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When did "Publish or Perish" first become a thing?
Related: What does "Publish or perish" really mean?
The issue of "Publish or Perish" is pretty much an accepted reality in Academia nowadays. When I look at history, however, I see that the Medieval university was far from this - that the average, say, 13th century academic was more invested in passing degree examinations, applying logic against the classics, and mastering pedagogical techniques (how to teach your own students) than in finding something truly new about the world and racing his rivals colleagues to publication.
At what point in history did "Publish or Perish" become a reality for the majority of academics? In no way am I challenging the concepts, only asking about the timeframe. Could an "average" academic in 1800 build a career by gaining advanced subject matter knowledge (e.g. being really really good at integrating by parts, balancing chemical equations, or identifying known species of birds by looking only at their feet), being good at debate, passing a lot of exams, etc., without discovering much (if anything) that was new in his field? What about 1850? 1900? When was the changeover?
My hypothesis would be that there was some sort of watershed event, perhaps similar to (or identical to) the radical change in admission requirements for US undergraduates that happened when large numbers of returning World War 2 veterans all wanted to (and could afford to) "go to college" at the same time.
Jon Custer made a good point about PhD awards exploding in the 1990's. The PhD degree itself might also be related. Since the PhD is inherently a research degree that requires a substantial original discovery (as opposed to other degrees that may be focused more on subject matter knowledge, professional practice, or pedagogy), an answer might consist in discovering when it became rare for someone to gain a professorial appointment without a PhD. This could be an example of Creeping Credentialism - that when everyone and their dog has a PhD, suddenly a PhD is required for all sorts of teaching (or even research) jobs that used to only require an MA or even a BA or below. The question would be, when was that? Could you become an English professor at Harvard in 1765 by walking in off the street with no degree, passing an advanced professor-level literacy test, and completing a six-week accelerated course in Ye Olde Modern 18th Century Best Practices in Contemporary Literature Pedagogy?
From a pop cultural/literary perspective, I was recently reading some of H. P. Lovecraft's fiction from the 1920's and 1930's and was shocked at the frequency at which his academic-background characters intentionally "lose" their research (oops) or at least don't seem to mind that they have lost years of potentially groundbreaking research. At some level I feel that he is intending to imply extreme gravity to the situation - that unleashing the knowledge of eldritch abominations upon journal readers is simply so unthinkable that it's worth shooting one's own career in the foot to prevent it, or whether his characters reflect a different era, one in which research was more of a fun diversion for academics bored of teaching (and thus not truly necessary to gain or keep a faculty post).
Note that I am not asking when regular journal publications or the practice of peer review first developed, I am asking when they became the sine qua non of Academia, that is, when one could no longer reasonably expect to achieve tenure if the only real publication one had was a degree thesis or dissertation.

I would postulate sometime in the mid-1990's as global PhD production increased while professor openings fell did not keep pace (lots of baby-boomers still working).

Sorry, @JonCuster, long, long before that.

@Buffy - no, not really, at least not in fields I'm familiar with. Certainly the 1960's were a golden time to be hired and tenured as a STEM professor. Departments were growing. Many that I'm aware of published steadily but not spectacularly. It was relatively easy to get long-term NSF grants that could be extended for decades. One might argue that by the stag-flation of the late 1970's things were changing. But, even in the late 1980's I had a number of classmates who did just fine. By the late 1990's things had definitely turned towards what they are now.

@JonCuster, the reason for the 60's was the competition with the Soviet Union after Sputnik. Yes, departments grew fast then and NSF poured in lots of money. But it ended abruptly about 1971 after the moon landings. It was nothing but a bubble.

Note the usage of the term over time on Google ngrams: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=publish+or+perish&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cpublish%20or%20perish%3B%2Cc0 it appears in the 30s and 40s, and absolutely explodes in the 1960s. So that's where my money would be.

@Buffy - and the undergraduate enrollment was increasing quickly, between the baby-boomers as well as a higher percentage of folks going to university in the first place. NSF ending 'abruptly' in 1971 seems odd since, of course, it is still around. At https://dellweb.bfa.nsf.gov/NSFRqstAppropHist/NSFRequestsandAppropriationsHistory.pdf you can see the budget by year. There is a slight dip in 1974, then it keeps growing.

@JonCuster. The rich NSF funding, not the agency. The country retrenched. "Job Done. Nothing more to see here. Move on please. Sorry you have a degree but no job." Mathematicians were pumping gas. I got caught in it, actually.

@Buffy or the local employment centers going on about how there were amazing jobs somewhere out there in TV Land where they were really really really desperate to hire people who knew how to read. I never figured that one out, actually.

https://www.aip.org/statistics/data-graphics/initial-employment-physics-phds-1979-through-2016 may have some relevance.

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d17/tables/dt17_315.10.asp shows total faculty numbers, with stagnation from ~1975 to 1985, then slow growth in tenured faculty. Non-tenured faculty may now outnumber tenured (another issue for publish or perish).

Even during the boom - circa '68, publish or perish was the talk of the grad school lounges. Just because there were lots of jobs doesn't mean standards dropped. The system was still under the control of the old timers. PorP has been around about as long as there were tenure eligible positions.

A lower bound on the year can can be possibly given by the case of Joshua King https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_King although in that case there may have been other issues. That does at least suggest that the degree of focus on it was not as severe then. A lower bound of the 1840s may not be that useful though.

@BrianH According to wikipedia the earliest use of the term in an academic context was in 1928.

In many places, temporary teaching faculty, such as adjuncts, are the majority of academics.  "Publish or perish" does not apply to them, because they are not expected to do research.

The mathematician R. L. Moore used to talk about how publication expectations changed after Sputnik. The number of publications rose dramatically, for example. (I know this because my father was a PhD student of Moore.) So I think Sputnik was a turning point towards a publish-or-perish environment.

Cartoon in the Wall Street Journal from perhaps 40 years ago, a grave stone with the epitaph, "Published, but perished anyway."

In mathematics, in the U.S., until the 1950s it was almost entirely the case that math departments were service departments to engineering and chem and physics. Teaching loads were high, and there was no expectation of "research" at all. Some people with M.S.'s were faculty, and some people with PhD's had "done no research" except their thesis.
In the early-to-mid 1950's, coinciding with the post-sputnik, post-Hiroshima era, apparently many math depts argued that individuals' teaching loads should be greatly reduced... so they could conduct research that would help "beat the commies" or whatever other enemies... and, concommitantly, they'd need lots more faculty lines.
Of course there was a boom time, perhaps of a decade or two, but then the pretense caught up with us all. E.g., Michael Spivak's multi-volume book(s) on differential geometry were published by "Publish or Perish" press.
Nevertheless, at a relatively high end of things, even into the 1980's, in math, in the U.S., it seemed and does still seem to me that people were judged more by their scholarship, reputation, insight, etc., than by paper-count. Yes, part of this was the considerable difficulty of creating a readable document pre-PDF, pre-TeX, pre-most-things. And, yes, pre-internet. Presentations at conferences, even without associated preprints, could make a person's reputation.
Many breakthrough results were first made public at conferences (in the lack of arXiv or internet generally), and, again, such stuff was what reputations were made of. "Publications" were mostly after-the-fact.

Harvard studied this issue in 1938, which was of course published, as: Report on some problems of personnel in the Faculty of arts and sciences by a special committee appointed by the president of Harvard university:
Quantitatively, 60 faculty testified that they were under undue pressure to publish, while 90 considered that such pressure was not undue or that they were not under such pressure.
The publication anonymously includes quotes from 28 of the 60:

The following statements and phrases are culled from the replies of twenty-eight men of these sixty, distributed among the several ranks as follows: assistant, one; annual instructors, nine; faculty instructors, eight; assistant professors, ten. They represent Biochemical Science, Physics, Biology, Anthropology, Economics, English, Far Eastern Languages, Fine Arts, Government, Music, Romance Languages, Psychology and Philosophy.
"Quantity rather than quality"; "forced-draught production"; "pinpoint studies of obscure and third rate authors"; "to attract attention outside the University"; "spectacular fields of research"; "early quantitative evidence of scholarly activity"; "problems which will give definite results in one or at most two years"; "a book is a book"; "mechanical fact of acceptance by a publisher"; "listing off with great fanfare the books and articles published by the department in each year"; "obviously mistaken emphasis upon mere yardage."
"The 'publish or perish' legend . . . has led me to publish material that could have been improved by further research." "This 'pressure' — and it cannot be described by any better word — I hold to be completely detrimental in both substance and manner." "I consider the pressure being brought to bear to publish at all costs a professional crime."
"____told me that a recommendation . . . must be well reinforced with publication. ... Its chief result has been to lead me to defer fresh complementary constructive work germane to [a] course ... in favor of revision of already completed manuscript." "The current opinion on the necessity of publication held by junior members of the teaching staff approaches the hysterical. . . . There must be some provocation for it." "I have come to the conclusion that to publish quickly and frequently is a necessity. A great deal of 'forced' scholarship is ground out of Widener these days."
"The indefatigable search after truth, which is surely a primary justification of the scholar's profession, is inconsistent with the hur-
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-ried, unsound, and imperfect results which so often obtain in forced publishing."
"Pressure to publish oppresses us all, even though it is not necessarily brought to bear in any form as concrete as a friendly tip or hard-boiled condition of permanent tenure. This pressure is without any question harmful to intellectual development in most cases."
"Very certainly it is now the common belief, whether justified or not, that one must publish if he is to win promotion. . . . Inevitably, then, my contemporaries resort to reports and accounts of fact finding which in the majority of instances are or very little value. . . . Their publications can only be described as printed matter and, being no more than that, they lie dead along the paths of literary study, exhaling a lethal atmosphere which is most disheartening to that particular kind of enthusiasm which should attach to the humanities."
"Within the last month I have received three letters from two distant universities asking me whether it was true as reported that Harvard . . . was hereafter demanding at least one book every three years."
"Emphasis on publication by the University is likely to increase quantity at the expense of quality." "I gather that number of pages published is the only general criterion of success." "This pressure on able young men to publish forces men to follow the sort of work done by their elders." "The announced policy of the administration was responsible for my embarking upon a special research project which promised to yield immediate results and did not." "Thus it was in friendship for me as well as in the effort to serve the department, that its chairman . . . used to call me into his office at intervals and give me what I can only describe as a kind of 'fight talk.' ... At the time, I thought he was right, took his talks all to heart, and in consequence . . . had a period of morbid self-accusation and self-distrust . . . which did my work less than no good."
"Publication of incomplete investigations merely for the sake of a title." "Volume is the thing that seems to make the most favorable impression." "It is my belief that the general pressure for publication which certainly exists at Harvard University is definitely harmful because it tends to force the substitution of the practical goal of professional standing ... for the much more important one of worthwhile contribution to knowledge and the jealous maintenance of intellectual integrity and rigorous scholarship."
"A man who is not doing much in the way of research or creative contribution to his field will not do anything worth while simply as
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a result of being told that his promotion depends on it; the most this will achieve is the wholesale production of potboilers." "The real aim of research is lost sight of in the rush to publish." ". . . repeatedly and unpleasantly urged to publish."

Using Google Ngrams to search for the phrase "Publish or Perish", we see that the phrase seems to have entered reasonably widespread use in the late 1940s and peaked in the mid 1960s:

Searching Google Books for the phrase turns up a number of earlier uses, but many seem to be mis-identified by Google (e.g. they suggest that Nature vol 362 is from 1869, whereas it was actually published in 1993).
However, Google Books did point me to this, published in 1935 in the Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand:

One of the aphorisms of Professor W. M. Davis, whose death was referred to at an earlier meeting to-day, was “Publish or perish.” Davis applied the remark to individuals, for he went on to say, “If it is worth doing, it is worth printing!” If no opportunity to print is afforded, then the well of inspiration dries up. It may also be applied to societies, for this generally disconsidered function of such a society as this is really the main stimulus to a vigorous existence.

So even if the phrase wasn't invented by Davis, it was in use, without needing detailed explanation, in the 1930s; but was still considered a relatively new concept at the time, since it could reasonably be ascribed as a quote from a single individual.
(Also, though it's hard to tell, this early use seems to be more positive than we're used to seeing.)
Wikipedia claims that it first occurred "in an academic context" in 1928, which fits with this timeline.

Great digging, and I love the context of the quote, as it seems to suggest the phrase may have actually meant that one should publish because otherwise the researcher will 'perish', not because of external pressure but because of a lack of inspiration and involvement. This is a very different meaning than the one we think about today! Important to consider the use of the term itself does not necessarily suggest the same environment we experience - context matters for interpretation, and multiple meanings can co-exist (as other answers show as well). +1


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Do unethical acts that are tangential to methodology taint research?
It's well-known that unethical acts can render research virtually unpublishable, but the cases we hear about tend to involve situations in which the methodology is tainted - for example, fabrication of data or unethical experimentation on humans.
Do unethical or unlawful acts that are tangential to actual research methodology likewise taint research?
For example:

A researcher is unlawfully present in the country in which they do the research, or lacks the legal status to do it there (e.g. overstaying visas, attending a university on a tourist visa, dodging a border checkpoint, etc.).
A researcher falsifies their academic credentials in order to get access to lab space, equipment, or grant money (e.g. the research itself is sound, but the researcher would not have been allowed unsupervised access to the university's microscopes had they known that he didn't actually have a PhD).
A researcher conducts research using stolen equipment or supplies.
A researcher commits a crime in order to hinder, delay, or incapacitate a rival researcher (e.g. sabotaging someone else's lab, murdering them, stealing their lab notes in order to deny them access to them, fabricating allegations to get them thrown in jail, deported from a country, expelled or fired from a university, etc.).
A researcher unlawfully uses performance-enhancing drugs without a prescription to maintain concentration on their work.
A researcher carries an unlawful weapon (e.g. concealed handgun without a permit, rifle unlawfully modified for full auto, etc.) for personal protection when gathering field data (e.g. where the researcher would have otherwise not gone there out of fear of violence).

Are there best practices or general principles on when such unethical acts taint research? Obviously, I'm not asking whether or not someone can, or should, get away with committing these acts, only whether or not they also would prevent publication. E.g. could someone say, "Yes, I blew up Dr. Smith's telescope and hit him with an axe so he couldn't beat me to publication, and I accept my 20-year prison sentence for that, but I was, in fact, the first to complete a spectrographic analysis of that planet and write it up so I should still be allowed to publish."?
This is not a request for personal advice! I'm just curious as to what actually happens or is supposed to happen in these cases.
My "guts" say that this would depend on the degree of non-academic misconduct - for example, that murdering a rival would prevent publication while parking unlawfully in a no-parking zone in order to make it to a meeting on time would not, but is this actually the case? Is every case evaluated independently, or is there a bright-line rule?

I know of one researcher who was caught sabotaging a competitor's equipment by urinating on it, yet who still went on to win a Nobel prize.

@Buzz Is this public knowledge? If so, who was it?

I think OP should consider the more concrete case of whether data obtained from experiments on humans in totalitarian states are suitable to be used for publication. This is a very concrete ethical problem. It may encourage researchers to obtain their data in countries where human rights are regularly and/or drastically violated and there is no proper ethics board.

@CaptainEmacs I don't know how well known it is, but it is not a secret.  The culprit was Sam Ting.

In regards to the drugs question, Erdos, one of the most prolific mathematicians in history, used a lot of amphetamines.

Your first two examples sound like a Holywood movie - with the researcher as the star-crossed hero who does not give up. No 4 is bad, no 5 is not entirely uncommon, except most people including researchers use drugs that decrease performance (alcohol). No 6 may occur in certain fields. I agree with @Captian Emacs, the question is valid but needs a better example.

First, I think there is an important distinction to be made between unethical and illegal.
While most things that are illegal are also unethical (e.g., murder, theft), there are many cases where the laws themselves are either clearly unethical (e.g., slavery) or may be considered unethical by a reasonable person (e.g., prohibitions on stem cell research).
Let us thus consider only unethical acts unrelated to research, whether illegal or not.  Here, I think there are at least two good motivations for considering unethical acts that do not directly call the methodology into question:

Concern about honesty: If you find out that somebody has been gratuitously lying in other aspects of their life, it's entirely reasonable to wonder whether they would feel comfortable lying in their research as well. Motivation matters here: a person lying to protect themselves or to cover a sexual infidelity is not particularly relevant, while a person lying with the intention of advancing themselves or hurting others is of much more concern. In this case, there is no "smoking gun" indicating results should be withdrawn, but it would be entirely reasonable to do a careful process re-review of their work for validity in the light of the new knowledge.
Punishment: If a person does terrible things that damage the scientific community or the larger community, one may wish to exile them and their research as part of the punishment, in order to make it clear one should not expect to profit from such behavior. This is clearest in the case of unethical acts directly related to research, such as sabotaging a rival or non-consensual medical experiments, even when they don't invalidate the methodology and conclusions. It's less clear what one should do about the scientific legacy of say, an abusive rapist who happens to also be a highly successful mathematician.
There is still no clear consensus on what to do in such cases, even in the case of Nazi medical research.  Personally, I favor the approach suggested by some of using only when no other citation is possible, and then without a formal citation and with inclusion of an explanation of why this research is problematic. Should this be extended to lesser criminals like rapists and abusers?  Unclear, though I think it's certainly worth considering for those who poison a scientific community with their behavior.

+1 but I would like to point out that ethics is time- and culture-dependent. Since you mention slavery, today's ethical standards would bring into question the technological advances made by ancient civilizations that employed slaves, such as Ancient Egypt, if they were made today. However, it seems to me that nobody is ignoring the technological and scientific legacy from those cultures. Perhaps in 1000 years the horrors of Nazi Germany will seem so distant to future humans as Ancient Egypt's slavery seems to us.

I don't think there are "best practices" for that. For those to develop, this would first need to be a somewhat widespread issue (nowadays), which I am not aware to be the case. In principle, non of the examples would prevent publication of the research, although your second example (faked credentials) would certainly lead to high scrutiny of the manuscript. If a researcher were known to have pretended to have a PhD in the first place, I assume a reviewer or editor would not take his data and reported results in quite the same good faith as we usually do with other researchers.
It should also be noted that how the community would react to a paper is a different question - in your murder example, maybe a manuscript could still be accepted in principle after this, but it is difficult to imagine that the community would give the axe-wielding author much recognition for being first to publish their analysis.

I doubt that there is any way in which unethical personal behavior will taint the research itself. It may cause the person who does the research to be shunned and condemned, but the research stands on it own.
There are, for example, a couple of examples, one from mathematics and the other from computing (EE, specifically), in which the practitioners were terrible, virulent, racists and spoke out about their hateful beliefs. But no one questions their contributions to research, and in the EE case, the operation of your computer depends fundamentally on it. But people speak out against the views of these folks and name them as perpetrators of evil.
For a young academic to behave unethically, even outside the academic world, you might find yourself unemployable, publicly condemned, and shunned. Not a pleasant thing.

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What constitutes an academic publication for people in the Creative Writing field?
Based on my observation, Creative Writing degree programs seem to be heavily focused on learning a few timeless principles of storytelling followed by the production of a massive portfolio of stories (short stories, novels, poems, plays, etc.) demonstrating mastery of these principles.
Once someone has a degree in Creative Writing, or especially has become a professor of Creative Writing or aspires to be such, what sort of academic publications are expected or typical? My instinct would be to say that they simply write more (and hopefully better!) stories and publish them, but then that would imply that there is a difference between fiction intended for the academic community that is subject to rigorous peer review by fellow Creative Writing academics and fiction intended for a mass-market audience that is selected based on what the editor thinks will sell the most copies - does such a distinction actually exist? E.g. perhaps there is some writer today thinking "Hey, I think this story I wrote about wizards getting revenge on a king on Halloween is one of the best of its class in the past few hundred years, I'm going to submit it to the peer-reviewed Trans-Celtic Journal for the Advancement of Bardic Storytelling rather than Spooky Tales Quarterly. Tenure here I come!" Do separate peer-reviewed venues for publishing "academic-grade" creative writing not exist as such, and academics publish wherever they want (fanzines, pulp mags, blogs, Cosmo, wherever) and let their stories stand on their own?
Am I wrong on this? Do professors of Creative Writing actually concentrate on publishing research articles on the effectiveness of various writing techniques, tropes, themes, plot devices, etc. (e.g. "I did this study where half of my readers/subjects read my story [Appendix A] with the side love scene and half without, and the ones who read the story without it rated it higher [Graph B]. Conclusion: Don't include side love scenes.")? Do Creative Writing professors write literary analysis like Literature professors in the Liberal Arts?

One thought would be to go to various universities' websites and look at the CV of creative writing professors.

This varies by institution but it is quite common for tenure and promotion policies to consider "creative works" in awarding tuition to professors in fields like theater, creative writing, fine arts, and music.  It's also common for those professors to have a terminal master's degree such as a Master's in Fine Arts rather than a doctoral degree.

@corey979 no I'm not, and not planning to be. I'm just curious as to how it works.

Another thing that leads me to believe that peer-reviewed creative writing does not really exist: I am, and have many friends who are, avid readers, and I've never heard someone say, "Hey, if you're tired of all the crappy Harry Potter wannabe stories that are flooding the market, just subscribe to the Advanced Journal of Applied 21st Century Best Practices in Young Wizard Creative Writing. It costs $50 an issue because it is written at a 35th grade reading level and so hardly anyone reads it but professors, but the stories are so amazing!"

@RobertColumbia: There are lots of peer-reviewed literary magazines.  https://www.kenyonreview.org/ is an example.  Perhaps it just isn't the type of writing that appeals to your friends?

+1 to @AustinHenley's suggestion of looking at CVs of people in the field.  I kind of feel like this would answer your question in less time than it took to ask it.

I think the mocking, made up journal names are excessive and rude to that community.

There are plenty of scholarly essays that can be written about creative writing.
Here's a CV from one professor who teaches creative writing extensively. It lists, as well as books, short fiction, and poems she has published, a long series of scholarly essays that seem like your "literary analysis" category (titles like "Reed-Kellogg Diagramming and Vernacular Speech: ‘Telling It Slant’ in the Introductory Classroom", “Robert Penn Warren and Psychological Pastoralism,” “Agency in All the Kings’ Men: The Issue of Anne Stanton,”).
She also has a series of essays on writing which are probably what you're talking about with your "articles on the effectiveness of various writing techniques, tropes, themes, plot devices" such as “Don’t Be Afraid to Write Badly,” The American Scholar, January 2017 and “Writing ‘Bush,’” Fourth Genre, Summer 2011.
Here's another CV from an "Assistant Professor of Poetry & Creative Nonfiction" who has a section for "Selected Prose (Creative & Critical)" that includes what looks like both literary analysis and essays on the "effectiveness of various writing techniques" (Writers on Writing, “Why to Kill Your Paradise").
So yes, it seems that there are publications that take a scholarly attitude toward creative writing, and at least some professors of creative writing do publish in them.

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Why aren't systematic reviews present in electrical engineering journals?
I am an electrical engineering PhD student (computational electromagnetics) and recently I learned about systematics reviews, which seem to be the norm in the health sciences. I tried to search for systematic reviews in the most relevants journals in my field:

IEEE Transactions on Electromagnetic Compatibility
IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation
IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery
International Journal of Electrical Power & Energy Systems

I found no systematic review on IEEE journals and only one published this year (2022) on IJEPES and, even then, from what I skimmed, it doesn't present the information I expect from a systematic review (namely, the PRISMA checklist, such as inclusion and exclusion criteria). This very superficial research I did suggests that systematic review are uncommon in electrical engineering (I did find some on Software Engineering, though), which raises the question: why aren't systematic reviews present in electrical engineering journals?

Why would you expect to be any? There aren't any in math either.

At least in particle physics, there are specialized journals for the systematic review type article. I wore out my copy of Physics Reports when I was learning about Yang-Mills theory. Is it possible there are such journals?

In medicine, you have to conduct an additional study just to show that two other studies are comparable. In engineering or natural sciences, that's a lot easier.

@Arno I am doing some research on human safety against radiation in extra high voltage installations. I expected to find a review along the lines of "most common or effective practices for mitigating worker's exposure". It serves nothing to establish the safest working practices if people are unwilling to follow them for any reason.

(Frame challenge)
Well, there is an immediate problem:

most relevants journals in my field

three of the journals listed are "Transactions"

You see, this is a type of journal to cover a fast-moving field and publish novel contributions to it. Journal scopes (emphasis mine, I had to take a couple from SJR as IEEE website is having problems):
"IEEE Transactions on Electromagnetic Compatibility publishes original and significant contributions ..."
"The IEEE Transactions on Antennas & Propagation publishes full papers and shorter Communications on original contributions within the general topics of electromagnetics, antennas and wave propagation."
"PWRD welcomes papers that disclose innovations in electric apparatus for power delivery with the main focus on power transmission and distribution components."
I hope you get the idea. This does not mean the field does not have reviews, it just means you tried to find them in wrong places. I was able to find some reviews in Energy, IEEE Sensors publishes a lot: you can consider the latter a proof that it is not an IEEE problem, it is a Transactions problem. Now, I do not know what exactly is relevant to your subfield, but you could use it as a starting point.
You could search on Scholar and include "review" as one of your keywords. Also, this is one area where SJR may actually be helpful: if you consistently overlook some type of literature, you could skim through their Q1/Q2 list and see if there are any journals which sound relevant but you do not read much of (this is what I did to find both of these examples). Maybe your typical search strategy is flawed (it pretty much always is, for all of us, but the degree varies). Some of the good venues are getting overtaken by OA journals just because search engines tend to rank those higher, and no one has time to read every single journal in their field systematically. Either way, consider casting a wider net.
EDIT (as suggested by Jon Custer): In many universities, there are dedicated people specializing in helping researchers traverse the vast sea of scientific literature. They are called research librarians, and they are underrated. Go talk to one, they would be glad to help.

And go talk to a research librarian…

It was truly a "wrong place" problem. Thanks. I could find one about antennas on IEEE Access: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9292914

@JonCuster Thank you. Guilty as charged - I also keep forgetting about them; our library was great with books, but not particularly helpful with periodics.

I once was trying hard to find articles covering a specific topic, but the search engines kept coming back with hundreds of useless results. 10 minutes talking with a librarian, and about 2 minutes of her typing search strings yielded 3 dead-on results. I learned a few search tips in the process, but I also learned to use experts when needed.

Try Proceedings of the IEEE

Proceedings of the IEEE is the leading journal to provide in-depth review, survey, and tutorial coverage of the technical developments in electronics, electrical engineering, and computer science.

or IEE Proceedings A (Physical Science, Measurement and Instrumentation, Management and Education, Reviews)

Published from 1980-1988, IEE Proceedings A contained significant and original contributions on physical science, measurement and instrumentation, management and education, and reviews (specially commissioned articles written by specialists reviewing topics in depth for the professional electrical and electronics engineer).

You can find other electrical engineering journals that publish surveys and reviews.

Only found one on Proceedings of the IEEE, but I get the idea: I searched te wrong places.


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Asking senior scientists for a subreview
I am a junior postdoc (1st year) part of a program committee in an international conference. As a member I have been assigned with several papers that I would like to delegate to subreviewers.
I have in my network researchers who are also postdocs but, they could be regarded as senior. Is it rude, or weird, to ask them to subreview a paper? If so, should I try to find PhD students or other postdocs in my range? If not, to what extended may I ask for a subreview?

Is it rude, or weird, to ask them to subreview a paper?

No.
There is absolutely nothing rude, weird, presumptuous, or inappropriate about asking a more senior researcher to review a paper for a conference.  It is an utterly standard and expected part of your role as a PC member to ask experts to review papers.  Conversely, it is an utterly standard and expected part of their role as active researchers to be asked.
Of course, anyone you ask could say no.  And indeed, more senior experts are more likely to say no, in part because they are likely to receive more than their fair share of these requests.  That's why you should always ask for  suggestions for additional/alternate reviewers whenever you ask someone for a review; more senior experts are also more likely to know who the good reviewers are!
[Checking my inbox for review requests in 3... 2... 1....]

You can always ask and they can say "no". It's surely not rude and weird; people are asked to review stuff all the time. The probability is not too low that one or more of them will say "no", but you may be lucky.
In my experience, more senior people are more likely to say "no", but of course if they say "yes" they will be the more competent reviewers. And some say "yes".
Don't be worried about asking somebody something that they don't want to do. If you ask and they say "no", it won't reflect in any way negatively on you.

It does make sense! However, the doubt always remains... And you do not know if asking is not appropriate.

Asking questions is the essence of science ;-) - that said, I'm of course not sure in what culture you are and whether people around you have some utterly unscientific expectations about behaviour.

I don't quite understand the premise. Are you as part of the committee tasked with finding reviewers (in which case they are not "subreviewers") or are you a reviewer and seek others to do part of your job?
I don't see anything weird in the first case. You are at the program committee. It is your job to identify the most suitable people that can act as reviewers. By contacting the appropriate people, i.e. experts in the respective field, you are doing a good job. This has nothing to do with the seniority difference.
The second case seems a bit more problematic. In my field it can sometimes happen that senior people delegate reviews to juniors. But that is usually confined to the immediate environment of the senior person (e.g. his lab or department). And it is more of an exercise and experience building and it is very likely that the review will be reviewed along with the paper again by the senior. If you would like to delegate your work to senior researchers, you can expect that it will be done by their students if it is accepted as such at all - people might not be fond of doing reviews outside of the formal channels.

As a PC member I am assigned several papers to review. And I have the choice of asking subreviews.

Would someone care to explain the downvotes? I can't improve the answer, if I don't know what is wrong with it.


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Subreview papers, to what extent?
I am about to defend my PhD thesis in computer science and so far I have being asked to subreview 5 or 6 papers of different conferences.
At the beginning, it was exiting because it was a new experience in my career. However, at this moment I am a little bit snowed under work and I have being assigned with 2 subreviews from the same conference.
I do not want to turn down the opportunity of expanding my knowledge and experience, nevertheless, this situation has brought to me serious doubts about the usefulness of subreviewing.
Apart from the acquisition of knowledge and experience,

Which are (or could be in a future) the benefits of subreviewing?
Is there a moment in your career that it is not worth it anymore?

Thank you.

For point no.1, you might be invited to be par of committees; organize talks; maintain/make connections; most of all stay up-to-date on new research in your field. For point no. 2, varies a lot, but perhaps when you are too old to care; too famous etc.

@TheGuy your comment is more suitable as an answer.

What do you mean by "subreview", verses regular peer review? I'm not familiar with the term.

@Tripartio In most computer science conferences, the program committee (PC) is formally charged with reviewing submissions.
At many conferences, PC members (especially those with large numbers of review assignments) are encouraged to delegate the review of each paper to an outside community member; those are "subreviewers".  In extreme cases, PC members act more like editors than referees, and "subreviewers" are the real referees.  Details vary among different subfields of CS.

(a) Benefits: You mentioned the biggest one, i.e. knowledge, exposure and an updated idea of trends in the field. Besides this, the major factor is generating/maintaining goodwill with the person who sent it to you for subreview. This is an intangible benefit which could multiply in ways that are hard to predict.
(b) When is it not worth it: Probably once you have defended your PhD. You may prefer to review directly. Definitely once you're in a faculty position, unless you do it as a favour to someone.

My answers to each of your questions:

"Which are (or could be in a future) the benefits of subreviewing?": I see at least two main benefits:

Exposing yourself to the main reviewers and conference chairs. By visibly doing high-quality work for them, you establish positive reputation as you build your professional network.
I believe that all active researchers have a moral responsibility to actively peer-review the work of other researchers. A rule of thumb is that for every article we submit for peer-review, we should peer-review at least two articles when requested. (Of course, we can choose which two articles we want based on our quality level and interest, but we should make time to fulfill this professional responsibility.) It's a simple matter of treating people the way we would like them to treat us: if we want our articles to be peer-reviewed, we should peer-review others' articles.

"Is there a moment in your career that it is not worth it anymore?": Although you said, "Apart from the acquisition of knowledge and experience,"this is a huge point and actually answers this point: insomuch as you would always want to keep on gaining knowledge and experience throughout your career, you certainly always should continue subreviewing articles, as long as you remain an active, learning researcher. Moreover, concerning the first question, as long as you are an active researcher, you would still have an obligation to peer-review for others.


text:
Expected size of search results for a meta-analysis?
I'd like to perform a meta-analysis on the efficacy of web-based counsellor interventions across different modalities (text counselling, video counselling, etc.)
To do so I created the following search term:
(Internet OR Online OR Web-based) AND (Therapy OR Counselling OR Intervention) AND (RCT OR Randomized Controlled Trial) AND (Counsellor OR Therapist OR Psychologist OR Psychotherapist)
In Google Scholar this returns over 145 000 results, and still over 19 000 if I filter for 2013 and later.
This is my first attempt at a meta-analysis and I'm wondering if this is considered normal - if there are researchers who sift through tens of thousands of papers to find <100 relevant ones? It seems like other reviews have managed to tackle similar topics yet only returned ~1000 studies. For example: Guided Internet‐based vs. face‐to‐face cognitive behavior therapy for psychiatric and somatic disorders: a systematic review and meta‐analysis

The study you linked says that they used PubMed mainly, which is far less inclusive than Google Scholar. They say they "consulted" more broad databases like Google Scholar, but that sounds very intentionally vague. Most work of this sort starts more narrow for precisely the reason you note, so you might want to start there and see if there are less total results, and of course include less junk. Then you can add other sources, but starting with a massive pile of general junk requires a different approach (usually automation assisted).

if you are comfortable with writing a little bit of code, you could automate some of the process. Either by directly searching for relevant terms within the HTML versions of the article or downloading the pdf's and converting to text and then parsing them. You would still need to check the articles by hand but you could use an algorithm to filter them to a more manageable level.

The short answer to the last question is that yes, for some questions people do sift through tens of thousands of results to find a small yield of relevant studies. (And the pool becomes smaller when later screening for details like N and standard errors and adequate description of the population and intervention to allow for a technical meta-analysis.) But that may not be the ideal way for you to do this.
The Campbell Collaboration helps coordinate literature reviews and metaanalyses on many social issues, as the Cochrane Collaboration does for health. The Campbell Collaboration has a document on how to write a good protocol for such a review, including specifying your search strategy, and there's some longer guidance on search strategies and information retrieval here.
The latter document says:

The decision as to how much to invest in the search process depends on the question a review addresses and the resources that are available. It should be noted, however, that article abstracts identified through a literature search can be ‘scan-read’ very quickly to ascertain potential relevance. The process can be facilitated by answering a few specific questions that relate to the inclusion criteria when scanning the abstracts, such as “Does this document report an empirical study?” or “Are children age 3-18 in the sample?”. If the answer to any question is No, then the reference is excluded. But any study that makes it through all of the questions answered either Yes or Can’t Tell, is retrieved. At an estimated reading rate of two abstracts per minute, the results of a database search can be ‘scan-read’ at the rate of 120 per hour (or approximately 1000 over an 8-hour period), so the high yield and low precision associated with systematic review searching is not as daunting as it might at first appear in comparison with the total time to be invested in the review. (p. 23)

Much of the work done by these collaborations involves large research groups and/or volunteer labor and/or automated screening. For your workflow, you would probably want to find a system that lets you view the title and full abstract without clicking through--easier in some databases, maybe a deep option somewhere in Google Scholar. This difference in the view may allow you to more efficiently screen the literature even if there are many potential results.
It seems to me that a good reason for using Google Scholar would be if you want to seek out "gray literature," technical reports, unpublished results, and results in multiple languages. However, Google Scholar will probably bring up more irrelevant studies than if you search databases. For your search terms, though, I'm not sure that you'll run into as many well-designed (RCT) studies on a novel technical infrastructure that would fall through the cracks like that.
Thus, I think your best bet might be doing your main search via PsycINFO or some other database, plus a dissertation database, and then look at Google Scholar a bit to see if anything was systematically missed.

I won't repeat what cactus_pardner has already said in their excellent answer (I especially appreciate the abstract-sifting strategy quoted from the Campbell Collaboration), but I will rather focus on the proper (or improper) use of Google Scholar.
Google Scholar is a great resource in general (I consult it regularly myself), but it is not a good primary database for a literature review. For that kind of purpose, searching Google Scholar is similar to doing a regular Web search on regular Google: you will come up with hundreds or thousands of irrelevant articles. Of course, Google is well qualified to build a professional scholarly database, but as far as I understand, in order to allow Google index their articles for free, the publishers place many restrictions on what Google Scholar is allowed to display. For example, Google Scholar is forbidden to display abstracts of articles (which is one of the most crucial capabilities that you need to do a literature review!).
Thus, I recommend that you book an appointment with a librarian to understand the scholarly databases that you have access to (an academic librarian is preferred); a librarian should be able to help you identify the best databases that you have access to that are relevant to your research topic. (And in my experience, librarians can often give you access to special trial databases that are not available to the general public.)
Google Scholar is mainly useful to find non-published grey literature as a supplement to your formal database searches, but as a primary search source, its abundant results of primarily irrelevant results are often overwhelming to the point of being useless.

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text:
Permissions of an adapted figure for a thesis
I am looking to use a figure for my thesis.
The figure itself is however (heavily) adapted from another paper.
I am fine with reaching out to get permissions from both authors, but I am unsure if I need to. Who owns those rights?
Additionally, I am unsure about how to write that permission was given. Right now, I have:

The diagram is reproduced from X, but is adapted from the
work of Y. Permission from both publishers was given.

Your intent and suggested wording is fine. You need to, at least, seek permission from the copyright owner of the figure you actually use. If that paper correctly cites the earlier version then you don't need to do so also, but it is nice to do.
Note that a figure in a paper isn't like a few words. The latter can be quoted under fair use (with citation), not requiring explicit permission. But a figure can be interpreted as "a complete work" independent of the fact that it appears within another work. Thus permission is normally required unless the figure is so mundane as to be a simple expression "common knowledge".
But you seem to be on the right track here.


text:
SOP: mention that I am considering two different areas for PhD?
I'm applying to PhD programs in Physics in the US. I have two fields of interest: Particle physics and complex systems. I'm currently doing research projects in both of them. However, I'm still not sure on which I would like to pursue my PhD. I'm not sure if I should address this situation in my SOP. I will mention both research projects but I'm not sure if mentioning two possible areas of research will hurt my chances of getting into the program.

Will you already have a masters when starting or just a bachelors?

Well, yes and no. There is a legal issue because internationally is considered something in between (I'm not studying in the US). However, I can enter directly to PhD in many countries and I do have a thesis. The problem is that I'm doing my thesis in particle physics but I'm also studying mathematics and I'm doing my math thesis in complex systems.

Most applicants to US doctoral programs have only a bachelors, and one from the US, where the undergraduate program is generalized, not especially specialized. So, admissions committees have a lot of experience with applicants who are a bit (or a lot) tentative about their future research direction. You are probably more focused than most, actually, having narrowed it quite a bit.
But note that you apply to a department, not a university. If you mean complex systems in the physics context you are probably fine to apply to that department. But if you mean it in the mathematics sense, then it would be a different department requiring a different application, with a separate SoP. I'll assume you have resolved this.
So, assuming you mean a single department, I'd suggest mentioning both, but if you have a preference for one, then state it that way: primarily interested in X, but with additional interest in Y. But if they are different departments, write an SoP specific to that area of study.
The other issue is that after acceptance you need to find an advisor and you may learn that you will get more help and direction from someone in one of those fields rather than the other. So early commitment to a specific area may not be in your best interest.
If you have only a bachelors on entry, then the early years will be filled with advanced coursework in most places and you get a chance to meet faculty and make a judgement about an advisor. With a masters the path is a bit shorter and decisions need to come earlier, but leave yourself some "wiggle room".

My own experience (long, long ago) was that in math I was happy with either Real Analysis or Topology. That was enough. The place I wound up bas big enough that it made no difference. Plenty of advisors in both (and other) fields.

Great! I really appreciate the advice. In fact, I'm trying to search for departments that have both research areas. However, there are not many places that have both research groups within the physics department.


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Does Elsevier Engineering Village include IEEE Journals or arXiv papers?
I need to conduct a litertature review around the topics of learning-based control autonomous vehicles and I am currently identifying which databases to search. I have chosen IEEE Xplore, Elsevier Engineering Village and arXiv.org. Do any of these databases include all of the literature of any of the other databases? For example, I can find IEEE Journals through Engineering Village.
Furthermore, is there any overlap with SpringerLink articles with any of those previously mentioned? Should I use Google Scholar instead? It seems to not have such a detailed advanced search.

IEEEXplore seems completely subsumed under Engineering Village. I've yet to find a paper on IEEEXplore that wasn't on EV.
I have had some arXiv papers pop up in EV, but a quick look shows me that not all arXiv papers can be found with EV.
Google Scholar works fine if you know the tricks to create effective search strings, like using a * to capture all word variances. Ex., rehab* could be rehabilitative, rehabilitated, rehabilitator, rehabilitation. Or "" to clump a phrase, like "augmented reality" to ensure it doesn't just pull up papers with only the word "augmented"
Unfortunately, I don't do research in your area so I can't speak to whether these are the best databases for your purposes. An academic faculty member could help with this. If you are doing research independent of an academic institution, you can get a sense of this sometimes just by googling "autonomous vehicle journal," and seeing what you find. Also, searching for related conferences and seeing where they publish can be helpful.


text:
Should I charge entry for a public lecture?
I am a research scientist, and as part of my role I am expected to perform some form of public outreach and engagement. I enjoy outreach activities and giving public lectures.
I have a suspicion that free public lectures are usually poorly attended. I suspect that the attitude is one of "Well, it's free and you get what you pay for". Certainly the quality of artistic performances that I've seen is strongly correlated with entrance fee.
While it is a reasonable expectation that my Faculty would pay for the costs of lecture room hire, advertising, possibly even tea and biscuits, I wonder if there is an advantage of charging a nominal fee to attend, to overcome the low-quality perception of a free lecture.

I suspect that the answers will be more or less opinionated to this one. I personally feel that charging an attendance fee is unethical (especially in this context) and unpleasant. I personally would not be very psyched to go listen to a scientist who charges people who want to come listen to him/her.

Bring free pizza if you want more people to attend. :-)

Not really an answer, but good for a comment: the public lectures about research I know of are quite successful (mainly in mathematics) and the key is advertisement and, prominently, working with high schools. As far as I understand, high school teachers are enrolled to discuss related content beforehand in their classrooms, and the trip to the lecture is organized for a number of classes from a variety of high schools. Of course this needs quite an organization and good connections.

There should also be cultural differences ... the "you get what you pay for" mentality is mostly an American thing in my experience, and does not apply everywhere.  I got my undergraduate degree in an Eastern European city.  I remember that there public lectures by scientist would always be free, while some of the more successful charlatans spreading pseudoscience would charge fees or try to make money out of it another way.

'the quality of artistic performances that I've seen is strongly correlated with entrance fee' There might be another cause for that. Maybe artists take paying venues more seriously (people will be upset if they paid for something bad).

I doubt exclusivity as represented by an entrance fee would attract people to a lecture. After al, it is the subject that is of importance. thus the advertisement is key and the way you set your topic in a wider perspective. If the topic concern people such as climate change, environmental issues, medicine to mention a few, people will come. It will be more difficult to attract people to topics they either do not know anything about or are not interested in (or in the worst case, is not widely reported in media). Thus, my negative perspective is that the success of attracting an audience is to a large extent a question of how the topic is known by and an interest of the public.
So, I would advice against charging for the lecture and put all efforts into making the lecture as interesting as possible for the intended audience. And, to do this by coupling the topic to a larger picture that is relevant to the public. And finally, if you do not get a huge audience, it does not mean there is anything wrong with your research or lecture, public interest varies over time and research can have huge relevance for important aspects of society and life without attracting a wide audience.

I remember this issue from my econ 101 class (far too long ago). The teacher said "As the price of something goes up, demand goes down, all else remaining equal." A student responded "But if you increase the price, you increase the 'perceived value' of your offering thus more people will want it then your demand will increase."
One saw things from a marketing perspective and one saw from an economics perspective.
The teacher, however, responded that the student's statement is generally only true for luxury items which demand higher than normal market prices for their category of product.
I believe your thinking is in line with the student in this story. I would not consider a talk from an academic to be a luxury item (even for a 'rockstar academic'). I would go along with Peter in his answer and posdef in the comment: The cheaper (best=free) the lecture, the more likely I am to go and the more likely I am to encourage my friends to go, since they cannot complain about it being too expensive.

Wouldn't the rockstar academic have a full lecure hall by definition? And thus not the problem this question is about?

@cbeleites well it's all relative. A "rockstar academic" is much different from an actual rock star.

@DavidZ: what I thought of when reading the term were a bunch of famous scientists (also famous for giving awesome lectures) I heard. When those were around, the lecture hall was always full. Mainly with academic audience, though. I think it is largely a thing of reputation: for the lecture series and the lecturer and much goes by person-to-person information.

If your work is publicly funded in some way, then your outreach should be free. If attendance is poor, consider finding some other venue for your outreach, such as an event hosted by a school or museum where you will have a more "captive" audience.

A possibility that I have not seen mentioned: contribute the lecture as part of a fundraiser.
This stems from the belief that while information should be free, the actions of distributing it should not.  If you find an organization (possibly even on campus) toward which you are sympathetic and might have such returned because of the subject matter of your lecture, you might offer the lecture as part of a fundraising effort, requesting a minimal contribution.
This may achieve both goals of increasing its perceived value (as suggested elsewhere in this thread) and having you perform more of a service than just delivering information.  A side benefit is that the recipient organization normally will handle the logistics of scheduling the talk and getting the audience.
Check with your university on approved ways of doing this: I have not done anything like this in this millenium, so the rules may have changed.

I think whether or not charging a fee is a feasible idea depends on the circumstances. There are several factors at play here.

Your role. This is the hearer's primary perception of you.  E.g. I think it is quite common that authors who read from their book charge some fee. This would be perceived like the artistic performance you mention, and it is also the case for journalists talking about e.g. political topics. On the other hand, it is really (at least here) uncommon to charge entrance fees for scientific lectures for the public.
The topic. The "norms" of fees for lectures may vary according to your topic.
If you are talking about some medical topic and charge even a nominal fee, I think there is a risk of repelling people more than one could attribute to the fee: you may leave a slightly "fishy" impression that you are talking for the fee and thus maybe you are saying what you think the audience wants to hear as opposed to giving an independent opinion. Just like the default opinion is "be cautious" if the lecture were sponsored say, by a pharma company.
I don't think it would matter in this case if the fee is so nominal that it doesn't even cover the rent for the lecture hall. Of course in this case, you could turn the argument and say "I'm charging a fee of you, dear audience, so that I do not need to go to pharma industry for sponsoring".
For topics which are also discussed politically, I think the reasoning should be roughly similar. Though people are used to hearing speakers that have a clear political opinion, and there are scenarios where it would probably be perceived as normal if entrance is charged (see the book author reading).
If on the other hand you are going to give an awesome experimental lecture, I think no concerns about your integrity would be linked to the fee. People may be willing to pay just as they pay the entrance fee for a science museum.

Note that none of these points looks like drawing a larger audience (unless maybe the fees are to cover extra advertisement), just like repelling some or not.
A completely different consideration: Why not choose a smaller lecture hall? It is not very pleasant to be in an empty-looking lecture hall, neither for the speaker nor for the audience. Much better if the hall small enough to be well filled. And a slightly overfilled lecture hall leaves the nice impression that far more people did come than were thought to come... May also be creating an impression that this lecture is an insider tip.

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text:
How to minimise student's discomfort when suggesting they need to improve his/her English?
The standard of English grammar, spelling and syntax is abysmal in my country. High school students generally learn such things by studying a foreign language.
As a result, the written work I receive from students whose native tongue is English frequently has many errors - including the usual:

Typographical errors
Apostrophes in the wrong place (its, it's)
The following fails: their/there/they're; whose/who's
And, generally, failing to check spelling, grammar and to proof read thoroughly.

The typos and failure to proof read thoroughly I can understand and treat accordingly, namely encourage students to proof read and check their work carefully, or get a friend/colleague/family member to help.
The failures in English grammar, syntax and punctuation - which I suspect arise from a deficient treatment at school - I find hard to forgive.
Our University has extensive support for improving the English for both native and non-native English speakers.
I feel concerned, however, about suggesting to those students who are native English speakers, but who need more training, to attend the help workshops available to them. This is for fear of embarrassing or alienating the students. Is there a sensitive way of dealing with this? Should I even try to spare the students' blushes?

I can tell you one wrong way. Back in college, my professor wrote on the very front of my midterm paper in red ink: "Is English your second language?" (I'm ethnically Asian, but born and raised in the States.)

If it can be of any comfort, I can tell you that the problem you're pointing out is not specifically related to English, but it happens in other countries as well, with the corresponding native language. And about minimizing the discomfort: when some 20 years ago I had written my Masters' thesis (in Italian), my advisor corrected a number of errors and then told me: "You know, they teach this stuff at the primary school..." (it worked...)

Why would you want to minimize the student's discomfort? They should be uncomfortable. The trick is making it clear that you are criticizing their writing, not their character.

One way to approach this is from the perspective of why the quality of prose matters in the first place.  After all, why should we bother with spelling, grammar, etc?
Having good spelling, grammar, etc. is important because not having them puts roadblocks in the way of communicating with the reader.
You can minimize a student's embarrassment by emphasizing this aspect.  Assuming that student is otherwise doing well, you might can bring up grammar by approaching it from this angle.  You can emphasize the pragmatic aspect that, in pretty much any career they choose, written communication will be important, and that it's important to not have others' appreciation of their good work be impeded by problems with grammar and spelling.  It's really the linguistic equivalent of keeping yourself clean and well-groomed.
If a student is not doing well with the core material... well, then grammar's not really the key problem to talk to them about anyway...


text:
What are the advantages/disadvantages of a PhD advisor who is experienced vs. one at the beginning of his career?
I know in most of the cases, PhD seekers do not have many options and we must stick to what is offered. However, it happened that I initiated connection with two advisors from different institutes which almost have the same reputation. However, one of them is a lecturer (equivalent to assistant professor in north America) and the other is full professor. Nothing is guaranteed yet, so I won't give up on any of them. Yet, before I delve deeper, I would like to know is it better to work with advisor who is still at the beginning of his academic career but with less experience and maybe more demanding. Or it is better to work with full professor who has long experience but might be too busy for you or not really pushing you to work.
The answer that I am looking for is from two parts, during PhD study and the future career:
PhD period: I know PhD student is independent researcher and should not rely much on his advisor in many aspects. However, I have this fear due to what I faced during my Master, whereby my supervisor was just looking for the quantity of papers not the quality. I assumed from my conversations with him that the number of publications was main criterion to become full professor in that institute. One the other hand, other colleagues complained about their advisors (full professors) that they really do not allocate enough time for them and even do not encourage them to publish saying that you are master student and this number of publications is enough.
Future career: I assume recommendation letter from full professor outweigh the one from assistant professor. Do you agree? why?

Haven't we had this question before?  I can't find it, though.

Also related: Can I successfully adapt to an advisor who will not push me to work?

@NateEldredge I had the same feeling as well. But I can't find it either.

We have definitely had this question before.

Related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/158/how-to-evaluate-potential-advisers-on-grounds-other-than-their-research-publicat - has explicit mention of tenured vs untenured

@Suresh: Yes, I think that one does a good job of addressing this question.  I especially agree with Henry's answer.  I'm voting to close this as duplicate.

It is sometimes assumed that less experienced / competent supervisor will try harder instead, spending more working time and will be somewhat a friend to you, not just a teacher. However this depends. A younger supervisor may also choose to give you only the minimum required amount of time.
For a good PhD student, it may be most important to get a good project and ideas that, as a rule, work. This does not require lots of time but does require a lot of competence. I would normally select the more experienced supervisor even if one may have less time for me. Only if the studies require some complex, difficult to learn methods, a younger supervisor who still uses these methods directly and personally at work may teach them more efficiently.

I think you stated it pretty well, the young one having less influence, but more eager to collaborate vs. the more experienced one, with more influence, but who doesn't really need to prove himself any longer and probably regards you as just another daily task.
I would consider how cooperative and ambitious the younger one is. If you can see that you can benefit from (i.e. be interested in that particular area of research) and collaborate on something that would further both your careers, in my opinion, you should opt for him. In addition, you could gain a long-term collaborator, even after your PhD, being one of his first PhD students. Also, more demanding + relatively common goals, would drill you to become a better scientist, than you would become if you were in a more "lecture-like" and comfortable environment.
In fact, I would choose the more experienced professor only if is influence and respect in the academic community is extremely high or in the case I would want to "just get over" my PhD.

I entirely disagree with this advice, and with the assumption that you can tell how ambitious/busy/demanding an advisor is based on his level of experience.


text:
How insulated is guaranteed funding from an economic slowdown?
I received an offer for five years of guaranteed PhD funding. However, various sources have been prognosticating another recession for sometime soon.
Between a science-hostile administration and a recession; I would be worried about funding to NSF and NIH.
Does a (university) department guaranteeing funds to their students mean that those dollars already exist in their bank account? Even five years of a stipend is not much compared to the greater cost of research in my field. Is there any chance a few years of slow awards could affect graduate student funding?

Note that "department" is a bit ambiguous here. It could mean a department of the US government or a department of a university.

Also note that in every department I am aware of, the guarantee of funding has asterisks (if the department gets axed for instance, or the University declares a financial emergency, many Universities can even dismiss tenured faculty under such conditions, so guarantee is not "we put $X of gold bullion in a safe in the basement to cover your funding"). Slower funding can mean that less students have research-based (RA) positions, teaching loads increase and more students must teach for funding, etc. There are lots of ways to "manage people out the door" as well. All ventures as risky.

@Buffy Sorry for the confusion. Do US departments guarantee funds to specific graduate students? Are you thinking like the GFRP?

Offer letters from graduate programs in the US frequently include "weasel words" that say that your funding is subject to the department having funds available.  It's always possible that something really bad could happen and leave you without support.

@Ben It wouldn't, that's why I didn't ask that question. I am more curious about how things work in general.

Large universities that are offering guaranteed funds often don't guarantee where those funds will come from, simply because they cannot: the money doesn't exist yet. In my graduate program, this is what guaranteed funding meant:

Your first year was covered on a T32 training grant from NIH. This allowed you to rotate in different laboratories without those labs needing funding for you. The NIH provides these grants specifically for this purpose. If all the training grant slots were filled, some students would be admitted directly to a lab that was able to fund them starting their first year.
After rotating, you would join a lab. This lab would basically need to have funding for you, or else you would have to teach. It is important for students and their PIs to talk about funding, since some labs have new grants or several grants and can pretty much slot out a PhD student's entire time in the lab; others have funding expiring soon and the student and advisor need to have plans if that funding falls through.
At any point, most students would apply for outside funding, and some would get it. Even though funding was guaranteed, applying for and receiving grants looks good for your resume.
Students were required to TA at least one semester; many would TA more if they were interested in teaching or to cover breaks in funding in their labs. Usually these would be negotiated with the students and students could time their TAship to coincide with a low funding period in their lab if necessary.
In rare cases, students in labs that failed to secure funds continued their research with funds from another lab, perhaps changing their research project. The program would consider these hardships when granting the PhD degree, and it might result in a thesis that's less cohesive - that's just part of life.

Note that most of these steps didn't really involve the guarantee, it just involved there already being money around the labs that make up the program to fund students. Guaranteed meant that the program would be your advocate and would find you funding of some sort if other sorts fell through. They would find a way to get you a TAship if you couldn't get an RA. They would ask someone else to give up their TAship for you if they could get funding from their lab. They would find a way to stretch funds from one part of the budget to another to make sure you graduate. They would use training grant money for you to finish your final semester. The money wasn't in a pot set aside for you at the outset, but in the fungible world of money, the university was committing to support you. Guaranteed did not mean you could work in any lab of your choice and work towards any research project of your choosing, but it meant that lack of funding would not be an absolute reason for you to be unable to continue in the program over your first 5 years.
Every program will differ in terms of what types of support are available: TAships, RAships, PAships, fellowships and other funds. Funding guarantees are important, but so are the sources of those funds, and this should be an open conversation throughout the application process.
As raised in the comments, there are situations where even 'guaranteed' funding can be revoked, since the guarantee almost certainly comes with basic strings attached such as continued progress in the program, not violating a code of conduct, etc. That said, this sort of guarantee from a reputable university program is putting their reputation on the line to get you funded. They will only break this promise if necessary or justified. No employer is likely to ever provide you a stronger guarantee.
I started graduate school around the last recession; ultimately, the recession and associated funding cuts meant in some of the years after me the program admitted fewer students than typical over a couple years, but no one went unsupported.

Thanks for a comprehensive answer, I think we're in the same field, so very helpful.

@AzorAhai Happy to give more specific advice over chat that doesn't meet the normal SE standards for Q&A. Also, I'd add that in my experience funding discussions need not be too hush hush - as a prospective graduate student, you should feel free to raise those issues with potential supervisors, current students in the program, and program staff. No one I know that would be worth working with would be offended if you asked them for specific clarification of a funding situation. Sure, it can be a delicate topic, but you are precisely the person who needs to know.

I'm pretty sure that no US agency would be permitted to reserve funds for five years. Appropriations are for one year only. A serious recession (a la 1929) would disrupt more than the funding, of course.
On the other hand, the agencies are normally pretty conservative when they make such commitments. But there may be a different president and will be a different congress by the end of that period.
And if a grant is made as a lump sum it will be paid out in one year to the university who will then administer the grant and guarantee its terms are met. Most US government grants are, in fact, administered this way, as are many private grants. The university charges the grant a fee (overhead) to cover administration costs. At that point the university holds the funds. But I have no information on how prevalent lump-sum grants are.
You can find more information here for the NSF.
If they wind up "short" on funds they will most likely just not award new grants, rather than cut off older ones. So it is pretty secure, but not absolutely secure. They will almost certainly have some money, but note the "hedge" words.
But my advice is to live your life making the best decisions based on current evidence rather than trying to forecast economic events too far out. If you refuse an award, thinking that it might end before your needs do then you are unlikely to come out ahead.
I will also note that in the worst case, universities will also most likely try to fill in gaps in funding as best they can, but, again, with no absolute guarantees.

RE: reserving funds, can a department not already have my entire stipend in an account somewhere? | Maybe this is just my incomplete understanding of funding, but does an entire stipend come out of a single grant (re: not cutting off older ones). | I'm not really trying to make any decisions here, I'm more curious about the mechanisms.

I interpreted the question a bit differently. It might be possible for a government department to make a lump sum grant to a university to fund the continuing. From that point it would be up to the university to hold the funds and administer them. I don't actually know if this is done by NSF or not. Some private grants work this way, however. Many grants actually are administered by universities who assure the government that all conditions are met and who charge a fee (overhead) for the oversight.

Appropriations are not necessarily one year long: depending on the agency you're dealing with, I've seen them be doled out in chunks as short as one quarter or as long as two years.

Certain NSF programs and directorates often obligate funding for longer than 1 year.  I received an amendment on a CAREER this week for years 2-4.  In 2012, one of my PIs received 5 years up-front from NSF.  Unlike other federal agencies, it varies widely at NSF.

As I am an administrator, I will offer a more specific view on the pressures of how to fund a student within the context of a portfolio.
Your funding will most likely be classified as one or more of the following funding sources, subject to change at any time:

Sponsored

Federal
Non-Federal (industry or foundation)

Gift
Non-sponsored ("hard money" or university funds)

Endowment
Operating budget

Institutions typically have a way of paying students such that there is a pattern.  E.g., the expectation may be that the operating budget will pay for first and second years in addition to anyone who is a teaching fellow (teaching fellows are often doing research as well, and may end up "split-coded", i.e., two funding sources).  Then the PI is responsible for years 3 and beyond.  How the PI pays for the student is their own responsibility.  This may entail startup funds (which may be provided by the endowment) or sponsored funding.  They may push you to get a fellowship (GRFP or F-series for NIH)
These funds are subject to different funding issues.  If you are on federal sponsored funds, it is possible for a project to be terminated.  It's not common, but it is a possibility.  If you are on DOD funding, this can be because the sponsor doesn't want to continue the work.  DOD tends to obligate funding in small increments so that they have this option at the moment they want.  NIH obligates funding annually pending progress on the project.  NSF is harder to predict.  It ranges from one year to the entire project (usually maxed at 5 years).
NIH funding tends to be awarded but cut in certain ways.  E.g., NIH has stopped funding inflation since 2012.  The salary caps for PIs has not been increased as expected, because they are actually part of the Executive Schedule, and tied to the United States Code that sets federal salaries for the executive branch.  You can see how political it will be to increase an NIH PI's salary--many other political roles would be increased as well.  This is not the case at other agencies.
In terms of the size of budgets, NIH tends to have larger budgets because of their focus on healthcare.  Meanwhile, NSF is frequently cut because they focus on basic research, which does not sell as well to the general public.  Think of it this way-- everyone may support the development of lasers (applied research), but few people understand and support the funding of work pertaining to the physics of molecules (basic research).  This happens to be the crucial work that results in the possibility of laser development, but such research is harder for the public to understand and support.  Politicians run on researching the cure for cancer not describing string theory.
Unfortunately for basic research scientists, there is rarely a major payoff (program income or royalties) from such discoveries.  Even when the basic research enables applied research, the profits are made from the applied research and those folks keep a lot of the profit from the endeavor.  Furthermore, academia tends to avoid applied research in general as a matter of course. This is one of the reasons that PIs may provide basic research for an industry sponsor who works with DOD on an applied research project.  This structure is becoming much more common, particularly for PIs who are otherwise locked into NSF.
If you end up on endowment funds, be advised that the existence of those funds are more volatile.  The PIs who were obligated funding by the institution will be first in line to receive remaining funds and new programs will be the first to be shut off.
There is no such thing as a "guaranteed" funding source really, it's more that the university is diverse enough that they feel comfortable guaranteeing your support. Unless you are worried about the overall financial health of the institution, you should focus on your PI's ability to procure funding.  You can actually look them up in NIH or NSF's systems to see what they have received.

From a practical standpoint, the key thing is to figure out how stable the funding is at a given university department and lab group.  Some universities are plush enough with Federal funding and implicit undergrad subsidy of research that they can/will take care of you regardless of if your prof runs out of money.  A few won't or will expect you to teach for the money.
Note, this has always been the case, regardless of overall government outlays.  In other words the variability of paramater X, of how much science funding there is in the nation is a lot less important than the more granular variability of funding at your advisor/department level.
Talk to students in specific groups and departments and ask them about funding, how precarious it is, etc.  (Yes, current stability may not mean it is always that way, but if you already hear occasional issues or the lack of them, that's helpful to know.)  By and large, I find the hard sciences much more stable and well funded than the soft sciences or liberal arts.  If you are at a top 25 R1 department school in a hard science, the likelihood of funding issues is low.  But you will find some differences from school to school (or advisor to advisor) on how plush they are.
Every 4 years there is a Presidential election. Every 2 years House and 1/3 Senate.  And every year a new budget bill.  And about every 5 years (plus or minus quite a bit) we have a recession.  So it's really impossible to predict what the situation will be in the future.  All that said, overall government funding of R&D is much more stable than what you are implying in the predicate of your question. (Now...selling bulletproof vests and Humvee armor...that is a very boom and bust business, pun sadly noted.)
Finally an important financial question which you should push for, that affects you much more than grant stability:  ask and find out typical times to finish the Ph.D.  My advice is to prioritize advisors and departments with a reputations for getting people done in less than 5 years.  4 years used to be nominal in the US, but now is considered fast.  You don't want to be a grad student for 7 years.  You're not really "studying" after your first year or two.  You're just a poorly paid employee with none of the rights of an employee (albeit with more ability to goof off or spent long times on projects that interest you).


text:
Is the maintainer of a database a good or bad reviewer in principle?
I have used a large database comprising the equivalent of about 10 studies.
Would the researcher in charge of this database be a good peer reviewer? As an editor, would they be a good selection?
On one hand, they know the database and the field very well, on the other hand, you could make the argument they may be biased in favor of publication because it draws attention to their project and cites the associated papers.

It is impossible to say whether they would be good or not, but it is fine to suggest them. It will be the editor that chooses, in any case. And they are unlikely to be the only reviewer. Don't worry about it. If you think they have the required skill it is fine to suggest. You don't need to make a judgement.
The editor, being human, will use their own judgement. But a reviewer, promoting their own work and giving unwarranted positive reviews will probably be easy for the editor to see.

Thanks. I tweaked my language a little - I know that, as an author, I can suggest them, there will be multiple anyway, and that the editor will ultimately decide. I mean in principle, would they be rejected because of their connection to the db in the same way a former mentor of an author would be rejected out of hand?

Only the editor can say

The maintainer of a database might be in the best position to review your use of the data (like checking that you didn't mix up anything, confused male and female patients in a medical study for example), and useless at judging the scientific content. It would definitely be a worthwhile review. And the best science is useless if your data is wrong.