
That is not fair or ethical. Even telling somebody about the topic or the title could trigger interest in the problem that did not previously exist, along the lines of "Hm, that gives me an idea..." That leads to pre-emption also.
I think the only advantage you can ethically enjoy, as a reviewer, is that IF the paper is accepted and GOING to be published, you have a significant head start on following up based on any new insights in the paper; giving proper credit where credit is due.
You should never share what is supposed to be confidential without permission of the editor, not even with friends you trust -- because the friends they trust may not be people you can trust.

Your collegues complained, among other things, that your unwillingness to share the paper demonstrated distrust on your part --- and well it should.  Had you been willing to share the paper without permission, you would have been giving the author reason to distrust you.  Your collegues demonstrated remarkably unethical behavior and, to refute their claim, have proven they cannot be trusted.


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Is having a personal blog that addresses controversial political topics possibly damaging to an academic career?
I am a Ph.D student, and I've been considering for some time starting my own blog as a hobby, to write mostly on philosophical/political topics that interest me; these are definitely not related to my field of research (at least, not most of them). As it happens, some of the topics I want to address are controversial, and much of what I would write could be interpreted as being offensive to one group or another.
Let's assume I want to look for a tenure-track position, and later on get tenure. Ideally, I hope everyone would agree that such a personal blog should not alter in any way my case for obtaining the position. In practice, I am concerned that the existence of such a blog could be used to attack my case for the position (and later on, my case for tenure) on the grounds that the opinions therein found are "offensive" or even "hate speech" (as might be interpreted by some very sensitive people in these modern times). More subtly, one imagines it could cause some decision-making persons to develop an effective bias against me, which would probably have a negative effect.
Thus my question in the title. I am looking both for personal experiences that people have had, and for some statistical data that may answer the question or a closely-related one (such as, does non-trivial political participation affect academic career? etc.)

See How detrimental is involvement in politics to a scientific career? and Academic freedom and unpopular or offensive views, both of which have very good and comprehensive answers. I'm not sure there's much more to say on this topic...

You may want to consider keeping the two things completely separate.  However, for an example of a professor running a high-profile, extremely controversial political blog, see http://legalinsurrection.com.  (Keep in mind this guy had tenure when he started his blog.)

You can anytime remove your formal identity from the blog, and use a "writer" name.

ff524, thank you for linking to those questions, which are very relevant. I think my question is a little different/more focused, but in any case, the answers and examples given there have convinced me to keep such a blog anonymous.

I do not see this as a duplicate of Hypercube's question; this question is specifically about running a blog about Lentes' political views, Hypercube's is about his/her political activism more generally.

There are definitely examples when an angry pitchfork crowd doxed bloggers, and started a campaign to have him fired from his position. Some cases were successful, some not. In general, it is a risk.

Let's start with this: as a professor you will be in a position of power over quite a few people. Part of the job of being a professor is to responsibly manage a number of employees and respectfully interact with students. If you really did (recently) practice hate speech, then that does legitimately disqualify you.
However, when this becomes an issue you will probably never hear about it. Think about that from the position of the hiring committee: They have a number of applicants, most will be somewhat suitable for the job, but one will be stronger on one point and another stronger on another. So there are so many ways in which you can justify any decision. So when you do write down the justification, you will choose the one that will give the least problems.

I suggest you set up your browser to do automatic spell checking.

In practice, one never writes down any justification at all for decisions not to hire someone.

In germany an ordered list of candidates is made that does need justification.

To be clear, I am not really concerned about saying hateful things because I harbor no such opinions and find them absurd; I am, however, concerned that, per recent campus trends, some very easily offended people may find some different opinions so difficult to them that they label it as "hate speech". Having read the answers to the linked question, I am now convinced that, if I have such a blog, I have to make it anonymous.

An anonymous blog is probably a waste of your time. The problem with anonymous blogs is that you will be convinced you are right, and they will be convinced you are wrong, and nobody will learn anything. It is usually much more productive to talk to people. They are usually much more reasonable than you think, and they may actually have a point. They may exaggerate a bit, but that does not mean the point is not there. Also be careful about blaming others for being offended. It is usually best to respect the feelings of others even if you don't understand them.


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Should an intern who wrote most of a paper and where the first author contributed little request to be first author?
Background: A little over a year ago, I wrote a paper for an internship (during high school) at a major university medical center. My contribution to the paper was basically everything except conception and some editing/revision (mainly phrasing, not content). The author list, in order, is: immediate supervisor, me, other intern, senior person in group, and PI. The other intern put in about 3 hours of work which were not used in the final manuscript before disappearing to another country and not responding to my attempts to contact. My immediate supervisor, frankly, had very little contribution and is not giving the paper the attention I would like; they took a year to submit the paper (rejected the first time by a reach journal), is taking excessively long to resubmit or get back to me about it, and is usually radio silent.
I have a pretty good relationship with the PI, who seems somewhat aware that my immediate supervisor is not being responsive or attentive. It's from work done during high school, so I don't have very much experience with these politics.

Can and should I ask the PI (or someone) about changing the order of authors?
and what actions would be appropriate for me to take to try and get the paper finally submitted relatively soon?

Who came up with that author list in the first place?

I think it was my immediate supervisor, but I'm pretty sure the latter two signed off on it.

I think you should talk to the PI about the order of authors.  Don't frame the conversation as a demand/plea/request to change the order: phrase it as a question from a very new researcher who put a lot of work into a project and wants to be shown the ropes about why author order is the way it is.  This is not a cover story: I really think that virtually no high school student could know the conventions of author order in the publications in a specific academic field.  So although it is possible that you deserve to be first author or come in some other place, I don't see how you can reasonably know that without gaining a lot more information about the conventions of the field.
Here is another question to ask your PI: what are the consequences for your career of the author order on the paper?  This is not my neck of the academic woods, but I would guess that a high school student being an author on such a paper is already getting about the maximum amount of credit without being first author.  It may well be the case that the ordering of the other authors has something to do with their academic career...and they may or may not be doing it in what we would agree is a totally ethical way, but unless your contribution was really exceptional, it may in fact turn out to be worse for everyone involved to make a big fuss about it.
I want to end by saying that academic politics really only matters for academics.  I'm not (at all) saying that you don't have the right to engage in the jockeying for authorship position...but you may have the luxury of not needing to worry about it.  That is a luxury, by the way...

I agree with Pete L. Clark's first paragraph in that you should be first sure you understand the conventions of author order, especially in regard to paper contribution, before you suggest any changes. It would be a great start to a conversation with your immediate supervisor or PI.
You say you've done almost everything, but I would suggest thinking about and listing each of the contributions you made. When authors are ordered, it's not necessarily the amount of time they've spent but the type and quality of their contribution.

Did you come up with the original idea?
Did you design any of the experiments?
Did you suggest any changes to any involved experiments/prototypes?
Did you run any of the experiments?
Did you analyze the data?
Did you interpret the data?
Did you write the paper?
etc. ...

Since I don't know the specifics of the situation or the field it's difficult to give you my personal opinion on whether you deserve first authorship or should ask for it. If your involvement comes down to essentially following specific instructions (running already designed experiments, writing up the already interpreted results) without any or with little creative input from yourself, then I don't believe you do. Since this paper has already been submitted once, the time has passed for you to ask unless you personally make significant changes or additions.
Asking for first authorship (or an authorship in general) without a good understanding of conventions can have a negative impact on your relationship with your immediate supervisor without gaining you anything. In my personal experience I've heard interns ask for an authorship when their contribution was pressing the start button in a series of experiments because 'it doesn't affect the other authors,' which is both laughable and ridiculous.
Another note of caution - the paper review process often takes months, and can extend to over a year in some cases just for the first round. Since this is again your first work, make sure you understand where the delay is coming from before getting too anxious. If the delay was in fact on them, was it because significant changes had to be made? With the current rejection, I would not ask your supervisor why the re-submission is taking so long, but how you can help address any of the reviewer comments to make it suitable for re-submission or submission to another journal. Ask for a copy of the reviews if you don't have them already; it may be very clear why it is taking so long if there are large issues to be resolved.

So it would make sense to ask about order of authors, at least to better understand the process behind it?
The field is nutrition/medicine.
Also, if it's of note, my contribution specifically was: methods design; execution/data collection; data analysis and interpretation; drafting the manuscript. PI conceived the concept and asked me to do everything between conception and finalizing the manuscript and send him the draft. The revisions, according to MS Word revision tracking, were mainly syntactic. The figures/tables are exactly as I made them. PI periodically advised me on direction.

I think it's worth asking that question, if only for your future papers. I'm in engineering/robotics so I couldn't tell you what is normal in your case.  I was surprised at first how conventions can vary across fields so i would never consider it an unreasonable or unexpected question as long as it's asked politely.


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publishing a paper in a journal with different scope
Several times I have read papers published by the journals where the scope of the publishing journal is totally different (if you consider the scope of the journal as it is explained in their homepage. In some cases, I am sure that there is no related/ or even some close system keywords for submitting the paper). Therefore, the papers I am talking about are not even on the borderline.
How these papers get published by such different journals? How the authors deal with selecting the system keywords from the journal's list when they are extremely different? (which clearly means that the journal's aim and scope are extremely different with the paper)

I think the answers range from "it's a predatory journal so they don't care" to "well, the editor liked it", to it's not actually as unrelated as you think (perhaps your expertise is more narrow; perhaps there are indirect applications not clear to you). I'm not sure what usefulness an answer will have for you - what problem are you trying to solve?

I am trying to understand if I can send one day a paper which is an extension of those especial papers to the same journals with those unrelated keywords, and not seen as naiive or mad to do something 99-100% impossible. In the past I have had two such papers and gave up sanding the papers when I saw the list of the jornal keywords that I should select in the submission system. But I still everyday that I see the papers in the same situation, I ask myself how they have selected keywords and how the journals accepted to review those papers. (actually, I am not talking about predatory journals.)

Who is your intended audience for a paper that you publish in a journal with the wrong scope? If I were to publish a set theory paper in a number theory journal, it wouldn't be seen there by set theorists. It would be seen by number theorists who would find it incomprehensible or uninteresting or both. The only reason I can see for such a publication strategy is that the paper is so lousy that I don't want set theorists to see it, yet I want to be able to list it on my CV.

@Andreas Blass: So, based on your last line, we must be careful when we want to such papers in our work, yes? Also, when we select one of them to extend? Since (if it is correct) specialized journals might be doubtful about the reference paper to be weak. Is that right?

@m123 I don't recommend writing and publishing lousy papers. Anyone who insists on publishing lousy papers should indeed be careful.  A lousy paper might admit a good extension, but in that case I'd finish the extension and publish that.

These decisions are made by people, not machines. The reviewers can advise whatever they like and editors probably have some leeway in going outside the "stated" scope of a journal. They might choose to publish what they consider a very high quality paper if it is outside the scope. And some papers might also get printed for no other reason than that there are page quotas and deadlines that need to be met, so a paper outside scope might be preferable to one that is of low quality but within scope. Humans. Ain't we weird?

Therefore, I can try them and have hope not to receive a rejection by scope? but how can we select the keywords/edicts in the submission system when there is no related one? and one more question is, based on your last lines, in means that publishing in unrelated journal doesn't affect the negative first impression/judgement of others who haven't read the paper throughoutly? With a reason like: specialized journals have access to more professional reviewers who can evaluate the paper more precisely?

Trying them seems risky. The keywords are mostly to help the editor choose reviewers. If you are out of scope it may be harder for them and a desk reject more likely. Had your question been "Should I submit an out of scope paper" I'd have suggested not. At a minimum it will tie the paper up for a while.

So, are the authors who publish these kinds of papers taking risk? Or the have some background information about their target journal that I don't have? (for example, they know that the journal has an editor who his field is the same as them, or the journal publishes a specific topic too although seen as unrelated)

Can these papers get evaluated equally to those published in technical journals of the same scope as the paper?

Things vary. Impossible to say for sure. Just don't depend on exceptions to happen.

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


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possibility of paying fees by bitcoins in IEEE transactions?
Is it possible to pay IEEE transaction fees/charges by bitcoins?

I don't think so. At least for the IEEE Transactions I know of, payments are managed by RightsLink, a company external to IEEE. In the help center of this company, you can find information on how to pay:
How do I complete the RightsLink order? How can I pay the charges due?
It is there written that (bold mine)

Select your preferred payment option (invoice or credit card)

and

If you submit your order with the “invoice” payment method, you can pay that invoice later using a credit card, wire transfer, or check.

They want the good ol' dirty money!


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Google scholar citation counting suddenly drops, very recently
Very recently, I had noticed that almost all scholars, from all countries and from all different universities, that I am aware of, their Google scholar citations counting suddenly drop (of the scale of 10, to 100 to 1000 to 10^4 counting, depending on your academic ranks and total citations).
One can check https://scholar.google.com/
Many people (almost all people) are affected.
Is there some policy changing?
Also it looks that the Google Scholar citation counts much less than ADSABS-Harvard system http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abstract_service.html, is there a reason behind it?

You'd have to ask Google about this- they apparently changed how they search for citations and decide what sources to include.  FWIW, I haven't noticed any such change in my Google profile.

Which email do you recommend me to send to Google Scholar? I never knew one can reach them. Thanks!

I haven't noticed this. Only Google can answer this, but perhaps if you look at lists of citing articles you will be able to notice which ones have been removed and then can guess why.

"I had noticed that almost all scholars, from all countries and from all different universities" -- how did you collect this evidence?

I looked at the Harvard link that you provided and see nothing. What do you want us to look at? Vote to close as "unclear what you're asking".

It is true, I find the google citations suddenly drop again and again...

Please give links if it is possible, whom should I contact?


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How to correct the missing citation counts/citing References in the Google Scholar?
How could we correct the missing citation counts and the missing citing References in the Google Scholar suppose you have a Google Scholar profile?
For example, I find that other resources such as https://inspirehep.net/ and http://www.adsabs.harvard.edu/ that links to arXiv may have much precise and better citation counts for a few particular publications of mine, while the Google Scholar misses many citation counts/missing citing References.
I am a physicist, an engineer, and a natural scientist. But I don't mind to receive comments from experts working in other disciplines.

Perhaps the best way is to stop worrying about it - while Google Scholar is nice, it is free so you get what you pay for...

You could write to them at scholar-support@google.com, stating your issue.


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Green card sponsorship policies and timeline for tenure track faculty
I would like to find out about "industry standards" for when, and on what timeline, US universities will sponsor applications for permanent residency (aka green card) for new tenure-track faculty.
I'm asking from the employer's point of view.  It seems that my institution's policy is that we will sponsor an application for a new tenure-track hire after they have been in the job for one year.  However, we just recently had a candidate turn down an offer we made, saying that although they were very attracted to our position, they had another offer from an institution that was willing to sponsor them immediately, and that this was a very important consideration for them.
Of course there may have been other factors not mentioned, but all the same it is a very disappointing way to lose a candidate.  As such, I would like to find out what norms may exist across US academia, to get a sense whether we are competitive with respect to what most other institutions do.  If there is wide variation and no real standard, that would be useful to know as well.
Related to this, since I'm not as knowledgeable about immigration issues as I might wish: I am assuming that the main reason for having such a policy is just that the university wants to make sure the new faculty member is likely to stay on, before investing the money for application and legal fees (which I'm aware can be substantial).  But I am wondering if there are any other relevant factors in deciding when to sponsor an application, other than pure financial risk, that I don't know about.
For context, this is at a public R3 university, and the hire is in a STEM field (though I think our policy applies for all new hires in every field).
Somewhat related but not answering this specific question: How long does it take to get a green card as a US faculty?

Hm. I've not paid attention recently, but 10+ years ago my R1 math dept in the U.S. would always help green-card applications, and, I think, pay most of the costs...

@paulgarrett: Do you recall whether they would start the process immediately when the person started working, or whether they would wait as we do?

I think even in the preceding spring... once it was "sure" that the person was really coming, and not accepting a different position elsewhere. My dim recollection is that everything was sooo slow that starting in March or so in the previous spring just barely made things work well.

Here's one data point. As far as I know, at my university (a top 50 small liberal arts college), we sponsor after one year in the job. I do know of a case, however, where the sponsorship happened later, in the last year of the person's visa instead. But that was a long time ago, and I think now we sponsor the green card faster. I do not think we have ever sponsored before a person even started, but maybe we should consider that.


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How can I post my own version of a published SPIE paper on arXiv?
SPIE policy for web posting of papers states the following:

SPIE grants to authors (and their employers) of papers, posters, and presentation recordings published in SPIE Proceedings or SPIE Journals on the SPIE Digital Library (hereinafter "publications") the right to post an author-prepared version or an official version (preferred version) of the publication on an internal or external server controlled exclusively by the author/employer, provided that (a) such posting is noncommercial in nature and the publication is made available to users without charge; (b) an appropriate copyright notice and citation appear with the publication; and (c) a link to SPIE's official online version of the publication is provided using the item's DOI.
This authorization does not extend to third-party web sites not owned and maintained by the author/employer such as ResearchGate, Academia.edu, YouTube, etc.
SPIE content published under a Creative Commons CC-BY license is exempt from the above requirements.

Emphasis in the above text is mine.
So if I understand correctly, once the paper is accepted in SPIE (journal or proceedings) for publication, then I cannot post it on arXiv (since the arXiv server is neither exclusively controlled by me/my employer). I am talking about my own version, not the published one.
I tried to submit my own version on arXiv and they understandably rejected it saying that they cannot accept anything that has a journal copyright. So is there a way around it for me to submit my article to arXiv?
If not, I think I can surely post it on my own website, right? I will post the copyright and the DOI in that version.

any updates on this post? I have the same question.

Some SPIE journals have following in the author guidelines Authors may post draft manuscripts on preprint servers such as arXiv. Once a manuscript has been accepted, the full citation of the published journal paper along with a link to its Digital Object Identifier (DOI) should be added to the preprint record. Still confused about what rules apply if text was corrected during proof of article.

Some update on this.
It states SPIE's official "SPIE Article-Sharing Policies" website:
(https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/article-sharing-policies, accessed 2018-06-18)

What about arXiv?
Authors may post draft manuscripts on preprint servers such as arXiv. If the full citation and Digital Object Identifier (DOI) are known, authors are encouraged to add this information to the preprint record.

So is there a way around it for me to submit my article to arXiv?

It's reasonable for you to ask SPIE for permission to post the paper to the arXiv (under conditions (a), (b), and (c)).  They might not grant permission, but it can't hurt to ask.  Even if they deny permission, at least you've given them feedback about what authors like you want.
One possibility is that they actively object to posting on the arXiv.  In that case, you are probably stuck.  Another possibility is that they don't specifically object to the arXiv, but don't want to authorize arbitrary websites they are unfamiliar with or other websites they object to.  In that case, they might grant you permission.  If they do, then that should suffice for the arXiv administrators.

If not, I think I can surely post it on my own website, right?

Yes, assuming it is controlled exclusively by you or your employer.  (That's true for most people's websites, but it could fail in unusual cases, for example if you are treating a social network page as your home page.)

I would add that using the institutional repository of the institution (if they have one) would be the better option than posting the paper on the personal website because they guarantee persistence and long-term archiving.


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Publishing a novel idea without experiments and results
I wrote a technical paper on a novel idea related to internet technologies. However, I don't have resources to conduct large scale experiment. Also, the numerical results cannot be consider as well. In the given situation is it wise to publish the idea paper in a low quality journal or submit it on arxiv?

It will likely just get lost in the noise either way. Interesting ideas need some validation.

@Buffy for validation I need large scale experiment. I was thinking to share with resourceful professors but I am not sure if it is a good idea.

what are you trying to achieve?

Ideas are like ...opinions...: everyone has one.
"Just an idea" is not research, and is not typically publishable. An idea based on a substantial compilation of existing research may be publishable, in which case the added value is the synthesis. I see this semi-frequently in my field (which is different from yours), but these types of "ideas papers" typically have other value to other readers in that they are written from the perspective of experts in the field. It's not a way to enter the field. They also double as review articles, but I somewhat doubt your technical paper serves as a review.
Publishable in this context means being able to put it somewhere that people will see value in it. Of course you can always pay someone to publish it, but that doesn't really have value.

Thank you Bryan! when I am saying Idea it is in detail description of system with mathematical representations and discussion on their use within exiting system. However, its all a theory! In computer science these kind of paper exist but came from experience and well known researchers. I don't have such kind of profile, so I need validity.


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The reputation of a researcher: number of Citations vs Quality of publication
From my social circle and from google scholar I learn that sometimes a trendy work with very less scientific depth gets more citations compare to  a less trendy work with high scientific depth. So the question is how to determine the quality and reputation of a researcher?

What do his topic colleagues say about him?

Note that quality and reputation are not at all the same thing.  The way you determine the quality of an academic's work is to study it and evaluate it...pretty much the same way you determine the quality of anything, in my experience.  If you don't have the time or expertise to do that, you can look for other things that are correlated with quality to a greater or lesser degree.

Number of citation is a visible metric (quantity), so it is easy to evaluate someone based on that. Quality of work has already been judged by reviewers. Is not it?

Can we determine the quality of work by mean of conference/journal where the article was published?

@MBK Of course. That's why in the CV/applications etc. one sees and judges the publications rather than the citations (which are rarely mentioned, at least in TCS). Keep in mind that citations take few years to appear as people discover your work. Also the more specialized your work, usually the more deep it is and the less citations will receive (due to specialization).

@PeteL.Clark Agree. The best way is to judge by reading it. But a "famous" paper has more chances to come into your attention and even then it's a subjective metric of quality. Objective metrics usually correspond to the quality of the journal/conference. A FOCS paper is 99% of high quality, even if it receives in the next years very few citations, and this can happen for many reasons.

@PsySp lets suppose two candidates apply for an academic/researcher position with same number of publications one has published in highly reputed journals/conferences but has quite few citations and other has published in average journals/conferences but has a lot of citations. Which candidate will be consider more suitable?

@MBK depends on how the PI ranks their work. In that case I suspect that the PI would be in a better place judging, based on subjective criteria. My feeling is that higher quality journals are a better ticket for academic jobs.  It definitely demonstrates certain capabilities: citations might be matter of luck. Publishing to highly prestigious venues is not. All being equal, then maybe citations come into play.

@MBK That's why, at least in my field, Impact Factors (which are based on citations) of journal mean virtually nothing.

Can we determine the quality of work by mean of conference/journal where the article was published? — Absolutely not!!  Excellent papers sometimes appear in "mediocre" venues, and even the best venues occasionally publish shiny garbage.

Quality is not easy to define in general and this is even harder when it comes to scientific work or even scientists. One may say that any judgment of quality is subjective and hence, as Pete L. Clark suggested, you have to form an opinion yourself, e.g. by reading the articles/books or listening to talks if you have the chance. You may also ask colleagues about their opinion to help you to form your own opinion. To see that quality is subjective: The formulation of your question suggests that for you, high quality work has to have some "scientific depths". For other people "high quality" may mean "great and simple ideas" (which may not be too deep, after all).
Reputation, on the other hand, is something that is more related to a community, so you can get a good impression of someones reputation if you ask colleagues who are in business for some time. To see that quality and reputation are not the same thing you may get a response like "He/she has a good reputation in the field but I do not like his/her work very much."


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For schools that require "at least 3" letters of recommendation for a grad school application, is it smart to send 4?
I am applying for math PhD and may have 4 letters of recommendation: One from my masters advisor, one from a professor I'm doing a small project with, one which I did undergrad research with and took grad algebra with, and one I took grad complex with. The last one is more recent in terms of me knowing him, but I did very well in his class.
For schools that either say "at least 3" or do not specify, should I do all 4 letters? Do I run the risk of the committee choosing the first 3 that they see, and discarding the 4th?

Only if the fourth recommendation is helpful. You should have your  other letter writers form a committee to determine whether or not the fourth letter will be helpful. Only the letter is confidential.

Personally, having one extra (a 4th) is probably not a bad idea.  However, there are risks involved.  First, just the logistics for interacting with 3 people for getting 3 recommendations is challenging enough.  If you add a 4th person to ask for a recommendation then your work may go up by a good amount.  Second, having a 4th raises the risk of having a negative statement from a recommendor that could hurt your chances.

Thanks for your input. I have asked all my recommenders if their letters will be strong, and I'm planning to ask the 4th writer this as well. So, in principal, I shouldn't have any weak letters unless they lied to me. If the 4th writer says he cannot write a strong letter (which may very well happen), then I will not ask him to write a letter.

I cannot confirm your first argument. In my opinion, if one asks 4 persons, this involves not much more costs  then asking 3 personen and the chances to get 3 letters are much higher as if one asked only 3 people.

Also one bad letter out of 3 is worse than one bad letter out of four, so, yes, you can hurt your chances if the 4-th letter is worse than the first three but you can just equally well improve them if it is better. Formally sending four doesn't violate the requirement, as stated, in any way, so just play it by ear.

The biggest reason I mentioned the cost issue is because I have been both a PhD student asking for recommendations and have been asked for recommendations.  In this day, when all of us are being overloaded with information and requests for help I feel guarded.  Overall, I really don't think a 4th is a bad idea.  It shows you have done extra work.

(This might be obvious but) I'd like to add that if the instructions eg. ask for specific reasoning behind the extra letters of recommendation despite not explicitly forbidding them (this was the case for me, even though the short advertisement asked for "at least two"), it's most likely a good idea to actually have some reasons besides "I want to send more recommendations so that my application would automatically look better".