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Abusive supervisor & academic career
I am a Ph.D. candidate in economics in the UK, and now start my 4th and hopefully final year of the program.
I currently consider changing my supervisor (SV hereafter) because of an ongoing conflict. During my second year, she matched me with a former Ph.D. of hers, "co-author" or "CO" from now on, so the three of us could write a paper together. While things started OK, CO became increasingly possessive of the project. His tone became aggressive and disrespectful, he gave me non-sensical, inconsistent instructions, lied to my supervisor behind my back about things I had never done or said (learned of this during meetings with my supervisor), and he repeatedly deleted content I produced from our draft for reasons that stood in complete contradiction to earlier agreements. Suffice to say, progress was unsatisfying.
I was baffled that SV did not intervene, but seemed to go along with him; I had severe self-doubts. Yet after a particular crappy "revision" of our draft by CO, SV shortly after told me she considers CO's input crap and admitted he's difficult -- turns out she was not paying attention and had until then simply trusted CO by default. I was relieved, but unfortunately, nothing changed afterward; while SV repeatedly agreed with my views, she nevertheless continued to humor CO, and backed him when he criticized me for lack of progress. At some point, SV finally admitted to me she has no understanding of our project topic and what we are doing, which explained a lot of her weird behaviour.
This toxic situation has taken a toll on me mentally, and it needs to stop. Unfortunately, SV is a leader of our rather small field, and I was told not having a letter from her is a red flag in job applications. Fortunately, I have done research assistance for another young prof at our faculty who appreciates me, and he would be willing to take me on as his student.
Any advice on how I can handle this gracefully? I have no reason to trust my SV anymore, and think her perfectly capable of ruining my reputation if I changed. Is there a way to protect me against this? Or should I just accept the academic trail is dead for me and look for suitable industry jobs instead?

I find this a bit puzzling. Can you specify your ideal out come and second-best outcome here? Have you actually asked to quit the co-authored project? Did you explicitly ask for the supervisor to have a conversation with the former student about behavior or did you just assume she would when you told her you didn’t like it? Have you had a conversation with coauthor about their behavior?

Ideally, I would change to the other prof without burning bridges with SV, meaning I might still get a good letter from her (puzzlingly, she actually said I am a ``high-calibre student'' to me recently).
I did not ask to quit because the research idea is from me, and I still think it has high potential.
Yes, I had told SV I do not know how to tackle CO's behaviour, and asked her for advice. She told me she's looking into it, but I am not aware anything actually happened.
No, I have not talked to CO directly; we now despise each other to a degree that makes any normal talk very hard.

The second-best outcome may be no change of SV, but a tacit agreement that I would work with the young prof for my third chapter.

Did you ask her for advice, or ask her to intervene? I can’t tell if you are expecting direct results with indirect conversations or if the supervisor tried to intervene and got nowhere.

Excuse my vague wording. Yes, I have asked my SV at some point to talk to CO and pay more attention to our exchanges, which she said she did. The only effect seemed that CO was passive for a while, only to return 100% to earlier behavior. I mentioned this to SV, she agreed this happens, nothing changed.

There is no one who has full power to ruin your academic trail. Please remove this idea from your head. Try to be diplomatic and keep a nice relationship with SV (even if you change her) and also with CO. I don't know how it works in UK but in a lot of European countries, A boss is obliged by law to write a letter when former employees are searching for other positions. Also, do not make assumptions before taking to SV. Sometimes those ideas are only in your head.

SV is clearly not forceful enough to put CO in place. It's a weakness, but not necessary an antagonist disposition. So, don't open a fight at multiple frontiers. Keep your SV friendly, or at least collegiate, add your new prof to the team (if they can help you), cut off contact with CO (or at least downgrade it to the lowest possible level). CO will not become your friend. If you can afford to not have to continue this work with CO, discontinue it.

The situation is resolved: I spoke to SV plainly and explained to her that I found her supervision last year unacceptable. I did so in a factual, polite manner, listed specific occasions where I felt left alone, and concluded, given the poor results, that it may be best for both of us if I continued to work with the other, younger professor.
It turned out she reacted well to clear words. While she is not happy that I leave, she supports my decision, reassured me she will still write a letter for me and sent favorable comments to the young professor. I suspect she is actually ashamed she didn't tackle CO and let me down; as Captain Emacs noted, it seems to be a character flaw, but not hurtful intention.
In any case, I thank you all for your comments (which encouraged me to do this).

Since you have already completed most of your PhD, your best course of action is to finish your PhD as soon as possible.  Then you will be free of CO's bad behavior.  Negotiate a plan for completion of your degree with your supervisor.  Request that this plan does not rely on CO since they are not dependable.

should I just accept the academic trail is dead for me and look for suitable industry jobs instead?

The information you have provided in the question tells us nothing about your ability to find an academic job.  However, academic jobs are in general scarce and low paying.

Having a Ph.D. supervisor who "admitted to me that she has no understanding of our project topic and what we are doing" sounds crazy to me, especially after she arranged for the three of you to write a joint paper (presumably on this project). This sounds as if you definitely need a new supervisor. You mentioned that another young prof wold be willing to take you as his student.  Does he understand your work? Or will he understand it after a reasonable amount of explanation? If so, might he and your present supervisor be willing to be co-supervisors, if you really need the present supervisor's recommendation? The ideal situation might be that the new supervisor actually supervises your work while the present supervisor handles administrative stuff and adds her recommendation's weight to your job applications. (Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if your present supervisor's recommendation counts for less than you think, in a field that she doesn't understand.)

The project is based on a joint paper of SV, CO, and another guy. My research proposal extends this paper, thinking, naively, this would help us all to start from a similar level of understanding since I had provided research assistance for said paper. Unfortunately, it turned out SV had severe misunderstandings about what was done in this past paper, so her main contribution seems to be her name on top (prestige trading, saw and heard about that before). While I like what you propose, the issue of CO remains. This guy will not leave the project willingly, as he sees the potential as well.

Sure CO remains a problem, but not one you have to deal with much in the solutions that Andreas and I are suggesting. It sounds like SV has very little power over CO because this all stems from CO’s work. SV certainly can’t kick CO off a paper stemming from his work.

If you've almost finished your PhD, finishing it makes more sense than changing supervisors.

Co-supervisors are not so unusual in Economics.

I would say that the overarching problem is that Co is not easy to work with and that SV doesn’t have the capability, motivation, or bandwidth to deal with it.  Just because someone is a good researcher doesn’t mean they are a good manager. If, as you say in a comment, this is an extension of CO’s work, then SV also has very little leverage, other than seniority.
So, if you want a career in academia, move on to the new faculty member for the third essay, and it will become self-revealing if you should move on all together. If this will be your job market paper, and if it is done well, it may be enough to get you an academic job in Econ (particularly with a post-doc). To maintain your relationship with SV, I would frame this as a conversation specifically about the future of your third paper, rather than the past. Explain the topic you would like to work on, and that you think that engaging the other advisor as a co-advisor would be useful. Then forget about the first paper for the time being and focus your efforts on the new work. This should allow you to get good work done while keeping a positive reference from the first advisor — both of which seem positive for your future prospects.

I don't think this answers the question.

This answers the question of “any advice on how I can handle this gracefully?” Based on the two priorities from OP in the comments, which boil down to working more with the junior faculty member and less with SV.


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Ethically, should you report cheating that you learned of indirectly?
Six classmates and myself have been in the same program for the past 2 years and one of them just informed me of another classmate that sits beside him of cheating on exams, so I informed the professor, and now that person may be kicked out of the program.
Did I do right?
Why did that classmate inform me of the other persons cheating? I felt an ethical obligation, because of the program we are all in too disclose this information to the professor and did not want the burden of knowing on me.

"Why did that classmate inform me of the other persons cheating?" Well, does that classmate hang out here? If not I doubt you'll ever know. Why not just ask him/her?

The basic question is rather simple: ethically, should you report cheating that you learned of indirectly?  Seems clear to me.  (The "Why" question seems rhetorical and secondary.)  Voting to reopen.

For many types of moral situations, university rules actually require that you inform a superior as soon as you find out yourself, or you are also in violation.  It may be that the classmate who informed you didn't have the civic courage to report it but knew that you did.  It is precisely to break cycles of no one saying anything that the rules are set up in the way I just described.
Or of course it may be that they were lying.  As long as you passed the full information to the professor about how you knew what you knew as well as what you believed you knew, it is now the professor's responsibility and not yours.  If there's anything you haven't already told the professor, I'd suggest contacting them again.

...one of them just informed me of another classmate that sits beside
  him of cheating on exams

And why did you believe him? If your classmate told you that the guy behind him is a thief, would you go to the police without checking it? You refer as to your confidant as a "classmate" and not even a friend. Do you believe everything that other people say without checking facts first? How can you be sure that your classmate does not have some kind of animosity or vendetta towards the other student? You should not be that naive.
Regarding ethics, you should go to the professor and tell the absolute truth, i.e., that you did not witnessed first hand the other guy cheating and you naively believed the words of another classmate. Let the burden of truth lie to the one that provided you the information. And next time check your sources first before jeopardizing the future of strangers without solid proof. For all we know, the poor guy might be innocent and you just might be a naive pawn in someone else's vendetta. As is well known in criminal law: "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer".

Please don't take this negatively, but perhaps "your friend" was too sure about your ethics, and he/she knew that if that information was given to you, it would reach the teacher. So, he/she made you do, what he/she believed was ethically correct to do, but didn't want to do it himself/herself, for whatever reasons. Not having first hand info of the ground reality, I/other users on this site can only speculate about those reasons, so I better leave that part out. :)

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Is there any special field in political science to study security issues?
In my country, students can follow a special field in political science which is about security issues (like Terrorist, Threats and  opportunities) in Masters programmes. The graduated people can work for Foreign ministry, intelligence services or embassies.
I know the fields in master can vary country by country, but is there any similar fields in German Universities?
What about UK?
If there is, can a non-citizen person study in these fields?

Yes, there are several International Security Studies MA programmes in Germany and in the UK. Examples from Germany include a Master in Peace and Security Studies at the University Hamburg and a Master in International Security Studies at the Universität der Bundeswehr in Munich.
In general, a EU citizen can study in other EU countries. Visa and admission criteria for non-EU citizens vary.

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Why are all these papers exactly 10 pages long?
I've been reading papers authored by professor A's PhD students. I have read about a dozen of papers by now, and realized that all of them are exactly 10 pages long. These papers were written by different PhD students and they were published in several different venues (very good ones). Is 10 the magic number for paper-length? (at least in professor A's field, which is computer science - human computer interaction)

Have you checked whether those venues have page limits?

Just a quick comment to add to the answers below: in many fields, journal papers are the important thing, but computer science tends to have a strong emphasis on conference papers, with important results often being published in conference proceedings only. Since Professor A's field is computer science, this probably goes some way to explaining why most of his students' papers are conference papers and therefore subject to a page limit.

Most American computer science conference papers are precisely 10 pages long, because most ACM conferences have a strict 10-page limit on proceedings papers.
(ACM is the Association for Computing Machinery, the primary professional society for computer science.)

It's worth noting that although 10 pages is just an upper bound, in practice it functions as a lower bound as well: almost everyone has more to say than will fit (so they use all the space they can), and even if you could say everything in 9 pages you don't want to look like you're the only one without 10 pages of content.

See also: "Why are everyone's NSF proposals exactly 15 pages long?"

Conference papers often have fairly strict page limits; however, there is no uniform consensus even between different conferences in the same field, and certainly not between fields! For example, one fairly extensive series of conference papers (whose conferences I attend semi-regularly) limits contributions to six pages.
Similarly, many journals—such as "letters" journals—have even more severe restrictions (four or five pages), while other journals have (seemingly) no page restrictions at all: I've known papers in both engineering and mathematics journals that have gone for 20, 30, or even 40 pages.

In many applied math journals, the typical paper length is around 20 pages (with large variance). On the other hand, the page layout is much less cramped than in other venues. I wouldn't be surprised if a 20-page paper could fit in a CS 10-page proceeding just by changing the documentclass.


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What is the significance of the corresponding author?
In your field of research, what is the significance of the corresponding author?
Does the title "corresponding" imply that the person is the expert out of the list of all authors, or that the person is responsible for communicating with the journal / reviewers?
When should the PhD student, if she/he is set as the first author, also be the corresponding author?

Possible dupe of http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/10062/285. There is also http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/19641/285 . These two are the same. I'm not sure if this question is exactlyt the same as those.

As Faheem pointed out there are other questions that deal with what a corresponding author is. You second question is not covered by those questions though.
The corresponding author should be an author that will be easy to find again after a few years. Ph.D students are not great choices since they are almost by definition not going to have the same contact information by the time most people read the article. In mathematics this is a serious concern because the backlog in articles can be multiple years and the student can already have graduated and moved across the world by the time the article is officially published.
As the other questions point out in some fields corresponding author is used to indicate contribution to some degree. But the old fashioned use of "the author you can find an address for" is still a worthwhile thing.


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Why are PhDs the most common doctoral degree?
I have heard many people say they have a PhD in a certain area.  For nearly all of my life,  I thought a PhD was simply a doctorate,  and I didn't know that it had anything to do with philosophy.
There are many doctoral degrees, why are PhD's the most popular doctoral degrees by a long shot?

"There are many doctoral degrees" ... To clarify the question, can you provide examples of these other types of degrees that are common in your area?

This answer suffered a Major Revision!

A Ph.D. is an academic doctoral degree and have nothing to do with philosophy nowadays.
From Wikipedia:

In the context of the Doctor of Philosophy and other similarly titled degrees, the term "philosophy" does not refer to the field or academic discipline of philosophy, but is used in a broader sense in accordance with its original Greek meaning, which is "love of wisdom".

People often refers to an academic doctorate as a Ph.D., even when the official title in their university/country is different of Doctor of Philosophy. The reason beyond its popularity is because a Ph.D. is a title traditionally conceded in countries with anglo-saxonic language and since the common language in the academia is English we often "translate" our titles to the equivalent in English.
I have recently learned with @Pete L. Clark that there are different types of doctorates in the US that give the same legal statute as an academic doctorate, but with different structure and requisites from a doctorate in Science. The example that he used was the Doctor of Arts (D.A.), a title that gives equivalent rights as a Ph.D. in which concerns teaching and research in universities.
My previous misunderstanding was due to the structure of high level education that I am used to in Portugal and Brazil. In both countries Therapists, Physicians, Lawyers and others do not have a doctoral degree. In Portugal a physician have Master's degree in Health Science or a 6 years pre-bologna licenciatura degree (undergraduate degree). If a physician/lawyer/therapists wants to have a doctoral degree here they need to engage in a minimum 3 years doctoral course, publish articles and defend an original thesis.
For a historical insight and more complete overview, please read this article and this article.
I'm sorry for the previous wrong answer. I think the question is too wide and depends highly on which country we are talking about. I assumed things about the doctoral degrees on the US that are not true.
Edit: Of course that there are many different ways to refer to an academic doctorate depending on the country the title is emitted. The point is: they are all equivalent. A German Doktorgrad is equivalent to a Ph.D. in the UK and to a Doutoramento/Doutorado in Portugal/Brazil, etc. In the other way researchers would not be able to work across the borders.

This seems untrue, ish. In common communication, yes, a doctorate refers to a PhD, but hearing it applied to MD is not uncommon. And technically, various other doctorates exist: JD (lawyer), DMD (dentist), DSD (dental surgeon), OD (optometrist), DVM (vet), PsyD (psychologist, though it’s relatively new and a PhD in psychology is the more common doctorate in that field), etc. The thrust of the question, I think, is why so many fields congregate under PhD instead of each having their own _D, like some of the above.

The history section in the linked article is the relevant part. Traditionally, a university degree was either a professional degree or a degree in the arts/philosophy. Fields of study have evolved, but many of the old titles remain.

@KRyan These titles are specific from some countries like US and they are not equivalent to a Ph.D or a doctorate. Physicians and Lawyers in Brazil and Portugal are called doctors only because the tradition of using it as a pronoun to express respect. In general physicians have a master's degree in health science.

This answer is unfortunately wrong: Even Wikipedia states in the first paragraph of its "Doctorate" article that "There are a variety of doctoral degrees, with the most common being the Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), which is awarded in many different fields, ranging from the humanities to the scientific disciplines". There are MDs, D.Phil,  D.Eng, German-style D. rer. nat. etc.

@errantlinguist The point is: there are many different ways to call a real doctorate at doctoral level depending on the country where it is emitted. However they are all the same title and equivalent across the borders. A German Doktorgrad is equivalent to a Ph.D in the UK and to a Doutorado in Portugal. Read the second paragraph of the article you referred, a MD is not equivalent to a doctorate.

@TheDoctor No, you are again wrong. Just because "doctor" in English sounds like "Doutorado" in Portuguese does not mean they are interchangeable: Holders of a Doutorado are doctors but not all doctors hold a Doutorado. Moreover, this has nothing to do with countries: The UK has PhDs, D.Phils, D.Eng, which are all doctorates but are not equivalent. I'm now downvoting because you don't seem to understand the differences and are strongly arguing that there are none, which is dangerous to others.

@errantlinguist So please, answer clarifying the difference between a D.Phil and a Ph.D. Even the University of Oxford says that they are the same title: https://www.sociology.ox.ac.uk/faq/dphil-faq.html .

@TheDoctor The difference is that you can get a D.Phil from Oxford but not a PhD. Stop looking for low-hanging fruit: See the Doctor of Engineering degree, which is not even functionally equivalent like D.Phil and PhD are.

@errantilinguist They have no practical differences. From the article you referenced: "since 1992 some British universities have introduced the Engineering Doctorate, abbreviated as "EngD", which is instead a research doctorate and regarded in the UK as equivalent to a PhD."

@TheDoctor yes, they do. Read the article. "while research toward the D.Eng. is applied, rather than the basic, fundamental research in a Ph.D." Even your example Doktorgrad is wrong: There are many Doktorgrad titles in Germany such as D.-Ing, D. rer. nat. Delete your answer because it is wrong and misleading and could even get people sued (you can't call yourself a PhD for every single kind of doctorate, only as a translation of certain ones).

@errantlinguist The difference is only on the field of research, as I have said before. In many countries there are only one name for the doctoral degrees, independent if it is applied or fundamental research. I'm not convinced that my answer is wrong and I think you have not understood my point. Flag my answer and ask for a community intervention if you think it is misleading. I will not delete it. Now I need to work and I will not continue with this useless discussion.

PhD was originally a German degree. Its usage has evolved in different ways in different countries. 2) The research doctorates granted by faculties of medicine in some countries can be either DMedSci or PhD, depending on whether the recipient is also MD.

It is generally accepted in the US that MDs, DDS and certain related medical degrees are doctoral degrees. Some have even made that argument for JDs. They are not research doctorates, but that does not make them cease being doctoral degrees.

-1 because this answer is factually wrong. PhDs are not the only kind of doctorates.

Everyone, I'm not usually the sort of person to ask this, but I'd like everyone to downvote this, seeing as the answerer has acknowledged that the answer is dangerously misleading and has not even amended it; The only reason I can see why they are defending their answer as it stands is because of how many upvotes it has.

If MDs are equivalent to Master's degrees in Europe then what do European doctors get??

@errantlinguist where I have acknowledged it? :)

@TheDoctor your arguments keep getting weaker and weaker after being proved wrong again and again. Everything you write is wrong, and then you add qualifying information, e.g. "the difference is only on the field of research". That is everything but an explicit acknowledgement; If you were academically honest, you would admit your original answer is wrong and delete the answer in order to save others from potentially getting hurt. Instead, you keep throwing out excuses and new, weak arguments.

@Azor-ahai They get a master's degree in Health Science. If they want to have a doctoral degree they need to engage in an academic doctoral program, publish articles in peer-review journals and defend an original doctoral thesis. The same thing for lawyers. They are still called doctors by the general public, because it is the historically pronoun of treatment for those professionals.

Flags should not be used to indicate technical inaccuracies, or an altogether wrong answer.

Agreed that it is not worth flagging, but: yes, you are simply incorrect that "PhD" and "doctorate" are synonymous.  To see this it is enough to exhibit a doctoral degree that is not a PhD.  For this see e.g. here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_of_Arts.  One of my colleagues has this degree and has a job for which a "doctoral degree" is a requirement: here is is webpage http://www.math.uga.edu/directory/michael-klipper, which has a link to his CV, in which you can see that he has a DA rather than a PhD.

@Pete Thank you for this example. Now I see that I was wrong. I've never heard about such  title as equivalent to a doctoral degree, with all the legal consequences of allowing to pursue an academic job as professor. Here in Portugal this title does not exist in arts, we have academic doctoral programs in arts with the same structure and demands of a doctoral program in science. Do you think I should delete my answer?

@TheDoctor how is the "Doctor of Arts" comparison any different to the "Doctor of Engineering" example, which you refused to accept?-- even the wording is similar: "While the Ph.D. is the most common doctoral degree in the United States, the U.S. Department of Education and the National Science Foundation recognize numerous research-oriented doctoral degrees such as the D.A. as "equivalent", and do not discriminate between them."

@errantlinguist Giving you the benefit of the doubt that you're genuinely asking: Your overall rhetoric is ineffective here because it reeks of elitism and dismissive bias, with just a hint of sycophantic melodrama. Pete's references clearly support the validity of his claims with concrete examples, while the purpose and applicability of your reference is unclear and gives an incoherent impression of frustratedly grasping for an emotionally appealing but ultimately flimsy argument. At least, those appear to be the main differences...

Emitted or omitted?

Downvoted, fully agreeing that this is a blatantly wrong answer. (Another example of a non-Ph.D. doctorate is the "D.V.Sc.", by the way.)

I have edit the answer based on this discussion. I hope that now it is acceptable.

Note that in Brazil, the top degree is called a doutorado, but in Portugal, it's called a doutoramento (anyone with an undergraduate degree is already style Dr./Dra.)

PhDs are more common because PhDs come from all fields and most countries.
To talk in broad strokes (I suggest looking into each of these points, e.g. in wikipedia for more details.)
Lets break our doctorates into 3 kinds:
Research Doctorates
These are given for doing research, and intended to train researchers.

Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD)

all fields of study, in all countries

Doctorate of ___ field

Some countries:  Austria, Germany, Switzerland and others
Dr-Ing (engineering) etc

Higher doctorates

Doctor of Letters (Arts, Humanitites), Doctor of Science etc

Field specific doctorate
more or less lifetime achievement awards for research.
Generally pre-req'd on having a PhD for at least 10 years.

Dr. habil

see Habilitation
Most common (but not restricted to) in Germany, Austria, Swizerland.
Requires a PhD equivalent

Obviously there will be less people with any given higher doctorate than PhDs since they are a subset of people who have PhDs with in a given field.
Professional Doctorates
These are doctoral degrees that are required to do a profession.

Medicine Doctor (MD) i.e. a Doctor of Medicine

Every "doctor" in a hospital has at least this.

Juris Doctor (JD) i,e Doctor of Jurisprudence

which in many countries required to be a lawyer
by tradition laywers never take the title Dr.

There are a lot of professional doctorate holders.
You've probably seen the thing about PhD holders not using the title Dr on plane tickets because they don't want to be called upon for medical assistance (which they can not provide).
There are probably more PhDs awarded each year than MDs.
But not by a huge margin.
In 2014 the US had 18,078 MDs graduate (source)
and 54,070 PhDs; of those only about 40,000 were in science and engineering and of those only a very small portion would be in medical science (source).
Also in 2014 the US had 43,832 JDs graduate (source).
This is as compared to only 14,000 nonscience and engineering PhDs; of which only a small portion of which would be in Law.
I posit that for any field with a professional doctorate (I can only think of MD and JD) there will be an order of magnitude more professional doctorates than PhDs in that field.
The only reason PhD numbers are so high vs professional doctorates, is because they are the same degree no matter the field.
Similarly, the only reason they are high compared to Dr.Ing etc is that those degree are only common in certain countries; and are field specific.
And vs Higher doctorates: they are prerequed on PhD, and are field specific.

Note also that in some countries PhDs (or doctorates) were introduced in relatively recent times. For instance, in my country, Italy, this degree was introduced only 34 years ago.

@NajibIdrissi  yes, I thought that I was talking in approximations was clear enough, but I guess not. I have editted.   Habilitation is kinda a doctorate. Sometimes it gets translated to X doctorate, doesn't it? (I'm not super familar, so do tell me if that bit is ouright wrong). If so then it is a higher doctorate in the sense that it requires a (lower) doctorate before you can start it.

Am I understanding correctly that you are saying that I can improve this post by just deleting the "Dr. habil" section?
Comments are for discussing how to improve the post, and I want to understand is that the suggestion you are making?

And a technical quibble (which doesn't change your point): medical doctors don't always have MD degrees. In the UK, at least, medicine is an undergraduate degree (unlike the US, where it's a graduate course), and newly qualified medics will typically have a pair of bachelors' degrees (MBChB). Thus most 'doctors' (know where your tonsils are) aren't 'doctors' (with a doctorate). MDs are the minority who have also done medical research (‘PhD in medicine’) and who are thus real doctors as well as proper doctors (!).

I have a French "doctorat en informatique", which was found to be equivalent to a PhD in the Canadian system... A rose called by another name and all that...

The doctorate-vs.-habilitation issue is further confused by the circumstance that at one time (perhaps still now but I don't have recent information), the Russian (at that time Soviet) system had two degrees of this sort. One, equivalent to a doctorate in the U.S. or Germany, had a name that sounded like "candidate". The other, equivalent to a German habilitation, had a name that sounded like "doctor".

In one's early education, especially in more traditional contexts, learning involved X being true because the teacher said so.  Don't question the teacher; just make sure that you know X.  It was all about memorization (rote learning).
This would start to change when a student would reach the highest levels of education, at which point they'd be able to argue and contribute their own understanding.  So instead of focusing on rote learning, a student would have to demonstrate their ability to think and engage in critique of their field (scholasticism).  This is, successful students would become philosophers of their field rather than simple repositories of memorized facts.
Education's become increasingly liberal with a shift from rote learning toward critical thinking, but there's still a semblance of that early expectation that pre-Ph.D. students are supposed to memorize what's being taught while a Ph.D. would symbolize one's ability to go beyond that.

Historical background
Academics used to be folks who participated in medieval universities.  There was a heavy religious flavoring to academia compared to today's more secular settings, but it was still general academia nonetheless.
A lot of stuff came from this time.  For example, on graduation when you dress up like Harry Potter, it's because that's how these guys used to dress.
Anyway, so this is where the Bachelor's/Master's/doctorate thing came from:

Course of study
University studies took six years for a Master of Arts degree (a Bachelor of Arts degree was awarded after completing the third or fourth year). Studies for this were organized by the faculty of arts, where the seven liberal arts were taught: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music theory, grammar, logic, and rhetoric. All instruction was given in Latin and students were expected to converse in that language. The trivium comprised the three subjects that were taught first: grammar, logic, and rhetoric. These three subjects were the most important of the seven liberal arts for medieval students. The curriculum came also to include the three Aristotelian philosophies: physics, metaphysics and moral philosophy.
-"Medieval university", Wikpiedia [links and citations omitted]

And that stuff was a lot of the rote learning, before one was a proper doctor.
After that, one'd go into the realm of philosophy, becoming a more critical thinker (scholar):

Once a Master of Arts degree had been conferred, the student could leave the university or pursue further studies in one of the higher faculties, law, medicine, or theology, the last one being the most prestigious. A popular textbook for theological study was called the Sentences (Quattuor libri sententiarum) of Peter Lombard; theology students as well as masters were required to write extensive commentaries on this text as part of their curriculum.[citation needed] Studies in the higher faculties could take up to twelve years for a master's degree or doctorate (initially the two were synonymous), though again a bachelor's and a licentiate's degree could be awarded along the way.
-"Medieval university", Wikpiedia [links and citations omitted]

This system was already established by the time "science" started to be recognized in a more modern sense.  At that time, it was still just Philosophy, or more specifically "Natural Philosophy".
So, to be a "doctor of philosophy" is literally just that - to be a scholar of philosophy who's gone beyond the intro years of rote memorization to the point where they can engage in scholarly critique of their field.

Ph.D.'s as further Master's degrees
In the historical context in which these degrees were named, the human knowledge pool was way, way smaller.  It was a drop compared to today's oceans.  And so, the prospect of learning much of the human knowledge pool was far more reasonable, if many'd still have regarded it as challenging.
Today, a lot of Ph.D.'s are awarded to students who probably don't quite get the whole philosophy-of-their-field thing.  That seems to be a natural consequence of there being a lot more one can learn before reaching the point of critique and abstraction.
So, today, a Ph.D. can be something like a fancy Master's degree.  For example, one can basically get a Master's in Chemistry, then do a bunch of lab work to test something out, and get a Ph.D. for that (experimental chemistry).
In principle, we might argue that there's some need for revision to the academic credentialing system to better capture its modern reality.  And we've actually kinda done that already - as noted in the Wikipedia link above, a Master's and doctorate used to be the same thing; they got more separated in part due to the human knowledge pool growing and more ranks being needed to account for it.  But that'd be a different topic.
For the purposes of this question, a Ph.D. got its name in the scholarly days when academics were basically those who learned their field and then engaged in scholarly critique of it.  And today, the name's kinda a historical artifact.

Further reading
I found a neat paper that discusses the evolution of doctoral conference since the scholarly days:

"Hora Est!: On Dissertations", 2005.

This document's a look at what scholastics/academics had to do to be recognized as a doctor.  And while the title specifies "On Dissertations", it notes:

Less than a century ago a dissertation was not always required to obtain a doctorate. Successfully defending a number of theses sufficed.  [-page 7]

Other interesting factoids:

Apparently dissertations used to be more about disputing (critique) points, written up as a disputation.  This contrasts with the modern description of a PhD being about adding to the human knowledge pool.

It seems like prior academia was far more concerned with religion than modern academia.  Early academics seem to have been something like clergy.

I don't see how this answers the question, he is asking why are phd popular degrees among other doctoral degrees.

@HermanToothroth Was primarily responding to the "For nearly all of my life, i thought a phd was simply a doctorate, and i didn't know that it had anything to do with philosophy." part by explaining the connection between a PhD and Philosophy.  Ultimately it's just a name that had historical grounding.  After its historical inception, the name's just stuck around.

@HermanToothroth If I understand correctly, to put it another way, this answer is saying that PhD's are the most common doctoral degrees simply because "PhD" was the term most commonly chosen for degrees at that level. And it also gives a justification for why the designation "PhD" was chosen so often, at least in older times.

This answer is actually wrong: PhDs originally did not entail original research at all, just lengthy scholarship and examination. The title comes literally from the meaning of philosophia-- love of wisdom. You were a doctor of philosophia because back then there was no distinction between e.g. biology, mathematics, astronomy... If you were smart and we're good at it, you could work in the field. Even today, e.g. physics PhDs can and do work in e.g. computer science.

Not to toot my own horn, but my answer explains the historical precedent behind the name philosophiae doctor from the history of philosophia.

So an S.J.D is a doctoral degree but a J.D. is not?  This conversation seems entirely pedantic.

@Nat the scope of your original answer is entirely different to that of your current answer.

@Nat honestly, I find this whole question a hot mess and wish I hadn't partaken in it.

@errantlinguist Ya know, reading about this topic and its popular perceptions has been a lot of fun.  Academia's got quite a history following from ancient times, shaping what it is today, though there seems to be little understanding of it online.  I'm glad that you did opt to participate; I may've had a bit of fun with the comments, but your answer provides a lot of useful information.

The title philosophiae doctor is a remnant from a time when there were no "degree requirements" for jobs and there was not a myriad of different sub-fields: the title "doctor of philosophy" comes from the Greek philosophia, literally "love of wisdom". In other words, doctors of "philosophy" were originally much more "free" in what they could and did contribute to intellectually, which is more of an artifact of how far we've progressed in terms of research between now and then than anything else (cf. Wikipedia for a good overview of university structure from Medieval times onwards).
This is shown by the great number of polymaths in the past in relation to now, including but in no way limited to

Aristotle (384–322 BC),
Archimedes (c.287–c.212 BC)
Ptolemy (90–168 AD)
Jābir ibn Hayyān (Geber) (721–815)
Ibn Hazm al-Andalusi (994–1064)
Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179)
Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472)
Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519)
Copernicus (1473–1543)
Matrakçı Nasuh (1480–c.1564)
Akbar the Great (1542–1605)
Isaac Newton (1643–1727)
Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716)
Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790)
Mikhail Lomonosov (1711–1765)
David Hume (1711–1776)

(cf. John Chiappone's Intro to Humanities site for many more)
There are many more people with higher degrees now per capita than there were back then, so there should theoretically be more polymaths now, but the state of the art has progressed to a level that staying cutting-edge in many fields at once is now much harder. However, even now, people who earned their PhD in one field can and often do go on to contribute to other fields, thus meaning that the spirit of the doctor philosophiae is still alive.
Xkcd made a comic of a very old joke which illustrates this well, but the joke as I know it repeats "A is just applied B" until it terminates at something like

Mathematics is just applied logic, and
logic is just applied philosophy.

Being someone with a philosophy-leaning background myself, I'd say the author stopped at mathematics because he's a mathematician (it turns out he's a physicist with a sense of humor good enough to be make fun of himself!).
Origins of the PhD title and its spread
The PhD title originated in Germany as a comprehensive title not specific to any field and was popularized by Americans who studied there and brought the title back to the US. See Wikipedia:

This situation changed in the early 19th century through the educational reforms in Germany, most strongly embodied in the model of the University of Berlin, founded and controlled by the Prussian government in 1810. The arts faculty, which in Germany was labelled the faculty of philosophy, started demanding contributions to research,[15] attested by a dissertation, for the award of their final degree, which was labelled Doctor of Philosophy (abbreviated as Ph.D.)—originally this was just the German equivalent of the Master of Arts degree. Whereas in the Middle Ages the arts faculty had a set curriculum, based upon the trivium and the quadrivium, by the 19th century it had come to house all the courses of study in subjects now commonly referred to as sciences and humanities.[16] Professors across the humanities and sciences focused on their advanced research.[17] Practically all the funding came from the central government, and it could be cut off if the professor was politically unacceptable.[relevant? – discuss][18]
These reforms proved extremely successful, and fairly quickly the German universities started attracting foreign students, notably from the United States. The American students would go to Germany to obtain a PhD after having studied for a bachelor's degrees at an American college. So influential was this practice that it was imported to the United States, where in 1861 Yale University started granting the PhD degree to younger students who, after having obtained the bachelor's degree, had completed a prescribed course of graduate study and successfully defended a thesis or dissertation containing original research in science or in the humanities.[19] In Germany, the name of the doctorate was adapted after the philosophy faculty started being split up − e.g. Dr. rer. nat. for doctorates in the faculty of natural sciences − but in most of the English-speaking world the name "Doctor of Philosophy" was retained for research doctorates in all disciplines.
The PhD degree and similar awards spread across Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The degree was introduced in France in 1808, replacing diplomas as the highest academic degree; into Russia in 1819, when the Doktor Nauk degree, roughly equivalent to a PhD, gradually started replacing the specialist diploma, roughly equivalent to the MA, as the highest academic degree; and in Italy in 1927, when PhDs gradually started replacing the Laurea as the highest academic degree.[citation needed]

Despite specialist terminal degrees appearing in other countries, this never gained much traction in the US and to a lesser extent in other parts of the Anglosphere. Additionally, in the Anglosphere (especially in the US), the ideal of greater education as being truly comprehensive in this manner seems to remain stronger than in e.g. continental Europe, with the tradition of liberal arts still being very strong there while being relatively uncommon in higher levels of education in continental Europe. This could explain how the modern notion of the single title "PhD" as a terminal research degree seems to have spread from the US: Many universities outside the Anglosphere which previously offered terminal degrees other than the PhD are now offering them as a trend of the times and increased internationalization, thus explaining some of the perceived convergence towards the PhD as a single terminal degree even outside of the Anglosphere.

The author is a physicist, not a mathematician.

@DanielFischer thanks; physicist also makes a lot of sense.

This answer is pure speculation with little actual information, except a long and pointless list of "polymaths". I would need some actual evidence to believe that the fact that a PhD is the US degree for most research doctorates has something to do with the liberal arts tradition. PhD education in the US is narrowly focused and has no liberal arts element to it. Even breadth requirements in PhD programs are limited to the field of study.

@SashoNikolov I supplied a huge amount of links which you can read about; What "actual evidence" do you need if that is not enough for you?
Moreover, what is your knowledge of higher education in the US? is your specialization in the history of education?

@SashoNikolov I now added explicit passages from Wikipedia illustrating the connection between philosophy, the liberal arts and the modern PhD title. On the linked Wikipedia pages you will find many bibliographic references to books which explain history much better than I can do.

I still see nothing here that supports your assertion that the PhD being common in the US has something to do with the US liberal arts tradition. I have a liberal arts education and a PhD from US universities and currently the two have very different cultures. I am indeed not a historian so maybe there is truth to your claim of a link but nothing in this lengthy quote supports that. Rather, it shows the origin of the title in the German tradition.

@SashoNikolov I unfortunately cannot and will not write a thesis connecting all the dots between a historical tradition of liberal arts to the name of the PhD (I'm sure some actually have done, or at least a book or article). However, the simple fact that I work with PhDs in psychology, neuroscience, computer science, physics and mathematics every day on the same topic is empirical proof that research can be multidisciplinary. As shown, as an artifact of history, the "older" title of PhD ironically reflects this more accurately than specialized degree titles do.

@SashoNikolov "The arts faculty, which in Germany was labelled the faculty of philosophy" > philosophy back then encompassed much of what we call "liberal arts" now and even more (this requires the huge amounts of reading/writing I don't have time to write out) > Americans get PhDs from German arts/philosophy departments > Americans popularize and refine PhD-granting programs. The fact that a modern PhD program is very specialized has nothing to do with the name, and I never suggested it. Originally, they were very different to what they are now. That is the point.

Ok, both the title PhD and US liberal arts education can be traced back to the faculties of philosophy in Germany. But your last paragraph strongly suggests that the following two facts are related: (i) liberal arts education is still strong (in the present) in the US, and not in Europe; (ii) in the US doctoral degrees never differentiated, while in Europe they did. I don't see evidence of a link between (i) and (ii). If you cannot provide any, why are you stating (i)?

@SashoNikolov fair enough, that is indeed my personal speculation based on my understanding of history and also of the history of education in the US. I'm sure people smarter than myself have written stuff about it, but I can't "prove" a link between them or cite proof. Thank you for being open enough to consider my argument, though. I edited the answer to make my own conjecture a bit easier to spot.

I guess the German style is that if you are in the Faculty of X, you get a [degree] of X. At some point, X happened to be philosophy. Americans copied the title, but because it was not connected to the organizational structure, they kept it regardless of organizational changes. (We Finns kept the Faculty of Philosophy alive for ceremonial purposes, and the literal translations of our degrees are still PhD and MPhil.)

@Nat the scope of your original answer is entirely different to that of your current answer.

A Ph.D. refers to an academic doctorate.  Which means it is awarded upon completing a body of original research in recognition of such completion.   Professional doctorate degrees -- MD, JD, DMD, DDS, DO, DC, Psy. D., Pharm.D (and I am borrowing this list from one of the other answers to this question) -- are awarded in recognition of attaining a high level of professional training in those disciplines.
Incidentally, "philosophy" used to refer to all studies which we call academic today.  So the title "Philosophy Doctor" stems from those times.
BTW, there is a number of people with double titles MD,Ph.D and DDS,Ph.D.  These indicate both academic research credentials and clinical training credentials.  Presumably, a Ph.D. (in one of life sciences) could be received without ever seeing a human patient.  Whereas an MD is more patient-oriented.


text:
As a copy editor for a professional journal, how far should I go in adjusting the wording of an article?
(It is important to note that the articles are generally written by people for whom English is not their first language)
I recently got my first article to edit, and realized very quickly how uncertain I was about how detailed I was supposed to be in my editing. The article was very wooden though and required a lot of editing to hold a professional English tone (to no fault of the author's, since English was not his first language). I am very good at editing and so had to settle on just going with what made sense to me, but I am wondering if there is a consensus or specific set of rules to follow.
For instance, I always use the word 'one' to denote an inclusive general view in my essays (ie, "If one accepts the premise of John Doe, then yada yada yada...), but this author continually used 'we', which seemed odd to me. I couldn't tell if it was something that needed editing, or was an intentional stylistic choice. I decided to be conservative there and left all the 'we's, but would really appreciate some input.

You are employed by a journal. Ask them what they want?

They don't respond well unfortunately.

In my field at least, "we" is not unusual. But you should really read past issues of the journal you are editing for to get a sense of its style.

" I always use the word 'one' ... this author ... used 'we', which seemed odd to me:" Are you employed to impose your personal style preferences on every paper you edit, or to work to a particular style guide (either a public one like CMS or an in-house document)? It's hard to imagine why consistent use of either "one" or "we" in a paper would make any difference to the users of the journal, regardless of your personal preference.

Folks, use of "we", "you" and "I" is generally not considered proper in formal writing.

@SnakeDoc, you might find the answers to this question interesting. http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12400/active-or-passive-voice-in-international-research-journal-within-the-field-of-m

As a non-native, I would likely write we, and I would just as likely be happy if a native speaker corrected it to one. I don't think you can assume a stylistic choice if the original author struggles with the language. Even if they did make such a choice, and it is wrong, you would have to correct it.

@SnakeDoc : maybe not in your field, but the "royal we" is pretty typical in a lot of science & technical papers.

As a native speaker of English, "one" sounds dated to me. I'm sure the matter is covered in style guides: does your publisher not have an official prefered style guide?

I think a reasonable rule to follow when editing an accepted manuscript prior to publication is to make the minimum changes required to conform with proper grammar as well as whatever style guide your publication uses. (The latter might include, for instance, citation formats as well as the use of British versus American English for spelling.)
If there is ambiguity in editing possibilities, I would propose the change to the authors, but also, if possible, flag it as an "author query" to ensure that the change is viewed and a consensus reached.

I would propose the change to the authors Should the editor be involved in this case?

@scaaahu: No. This is handled at the proof stage, so editors are not required. It would usually be handled with a note in the proof saying something like: "The authors' intent was not clear. Should this be written as (version 1) or (version 2)?"

While editing wrong English is a really good thing to do, and I do really like it when someone does it to me ( so I can learn how to do it better in the future) this has an important problem in research articles: You may, accidentally, modify what they author meant to say.
I don' know what you are supposed to do, but if you end up deciding to change wording in the article, I suggest you notify the authors you have done this and ask for review. Don't just tell them "this is the last version prior to publishing, is it ok?" but notify them that you reworded different sections of the article.
If you are going to go ahead of this I suggest you make 2 files. One with all the required formatting modifications and then another one built on this last one,  with all the wording changes. Ask the authors which one they prefer.


text:
Can a personal meeting with a scientist be referenced?
Suppose I meet a scholar at my university or some other institute, who is a famous person known for his or her work. and I ask questions related to the subject I am working on, and I get some answers or other useful information. Ethically, can I  cite this meeting in my paper or not? (Provided I do tell the person that I am working on something related, etc.)

Does this person know you will be citing your conversation with them? Did they know before starting the conversation (their answers might be slightly different if they do vs they don't)? Are you gonna let the person proofread your citations? This could affect their professional reputation.

Yes as i said that they will be aware of that, i am meeting them in relation to some work. I will not agree on citations proof reading, as in that case we should also let the published work authors to proof read in case we mention some weakness in their work. Any how a personal meeting can be challenged as never took place in case of conflict.

The difference is that any published work you cite is already proofread before publishing and written with the knowledge that it will be available to the public, a conversation is completely different.

Strictly speaking, yes. The APA style, among others, does have instructions on how to cite private conversations (see https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/11/ for an example), but in practice I've never seen it been used in psychology (or natural science) papers. This is probably because a personal conversation cannot be easily verified, which makes such citations less useful. One thing you can do is to track down the relevant papers and thank your colleague in the acknowledgement section.

The one time I cited a Personal Communication as a reference, the journal requested that the person I was communicating send a letter asserting that, yes, he had in fact said that thing.  I don't know what would have happened had the person been unavailable, but I had the strong impression that the journal editors would have requested that we re-do that section and not include the pers. comm.

Verification aside, usually the important thing is not that "expert x" said something. It's science after all. So I'd question whether the information isn't published anywhere (it should be) and cite that. If not, e.g., if it is about a research idea, I wonder too whether acknowledgements wouldn't be a better place. But as arguments go, citing an expert alone is a very weak link in the chain.

We were reluctant to include a Personal Communication because it was unscientific and, in itself, difficult to verify -- but the communication was on the order of "Yes, we accidentally swapped these values in the table and the correction hasn't been published yet because the journal is slow", so there didn't seem to be any way around it.

That's why i asked, some times you get chance to meet face by face, and what is said is not published...so in that case as a last option. I guess if there is approved citing style then it is allowed and considered as valid

Hmm, not clear to me why getting information from a scientist in a personal conversation is "less scientific" than getting exactly the same information from a journal article written by that same scientist. Citing an expert per se doesn't prove anything, that's the classic logical fallacy of "appeal to authority". But if in a conversation he relates the results of an experiment he has performed, I'd think that's exactly as valuable as getting it from a published paper. Yes, the published paper has the advantage of being easier to verify, perhaps less prone to errors in transcription. ...

... But a personal interview is likely more timely, perhaps the only way to get information on some ground-breaking new discovery. And of course outside the realm of scientific papers, if we were talking about journalism, personal interviews are a primary source of information.

@Jay readers don't really care where you got information on some ground-breaking new discovery, that's not the main purpose of scientific citations. Readers use citations to obtain the detailed information to which you are referring - citing a publication or even a webpage is useful in this regard, citing a personal interview is not - unless the full interview is available somewhere. Readers also use citations to verify claims - you can make a claim without providing direct evidence yourself, but point the reader to some evidence published by others; but a personal interview doesn't do that.

Perhaps the important question is about why this (cited) statement is needed in the paper? If your conclusions depend on this statement (e.g. fact about reality) being true, then you need to provide some evidence that it is so, and "Bob told me something like this" really isn't enough. However, if your conclusions don't rely on it, but your work was helped by ideas from this unpublished information, then it would be appropriate to simply put it in acknowledgements as this answer suggests; there's no real need to make up something to cite if there's nothing useful to reader that can be cited.

@Jay if you need to cite a ground-breaking new discovery, then the appropiate thing is to wait for that discovery to be published.

Agreed with @Peteris - in the sciences, I can't imagine anything that was conveyed in conversation that would be necessary or useful to include in a publication (assuming this is an academic publication and not a documentary or other type of journalistic work).  It wouldn't matter if "Albert Einstein said in conversation that this mathematical transformation is valid", for example, or "Stephen Hawking agrees this hypothesis has merit", etc.  What matters is proof and peer-reviewed results.

@J... I can't imagine anything that was conveyed in conversation that would be necessary or useful to include in a publication  -- how about the example we ran in to, "We accidentally transposed some values in  that table, and the correction won't be out for a while yet because the journal is slow"?

If at all possible, follow Drecate's advice and cite the relevant papers.
If this isn't possible (e.g. a scientist told you about an unpublished observation in their group, like, "Oh yes, we often saw that, but never got around to writing it up."), citing a "personal communication" is appropriate.
HOWEVER, if you do this, the person you are citing should know about it!  I would send them a copy of your draft before you submit it.  This avoids circumstances where 1) you misunderstood them, and they didn't say what you thought they did, or 2) they thought they were speaking "off the record," and don't want to be cited in support of this point, or 3) you are "spoiling" their result by announcing it before they publish.

Yes, it is possible, and I have done this once or twice. As others have said, it is better to cite a published document if possible, but (Smith, pers. comm.) is sometimes acceptable: typically if it's for a minor point that referees are unlikely to dispute, or for a minor detail of published work that didn't make it into the published version.
Examples:

"Liu and Smith (2006) used 15mm glass culture tubes for their samples (Liu, pers. comm.)"
"Environmental managers report that farmers in this region generally do not trust models (Freeman, pers. comm.) so we took a participatory modelling approach to increase trust and transparency, following the advice of Jones (2011)."

Yes - but don't use that as a crutch for taking sole credit for a result that's not entirely your own.
If you're writing a paper in which that is a significant part of the novelty, try to make him/her a co-author; or otherwise coordinate with that person, since you're working on the basis of his/her idea to a great extent. Another option you could offer him/her, if they don't want to be cited, is a thank you note for useful discussion regarding XYZ.
If you're writing something in which the citation is not part of the novelty of the work, it's simpler and more obvious that you just cite a "personal communication" like other answers suggest.


text:
How do I deal with a stubborn co-author who won't respond to suggestions?
My research group is preparing a theoretical article in a field where author order matters (computational neuroscience), and it has to be submitted soon, as our funding ends soon. I am an author "in the middle of the list."
The first author (TFA) has made a first draft and started circulating it. Although results-wise everything is ok, the text is very poorly written (both in terms of English and general logic understandability). TFA is known to be not very responsive to even minor correction suggestions.
Our PI knows the situation but he started his PI career relatively recently and his management skills have not yet fully developed, as far as I understand it. He says that he will just rewrite the whole text in the end (as he did with a number of other articles before).
Technically I or another middle author could rewrite the draft completely to make it better. However I think it would make the first-authorship of TFA somewhat strange-looking, and in general I feel that there should be some better ways.
So the question is: how are situations like this typically resolved?

"I think it would make the first-authorship of TFA somewhat strange-looking," Not at all. Writing is only one slice of a larger pie, and if the other slices of the pie are mostly of his baking, then there is no reason why he shouldn't be the first baker.

I would say that typically in life sciences, rewriting the paper carries little weight in terms of authorship order. Events that happened before writing (developing the idea, executing it, producing results, etc) are much more important.

@Bitwise my field is not a pure life science, we do mathematical models for life sciences. So it is not like TFA sat days in a dirty lab doing dangerous experiments and now somebody wants to steal his effort only because he has bad writing skills. In the case of this particular article the first author did a few not-that-difficult to code computational experiments and found some important articles that our model is based on. But the most important thing -- the formulation of the equations, was done by the PI.

The history of this question seems to have been a bit murky to me "I want to rewrite an article that is poorly written by the first author, can I argue to supercede him as first author") Now it appears to be changed to ("I can't get the first author to do what I want him to do". I'm not quite sure what you are asking. You can't get him to agree to let you be first author if you rewrite his text (which many comments suggested was not very strong case on your part) ? or is he not agreeable because he refuses to Let you do some massive edits while keeping the authorship the same?

Rewriting the text doesn't necessarily qualify someone to be the first author of a publication. If you're using the intended first author's structural outline and just rewriting sentences, then I don't know if that's sufficient to usurp the intended first author's claim. If I were the PI, I don't think I would do that.
What I might do is place a note in the paper along the lines of "X and Y contributed substantially to the writing of this paper," where X is the intended first author and Y is the person who rewrote the paper.
Better still would be for the PI to work with the intended first author about the corrections that are needed, rather than just rewrite everything. Helping X to become a better writer will reduce the PI's workload in the long run.


text:
How to choose to which conference submit a scientific paper?
Nowadays, in almost every scientific field, there are hundreds of conferences. Many call for papers emails fill our mail boxes.
Freedom of choice is great, but, how to choose to which conference send a paper?
Should I choose one...

based on the scientific relevance?
based on the scientific vicinity to your paper theme?
based on its prestige?
because of some official ranking?
because it provides the best food?

I suspect the answer is different in computer science (where conference papers actually matter) than in other fields.

It is always about the location ;)

Have you asked your advisor?

If you have the money, then target the top conferences wherever they are. If you have secured a faculty position, then target the conference you like the most whether its top or not.

Because it's in a nice place, of course!

In an ideal world, you would like to choose your conference by their relation to your paper's main topic, and the possibility of impact to your field.
Now, you might be inclined to choose according to other filters:

Based on its "possible attendants", such as a highly-esteemed
investigator you might want to know and get feedback from, in a more
personal way.
Your own "travel experiences" (such as wanting to travel to a
far-away location, or to re-visit some beautiful place).
Most conferences consider acceptance as a "at least one of the
authors must attend and present their work" binding commitment, so
unless you are going with your college's support, you must
consider the ongoing rates on inscription, hotel rates and
added values (such as travel expenses or food, among others).

Some other reasons might apply, but your main filter must be to choose a conference in which your work is closely related to.

Some of the best conferences I have been to have been ones outside my area of specialization, but for a new research sticking on topic is probably key.

I concurr, but you at least need to send a paper that is "somewhat related" to the main topics of the conference, for them to accept it.

Not a complete answer, but is substantially reduces the number of conferences to consider, the first things I consider are: timing, location, duration, cost. It has to fit into my teaching schedule and I have to have results and enough time to write them up, but not so far off that I want them out (timing). A one or two day national conference is much easier to deal with than a week long overseas conference (location and duration). I have to be able to afford it (cost).

Why choosin' a conference instead of another?

Conference is a social event. Even in computer science where conferences really matter, attending and presenting a paper either in a talk, or as a poster is still a personal dissemination of results. With this prelude, I argue that you should choose also (if not primarily) on the basis of what kind of audience you expect to attend your presentation.

sometimes, your paper is a message to the community (incremental works or methodological remarks come to mind). In that case you want to target precisely the community your paper speaks to. So even if it would be a small workshop without proceedings, if your result matters to the small community, you should speak primarily to them.
most of the time, you have a standalone research result. Q: What are you after with it? A: impact = citations. Hence, go to a place attended by those guys who are likely to cite your work. Usually, that is correlated with the position of the venue on the Top-XYZ ladder = badge (see below).
sometimes, you want to get a badge = have a paper at this prestigious conference which will shine on your CV. Fair enough, there you have the way to decide.

Ideally, you should go for a place providing both 2 and 3.  Honestly, I see little good from choosing a conference based solely on its focus. Doing so, you might end up at C-tier venue full of people who are interested in the location and the buffet.

If you are new to research or new to a particular field, you should discuss this question with a colleague who has experience in that field (for students, this is your advisor).  They know which conferences are the most important/useful/well-attended.  After some time you will know this too and can decide based on personal experience.
Outside of expert advice or personal experience, here are my criteria, in order of importance:

It is sponsored by one of the major relevant professional societies.  Which are relevant depends on your field.  In mine, this means SIAM.
The work I would like to present is relevant to the focus of the conference.
The timing and location make sense.  This can depend on many things, but it is less convenient to travel when you need to be in class (as a teacher or a student).   You may have limited funds, or limited tolerance for long flights and layovers.  Choosing a conference because you have some particular desire to visit that location is not generally a good idea unless the other factors here align too.
The size of the conference, in number of attendees and also breadth of scope.  After many years I have come to the conclusion that smaller, more focused meetings are more useful to me, but I know people who feel just the opposite.

In fields where conference submission acceptance rates are relatively low (i.e., the process is highly competitive), conference prestige or rankings should indeed be an important factor.  In others (like mine, applied math) conference submissions are not really competitive and there is not a hierarchy of conferences in terms of prestige.
For small thematic workshops, criterion #1 above is often irrelevant; but for anything larger it is essential.
Don't choose a conference based on the food.

Why does professional society sponsorship matter? IEEE in particular has sponsored some truly shady conferences in the past.

@JeffE fair enough; I've edited my answer.  In my field, any large meeting that's worthwhile is sponsored by SIAM or its equivalent in another region.  I don't have enough experience with other societies so I removed them.  As already noted, for small meetings this is irrelevant.

Even in applied math, professional societies sponsor conferences because they're worthwhile, not the other way around.  Most AI and machine learning conferences are (a) not sponsored by a professional society and (b) huge.

@Jeffe Sure -- I'm not claiming causality, just correlation.  I explicitly state that these are my own criteria; I can't speak about other fields because I don't have any knowledge there.

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Do I need to have teaching experience before entering grad school?
I'm considering going back to graduate school, but I've heard from a number of friends that graduate students are all required to teach. Is that the case? I have no teaching experience at all. Will that negatively affect my chances of getting in?

I think the teaching requirement is program / university specific.  Some more information may be helpful.

Uh... typically the PhD is where you start getting teaching experience. At least in Italy. Non-PhD's can volunteer to "assist" in some laboratories through "150 hours" programs, but that's it.

@badp - That's actually only true for academics. In the "real world", people go to school to learn how to teach. That's how your first grade teacher learned to do her job... not by on-the-job teaching.

@eykanal I guess I fail in assuming that by "teaching" you only meant "teaching in academia".

In general, no, it won't. Having teaching experience might weigh in your favor in exceptional circumstances (a graduate department that needs a lot of teaching assistants, and you're "on the bubble"; you're going into an education program or something similar; or the application specifically asks for teaching experience).
However, most graduate schools don't expect that students have prior teaching experience, and provide training to smooth the transition.
Teaching load also varies widely from program to program: some science and engineering students TA for one semester over a five-year program, while humanities graduate students may have to TA every semester to pay for their studies.

I've heard from a number of friends that graduate students are all required to teach.

This is usually a requirement for doctoral students, and only because most doctoral students are having their education paid for by the university or grants. If you are terrified about teaching, my advice would be to visit your local Toastmasters chapter. While there is far more to teaching than being able to speak in front of others, the fear of public speaking is the largest (in the sense of provoking fear) hurdle that I've heard folks mention.

For doctoral students, you may very well be expected to teach - rare is the department with sufficient faculty and graduate student funding that using TAs is unnecessary. That being said, learning to teach in those institutions is considered part of your training - not something you're expected to have in advance.
I had a small shred of teaching experience before entering grad school, but many of my fellow students did not, and it mattered not even a little bit.


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What's the best way to share my presentation slides online?
I'm thinking of posting slides from some of my technical presentations online.  One option I've used in the past is just posting the PDFs.  But I've seen some sites that offer nice interfaces for others to view and share your slides without downloading them, such as

SpeakerDeck
Slideshare
Present.me

I am primarily interested in advertising my research to other researchers who might be interested in using it or collaborating.
Which site should I use, and why?  Or are raw PDFs the way to go?
In case it matters, I'm a computational mathematician and my slides are a mixture of text, equations, plots, short videos, and diagrams.

I'd instinctively find anything else than a raw pdf file annoying, due to the lower portability and implied access control. I suspect I am not the only one in my field (numerical mathematics).

Keep in mind is that, if the presentation contains unpublished results, you shouldn't publish it at all. Doing so could jeopardize your ability to publish the papers in a reputable journal.

@eykanal That may be discipline-dependent.  I publish all my preprints on arXiv prior to submission and it's not a problem.  Presumably slides are even less problematic.  Take a look at http://www.carlboettiger.info/wordpress/archives/3641.

@eykanal: I agree with David.  In computer science at least, posting anything to the web (formal preprints, technical reports, slides, blog entries,  videos, StackExchange answers, whatever) absolutely does not  preclude or jeopardize later formal publication.

@JeffE - My statement was based on hearsay from both my PhD advisor and labmates. It was in reference to both the biomedical engineering and cognitive psychology fields. Given the postings here, I'm not sure if he was correct, but I figured it was worth posting.

@Eykanal is correct. Certain fields *cough chemistry *cough won't accept papers that have been deposited. Patents will also have rules on what is considered "public disclosure".

@eykanal how reputable are draconian reputable journals?

I typically post my slides on my website as pdfs.  On the title page of my slides, I have started adding a line that says something like "slides available on my preprint page", and sometimes I'll mention this at the start of my talk.  On my website, I have a page for all my slides and I also link to the relevant slides on my preprints page.  Personally, I prefer when speakers make their slides available as pdfs, because I like being able to download them and file them away, rather than needing to bookmark a website.  Similar to my preprints, I'm excited to have folks download my slides (so I don't see any reason to control their distribution).

I agree about the downloading - I know some people really care about controlling access (which is why I mentioned it), but I don't think it's actually advantageous.

Downloadable pdfs are nice on many grounds, but using one's website may be not a long-lasting solution (unless one has a tenure), effectively making pdfs disappearing after a few years.

@PiotrMigdal I don't have tenure yet, but I do expect to get it.  I guess my plan is to move my website (and pdfs) with me wherever I go (if I do end up moving).  A Google search on my name easily finds my website, so (possibly with a little digging), my pdfs should be easily accessible for a long time.  One possible future alternative would be if the arxiv allowed posting of auxiliary files.  Then you could post your slides as an attachment.  Currently, one hack would be to post the TeX source of your slides to the arxiv.

From what I can see, some key issues to think about are:

Social media integration and analytics.  These sites will help you advertise your presentation and gather data on who views it.
Downloading.  You can make it inconvenient or impossible to download the slides.  That's an advantage if you want to control the presentation and keep anyone from archiving a copy or extracting figures (you can't stop someone determined and knowledgeable, but you can stop casual users).
Accessibility on devices.  My smartphone cannot view Present.me presentations at all, and it has a little trouble with SpeakerDeck and Slideshare presentations.  (I can view them, but they are awfully small and I cannot zoom in.)  I don't usually view slides on my phone, but I do every so often.

I agree with Anonymous Mathematician, but I want to add an additional key issue:

Rendering Compatibility: Can whichever method you choose properly render all of your content? I have had trouble converting PowerPoint files containing chemical structures drawn in ChemDraw (which are vector graphic objects). Creating PDFs seems to be hit or miss depending on the method I use. Notably, Office is better at it than Adobe software. Slideshare will not render these objects at all. I do not have experience with Present.me or SpeakerDeck.

If your presentation is in LaTeX, you may want to try writeLATEX. You can actually make your presentation in writeLATEX, and share it from there once it is ready.

Google Docs is another option that allows you to:

Embed the presentation on your site with a nice interface.
Provide a public link to the presentation, where viewers will have the option to download as PDF, PowerPoint or Text.
Make lists of viewers (possible contributors) authorized to comment or edit.

Additionally,
While making the presentation:

Work from school, home or anywhere with an internet connection, without the need of manually synchronize.
Work collaboratively, collaborators can edit or comment.
Revision history (who changed what) with the possibility to revert changes.

During the presentation:

See your notes using speaker notes.
Present remotely using Google+ Hangouts

Interesting, but this would require that I write my presentation using Google Docs (no TeX!) so that's a non-starter for mathematical fields.

I am one of the developers of SlideWiki and would suggest you to use that (http://slidewiki.org)
SlideWiki features include:

WYSIWYG slide authoring
Logical slide and deck representation
LaTeX/MathML integration
Multilingual decks / semi-automatic translation in 50+ languages
PowerPoint/HTML import
Source code highlighting within slides
Dynamic CSS themability and transitions
Social networking activities
Full revisioning and branching of slides and decks
E-Learning with self-assessment questionnaires

If I understand correctly, you are in the SlideWiki team. It would be fair to mention this fact in the answer, just to let people know that this is a "self-advertisement" and not a recommendation from an uninterested user.

Actually, it's even in policy of StackExchange sites - you are allowed to recommend service that you are affiliated with, but you must disclose your relation.

I edited my answer. Thanks for reminding me this policy

If you want to keep track of the people viewing our work, Figshare might be worth a try.
I do not think they provide the nicest viewer for presentation, but they keep track of the people viewing and sharing your work. They also enable your work to be citable but providing a permanent link to it. The only drawback is that once you publicly publish something, they do not allow you to remove it...

I found scribd to be useful in sharing files/papers. You can also know who accessed and downloaded your paper or at least you would know how many times it was downloaded.

If you are specifically interested in getting your research out there and tracking who looks at your research, I suggest ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net
ResearchGate is generally for developing a research profile for yourself based on your publications and communication with other researchers. But recently I have noticed people uploading presentations to their profile which then get added to their publication record on the site. People can provide feedback on the presentations and the site provides some decent analytics on activity. It also provides a means for people to cite the work.

I get annoyed with the spam sent by this site.

Just to clarify, I am not an affiliate of this site. IMHO it is one of the best options for what the question is asking for. You can easily control what emails the site sends you in your preferences.

I'm talking about spam that it sends to people who do not have an account there.  You certainly can't control that through your preferences.  See http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16870/researchgate-an-asset-or-a-waste-of-time and other questions about RG on this site.

Thank you for providing the link, I had not seen that thread. I used to have the same issues with RG, but the site has improved considerably in the last couple of years. After having a quick look at my profile settings I can confirm that there is an option to disable 'invitations'. Also mentioned here: [link] (https://www.biostars.org/p/63561/). But I agree the sites use of such tactics is a legitimate reason to boycott the site.

Good to know that they are changing.  Sounds like "spam on" is still the default, though?

SlideJar is a great platform (http://www.slidejar.com) since it provides search and results at a slide level. It also has a way for you to provide real value to the folks who you want to share with as they can mash up individual slides into new presentations and save them for later reference. ANyone can set up their own slidejar site (see http://neillasher.slidejar.com as a reference) and can actually earn revenue by people mashing up their slides and saving them.

Unfortunately that site only accepts powerpoint slides.  In my field, almost nobody uses Powerpoint.


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Can something published on arXiv or optimization-online.org be mentioned in my CV?
I was thinking about submitting one of my papers in arXiv or www.optimization-online.org and hence I was just wondering if mentioning the same in my CV would be appropriate. Is it done usually? If yes, how should I actually mention something like this in my CV? Kindly guide me (I have no previous experience in publishing papers and I'm an undergraduate student).

I list my current submissions in my CV (under "Current Submissions"), whether they're on the ArXiv or not.

@ChrisWhite Thank you for those links. Nevertheless I have put up a question giving the complete description of my current position here -> http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11213/should-i-still-try-to-publish-this-paper-i-wrote-after-it-getting-rejected-kin. Would be nice if you can give it a look.

Putting non-peer reviewed publications on your CV is perfectly fine, but you should be aware that for research-oriented jobs and admission to academic programs you will be primarily judged by your peer reviewed publications.  I have seen CVs that separately list peer-reviewed works and non-peer reviewed works, and sometimes the non-peer reviewed works are simply listed as "technical reports."
If you believe that the papers you write are worthy of being mentioned on your CV, then list them.  But don't think that by putting a bunch of low-quality non-peer reviewed works will do you any favors when looking for work or when applying for academic positions (whether graduate school or employment).  Obviously, you should avoid putting them on your CV if you are doing so simply to demonstrate that you can write a paper.

Thank you for the response.
I would admit that the paper isn't something completely novel or path breaking. The essence is that I have tried working on the Traveling Tournament Problem and with the help of existing algorithms and techniques I have applied it on a very popular sports league and got significant results (such as reduction in the total travel by around 25%) and I am quite sure no one has actually worked on THAT league before. But my problem is that I tried submitting it to a top springer journal but it got rejected saying there wasn't any new ....(contd in next comment) [1/2]

........ technique that I was employing. And post that I have been in a complete dilemma on  whether it really is worth publishing. Would be really nice to hear your view on this. I mean do people accept such papers? [2/2]

When you say "you should be aware that for research-oriented jobs and admission to academic programs you will be primarily judged by your peer reviewed publications," I think it's field-dependent. In high-energy physics we all check the arxiv for new papers and publishing is an afterthought. It's relevant when being judged by people outside the field (e.g. promotion and tenure reviews), but not really inside the field.

@MattReece I get that, but is your CV filled with arXiv-only papers?  How do you judge mediocre arXiv papers from high quality ones if you see them on a CV? (not that you can necessarily tell high quality peer reviewed publications, but you can judge quality conferences and journals, and have a modicum of confidence that a peer reviewed publication has been vetted more than on arXiv).

No, it's not filled with arxiv-only papers, although my CV usually has a few papers that are on arxiv and haven't been published yet. But in my experience when looking to hire a postdoc, who may be at an early stage of their career, I don't mind seeing a lot of arXiv-only material on their CV. It's difficult due to limited time but I would hope people always try to judge quality based on content (or indirectly via who is citing it, what recommendation letters say, etc) more than publication venue.

This only pertains to mathematics since that's the only field I can speak for, but there it's normal for people to list preprints on the arXiv in their publication list or CV making it clear that it is listed as a preprint.  I think people understand perfectly well that there are long lead times on getting things published.
That said, I would say that you should think carefully and get advice from more experienced people in your field before submitting to a preprint archive.  At least in the case of the arXiv, once something is posted, it can never be taken down.

Thank you for your response.
But again, I'm a little worried on how publishing these preprints actually work. I mean, the thing is as you've said it takes so much time to actually get a response from a journal regarding their decision. So in the mean time can I just put the same paper without any modification in a preprint archive or should I be asking some kind of a permission from the journal (to whom I have submitted/will be submitting)  before doing so?

At least in math and CS, yes, you can just post your paper to the arxiv.  In fact, many journal allow you to submit manuscripts by just sending them an ArXiv ID.

@JeffE I am always curious about a minor issue, never bother to ask. I noticed that you use ArXiv instead of arXiv very often. Which one is their official name? I ask you because I know you're one of the moderators there. Please let me know if the answer is long. I'll post a question if necessary(or should I ask them?) Thanks.

I think "arXiv" is official—in particular, like Dead Kennedys and Talking Heads, it's just "arXiv", not "the arXiv"—but I can't get past the initial lower-case letter for a proper name.

Depends on your field. If in it arXiv is not popular, make a separate list named "Preprints".
If it is popular (i.e. people are expected to post on arXiv along with sending to the journal), then it is common to have a single list (where, naturally, papers from last months or a year are only on arXiv, other - both have the journal reference and arXiv ID). If older papers are peer-reviewed then it is somehow implied that the new ones are likely to get into journals/conferences as well.
However, if you have only arXiv preprints (e.g. as you are only starting your career) it is not implied that they will get accepted. Anyway, listing them is way better than listing nothing - just make a list of "Preprints".
In any case putting preprints may give you an edge - especially if your preprints are related to research they are interested in (for me, quite a few times, they were a starting point of a specialistic discussion).

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Article with unspecified-but-present authorship ("consensus document")
I'd like to properly refrence an article whose author is mentioned as A Consensus Document (it has some 25 authors).
I have never seen this kind of authorship before; the citation entry generated by the website does not contain an "Author" field (which is problematic for BibTeX and somewhat intriguing on a personal level).
I don't know what would be appropriate to remedy this situation. Would adding an author such as Consensus Document make sense?
Otherwise, could I just add the first author in alphabetical order1, or would this misrepresent the authorship?
Another possible alternative is that, since one of the authors (not the first one in alphabetical order) wrote a foreword to the paper, maybe he could be considered as the first author instead?
1 The authors are only presented in alphabetical order.

I was expecting for a more formal definition of what authorship should constitute in this case, if such exists, otherwise I may delete the question if indeed there's no such notion.

Otherwise, it would probably be best to specify all authors in your .bib entry and let BibTeX shorten the list when creating the label. But you cannot assume somebody is first author unless you know they are, which you don't. Indeed, insofar as 'A Consensus Document' means anything to me, it suggests that none of the authors should be considered as having priority. But, As Alan says, this is off-topic for this site. The correct strategy may depend on: your discipline, the kind of document you are writing, how/where it will be published, &/or the style used for the references and citations.

The website you've linked to, under the "How to cite" tab, suggests the following format for the entry:

(2008), Vacuum Assisted Closure: Recommendations for Use. International Wound Journal, 5: iii–19. doi: 10.1111/j.1742-481X.2008.00537.x

Note that there's no author information at all. I suppose that's not a problem for numeric-style citation call-outs, but it sort of begs the question what should be done if authoryear-style citation call-outs are to be used.
The printed article itself provides the string "Expert Working Group" (followed by the names of all members of the group) where one would usually provide the authors' names. This suggests using a "corporate author" approach, along the following scheme:
@article{vacrfu:2008,
  author  = {{Expert Working Group}},
  title   = {Vacuum Assisted Closure: {Recommendations} for Use},
  journal = {International Wound Journal},
  year    = 2008,
  volume  = 5,
  pages   = {iii--19},
  doi     = {10.1111/j.1742-481X.2008.00537.x},
}

Note the use of double curly braces around the argument of the author field.
If that's too unconventional for your taste, you might try either
  author  = {{Expert Working Group (Apelqvist et al)}},

or, more simply,
  author = {Jan Apelqvist and others},

as the content of the author field.