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How to force a journal to address an associate editor's scientific misconduct?
My manuscript, submitted to a high-rank and very respectable journal, has been rejected by a referee. From the referee's report one could make a conjecture that the referee is one of my competitors, whose results are far inferior to mine. A second referee also rejected my work by giving an absurd argument. It is not an emotional exaggeration, the absurdity of the second referee's argument should be obvious to anybody graduating a university. The editors agreed with such reports, despite the fact that all my arguments have been completely ignored by the referees. I appealed and my manuscript was considered by one of the associate editors. And now is the most interesting part.
The associate editor agreed with the referees and added his own argument against my work. But in this case his real name is known. He happened to be a very famous scientist. Knowing the name, it is very easy to find out his own works on the topic in question. Surprisingly, at the same time I submitted my manuscript, he (associate editor) published two papers in this and higher-rank journals where he stated exactly the opposite to what he wrote in his report to reject my work. Even after he had written his report, he continued to publish and give talks where he states the same point of view (which is the opposite to that of he wrote in his report). If my conjecture concerning the first referee's identity is correct, he is a coauthor of some of the associate editor's works and the associate editor just wants to help him to reject competing superior results.
I collected all these facts, presented them to the editors of the journal and accused that associate editor of scientific misconduct (because what he wrote in his report is a deliberate lie, supposedly in collusion with the referee, or even with both referees). After two months, I received a short message that the Editor in Chief will decide what to do in this case. Up to now there is no reply. It seems that the editors simply want to hush this incident up.
This journal is one of the oldest and most respectable journals in its field. Is there a way to change this situation and force the editors to report this incident and disclose the identities of the unfair referees?

How long ago did you hear that it would be handled by the EiC?

Are you absolutely sure that you're right and they're wrong (in terms of results)? That doesn't jump out from your post and is something that you should be certain of. (Perhaps you are and you just didn't think to mention it. Or perhaps I missed it!)

Who do you want to “force the editors to report this incident” to? If you want to make it public, what’s to stop you from making it public yourself on a web page or blog, or letter to some professional mailing list or newsletter?

@user2768 To, me, it certainly jumps out that the OP is absolutely sure he is right. Whether he is correct in being absolutely sure is a different question, and IMO there isn't enough information to form an opinion about that.

@alephzero I was using you're right as an umbrella term to include correct, so, yes, exactly.

I rolled back your question to what was actually answered. If you want too edit in a short update how everything went eventually, that’s fine, but please do not add a long rant about that journal. If you have a new question, please ask it separately, but please adhere to the code of conduct when doing so. Finally note that this site is not the right place for rants and public accusations, no matter how correct they are.

I don't know the details, but from what you've written, I think your case is somewhat weaker than you think it is:

You can't be sure the first reviewer is your competitor. You can conjecture, but you can't prove it.
Even if we assume the second review is bogus, it doesn't mean the editor made a decision based on it. It's possible the editor is making the decision based on the strength of the first review, and simply included the second review because it's available.
You say that the associate editor published two papers at the same time you submitted your manuscript. I don't know what typical review times in your field are, but this implies the associate editor submitted his papers long before you submitted yours. In other words, he has precedence.
You imply that the associate editor wrote papers and gave talks that say X ("Snow is white") but rejected your manuscript because of ~X ("Snow is not white"). This sounds ridiculous and my feeling is that you're missing something subtle. For example, maybe the associate editor is saying "green snow is not white" which isn't contradictory with "snow is white".
It sounds like you are charging both the associate editor and the original handling editor with academic misconduct. This is clearly a more serious accusation than normal, because it implies both of them colluded. You're further accusing both editors of collusion with the reviewers. My gut feeling says at this point you're stretching belief. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it absolutely sounds unlikely and the burden of proof is heavily upon you.
Further to the above, you don't actually have strong proof. You only have suspicions (which is actually a good thing: it means the reviewer anonymity shield is working). What you've written is somewhat contradictory as well. You say that this journal is one of the oldest and most respectable in your field, and yet the associate editor has published two papers in even more prestigious journals.

If you're convinced your position is correct, I'd escalate the dispute, first to the EiC (which you've already done), and then to whatever is above (e.g. the publisher, the society that manages the journal, etc). Keep in mind however that these people cannot break reviewer anonymity, because that mechanism is in place precisely to prevent authors taking revenge on reviewers for rejecting their manuscript. In fact part of the reason the dispute is where it is is because the associate editor (naively? bravely? you decide) signed his name on the decision.
If nothing happens, my conclusion is: the more formerly-uninvolved people come to the same conclusion, the less likely it is they're all colluding against you, and I'd just submit elsewhere.

Anonymity of reviewers is the norm in many fields; anonymity of editors is not as far as I am aware (and certainly not in my field). Adding their own comments beyond simply summarizing the reviewers comments and the editor's decision, however, does seem unusual to me.

One simply needs to go to the journal's website to see who's on the editorial board, and the identity of the one assigned to your paper is not secret (they're the ones who harass you for not filling forms correctly!)

+1 Good response. The whole range of possibilities exists: from honest reviewing and OP misreading reviews, up to reviewer/editor incompetence to outright malicious intent. Proof is king indeed.

This is a tough situation to be in. I’m so sorry!
I’d say sending another polite but firm letter to the editors stating that you have facts to back you up. If still no response, get someone involved. Do you know anyone senior who’ll back you up? Do you have colleagues who will be able to reach out to such people? If the journal is affiliated with a society (like the ACM), you could possibly get them involved too.
This is all predicated on your story being as you tell it, and that you have factual evidence to back you up. The truth is that it is often very difficult to prove such allegations and the reviewer/editor could just say that you misunderstood and the paper was rejected because of some other reason. I’d be mentally prepared to lose this battle if I were you, and if you don’t have strong factual backing then it may hurt you more than it does them.

Spark, thank you for your quick reply! I fully understand that it is a tough situation, so I do not mention the journal and the associate editor. It is really difficult to prove bad intentions of the referees if you don't know who they are. If you know their names, as it is the case when you appeal, you can easily check their works. In my case the situation is crystal-clear - the associate editor follows the line of research which he said is inefficient and that is why he rejected my manuscript. Moreover, his research (his papers appeared online the same month I submitted my manuscript!) w

Your response was cut off, try and condense it. My point (and that of others here) is that you need proof, or it’s your word against theirs. If you go there leveling accusations you’re going to just tarnish your reputation and nothing more.

I am going to start in the middle of the story and work to the end and then jump back to the beginning.
Some time ago you reported to the editorial board of a journal that you believed an associate editor had engaged in scientific misconduct. After 2 months you received notification that the EiC would be handling the situation. It has been an unknown amount of time since the report has been forwarded to the EiC. Charges of academic misconduct are serious and I would expect most journals to follow up on them. Two months seems a reasonable time for the editorial board to come to the conclusion that the EiC needs to get involved. From there, it would not surprise me if it took 6-12 months to resolve the issue.
To the resolve the issue a number of things need to happen. The EiC probably needs to review the policies regarding charges of academic misconduct. They probably need to run the policies by the legal department to make sure everything is legit. Then they probably need to send all the manuscript correspondence to a trusted independent expert to review and provide insight. Then they need to pass everything by legal again. They are likely under no legal obligation to follow though at all and may not even tell you the outcome.
You can continue to follow up with the EiC to let them know you have not dropped the issue. I would not follow up more frequently than every 3-6 months. How quickly things will get resolved depends to an extent on how seriously the EiC takes your claim. This brings us back to the first part of the story ...
Scientific misconduct is a serious charge and something that ruins careers. If the AE plagiarized your manuscript, that would be academic misconduct. Writing an overly negative review to sabotage the publication of a paper is not nice, but probably does not constitute scientific or academic misconduct. Journals allow editors and reviewers with pretty extensive conflicts of interest to be involved in the publication process.  Before pursuing this even further, you should get some colleagues who understand the work to give you some frank advice regarding any potential misconduct regarding the process.

Writing an overly negative review to sabotage the publication of a paper [...] probably does not constitute scientific or academic misconduct. Are you serious??? It may not be as serious as plagiarism, and is certainly harder to prove, but I can’t see how anyone could take seriously a claim that it is not unethical behavior, a breach of the editor’s duty of impartiality, and a form of misconduct. At the very least this person (if guilty) should not be an editor of any self-respecting journal.

Writing an unprofessional review, especially for one’s personal gain, falls under academic misconduct.

I guess it depends on what StrongBad meant. If "writing an overly negative review..." means writing a review which is excessively picky, uses unpleasant or accusatory language, or so on, to advocate against publishing a paper which the reviewer legitimately believes does not deserve publication, then I wouldn't consider it quite as bad as academic misconduct. But if we're talking about writing a negative review because of a conflict of interest or some other illegitimate reason, then I agree, that's definitely misconduct.

"Writing an overly negative review to sabotage the publication of a paper is not nice, but probably does not constitute scientific or academic misconduct" - the fact that antagonistic motives may be hard to prove does not mean this is not misconduct. It is just much harder to prove than plagiarism and its cousins.

This is a good answer, especially getting colleagues involved. That should have been done from the get go. You don't want to make an accusation like this without checking yourself. But on the issue of academic misconduct, I have to agree with @DanRomik. At a bare minimum, the associate editor probably should have recused themselves from the situation after it was escalated the first time, given that their own work being undermined seems like a significant conflict of interest.


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How can I increase the chance of receiving review requests? Is it appropriate to contact editors to offer my services as reviewer?
I have a couple of published works, and I have received, so far, three review requests from three different journals. I have decided that reviewing service will help my resume at this stage. How can I increase my chance of receiving review requests from good journals? Is it appropriate to contact an editor and offer my service? Is it appropriate to contact the editors of the same journals that have already asked me to do review, and offer them that I would be willing to do more in future?

See How do you earn opportunites to review journals or conference papers?

Brian P is entirely correct that this is the sort of service that is valuable to the field, but does not make your CV/resume stand out. Most people view reviewing as a combination of altruism and self-interest in choosing what the field should care about. If, however, you still want to gain more opportunities to review:
1) Ask your collaborators or advisors. Assuming they are more senior, they will probably get more requests than they want to handle, and can suggest you as a potential referee.
2) Do a clear, thorough, and timely job with your reports.
3) If you have reviewed for a journal before or submitted there, you may have a "referee profile" there, which will include keywords for paper topics you are qualified to handle. Make sure these are correct and up-to-date.
4) You can create a public review profile with Publons, which could let editors find you more easily. [I haven't done this, so I can't speak to its effectiveness, but unless you are publicly posting terrible reviews, it probably wouldn't hurt.]

I think being a reviewer can round out your overall scholarly portfolio, but that is definitely not the big ticket item for a CV, especially if you are on or seeking a tenure track position.  If you are an early career investigator, focus on publishing high-quality articles, and then the request for reviews will start to flow.  You can reach out to editors and offer your services.  But, to be frank, I would invest your time in producing, rather than reviewing, scholarly works.

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My supervisor wants to put someone else as first author on one of two papers when I have done most of the work on both. What should I do?
I have completed experimental research on a novel topic. I was the instigator of the direction of the research and the one to find the results. Then, theoretical work was performed to support my experiments. While the theory confirmed all my work, there was nothing original or new in the theoretical support. I wrote the paper and drafted the manuscript.
The group supervisor wants the theory paper to have the theory researcher as first author. The group leader's arguments is that "there will be two papers, so share the first authorship".
I think this is unfair. Why should I have to share my work just because there will be two papers out of it?!
I am asking for guidance on this. In particular as scientific supervisors, is it fair to put the main researcher as an "et al", just because someone else in the group has not got a paper?

I tried to frame the question more generally. However, I still struggled a bit to work out what is the general question. Obviously, a lot of the issue comes down to whether your judgement of whether the theory contribution is much less than yours is shared by others. I'm not saying you're wrong. I just imagine that it might be good to get an outside perspective on this issue.

...theoretical work was performed to support my experiments.  Using passive voice to obfuscate the actor is fine in a research paper, but here it adds ambiguity.  Who performed the theoretical work - you, or the "theory guy"?  It seems clear you wrote both papers, but did you also do the work?  Was the "theory guy" someone you went to for help or guidance, or did he actually originate the work in the paper?  If the latter, it's pretty clear that he should be first author.

I remember when I was on an academic placement and a fellow student was belittling my theoretical/simulation based project. When came to him having to simulating something for his experimental project he told me how much harder it was than he expected! Don't assume there's not effort put in or that there's nothing new done by the theorist!

Not enough for an answer, but I'd say that having both the experimental and theoretical work on this project being done and published by the same group is a win-win for you and your group.

"there was nothing original or new in the theoretical support" is a statement about the quality of that paper, but not relevant in assigning authorship for that paper, it still matters who did the research on it.

I'm struggling to understand your question - you did the experiments, and you get first authorship for the experimental paper.  That makes sense.  It appears you did not do the theory but you expect to get first authorship for the theory paper?  That doesn't make sense.  The question could be turned around - do you even deserve to be an author for the theory paper?

@Ooker a [tag:conflict-of-interest] is when someone has personal, financial, or similar interests that causes them to potentially have biased judgment. There is no indication of any such issue here.

So you have done experiments and your partner have done theory. You are going to make two papers out of this, one theorethical and one experimental. And you think it's unfair not to be first author for the theory paper?

I'm probably out of touch with your reality, but translated to mathematics your story sounds like this. "I conjectured something, I verified it for a huge amount of cases, but not all. Someone else came and provided a proof for my conjecture. I think my contribution is more valuable." And in mathematics this is ridiculous.

@GitGud The translation to mathematics doesn't necessarily apply, assuming the translation is even correct—lots of experimental work isn't trying out cases of a theorem, we don't know here. (See e.g. why experiments in physics are needed to discriminate between multiple mathematically-consistent theories).

@AngusTheMan "just because someone else in the group has not got a paper" is not a good reason, but I agree with others that the theoretical paper is mainly the work of the the theoretical author. Can you clarify if you also drafted the theoretical manuscript?

does your discipline allow for co-first authors?  For the theory paper, could the theorist be listed first, but with a * by each name indicating "these authors contributed equally to this work." You might have to surrender such a distinction on the other paper, but that should get you a bit more cachet than second author.

@GitGud In the sciences, math is the servant, not the master.  When an experiment and theory can be proven to disagree, it must be reality that is correct, regardless of how logically consistent the theory is.  In the sciences, all of the mathematics is based on uncertain axioms - or at least axioms which hold under circumstances whose limits may not be entirely understood.  What, to a mathematician, would look like a perfect proof is, in the sciences, only an idea until it can be verified by experiment.  The relationship between theory and experiment is much more intimate than you allude to.

Generally speaking, it is infeasible for us to judge whether authorship or the order of authors on any given project is "fair", as all of those depend a great deal on discipline and the particularities of any given project.
That being said, from the little text you provide the 1/1 split does sound fair. There are two papers coming out of the work, one experimental and the other theoretical. The person who did the experiments first-authors the experimental one, the "theory guy" leads the theory paper. So far, so good, I would say.
You say that there was "nothing new" in the theoretical work. This seems highly unlikely to me, what would even go into the theory paper if that was indeed the case? In general, providing a solid theoretical basis to experimentally observed results is a very valuable contribution, that you maybe need to learn to value higher. Sometimes the theoretical methods to achieve this are straight-forward, but this does not diminish their value for your project.

Taking a look at it from the other perspective, the "theory guy" might think that his part is what required a lot of ingenuity, while performing experiments could be done by anyone, requiring no more ability than to follow instructions.

OP said that the experiments came BEFORE the theory. If this is not clearly stated in the two papers, others might think OP just followed the theory, rather than originated the idea.

I kind of agree with previous answers. If there is a second paper with theoretical aspects, the person doing this aspects should be first author. You need to question yourself: "Would you have been able to write the second paper without the second researchers influence?", if yes "How much time would you have needed to do so without him.", "How much time did the second researcher spent on this topic?"
The unfair part is, that you seem to have done already all the writing work. This should in general the main authors duty. Did you also do the literature research to back up the theoretical aspects? Did you summarize in material and methods what has been done without the second researcher?
You wrote that there is no novelty in the theoretical aspects. If this is truely the case, then this paper should be considered anyway unethical, e.g. it should not happen at all. Why to publish trivia, why you care about? It is always easy to say this is trivial, when you got presented the results in a polished form. The underlying model is quite simple to understand. But how many other models you do not think of have been tried out to get to this point?
Anyway, the best thing to do is to communicate. First with the theoretical researcher. He is not your boss, you can presumingly talk more open to him. If you find a solution which satisfies both your desires, go together with him to your boss to back you up. If you do not find an agreement, make sure at least that the writing aspect (you did the work here) is communicated to your boss. You only did that part in the expectation to be first author.

First of all, thank you for not sharing all the details about the subordination within the group. To my opinion, it is largely irrelevant whether you are a bachelor student or a senior postdoc. These facts should not have any influence on the author list.
For your actual question, I have experienced several times that in such "shared" papers, only the first manuscript makes to the publication. So you might end up with a single paper where you are not the first author.
Therefore, do agree to share your first place if you believe in the future fruitful long-standing collaboration with these theorists, if you trust their altruism and honesty, if you believe you can harvest more than one paper out of such collaboration (not an unheard thing).
However, do not be afraid to defend your first place. It shows your confidence in your work and determination to pursue further goals in science, and will minimize further occurrences of such "fair offers" in the future.

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Is it normal for US PhD programs to require students to pay tuition for extra credits beyond 9 credits/semester?
Last semester I chose 12 credits, but the department said it can only pay for 9 credits, i.e. I have to pay for the extra 3 credits by myself.
No one ever told me about such rules before. I thought the tuition fees for phd students are just a fiction/imaginary/symbolic number. Is there anyone who have heard things like this?
I think it is ridiculous to ask a phd student to pay. Because phd is kind of a job, I have heard employees getting very low salary, but never heard of an employee PAYING her company.

Well, yes. It does depend on the institution, but it seems normal to me.

"No one ever told me about such rules before." Try read the student handbook or procedure guide. Don't rely on people telling you about these things cause they don't necessarily know why you want to speed up the study pace. A chat with the financial office will also help.

@Penguin_Knight ...So you read all of them? Without leaving out anything? You sure?

What field? What country?

@Superbest STEM field, USA

"So you read all of them? Without leaving out anything? You sure? " No, I did skip the section on maternity leave because I didn't need it.

There is a lot of variation within STEM too, you should say what discipline.

I'm confused. In your other question, posted around the same time as this one, you're a masters student. In this one, you're a PhD student. What's going on?

@ff524 Haha, good question, I am phd but I am transferring/reapplying to other phd programs this fall. So i will be leaving with MS degree. Make sense? Can I say i am both?

Yes, this doesn't sound too unusual.  It's certainly pretty common to have restrictions on the number of courses that grad students can take.  Some schools might make you pay for any extras, and at others they might not let you do it at all.
This may be a result of the university's internal budgeting: tuition is charged by the credit, and the student's tuition waiver is limited to a certain dollar amount.  This helps the institution keep some control over the "cost" of supporting a graduate student.  The tuition fees may be fictitious to the student (up to a point), but I assure you that to the departments within the university whose budgets are affected, those dollar amounts are very real.
I'd also interpret this as a warning that you are taking more classes than the standard load, which may not be a good idea.  It's very common for PhD students to take on more work than they end up being able to handle, and the results are often not pretty; sometimes this sort of thing starts a spiral that ends with the student dropping out of the program.  So I'd suggest caution before trying to push through the restriction: it might be a blessing in disguise.
Note that PhD students generally exist in sort of a gray area between "student" and "employee", and so your analogy of an employee paying her company is not really apt. Some academic cultures put them closer to one side than the other, but as you're finding, it's often necessary to balance aspects of both.

Nice comment, thanks. I am international student, we are required to take 9 credits to maintain visa status. I took the filler course which was 9 credits . That course is just a filler, no class or hw at all. I chose another 3-credits course. Thats why i got 12.

The primary focus of doing a PhD is research. Typically (at least in the US, in the engineering departments I am familiar with), any tuition/fees for courses you take in support of your research or to fulfill degree requirements that are paid for by the university are capped at a certain number of credit hours.
If a student wishes to sink more of their time into coursework (beyond that which is paid for by the institution) than on their research, then, yes, it is the student's responsibility to pay for it.

Hmm, i am a international student, so I am required to get 9 credits each semester to maintain my visa status. (American students don't need to worry about this though.) We have a 'dummy' course that gives us credits without doing any coursework

We have a 'dummy' course ... — Yes, and, if you really have other courses that you want to take rather than the "dummy" one, then (in my experience, anyway), you typically don't enroll in the "dummy" one, which helps to keep the total number of enrolled hours to a minimum.

First, this sort of thing is normal. For certain institutions, the minimum credit courses are covered within the stipend/scholarship/fellowship provided by the institution. Extra courses or certain special courses would require extra payment.

No one ever told me about such rules before.

It is your duty to read the PhD regulations and guidelines followed in your institution. You shouldn't be waiting to be told these things.

PhD is kind of a job

Well, not really. It is thought to be somewhere between a job and a course. But, some get paid and some don't. This is really a misconception.

"It is your duty to read the PhD regulations and guidelines followed in your institution" I cant find it on our website. I actually had carefully read the phd requirements. I just can't see anything relevant to such issues.

@SentToJailBecauseImTooHandsome: ask your advisor, if not, the finance sector.

In the US, yes, almost all programs require tuition and other fees.
In some cases, the student doesn't pay these out of pocket. Instead, the department may pay for them, or they may come out of grant money, and from the student's perspective these will be "waived". However, from the school accountant's perspective they are indeed real fees charged to real entities and paid with real money.
This is considered part of the student's financial support package. Not every school, and not every program, offers the same financial support, so many PhD students do indeed pay fees, sometimes very substantial ones. It may even be that the student receives a salary, and then has to pay tuition out of this salary (although given how silly this is, it tends to be rare).

PhD is kind of a job

In the US, no. It is a studentship, where the student pays the school to train him, not the other way around. The income (or at least lack of expenses) happens by way of financial aid from the institution.
In my humble opinion, this is a very unrealistic mindset, and no serious program would expect students to work for free (or worse, pay to work). However, clearly the establishment is not of this opinion: In many fields, it is in fact considered normal for PhD students to work without pay, and sometimes even being forced to take on loans or side jobs to afford tuition. I suppose they must be getting enough applicants anyways... The point is, in the US, there is no rule saying you won't have to pay fees - this happens to be an excellent thing to discuss during interviews or other stages of the application.

The difference between fields usually comes from a difference in demand for those fields (and, thus, a difference in grant funding for them.) The professors at the university don't work for free, either! Someone has to pay them for their time teaching and advising the student, just as the money to support the student has to come from somewhere. Not every field has sufficient demand for Ph.D.s to fund grants for all of the people who would like to get one.

In a very short answer. Yes it's normal.
From my personal experience, two of my friends are given 70% tuition fee waved off and rest they have to pay.
PhD is like a job, not exactly a job. So also expect that once the funding is finished you won't get paid for stipend also.


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Should I accept an invitation to give a talk on dated work?
I'm a recent math PhD, working in Subject X.  I had the good luck to give a counterexample to a conjecture in Subject Y, using ideas from X.  I don't know much about Y -- in fact I learned the conjecture in a "Y for dummies"-type paper and immediately saw the example.  The people I met in Y seemed to be pretty happy about this.
Now I've been invited to give a talk at a big conference about Y.  I would of course be delighted to do so, but by the time the conference happens my paper will be about 18 months post-arxiv.  I don't really have plans or competence to do further work in Y, and I'm concerned that my paper will be getting stale by the time the conference rolls around.  On the other hand, I could give a basic introduction to X and my example, which I think would be interesting to the audience.
Any suggestions as to how to proceed?  Should I accept and give a dated talk?

Personally, I would find a talk like this very interesting (i.e. an introduction to topic X, which I am not very familiar with, aimed at getting to the mentioned example).

I'm a physics PhD student, so our culture is a little different, but I've seen people give talks that were primarily about work published multiple years ago. So if math culture is anything like physics culture (and what I've heard suggests that the time scales are even longer for you), I don't think it's a bad idea. Especially, considering the fact that you have been invited to give this talk, it seems they want you there despite knowing that your work will have been out for a long time by the time the conference happens.
If you want to inject something new into it, you could consult with some colleagues in subject Y and ask them what the relevance of your counterexample is. Then you could finish your talk with an overview of what they tell you.

I'm assuming that either your job or the conference (or a mixture of both) is covering your travel + attendance cost.  If that is the case you should give your talk on it.
A couple of good reasons.
1) Your employer likely hires PhDs to publish papers and give talks, and invited talks always looks good when you're looking for a promotion or a new position.
2) Because Subject X provided a counter-example, it is likely much more relevant to Y than was previously though.  Likely the researchers in Y don't know much about X, and would like to know more.
3) You say you believe the conference attendees would be interested in your talk.  This is the reason people attend conferences, to hear about something they don't understand well but find interesting.  Don't worry that the paper is a few years old.

To add one aspect to the other excellent answers here:
Go and give that talk. Even if you don't really have plans or competence to do further work in Y, as you note, the topic seems to be interesting enough to enough people to explicitly invite you. So you never know, you might meet someone at that conference who you could collaborate with in extending your work!

Yes, you should accept and give the talk. Here's why:
1) You will be providing a public service. Most of science is currently hyper-specialized and practitioners from different disciplines have trouble communicating their findings to each other because of the differences in jargon and mutually familiar techniques. You have managed to bridge a gap and it is very valuable to make more people in Y aware of your techniques from X. There might even be people from a related Subject Z at the conference, and they might also be looking to learn from you.
2) There may be more low-hanging fruit in Y. You state that you are not inclined to pursue subject Y any further. But perhaps there are other current topics in Y where yet another technique from X might make a contribution. Just listen to some talks on Y and talk to the speakers afterwards. Someone might offer to co-author a paper with you, where they do all the work on Y and you provide the proofs from X.
3) You might initiate more fundamental research on X. Why was the conjecture in Y formulated in the first place? Was your counter-example so hard to construct with the tools previously used in Y? Was the counter-example not a viable practical example in Y? How would other techniques from X map to the domain of Y? Perhaps there are aspects in Y that cannot be readily modelled using X. In that case, you might need to generalize some of X or combine it with tools from subject U.
Conclusion: go forth, inspire and be inspired.

There is nothing wrong with the paper being old.
As an example, I once did a live experiment during a conference, with the attending people as participants in the experiment. Obviously, I couldn't evaluate and write up the data during the conference, although I had to give a talk with first results 24 hours after the experiment. I was also required to submit a paper with the complete results with the postproceedings, and these postproceedings appeared maybe 4 months after the conference and were sent to everybody who attended it that year.
I had to give the talk on the postproceedings paper the following year, when the conference was held again. Of course, it was attended by the same crowd of known faces (it is a conference for a somewhat small community). These were the same people who had heard the first results the year before, and then received the written paper.
Still, the talk was a success. The audience was very attentive during the talk, and I received both really good questions and great positive feedback afterwards, having professors come up to me, an unknown doctoral student, and express interest and praise for my work. They weren't bored at the "old news".
In fact, I don't think they had read the paper from the postproceedings, and that's fine. With the sheer quantity of research produced these days, nobody can keep up with all publications in their core area, and everybody picks only the stuff which has direct implication for their own work. They are still very interested in related topics when they get the occasion to hear about them, and enjoy good work. They just don't seek this information actively.
So, give the talk. It is a way to promote yourself and your work, and also your area X, which can have interesting synergies with Y. I doubt that anybody will have a negative reaction just because the paper has been sitting around for months.


text:
Should I apply for PhD program this year after one semester of research experience, or wait another year?
I am doing BS Computer Science. I will be starting my final year in August and my CGPA is 3.05. I don't have any research experience yet but I am pretty sure that I want to get a PhD degree.
Will 3-4 months of research experience be enough if I involve in a research project now (considering the 15 December deadline for PhD application)? Or should I apply next year and get more research experience?

I don't have any research experience yet but I am pretty sure that I want to get a PhD degree. — If you don't have any research experience, how do you know whether you want to get a PhD?

don't you think that you might be over-impressed by the Phd acronym, and that's why you are pretty sure you want to get it?; @JeffE 's point is incredibly important to consider!

Plenty of PhD students go into their program without research experience. I would say that of the PhD students I know who went into their PhD directly from their BS in CS well over half had no previous research experience. Previous research experience can help during the application process but it's not required.
That answers your overt question of "Do I need research experience to get into Grad School?" but let's take a moment to look at some of the implied questions you bring up.
Spending more time researching prior to applying for or attending graduate school can help you make sure that a postgraduate degree is really what you want. You should spend some time figuring out what kind of job you want after you are done with school and seeing what level of education will help you reach that goal. Or, in other words, why do you want to go to grad school? There were be a lot more happy grads students if more of them stopped to consider this question. I found that I while I enjoy research, I hate writing research papers SO MUCH that I couldn't face 5 - 7 years of research papers. I also discovered that for the jobs I wanted a PhD wasn't very useful at this point(and that most jobs I looked at would eventually pay for me to go back and get a PhD).
Spending some time researching prior to applying or attending grad school would also be useful if you felt you needed to improve your application packet. You mention a 3.05 CGPA which is kinda, just 'ok' you know? It's not amazing but it's also not bad enough to prevent you from attending graduate school. It's the kind of CGPA that needs strong extracurricular activities, external projects, great letters of recommendation and strong statements of purpose in order to succeed. How are your letters of recommendation? Do you have a good relationship with any instructors that could write a personalized letter? Were you involved in good extracurriculars(not necessarily CS related, but, rather, extracurriculars where you did something)? Have you taken the GREs? How did they go for you? What schools do you want to do your PhD at? How competitive are these schools? These are the kinds of questions that will strongly effect your chances at getting into graduate school. Time researching could help with some of these - it could get you stronger letters of recommendation, buff up missing or subpar extracurriculars, give you time to study for and retake the GRE.
Finally when you start thinking about a PhD you should consider a couple of things:

If you are not 100% positive(and even if you are) that you want to get a PhD and do all the stuff that comes along with that then you should apply to a program that gets you a Masters degree along the way. This way if things don't turn out the way you want them to you still end up with a very useful piece of paper.
What do you want to research? Just saying 'I want a PhD' is a short road to a shitty PhD experience. What are you willing to spend almost the next decade of your life researching? Who do you want to research with? If you want to study, say, Human Computer Interaction then you should be applying to schools that have those programs and have professors publishing and researching in that field. If you aren't sure what you want to study then, perhaps, more time researching before you apply would be useful - it would give you a chance to get the lay of the land and make some decisions(and possibly connections).
I've already brought this up but it bears repeating. What do you want to do with a PhD? Do you want to research? Do you want to teach? Get this shit locked down before you sign up for anything. So many PhD students go into their degree program because 'I want a PhD' without thinking about the why and the what and a not insignificant amount of them end up never finishing.

It's the kind of CGPA that needs strong extracurricular activities, external projects, great letters of recommendation and strong statements of purpose in order to succeed. — As opposed to what? In my (admittedly skewed) experience, nobody gets into a good PhD program without external projects, great recommendation letters, and a strong statement of purpose, no matter how good their grades are. (Almost nobody cares about extracurriculars, unless you mean things like programming contests.)

@JeffE: I think it's more than fair to say, as was implied in my answer, that as the GPA gets lower the letters, extracurriculars and similar should be better. Additionally I think you are completely off the mark in saying "Almost nobody cares about extracurriculars". Leadership roles and roles with responsibility are things that many if not most admissions councils will strongly consider.

PhD programs are for applicants who know and show, all they want to do is research! If the research project you are involved in, right now is extraordinarily productive, then you might get into a PhD program this year itself, given that the PhD would be about the research you are doing right now. You can also start writing review papers or research articles to start building your publication record. Even if it is under progress during the time of application, it still counts.
If all (or most) of these are non-feasible for you for the time being, I'd suggest waiting till next year. That way you'd know better what research you want to pursue for PhD and would have a strong profile too. Chances of admission are higher, if you do it(apply for PhD) next year.
Good luck :)

Chances of admission are higher, if you do it next year. That's not necessarily true. Generally, you're evaluated compared to your cohort; if you are farther along in your education, more is expected of you.

@ff524 Did you even read his question completely? The OP doesn't has a research background, doesn't has a brilliant GPA, and wants to go straight to a PhD program from their BS in CS. What I wrote is just what I think would help him, why don't you suggest something more useful?


text:
Is it possible to ethically use an undergraduate for publishing my research as a PhD student in the following context?
Suppose I am a Ph.D. student in machine learning and have an idea about developing a model that I presume to be more efficient than existing models. Although I have a broad idea of coding to some extent, I don't know to code my model on a deeper level and it will take much time.
In order to publish a paper on the model, there is no need to prove the efficiency of the model mathematically. It is sufficient to show empirically that my model performs better than the existing ones.
As undergraduates have more machine learning programming exposure due to the lab sessions, project works they handle, etc., they can do coding much more easily compared to Ph.D. students.
I have three options, either ethical or unethical:

Use an undergraduate student and ask the person to code by giving them all my requirements. Then publish the paper with me as the first author and the coder as the second author.

Although many of my fellow students use this option, I don't like it. Coding alone generally does not fit to offer authorship as packages in Machine learning generally have the inbuilt functions and my model can be developed using them.

Use an undergraduate student and ask the person to code by giving them all my requirements. Then publish the paper with me as the sole author.

I personally don't like this idea as a rule of my institute says that a Ph.D. student should be the first and most significant author in the papers they publish. And I am aware that I cannot publish my idea quickly without the help of an undergraduate person. So I am feeling that it is not a complete contribution on my own as I need the help of the person for executing all my intermediate ideas in developing the model as I am not well aware of the functions provided by the package.

Learn coding by spending time and then do it on my own and then publish the paper as the sole author.

I am biased towards the third one as it is ideal and ethical to do. But the only issue is that the option is time-consuming. It can take so much time to learn to code and then develop my model. There is a chance that some others may publish the same idea during this time.
I am confused about the first two options. To be honest, In the situation, I am discussing, coding seems to be an important resource than the idea. Because many ideas in machine learning papers are easy and publishing papers also does not need any mathematical proof, so the implementation is a key factor for publication.
In this context, I want to know whether options 1 and 2 are ethical or not.

Some discussion about working in teams and about the idea that undergrads are better at coding than grad students has been moved to chat. The discussion can continue in chat, but please see this FAQ before posting a comment below this one (remember, we can only move comments to chat once).

This question seems to mix up a number of different threads.
Much research is collaborative in its nature. A project may involve multiple individuals who each bring different things to the table. There is nothing wrong with deciding that the most efficient way to execute a particular piece of work is to bring other people on board. There are many reasons one might do this: sometimes it is because they have knowledge or expertise; sometimes it is because they have access to particular resources; sometimes it's simply about having spare time to work on something.
However, having other people involved creates new problems. It is important to make sure that everyone is on the same page about 'what they get in return for their involvement', and that expectations align with community norms. This involves many questions that we see here all the time, such as:

Who will be an author on any papers? Who will be first/last/etc author?
Is anyone expecting to be paid for their involvement? What about reimbursement of costs? Where is the money coming from?
Is anyone expecting to submit the work to be examined/assessed for any purpose? What do they need to do and when are the deadlines? Will it be possible to isolate their contribution sufficiently from anyone else's?

So, there is nothing intrinsically wrong in having an idea and asking an undergraduate to help you implement it. However, you need to:

Be clear on 'what they get out of it': are they getting course credits for it? Are you paying them? Are you just offering 'experience' and 'warm fuzzy feelings'?
Make sure everything is above board. If they are getting credits: congratulations, you are now a supervisor! Do you and the student both understand what is required, when it has to be completed, and how it is marked? What paperwork needs to be done? How are you going to make sure they get a fair opportunity to demonstrate their skills and get good marks? What happens if the project doesn't go as well as you hope? If you are paying them: where is the money coming from? What are your obligations under employment law?
Make sure everyone understands the position regarding authorship on any papers, and that this aligns with the norms of your field. Generally, writing all the code would seem to meet the test of 'substantial contribution' to a paper, and merit co-authorship.

The situation is more complicated if you are hoping to submit this piece of work as part of your own portfolio for an examination (e.g. as part of a PhD thesis). You need to check the rules and regulations at your institution. As a matter of general ethics, you cannot pass off the undergraduate's work as your own. You need to make sure you clearly identify which parts of a project are "your" contributions, and that these are substantial enough to merit inclusion in your thesis in their own right. So, for example, you might write:

In this chapter I show that volume of a U-basket is proportional to its dimensionality.... [several pages of maths]. To test this formula, simulations were performed for the  3 dimensional case (J Smith, Undergraduate thesis, Bigname University, 2022) and results are summarised in Fig. 1. We see that... and this supports the results developed in this thesis.

Bear in mind that supervising someone else to do research is often harder than doing it yourself. You need to make sure they understand what is required, and then you need to convince yourself that what they actually did matches what you wanted them to do. You need to make sure you understand how to use their code to produce publishable results, or you need to coach them to produce publication-quality figures for you. And you take on the risk that they misunderstand the task, or their code has bugs, or they turn out to be an idiot, or they get bored halfway through and walk away. So perhaps learning to write your own code isn't so bad after all!

Let me at least add to the answer of tschwarz. Long term if  you want to stay in this field you need to learn the necessary tools to be successful. This would seem to me to include programming. The problem is that if you simply specify a program you may not know when it is done whether it is appropriate for your situation or not. If you can't evaluate it you can't really depend on it to give accurate results. This might be especially valuable if you are comparing a new model with existing models.
For the current situation, I'd suggest that you are at least first author. But ask yourself whether it would be important for those evaluating your work to have access to the code you use. If you expect that it should be published along with the paper or that interested parties are likely to ask for it, then the programmer is most likely an author as well. The quality of the code can subtly affect the outcome.
My guess is that in this case, readers will want the code. And you will need to work closely with them to assure that it actually represents your model ideas.
However, if the code is simply something like standard statistical measures (tabulating and descriptive statistics) then, like the linked answer, there is little creativity in it and the code isn't necessary to publish, leading to sole authorship (with thanks to the programmer). But, you still need to be able to verify it's correctness and you are on shaky ground here if you can't do that.

This whole situation is completely, utterly baffling. After reading the exchange in the chat, it seems apparent that you, a PhD student in machine learning of all things, do not feel comfortable around standard packages such as sklearn or PyTorch.
This is bad. Really, really bad. That the professors are not interested in getting up to speed with the newest research is unfortunate, but you can not - should not! - accept this as a "natural order of things" and follow their example. They have likely secured their place in life. You have not.
Even if you get very lucky with long-term collaborations and people who could cover the implementations, your joint projects would still benefit immensely from you learning to code a thing or two. Yes, if you had an authority and have previously demonstrated a deep understanding of the subject, you could then assume a command over an army of students, but you are not at that stage of the career yet. Students have ideas of their own, in a few short years they will reach your stage and you will end up being far behind.
Truly, by being reluctant to learn now, in (probably) the fastest-moving field to boot, you are endangering your entire future career. I can not overstress how important it is for you to catch up on tools of the trade. As soon as possible.
Further, it is extremely unlikely for that idea of yours to strike a gold vein and for the student employed to not realize that immediately, and with possibly better understanding than you will have - kaggle trains people to think about these things. In no universe stating "oh it was just coding, all the important ideas were mine" would be ethical: either you can not be sure the results were correct (and you should not be publishing them then), or the person employed did a substantial amount of intellectual work not just putting them together, but analyzing and verifying them.
All in all, the best strategy would be humbling yourself, acknowledging you will need some basic coding skills in this career, and possibly even attending the same classes undergrads take as an auditor or enlisting outside help otherwise. Collaborating on a paper is possible, too, but they will have to get co-authorship, and there are many additional concerns @avid has listed in their answer.
I am sorry for the strong wording in this post, but also... not really. I firmly believe that following your professors' example would do you an enormous disservice here, so get to learning - painful as it might be. I know firsthand it is daunting, but it can be done and, in your case, definitely should.

This is a frame challenge (https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4976/how-to-deal-with-a-question-that-contains-a-false-premise-how-do-i-make-a-frame), and six months late.

Nuances are important here.
Learning programming to implement your idea is probably too time consuming.
If the programming is a standard task at the level of a programming assignment in the third or fourth year or something contracted via the mechanical turk or a similar website, then the programmer would work essentially as a handy-man. If you were a 19th century physicist, you might go to a glas-blower in order to have a tube in which you can create a vacuum. Any result of the research would not have the glas-blower as its author. Similarly, a programmer that translates your ideas into code makes no intellectual contribution to your research. Both the programmer and the glas-blower are absolutely essential and without them, you cannot be successful, but they are not intellectual authors. Of course, programming is an intellectually challenging endeavor.
The situation changes the moment that the programmer would go beyond translating your ideas into code. Depending on the amount of contribution, the programmer would then become an intellectual author.
Thus, sole authorship (and thanking the programmer explicitly) would be most likely the more realistic way of publishing your method.
Allow me to add a warning: You seem to be somewhat inexperienced in research. You might need to have a mentor for your project. Also, do not underestimate the costs of programming. You will have to pay the programmer a reasonable rate and most non-programmers underestimate the time it takes to develop good code. In addition, you need to spend some time to write good specifications of the code. When you do this, you might find out that you did not think out your idea well. In view of this, finding a student colleague who can program and can act as an interlocutor for you so that they contribute materially to the paper and become second author might be preferable.

"Thus, sole authorship (and thanking the programmer explicitly) would be most likely the more realistic way of publishing your method." That seems inconsistent with the previous paragraph. Please clarify. Are you suggesting that the programmer makes no real contribution in this case?

Indeed, the poor undergraduate will have to code up an efficient implementation of the ‘standard’ algorithm, then an efficient implementation of the ‘new’ idea to compare. Needs experience and insight into the particular language and field. The hired help is doing all the hard work, with the OP not understanding what is required.

I strongly disagree with this answer. "Translating ideas into code" in this case sounds like it involves much more than a "non-intellectual contribution", especially since "ideas" can be rather vague, but all the details will need to be worked out for a concrete implementation. There is no reason to refuse authorship to the programmer who did all the work.

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text:
Is threshold number of SCI papers a common recruitment criteria in the US?
There are six types of higher educational institutions in the US according to this source

Doctoral Universities (R1, R2, D/PU)
Master's Colleges and Universities (M1, M2, M3)
Baccalaureate Colleges (Arts & Sciences Focus, Diverse Fields)
Baccalaureate/Associate's Colleges
Associate's Colleges
Special Focus Institutions (2 years, 4 years)
Tribal Colleges

I am interested in knowing the general consensus, if any, of the recruitment criteria, based on the number of SCI papers published, of assistant professors among the top two types of institutes: Doctoral and masters.
I used to believe that recruitment, in general, doesn't depend on the number of SCI journals published and depends on experience(in years), projects handled, quality of papers published (if any), and quality of the PhD thesis, etc., I use to think that the quality of paper(s) matters more to the recruitment process compared to the number of papers. But I recently read reasons for rejection, citing that applicants have less than 4 SCI journals. You can check the advertisement and results. There can be many examples like this. So, I am wondering whether the same with the top two types of institutes in the US.
Are there any such restrictions in the top two types of universities in the US? Do the top two types of universities generally reject the applicants citing the lack of such a minimum/ threshold number of SCI papers?

Those unaware of SCI/SCIE standards can read from here.

Note that there is overlap between the categories. And some are hard to classify. The Ivys are all private research universities, for example.

@Buffy - well, except for the NY state funded parts of Cornell...

Are there any issues with the question or people are simply down-voting?

@JonCuster, yes the exception that proves the rule. Some of my neighbors are Cornell ag school graduates even. Sorry to forget them.

IMO, downvotes on questions are sort of chaotic. Best to ignore them. Some are given (I think) for "You should have known this already." But that's just an opinion.

@Buffy Ha. The question was raised after reading some rejection statements. Possible. Will update.

Why would you believe that 'recruitment doesn't depend on the number of papers'? That could be a reason for some of the downvotes indeed.

@user2705196 I just updated and wrote the sentence you mentioned after down-votes. I use to believe as these reasons for rejection didn't use to exist before in India to the best of my knowledge. Top-tier universities may be exceptions.

Your "source" is terrible.

@AnonymousPhysicist oh! I am not aware of categorization in the US. So, I selected the one. I will try to update. Or please suggest me a link

@hanugm https://carnegieclassifications.acenet.edu/classification_descriptions/basic.php is a reliable source.  However, it's pointless to categorize universities in the US because there is no central authority that controls the universities.

Are we supposed to know what "SCI" means?  It seems strange to ask this question with no mention of any field of study.

Universities in the US and most other western countries do not care at all if your publications have been indexed by SCI or any other indexes.  In many cases, they will not have heard of those indexes.
No thresholds are used in faculty hiring at universities in the US.  The number of publications is considered in the context of the reputations of the particular journals and the number of citations.
Get accurate information by viewing the public CVs of people who have the jobs you want.

I doubt that in the US you will find any such "algorithmic" limitations. Every university is different. Every department is different. Every candidate is different. Every paper is different. Mere counts of publications capture very little.
While I can't rule it out universally, it is an uncommon practice here. (See below for the case of zero publications.)
A small number of good math papers with an indication of future productive activity may be enough, for example. And you can't compare math with experimental physics on numbers of papers.
Every candidate gets a thorough peer review of their record, not an administrative check list. Zero papers is probably a non-starter in many fields, of course, but not necessarily in all. Work in progress with high potential can count for something in a few cases. So can informal "sponsorship" by a senior professor who sees potential in a candidate.
And, of course, any new assistant professor will be reevaluated, perhaps a few times, before tenure is granted.

I doubt any US university would give so explicit of a reason for rejection in the first place, even if the first pass at applications had some algorithmic component (often HR screening against posted job requirements). Only leads to arguments that get nowhere.

@JonCuster ... Agreed. The linked example in the OP is an institute in India, established by the government of India.  As such it may have government-mandated transparency requirements that make such an algorithmic rejection system more likely.

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text:
Ph.D. work seems like a drag sometimes, is this normal?
I am a math researcher working in number theory. During my college years I heard all the stories of great mathematicians, icons of the subject who dedicated most of their time to mathematics research (think Gauss, Euler etc). And that motivated me. I always seemed to do well in math at college. I secured top ranks at  graduate and undergraduate exams. I cleared the national entrance exam in mathematics (CSIR, India) and got admitted into a Ph.D. programme. Now that I'm pursuing a Ph.D things are not as I had envisioned. There are days where I just don't feel like it. Some parts of math are hard and it seems like a drag. Also I conduct classes thrice a week which I am not enthusiastic about and on some days I just don't wanna do it.
I have this idea of a perfect job where you come in to work everyday and are captivated by what you do and everything just flows. But that's not what I am experiencing. Is this normal? I’m confused. Its not like I have lost interest  rather that I'm not as in to it as I would like to be.

"I have this idea of a perfect job where you come in to work everyday and are captivated by what you do and everything just flows. " -- Yes it's called adulting sucks. You have find your own motivation to keep your interest going.

Of course it is. This is normal for everything in life. Is this surprising?

I think the huge majority of grad students experience this to some degree, regardless of their field (whether they admit or not). It often occurs after a year or so of starting your programme and is sometimes called second year blues.

@lighthousekeeper: I have an answer more specific to OP then to the general case, for which it might not be quite relevant. So I'd like you to reconsider reopening for that reason.

@einpoklum OK, I voted for reopening the question.


text:
Major changes needed to paper "in press"
I recently submitted a paper in a decent journal (published by Elsevier) and it got accepted after 6 months. The referee asked for minor modifications which I did. The final version was accepted for publication and is now in press. However when I received the final version of the paper to check before it is published I discovered a small loophole in one of the proofs. Upon working on it for many days it seems to be un-fixable. The only way out was to add an extra regularity condition to the theorem which "waters down" the result. My question is what procedure will be adopted by the journal to resolve this? And can my paper be rejected at this stage?

We do not know exactly how the journal will handle this case. But in any acse, as @CaptainEmacs put it, talk to the EiC. The most "obvious" and fair thing would be the paper to be retracted, worked towards a new (weaker) version and resubmitted.

Each journal has its policies but the usual way in case of honest mistakes making it through publication is to publish an erratum with that journal describing the error and the complete result.

Well, you have to fix it, don't you? Talk to the editor.
Yes, the paper may indeed be rejected, but we cannot know this.
As a reviewer, I have found subtle holes in papers, and really it would have been unwise for the authors to submit without taking care of filling the holes (which they thought they could do, but turned out was impossible, as counterexamples were published later).
TL;DR: Better a watered-down, correct result than a wrong one.


text:
Should marital status and its international characteristics be included in a CV/cover letter?
This post is somehow related to a previous post on
extra-curricular activities.
My question is this.
Beside standard extra academic activities (previous work, particular sport achievements, participation to student associations and the like), is it advisable to write in the CV or cover letter for a post-doc position the marital status, if the applicant thinks this information conveys positive characteristics about him/her?
Say, there is a Spaniard married to a Canadian, they live in Norway (where the Spaniard just obtained his/her PhD) and they are open to moving to another third country (i.e., a country where both of them are foreigners). In my eyes, the information about the marital status and citizenship of the two spouses is providing evidence for multiple positive non-academic characteristics of the applicant (the Spaniard), such as determination, stability and flexibility that are beyond average.
I have conflicting feelings. I see that this kind of information provides positive non-academic information about the applicant, but maybe who will be reading this information won't be paying enough attention or won't have the experience or empathy to understand the implications of having this type of family.

None of your examples should generally be mentioned.

For US applications, you absolutely should not include such information, as it can make for awkward situations during the hiring process.
For applications in other countries, you may mention such issues in the CV where appropriate. However, you should not mention it in a cover letter, where it will seem contrived, artificial, or "stretching." People reviewing your application will not read anything into the characteristics of your marriage.

It is not against US hiring and employment law for the candidate to disclose their marital status voluntarily. It is only against the law to use your status against you, and asking may be seen as a prelude to doing so. The EEOC recommends against asking.

@BillBarth: True—I've revised the answer a bit accordingly.

@aeismail, your contribution is informative, since I have been sending some applications to the US as well, thank you. I do not click on "accept answer" though because I am hoping someone with knowledge about some European markets will add his/her answer.

@Luca: I work in Europe right now. CV's mention marital status; cover letters normally do not.

@aeismail You rise another interesting point. I have noticed that CVs mention marital status, and sometimes the amount of kids. Honestly I have seen this most frequently in CVs of American scholars working in American universities (maybe they write it because they are out of the job market?). Speaking of cover letters, I thought they could mention the marital status, although indirectly (e.g., in the concluding paragraph of the cov let: "my wife and I find Germany to be a very fascinating country for artistic reasons, this would facilitate our integration in the new environment")

@Luca: Again, I wouldn't recommend that route, as it can come across as "We want to be in Germany for the culture," which is not the attitude you want to convey with a cover letter.

@aeismail: from my experience in Germany it is generally not necessary to mention marital status in cover letter or CV. Only when you get the job you have to disclose it as it has tax implications.


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Acknowledge funding institute, sending and hosting universities
I have a question that is related to this one and it is about a paper acknowledgements section.
I am an economist.
I am currently working in university "A."
I am preparing a paper, and in this initial stage of the study I will visit the foreign university "B," where I will collect data.
For this visiting period, I am going to receive a travel grant from the third party institute "C," which covers both the travel and the stay abroad.
Within a few months, I shall leave my current university "A," so when the paper will be published (if it will be good enough, ça va sans dire) I will be in another university, maybe university "D."
Also, assume in university "D" I won't get any additional funding for this study.
Given this situation, which one of these four institutes will have to be thanked in the acknowledgements of this paper?

the current university A
the hosting university B
the granting institute C
the future university D (I think this won't have to be thanked; I have never seen anybody thanking her own university when this university does not provide any extra funds)

What is the academic bon ton in this case?

Thank the people at A, B, and D who helped you while you worked (if they helped you with the work, they will also be co-authors).

The granting institute "C" will have (at least!) provided you the means to collect the data for the study. Without institute "C", no data, and hence no paper. Hence they should be acknowledged, something along the lines of "Financial support in the data collection phase of this project was provided by institute 'C'". (Of course if your assumption in the fourth paragraph turns out to be wrong, this would have to be reworded...)

I think that you should distinguish acknowledgements from affiliation.  You should also generally act generously with acknowledgements, because giving acknowledgements doesn't generally detract from anything as long as you're honest about them.
So, in your case:

Your affiliation is University A.  If you are at University D by the time the paper hits camera-ready, then you might add that affiliation too, as a dual affiliation.
You definitely need to acknowledge the funding support of Institute C.  You may also want to acknowledge University B if the organization has given you support (as opposed to just individual faculty members).  For example, if the department loaned you facilities for doing your work, that would definitely merit acknowledgement in my book.
Other people who helped significantly with the project (except within normal non-scientific job duties) should get co-authorship or acknowledgement.  Thus, a hosting faculty member at University B should appear in the paper, but the IT person at University B who fixed your computer would not.

Depending on the nature of the visit, B could constitute an affiliation too. If in doubt, ask your supervisor. That's what they're there for!


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Does the journal editor have authority not to publish my article after clear acceptance?
It is to ask that I sent my original article in some journal, reviewers asked me to make some amendments which I did on time. The editor then sent me an email with their decision of acceptance.
Now they have published their journal new edition, but my article is not published. Is it legal or ethical to do this?

The article has been accepted, but was probably not ready for this edition of the journal so it will be in the next one. Cycles of producing journals is one thing, getting articles ready for publication is a different cycle waiting on reviewers turn around and authors also turning the revisions around...

If the journal is available on line, you might check the 'in press' listings. Or, some journals show future incomplete issues.

Answer to your title: NO.  But from your text, my guess would be: your article will be in a future issue.  And thus, as far as we can tell, the editor's actions were legal and ethical.

Have you even gotten and corrected proofs? Your paper is probably not even "done" yet, acceptance is just one step, see: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/55665/what-does-the-typical-workflow-of-a-journal-look-like you may have only completed step "editorial decision"...

If they've accepted it, they will publish it (eventually). They have nothing to gain otherwise by holding your paper. That it's not been published in the latest issue isn't a sign that they're not going to publish your paper at all - they could for example have a lot of papers that are online ready waiting for an issue, and they've hit their page count limit for this issue.
Whether the journal has the authority to reject your paper after accepting it is a separate question. In principle, they can: nothing gets published without the editor-in-chief's approval after all, and he can change his mind. In practice, this happens extremely rarely. If they find out for example that the paper is plagiarized, then it can be rejected. But to reject it because they changed their mind about whether it's publishable - that's almost never going to happen.

I would check the journal on line. The Journal of Alloys and Compounds us a good example of several things that could be going on.
First, the front page is mainly about the available articles (this is a small portion of the section):

The first article shown is a "In Press, Journal Pre-proof, Available online" - it is accepted, considered in press, and the proofs have not come back from the authors. But, it is available to be read by anyone and the pdf tells you how to cite it since it has a doi already.
Now, go to the issue listing near the top of the page:

Notice that the 30 September issue is done and considered fully published. There are then three more issues listed as "In progress", being filled out with articles from the queue of available accepted papers. (Many/most journals prefer to try and balance the variety of topics covered in an issue, although some prefer to have focused issues. This impacts how long a newly accepted article might take to surface). Again, any articles listed in the "In progress" issues are fully ready to be downloaded, read, and cited.
So, go online and see what is available - your article may be there.

Yes, it is both legal and ethical. I don't know why you would ask about legality, unless you have paid for publication.
But there are two things here. It may just be a matter of timing and available space. Your article may be in the pipeline for a future edition, but didn't make it into the most recent. Except for a special issue, I think that is the most likely explanation.
You have a letter of acceptance from the editor, so I think that your article will appear and don't suppose an editor would pull your article after sending such a letter unless they learned late of some serious issue - say scientific misconduct.
But prior to a letter of acceptance, the editor is free to act and include or not include any article. The reviewers work for the editor, not the other way round.
You are free to ask, of course. You can send a message that you thought your article was going to be in the recent issue and would like a publication update.

It would start to be unethical, arguably, if the delay gets considerable (in the timescale of years); see e.g. https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/124005/958, https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/123980/958.

@FedericoPoloni, that would depend on the reason (if any) for the delay. If the editor does this to disadvantage an author (or advantage another), then yes, but the ethical consideration then goes beyond the delay. But a long delay while claims are investigated isn't unethical on its face.

Many journals have many many months of backlog before accepted articles get published. Some are beyond one year.

@WolfgangBangerth Yes, and personally I consider that unethical.

@FedericoPoloni is it unethical if it does not get published in your timeframe but does in their timeframe?

@SolarMike Yes: in early career, it is important to have publications out, and  "matters of timing and available space" are not a sufficient reason to jeopardize people's careers.

@FedericoPoloni perhaps an issue of the author not submitting sufficiently ahead of time rather than the publisher trying to cause the author to fail... ie a case of the 5 P's : "Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance"

@SolarMike If I am not missing the point completely, we are speaking about delays of the order of one year between acceptance and official publication. Are you suggesting that this is normal and the author should have planned ahead? If there is someone who failed to plan things properly, it's the journal.

@FedericoPoloni I can't find anywhere the OP mentioned 1 year or even 6 months or any real timeframe, if you want to "drive" a different question then you should do so.

@FedericoPoloni, as an editor myself, let me give you my perspective on this. First, I agree that a year or more is just plain wrong. But half a year is not unreasonable: Many journals have quarterly issues, and production pipelines that require assignment of journals to issues 2 months before print. So even in the best of cases, if your paper is accepted at the right time, it will be 2 months to publication; if your paper is accepted at the wrong time, it's already 5 months. But that ignores the fact that you can't run a journal if your queue is so short that you don't know whether you're...

...going to have enough articles to even make a new issue. Remember that many journals publish 20 or 30 articles a year. If you empty the queue on the current issue, and no (or just a couple of) new articles get accepted in the next 3 months, then you can't publish: The publisher simply won't bear the cost of printing and distributing. As a consequence, you need to spread things out over at least a couple issues so you have two thin issues, rather than one full and one almost empty one. This already increases the time frame to between 5 and 8 months. There is nothing you can do about this.

@WolfgangBangerth Many journals publish articles as "online first"; this allows you to stamp an earlier publication date on your articles. If you decide print papers in issues in the order in which they are accepted, you can also assign issue and page numbers immediately, even if the print version hasn't been produced yet.

Also, it seems to me that you are overstating the importance of bound and printed issues. Something like 1% of the articles I read is printed these days, so I wouldn't worry too much about them. The correct approach should be "your paper is accepted; the dead-tree version is coming to libraries sometime in the future, but don't worry about that".

@FedericoPoloni: Indeed. I don't think anybody still cares about when a paper is printed. For all practical purposes, if someone tells me that the article is accepted (or published online), that's as good as if they tell me issue number and page range. --- As for the assignment of page numbers as soon as the article is available online first: Not so simple if your journal has multiple sections. For example, ACM TOMS has two separate sections and articles in section 2 follow all articles in section 2. I won't know page numbers for the second section until after section 1 is complete.

@WolfgangBangerth (1) You may not care about the difference between accepted, "due to appear", and published, but there are hiring committees and dumb bibliometric systems that do. (2) That is not a valid excuse to me. If that happens to your journal, change either your page numbering system or your sectioning system. As I said, you are giving too much importance to how the printed issue looks, and too little importance to giving papers a "published" stamp as soon as possible.


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Significance of senior author in China
While the issue of being the first or the corresponding author is China has been discussed in this forum, the significance of the senior author, or final author has not been addressed. We are working on an abstract, and determining the author order. As I am in the USA where senior authorship is an honor, determining if this would be win-win, Chinese senior author as corresponding author, and the US author as senior/last author. Anyone out there know about this topic?

What field is this?

I guess the value is the same as everywhere else in the world as science is an international field

@lordy Nope. Academia varies more than you think it does. Final authorship carries zero additional prestige in my field, at least in North America and Europe; it means only that your name is last in alphabetical order.

JeffE is absolutely right about the dependence on the field. But, in those fields where (unlike mine) the order of authors matters, the details of how it matters might or might not be different in China than in the U.S., so there might be room to play some games as the question suggests.  My guess is that they would not be different, but that's only a guess.

@JeffE I think lordy was not claiming that the value of first/last authorship is independent of the field but only that it's independent of geographic location.

@AndreasBlass My objection stands.  Different countries have different academic cultures, even within the same field.  (It's not clear whether they differ on this particular point, but I think it's careless to "guess" that they do not.)

@lordy The value of corresponding author certainly varies geographically (for the case of China, see this question), as does the value of being the literal first author (even when co-first), so I wouldn't rule out variations in the value of last author that readily.

@Anyon I dont think that the answer to the linked question applies only to China - also in Europa and the US co-authorships are inflationary. Many position advertisements ask for a separate list of only first+last+corresponding authorships

Are you sure this discussion won't address your question: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27553/in-chinese-academia-what-is-the-significance-of-the-corresponding-author-beyon?noredirect=1&lq=1

I have worked in China as a postdoc for two years, recently. I have come to know a lot about Chinese academic culture. Thus, I will try to answer your question.
As someone mentioned in comments, we don't know anything about your field. In my field, a [conference] abstract is usually not important per se, but provides a thermometer about potential authorship conflicts when it comes to the actual paper publication. So, bear this in mind while you see my points below.
Chinese culture is very conscious about hierarchy status. They take that seriously, so mind to make sure they understand you're striving to honor the Chinese senior author in your decision. In principle, granting corresponding authorship status is desirable for a Chinese PI. I should remark that multiple corresponding authors are common among papers coming from China. This enables the "humble first author" to honor all senior PIs included in the authors list. (Honorary authorship is exceedingly common in China.)
Coming out as the last author is also seen with good eyes, but not as important as being corresponding author. This way, I think your plan is good.
Finally, a word on publication awards in China. As you may have heard, researchers in China are paid cash awards over published papers. Cash is also an honor in China. Different institutions have slightly different rules about awarding cash prizes. Perhaps you'd like to ask them whether "the authorship status & position are fine with their university rules" or something to that effect, referring to such $$ award rules without asking directly.


text:
line chart or column chart
I want to show the average response time based on number of tasks on a device on a chart. So the x-axis is "number of tasks" and y-axis is "average response time".
My question is which charts I can use? a line chart or a column chart?

Well, this should give you an idea:

Source is https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hub/53/file-863940581-pdf/Data_Visualization_101_How_to_Design_Charts_and_Graphs.pdf

Probably an x-y scatter chart with some regression relation (line or curve).  You have a functional relationship versus a time series or categories.  Also likely many points.  All of these argue for x-y versus columns (although not dispositive).
In addition to Mike's excellent suggestion, please skim this book, especially first couple chapters:  https://www.amazon.com/Say-Charts-Executives-Visual-Communication/dp/007136997X
[The book is not perfect.  You will need to become an educated user of charts and look at different ideas.  But it is very strong on "use this chart for this sort of message" and for conveying things strongly and simply.]


text:
How to deal with fear of exams, perfectionism, and feeling inadequate?
I will get straight to the point without much details about my mental state. I am currently studying Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. I would say that it is a demanding program. My school is considered the "hardest" to get into in my country, and we have many different courses involving math, physics, introductory computer science, electronics etc.
I know I have to deal with many issues with my self-esteem, but I would really love to hear some advice on what to do when I feel like I am not sufficiently prepared to take an exam. This happens even in cases where I watched every (or almost every) class, did coursework etc. throughout the semester, but found that I struggled with past papers some days before the exam. This makes me feel like I do not "deserve" to get a good mark if I don't study everything properly. It's like I imagine every possible scenario of failure in my head and I reject to even take the exam even though my school offers me the chance to take it again.
I am afraid to ask my professor for advice on this issue because I do not want him to feel like I care only about my grades and not the actual course, because in most of my courses I really try to care and find a deeper meaning. But I have seen (comparing to my classmates) that this is not a good study approach for finals. I feel confused, weak, and embarrassed.
My therapist asked me why I am so afraid, and I think it's because I relate my grades to whether I am good enough to follow my academic goals. For example, if I really like the course, I feel like I am not eligible to further follow related courses if I did not excel. And if I do not like the course, I feel like I have to excel because it's mandatory in my field and it shows my ability to adapt. I also feel like succeeding properly involves studying everything even if it's not appealing, because otherwise I feel like I am cheating my self, my education, and my "profession".
How can I deal with this?

You seem to be heading down a good path with a therapist. Keep on it and good luck.

It's natural to worry about exam scores, especially when a semester class only has a small number of exams. Discussing with a therapist is a good idea, however I did not see mentioned whether your anxiety is justified: how does your knowledge compare to the professor's expectations and to the average student in the class?
Can you visit the instructor during office hours to discuss your progress? That time is set aside to help students. Please don't feel bad about appearing to care about your grades. Grades often provide both the incentive for and assessment of understanding. Most instructors are happy to help students who are putting effort in, whether it is for an 'A' or genuine interest. Perhaps the professor can help you obtain past exams to practice on, or practice problems in a textbook, to self-assess your understanding.
Can you study with other students in the class? You could identify how your understanding compares to the class overall, and if other students understand better, studying with them can help you learn.
Ideally, by informally assessing your knowledge, you will identify whether you understand the concepts adequately. If your understanding is sufficient, then your anxiety is not justified, and your therapist can help you move past it. Otherwise, you will have identified topics in the class that you can work on to become better prepared for the exam.

Test anxiety is very common.  Simply being aware that it is a normal thing to happen to students may increase your chance of success.
Treatment by a mental health professional is a good idea for severe test anxiety.  Advice from strangers on the internet is not a substitute for the assistance of a mental health professional.


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What to do with long equation-heavy solutions?
I am writing a paper about a problem that involves solving a certain equation. The problem is that the solution is very long and there are a lot of terms. My question is: Is there a way to present the solution in an attractive manner instead of just typing the solution, which is about a page long? Also, would the fact that the solution is long and looks unattractive affect whether the paper get accepted or not?

This is really a mathematics question.  Often, this issue can be improved by introducing good notation.

@DavidKetcheson, I tried but the closest I got was about a page long solution.

One page doesn't sound like a lot to me. As a rule of thumb, the solution should be as readable as possible. If a reviewer has a simple idea to improve it substantially, he/she is more likely to recommend rejection. In many cases, improving readability involves splitting the solution into parts (e.g., individual lemmas) such that the proofs are relatively short. Then, you add a story that explains the connection of the Lemmas and end with a summary corollary/proposition/lemma/theorem/whatever.

To those voting to close: this is not a dupe of "How best to present long equations in two-column papers?", that question is talking about formatting a single, long equation when you have little horizontal space. This is talking more about presentation of a complex solution.

While you may not find long formulae attractive, some readers may at least find them impressive.

This happens not just in mathematics but in many other disciplines as well: modeling of biological systems, for example, often involves a vast number of terms in the equations.  The best approach that I have found for these sorts of situations is to look for the structure in the system and to build your presentation around that structure.
In most cases that I have encountered, it is not true that there are simply a bazillion essentially unrelated terms.  The true story of the equation, then, is not the expanded mathematical form but the process and relations that generate it.    This opens up a number of approaches for factoring out the equations in order to make them more tractable to present, including:

Abstracting sub-structures as variables (e.g., X^2+XY+Y^2, where X and Y are complex terms presented separately)
Separating variables from parameters (e.g., a reaction network where each reaction uses one of several standard Hill equation models, with the parameters of the models presented in a table)

These sorts of factorings also lead to a much more informative and interesting presentation of the equation as well.  In fact, the Big Equation itself may often end up being relegated to an appendix, where its page-busting form is of little concern.
There may be, of course, certain systems in which such factoring is impossible---and that fact is quite interesting and worth clear discussion!

I advocate the idea of putting the expanded equation in an appendix. The meaning, or the story of the equation is what we need most of the time.

Quite often, following @jakebeal, a formula with many terms can be factored, or split into groups with similar interpretation: terms with similar powers, or groupings that are consistent (for instance in convective and diffusive terms with differential equations). You may  put the emphasis on the most important terms, and group the negligible ones. If you are a LaTeX user, you may use different font sizes: How can I change the font size in math equations? to help the reader focus on important parts.
Or if your equation is parametric, and your paper only requires a subset of solutions, those can be given in the text, the rest can be, as suggested, put aside in an appendix.
If you want montruous examples, you can have a look at What is the longest equation known?


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Can I add more corrections to page proofs?
After my paper was accepted, I was sent page proofs with few corrections to some words and some references. Is it possible to add something to this page proofs. I want to change wording of a line that they didn’t mention so it makes better sense is that possible?

Basically it should be fine.
In my own experience large publishers (Springer, BMC etc) have outsourced the proofing process or at least a separate division does it. After Editor has viewed your paper along with possible revisions made proposed by the reviewers, the paper is usually moved to the people doing the proofing. Theoretically, you could make any corrections possible, since the writers have no expertise in the subject. At least this is my experience. They just do the job according the journals policy and instructions. As so, I strongly believe you can make corrections outside the proposed ones. In some journal journals they also inquire for "any other corrections". Of course if you make revisions which have any influence on the scientific matter there might be issues after publication.

In my experience, this is usually fine, as long as your changes are fairly minor and localized.