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How to get an idea on what to do or propose in research?
I'm very new to research.
I know that in order for us to get an idea for research, we need to do a literature review to see what people have done so that we can do something that has not been done.
The problem is that I still don't understand many topics in my research area. My supervisor has already asked me to produce experimental results.
I still couldn't distinguish between what other researchers have done and what have not been done.
How to know "something has not been done" in our research area?
Then how to get the idea to propose something better?
How do we really sure it is "better"?
right now, I don't know where to go.

Have you discussed this lack of direction with your supervisor?

What's your background?

@BryanKrause No. The supervisor has expectations that I can do everything by myself.

@Nobody Computer science

@JayaA Well, it seems that you (understandably) can't. If you would like them to revise their expectations it seems like that would need a conversation.

@BryanKrause The question posted was about getting an idea in research. We can talk in general. So, the topic here is not about supervisors....

@JayaA Well, we can't give you a research topic, whereas your supervisor can (though ShernRenTee gave you a great pathway towards doing it yourself), so the question becomes very much about your relationship with your supervisor whether you want it to or not.

It also seems like 2 years ago you were in your final year of a PhD, and now you're just starting out? Or are you a post doc now? It does make sense to expect more independence from a post doc.

I appreciate that you're trying to improve your question, and we want to help, but "how to do research" is really far too broad a topic for us. If you are a PhD student, you really need to discuss this with a local post-doc or professor. The usual advice is to (1) read papers, and (2) in parallel, do some "experimental" work, even if this is [for now] just reproducing known results. But what that looks like in each discipline will vary widely.

As someone with zero background in this area, here is what I tried to do in ten minutes:
I looked up Machine learning in bioinformatics on Wikipedia. Searching the page for "2021", I came across a fairly recent paper titled Specialized metabolic functions of keystone taxa sustain soil microbiome stability. In the Discussion section, one of the main themes that emerges near the end is:

Interestingly, numerous studies have revealed that nitrogen cycling taxa are consistently identified as keystone taxa across diverse ecosystems. In contrast, the function of “phosphonate and phosphinate metabolism” is less well documented. However, the most abundant Gemmatimonas genus is one of the dominant groups identified in agricultural ecosystems. ... We speculate that the abundant bacterial genera that include Nitrospira, Rhizobacter, and Burkholderia referring to the keystone functions of “nitrogen metabolism” and the abundant genera that include Gemmatimonas and Brevundimonas referring to the keystone functions of “phosphonate and phosphinate metabolism” are pivotal taxa that may contribute to soil microbiome stability.

An unproven but strongly suggested speculation! That sounds like a topic ripe for research. I wonder if we can experimentally mess with Gemmatimonas and wreck soils somehow. Before I start excitedly writing up my research proposal, though, I note that this article has been cited 45 times (as of 8 June 2022). I will have to spend the afternoon looking through those citations to make sure none of them have already worked on my brilliant idea.
In summary, here were the steps I followed:

Locate a recent, interesting article
Skim to the end and scan the Discussion for interesting new thoughts.
(To be done) Check articles that cited this article to see if those thoughts had been followed up. (If they had, start over from step 1 with this article.)

While I would love to leave you with this framework and wish you success, there are two features of your situation that seem very precarious to me.
The first feature is that "machine learning in bioinformatics" is a set of methods. Unless you are in a very specialized group, you run the risk of floating adrift in the wild seas of method development with very little to show for it at the end of your PhD. In conventional research you can often know that your methods will give you the real answer, even if it sadly isn't the answer you'd like to have. In method development, you do not even know if your method is correct, so you will have to work out (1) if your method gives you the real answer and (2) why it is so much better than other conventional methods out there.
Think of carpentry: when you learn carpentry, you start by making a piece of furniture, like a chair or a table or a cabinet. You don't start by making a saw, or a hammer, or nails. That is a different, and much more specialized and difficult, field.
The second feature is that you are asking random strangers on the Internet for advice that should be coming from your supervisor. I cannot stress enough how hazardous that is. You do not know me! You cannot know for certain that the advice I am giving you is good or sound. And if you follow my advice and things go wrong, there is every reason for your supervisor to say "well, why were you asking random strangers on the Internet for advice?" The whole point of a supervisor is that a supervisor is someone who, in theory, has gone where you're going, and has some stake in your success (in that they will get to co-author the papers you eventually write, after having helped you get going). They should be obligated to give you sound, useful advice in a way that a stranger on the Internet is not.
If you do not sense that your supervisor has invested themself in your success, and is just demanding results without telling you how to obtain them, you need to fix your situation ASAP.

Some supervisors have the expectation that "you are a PhD student. you should know it"

@JayaA The whole point of a PhD is to learn to do research. Why choose to work with a supervisor who doesn't understand that?

@User Ah yes, because PIs in Europe never had to be students? Yes, I know this attitude exists, but I'm not willing to accept it as "normal" because I've worked with many people from Europe that did not have this attitude.

@BryanKrause Let's not deviate the conversation here to another topic


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Is publishing a chapter in a book considered as valuable as a journal publication?
I received an invitation from a Prof. in an highly ranked University to publish a chapter in a book (Computer Science). The book publisher is a well known publisher. As far as I know, the chapter will be peer reviewed. The topic is in my research field and considered state of the art topic. The time schedule is tight (one month). I would like to know if such a publication is considered a valuable publication and has equivalent value to publishing a paper in journal?

Would the book chapter contain any new unpublished results, or would it be restricted to reviewing the current state of the art?

You've not said where you are based. How are academics rated in your field and country (or country you want to get jobs in future). In my STEM field in UK book chapters aren't considered in REF assessment and can be time consuming for little reward. However, in Arts they are considered for promotion.

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/5556/1033

Ask yourself whether you could produce a journal article in a month and you have a good answer.

They are not equivalent, and the relative value depends. That's the distinction between primary and secondary literature. Many classic 'papers' in my field are not papers but book chapters with novel arguments (not data, obviously, those would be in a paper.) Both are valuable and having both in the CV is better than having only one of the two. If I were in the middle of finishing a research paper and a book chapter offer with a tight deadline came along, I would pass. But you don't mention having to choose one over the other, so it's to your advantage to accept.

In my field (linguistics), journal articles have traditionally been considered far superior to book chapters in terms of their value/prestige, but I notice colleagues of mine starting to push back on the conventional narrative - which I think benefits everyone.

I would say yes, especially if the chapter provides a mini review with an overview on the topic, plus some new contribution.
And if the professor who is editing the book is well known, it means that they will promote the book, and thus the contribution will have high visibility.
Moreover since their name will be on the book I would expect that the contributions will have higher chances to get cited.

Evaluating the value of a book chapter (for purposes such as tenure review, salary increases, promotion, hiring, etc.) can be more difficult than evaluating a conference or journal article, as it is not immediately clear how much peer evaluation was done.
On the plus side, you have an invitation by a recognized person in the field. This is like an invited article in a journal, which in Computer Science adds value. On the negative side, without your chapter, the book might be incomplete, so they can at worst prod you to better the chapter if you did a lousy job. (Not that you would ever do that.)
There is also a lot of predatory publishing going on with book-chapter invitations and some few good people have become stooges in a pay-to-publish scam. Since your potential editor has a renown, that is not the case here and an evaluator would hopefully know that. Then of course there are conference articles that are published as chapters in a book such as Springer Lecture Notes. This means that an evaluator has to look closely at the editor and the publisher.
The impact measured in citations is a different category. A chapter in a book might be less visible, as books authored by many people tend to lack coherence (in Computer Science).
So, summing up, a book chapter under these circumstances would not equal a class A publication, but might be better than a class C conference publication depending on the status of the editor. If you can do a good job in a month, I would go for it. You might be gaining the editor as a future letter writer.

Book chapters comes in different shades.
You have the ones that are 'technically' conference proceedings (CCIS, AICT, LNCS ...).
You also have the reviewed and collated like the one OP described.
Yet, there're the ones that are 'mere' collation.
I'll leave out the technical/subject books.
The weight ascribed/attached to books chapters varies at

country level for funding or research impact
discipline level where order and perception play a part
university level for promotion or funding or ranking.
There are other nuances beyond the three examples.

OP scenario might be considered a valuable publication, given the description.
[Edit]
Prof. in an highly ranked University might also go alongside Prof. is an highly influential, or highly regarded in CS (subfield) conferences, or highly rank in CS (subfield)

My sinister view is that it benefits the professor more than the authors of each chapter.  The professor will promote his/her name, and harp about having written a 'whole' book by him/herself.

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Low math GRE subject test scores, but high scores on Major Field Test: Should I mention this in my letters of intent?
I'm an senior math major in undergraduate planning on applying to around a dozen schools' PhD programs in math. I think the rest of my application (grades, advanced classes, research experience, letters of recommendation, general GRE scores) is fine, but I am concerned somewhat with my subject test scores. Due to financial and time constraints, I was only able to take the test once, and I got a score in the 31st percentile.
Is this something that's worth mentioning in my letters of intent? Specifically, I was thinking of mentioning that when I took the MFT (major field test) in mathematics as part of the capstone course at my university, I scored in the 96th percentile, so it's not that I'm bad at university mathematics, I just had test anxiety concerning the subject test.
Also, for what it's worth, I thought the MFT was similar in content to the math subject test, but not as difficult.
Another option might be just to mention the high MFT scores on my CV that I send in with my applications, leaving out any mention of that in my letters of intent, and just hoping that helps my case with the admissions committees.

While it's not exactly the same issue you are facing, you might be interested in this related question.

Not including it on your letter will probably suit you best.
WHY?
You always want to put your best foot forward so only address this if they ask/mention it.
For Example
Let's say that you are a doctor and you're trying to apply for a job at a hospital.
Your previous employment includes working at McDonalds (during you undergrad), working as a nurse at your local clinic, and doing your residency at a different hospital.
Obviously, you would put your residency and maybe your nursing experience in your resume.
But what about your McDonalds employment time? Would you really add that too?

The subject test scores are included elsewhere in the application; the question is not whether to include them at all, but whether to explain (and try to justify) the low scores elsewhere in the application, to mitigate the damage. Also note that academic hiring and graduate admissions has some things in common with regular hiring, and many, many more differences.

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Can I publish my Master's Thesis that I've claimed copyright on?
I graduated this past May with my master's in a physical science. Since then, my thesis has been uploaded online by my university, with my copyright on the thesis. I was interested in publishing the results from my thesis in a scientific journal, but with this copyright, is that even possible now? What are the rules when it comes to this sort of thing?

just because you write "copyright me" on a document, doesn't mean you actually get it. Whether or not you own the copyright will depend on the university's rules. So what do you mean "with my copyright on the thesis"? And are you asking whether the uploading by your university constitutes prior publication?

@EnergyNumbers: Actually, you have the copyright for something you created even without writing “© me”.

Voting to close as unclear what you are asking. Without knowing what is written in the copy right page of your thesis, it is hard to give precise answers to your question.

@Wrzlprmft yes, and in some courses, the copyright gets transferred to the university. Either way, the question isn't very clear.

@EnergyNumbers Yes, that is what I am asking.

@EnthusiasticStudent There is no copyright page in my thesis. It just states that I have copyright on the webpage to which my thesis is uploaded. It states "Rights Information: Copyright 2015 Stratix".

Generally, the agreement that you sign with a journal publisher is not just to allow publication, but rather to transfer ownership of the copyright to the publisher.  After that point you don't own the copyright and can't publish the material your self except under the terms of the copyright transfer agreement.  Some agreements are quite liberal while others are more strict.
However, most journal publishers specifically allow for the publication of papers that are substantially similar to parts of "published" MS theses and PhD dissertations- under this system you can still make copies of your thesis or dissertation freely available online.  Furthermore many publishers are OK with theses or dissertations that basically consist of chapters that were previously published as papers in their journals.  A few publishers (for example I believe that this was an issue with the American Chemical Society although they've updated their policy) have not allowed these practices.
In short, copyright is most likely not going to be an issue in publishing research papers based on your thesis.
Another issue that you didn't discuss in your question is rewriting the thesis material to fit into the short form of a journal article.  Thesis chapters usually need to be significantly shortened for journal publication.

This makes sense. And yes, I would have to trim down my thesis to make a journal, possibly two.

If you transfer the copyright to them, ensure that you can use it for personal reference and other non-commercial reasons (e.g. attach to a resume).  Also ensure that publication by your university is permitted so you don't get them in trouble for having posted it already.

The rules are: These days, in most countries, everything is copyrighted from the moment you write it; you don't need to explicitly "claim" copyright (though making it formal puts you in a better position to protest if someone uses it without permission). So you're in exactly the same position as anyone else who is considering publishing.
The publisher will either have you sign something giving them permission to publish, or will have some such agreement as part of the submission process. Read that carefully to make sure you're happy with it. If it claims more than you want to relinquish, try to negotiate changes before proceeding; if you can't, you'll have to decide whether to go looking for another publication venue.

It's quite common to require the author to transfer ownership of the copyright to the publisher rather than simply giving permission to publish with the author retaining ownership of the copyright.

It used to be more common to simply sell the copyright, throughout  the publishing industry. It's becoming less so, and more negotiable.

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authors: Юлия Александрова


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Should a PhD student use his academic affiliation for his publications which are not related to his thesis?
If a PhD student is working on a research project which is neither related to his thesis topic, nor supported by the university in which he is studying or a faculty member; Does he have the right to use his academic affiliation and contact email?
There are two points here,

If the student is using the university facilities, he may acknowledge that support in the Acknowledgement section of his paper not by using the university affiliation.
The university in which the student is studying in doesn't necessarily want to be associated with whatever research he does in his free hours.

P.S.: Does this consideration apply to the researchers who work in a research institute or company?

The more general version of this question has been asked and answered. I believe this may be a duplicate.

To comment on your PS. A researcher in a company would almost certainly not be permitted to use the company name as affiliation for research that is not endorsed by the company.

The question is "what are criterion for including affiliation," and the accepted answer detailed when you must and when you may include an affiliation.

Probably a closer duplicate: Rules for affiliation for student doing unpaid research in his/her free time? (which is not only about undergraduate students)

I won't post this as an answer because it's not directly related to your question, but your University policy and/or your work contract may also restrict the work you are doing in addition to what you are paid for by your employer. Specifically, in your case, doing research for a collaboration or on your own could fall into the "additional work" category if it's not directly related to your Ph.D., and you should need your advisor/University agreement anyway.

If this is legitimate research, and you used university resources of any kind, couldn't the university actually require you to use their affiliation. They can certainly require you to give them a share in any patent rights.

Mostly for interest, but may be relevant to the question: how different are your main field and the side project in question? Is it more like field A in computer science and field B in CS - or rather like CS and behavioral biology?

@xLeitix I am not sure about other majors, but in civil engineering there are broad research fields available and researchers sometimes work on two or three research fields. For instance, one may work on computational mechanics as his main research field and work on construction materials properties as his second research field (which does not consume that much energy and time and is so interesting for him). This way researchers in civil engineering usually work on two or three research fields.

If the student has a graduate assistantship, then it would be normal for the student to use the sponsoring university as her affiliation.

Yes.
The affiliation serves two purposes: acknowledgement and identification.
Even if it is not part of your thesis research, if you are receiving resources of any kind from your institution, you should list them as your affiliation.  These resources include money (whether directly related to your research or not), computing equipment, internet access, printer access, electricity, phones, faculty and student colleagues (whether coauthors or not), library access (either physical or electronic), whiteboards, local coffee shops/bars, and the general intellectual atmosphere that encourages you to do research in the first place. You can afford to be generous.
Also, the affiliation helps identify you as an author, especially if you have a common name, or you publish other papers with the same affiliation.

My PhD advisor, most of my former PhD students, and I all published papers as students without any faculty member's contribution.  This is not only completely, utterly, absolutely normal and accepted practice in my field, but strongly encouraged practice, at every one of the 11 institutions (7 in the US, 4 in Europe) where I have been affiliated, as a student, postdoc, faculty, or sabbatical visitor. Researchers should be allowed to submit their research for publication without interference from their university. Whether they are faculty, students, or janitors is utterly irrelevant.

First step: Ask your (1) advisor or (2) the department head or (3) both. Since you are not faculty, you may have to get permission to use the departmental affiliation for something that is outside your project. As long as this involves ethical and legitimate research I am sure it is not a problem. The department or university may have guidelines for publishing ethics which you may want to check as well. So, although there may not even be a problem, it is better to be safe than sorry.

you may have to get permission — What??

@JeffE In some places there is such law (e.g. in mine). Usually it is a formality (I guess to protect themselves against people publishing substandard things).

I must say that I am learning from these answers how shabbily graduate students are treated in some parts of the world.  Also the protection from substandard work ought to be the refereeing process, not some university regulations!  This makes me sad...

It can just be published as "unsponsored research".  If they value their relationships highly though, they should dialog with their professors.

If the student is being paid by the university (e.g. as a graduate assistant or part of a research group), then it can't really be called "unsponsored". (I haven't voted on this answer.)

The OP says it is not sponsored by the university, so is not a GA or part of a university research group.

The OP does say he is studying at a university; I think the question is somewhat ambiguous about whether the OP is being paid to be in a research group.

One could be doing research outside of work hours, then the university would not be sponsoring that research.

@Davidmh: that may depend on the field somewhat, but in my field of math it would be bizarre to try to separate "work hours" from other hours - research happens on its own schedule. Perhaps a laboratory scientist could separate time in the lab from time at home, but then how would they do research at home?

@OswaldVeblen:   If one is doing work that was not suggested by a professor, is not paid by the institution, then one is doing one's own private research, which at some time may be given under the umbrella of the institution.

@Mark J: yes, of course - assuming that the OP is not being paid at all by the institution. The question is somewhat ambiguous about whether the OP is being paid at all by the university.

@OswaldVeblen I am required to work (and paid for) 39 h a week. Even on a flexible schedule, anything I do outside these hours is not paid by the university.

@Davidmh As soon as you once download a paper from a paid website or use a paid search service, you are sponsored by the university.

@tohecz IANAL, but it could be argued that the paper was downloaded for my actual paid research, and I reused that knowledge. For what happened IRL, I know that in industry there have been judicial sentences in both directions, so it is certanly a shady area.

@Davidmh: that's not how academic research works; faculty don't separate "paid" research and "unpaid" research - e.g. summer research, even if "unpaid", is still affiliated with the institution. (Also, the typical faculty workload according to many studies is about 55 hours per week, much more than 39.) This is one reason that the premise underlying the OP's question is hard to understand - assuming you have only one job, and the job is at a university, that university is normally the affiliation for all your academic work.

@tohecx:  No, as a student they are already in the University system.  Using the services which are part of being a student, does not make them "sponsored".

@MarkJ Affiliation has nothing to do with "sponsorship".

Sorry to revive old post, but here's one more perspective - consider not some abstract "right" of the student, but rather the political and practical aspect for somebody building a career. For argument's sake, OP, let's assume your paper was on a totally unrelated subject, using no university resources, i.e.,  typed up at home on a personally owned laptop. Even so, think about how your advisor will react when he is surprised to learn that you have been spending time and energy working on this significant outside project and didn't even tell him. PhD students in sciences receive a full stipend, and that is supposed to sponsor ALL your academic energy (regardless of day/night). After all, some of us do our best work at night and at home. The time it would take to conduct independent research and publish is easily like a moonlighting job, and this is usually frowned upon or explicitly forbidden. It is a distraction from your dissertation, and will likely slow down the research of your advisor who is paying your stipend. Finally and most importantly, the advisor has powerful influence over your professional future. When that advisor is writing the all-important recommendation letter, you want him to say you are dedicated, focused, and hard working, not that you are an irresponsible dilettante / rogue player. I know this may sound harsh, but it is the reality of the world. (I'm a full professor in the sciences at a top 10 US university, and I have advised 12 PhD students over 20 years.)

I'm afraid that you sound like a terrible person to have as an advisor.

think about how your advisor will react — With proud congratulations.  (I am also a full professor in the sciences at a top 10 university, and I have advised 9 PhD students over 17 years.)

I admire JeffE's principles, and I know I come across as harsh. I value my mentorship relationships greatly, it is in fact the main reason I'm in academia, and it is the only reason I posted the above opinion - for the protection of the student. The PhD program isn't a continuation of undergrad, when taking "electives" and extracurriculars were encouraged. IMHO when one reaches the PhD level, it is time to focus and devote all academic energy to that degree. At the least, before conducting a major side project, run it by your advisor to get his blessings. After all, you do value his advice?


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Is a PhD needed after an MD or DO if one wants to pursue a research career?
I have completed my MD. I am more interested in research than in clinical practice. I know there are post-doc positions available which accept post-MD candidates. Still I am thinking of doing a PhD in my specialty of interest. However I would like to know what are the benefits of pursuing a PhD after receiving an MD? Is it really necessary to obtain a Ph.D. degree for a research career?

It is all a matter of qualification. If you think you need more training on a particular subject then you need to do a PhD. What is your specialty of interest?

I'd suggest looking through some journals in your specialty of interest. Do the authors usually have Ph.D.s in addition to MDs? (I have published together with a few MDs, and I can't recall any who also had a Ph.D., but that's just anecdotal.)

@andreas My specialty of interest is genetics, particularly genetic epidemiology.

Look at it this way; an MD says you are qualified to practice medicine, and a PhD says you are qualified to do research. In theory you could practice medicine without an MD (it'd be illegal in many countries but not having an MD does not mean you don't have medical knowledge), and likewise you could do research, especially part-time, without a PhD.
Leaving semantics aside, having that degree significantly increases your chances of pursuing a career in a particular field. If you intend on leaving the clinic and devoting your time and energy to research I'd say that a PhD would be expected, when you look for jobs. Whether or not you can bypass that expectation with other qualifications would be speculation.
As it turns out an MD & PhD combination is... uhmmm how to put it delicately..  "so money". :)
I say you put your hat in front of you, figure what you want to do, and go for it. Many doctors here (in Sweden) go for a double degree and it is definitely not something that's frowned upon. On the contrary, in many cases it is an additional merit for future promotions.

I'm an epidemiologist, working with a large number of research-oriented MDs, as well as a number of MD/MPH, MD/PhD and PhD researchers.
In terms of an MD vs. an MD/PhD...
I haven't met anyone whose been held back by doing research with just an MD, but my field admittedly somewhat exalts clinical expertise. The biggest advantage of a PhD is that you will have spent a great deal of time doing research instead of clinical practice. If you want to be an expert in methods for research and analysis, that's where a PhD comes in. The MDs I work with often end up deferring to a PhD (like me) when the research goes from the high level to genuinely in the weeds.

It is very much depend on your country and research field. Technically speaking many medical doctors affiliated to hospitals do research and publishes the results, so it is definitely not impossible. However, you should ask yourself if you have enough technical knowledge in your field you want to go and if you have enough experience in setting up research programs, writing proposals and papers etc.

authors: Александр Калинин


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Are professors' salaries a function of the amount of grant funding they obtain?
Some professors direct large research programs. What is the typical practice for compensating them?
For example, it is not unusual for a top professor to be directing $30 million in research grants every year. If the professor got only 1% of this, it would be a salary of $300,000 per year. I would assume they are paid more than that.
Please do not answer vaguely (impossible to know, it differs from place to place). Obviously, it differs from place to place. I want to know the general and typical practices. What is a common method of compensation.
I am just interested here in compensation for grant-making ability. So, if that is a factor in salary, I would like to know the effect on salary.

I believe most public (and state) schools list the "base" salary of their faculty online. I'm not sure about how much they make from grants.

Are you looking for total income from all sources - such as including consulting, or just compensation from the institution + any funding from other grant/funding sources?

Interesting question. I'm not sure, but I think some grants give nothing to the researcher. (Background: STEM in Canada).

If you don't want to get comments telling you that it differs from place to place, give the location(s) and field you are primarily interested about.

Are you saying professors get no compensation for winning grants? You know it is a LOT of work and effort to win big grants. That is time they could be spending doing research instead. I find it heard to believe they are not paid for winning big grants.

Basically, yes, they don't. Most profs are paid a given monthly salary in the US at a fixed rate by their universities. These are usually 9-month appointments. They can pick up 3 summer months through various mechanisms including grants.

"That is time they could be spending doing research instead" - in some fields, the grant money is often what allows the professor to do research, e.g. by purchasing equipment and hiring students to help carry out the research. It's not a choice between writing grant proposals or doing research in X units of time - if you don't have funding, you can't do research.

While there is the 25% salary augmentation mentioned in the answers below, another important factor to also mention is that it is my understanding that grant money can indirectly affect salary: if a department believes that a candidate is able to bring in large grants, they are likely to be offered a larger salary.

(tongue-in-cheek)Leave it to an academic to not understand how markets work.(end tongue-in-cheek)The basic answer is that you get from your institution what other institutions would be willing to pay you to earn grants for them.The complication to this is that you are trying to perform a market function beholden to a system that sees itself as "beyond" the market.Through the NSF and the NIH (assuming involvement) you are vicariously attached to the State and they makes up their own rules.If you feel you can land a large grant, hold it over your institution's head until they give what you want.

You don't even state a country ! You are asking for practices but this is obviously related to the place in the world. Or do you assume this site is about US academia only ?

In addition to the comment provided by K. Alan Bates, the vast majority of salary is related to the state of the entire job market in your area/country: a waiter in Los Angeles earns a multiple of what a waiter in the Midwest earns and orders of magnitude more than a waiter in Latin America, despite the fact they all perform the same job (even at restaurants of similar quality). This is true (although less so) even for jobs with a large variation in income and an effort/skill component (ex. sales).

@JaredSmith to add: ( I ran out of chars last comment) ...more accurately, all products submitted to the marketplace undergo an auction process and labor is a product just like any other.  Your 'salary'/'wage' is simply a price arrived at through the clearing process and there is a myriad of factors that make prices subjective.  Buyers want to pay 0 because that's most advantageous to them. Sellers want you to give ∞, because that's most advantageous to them.  Both of these positions are untenable, so both the seller and buyer fallback from their "theoretical best" to something that clears.

@JaredSmith ...because voluntary exchange requires mutually perceived benefits or each party will not agree to the exchange (axiomatic)In a formal auction,these dynamics are much more clearly demonstrated but if you were to attend a no reserve auction, the only thing you must bring to the table is "enough" to price the 2nd best offer out of the running.Labor prices differ for many other things as well, but this auctioning process is the primary factor for localized differences.  If you look for a car at a local farm auction, you'll have a completely different environment than Barrett-Jackson.

In the United States, the amount of money that a professor makes is not generally a percentage of the amount of funding that they have under management.  Instead, professors are typically guaranteed a 9-month salary and can supplement with 3 additional grant-funded months (generally at the same rate) for summer.  That salary is set by a combination of regulation, negotiation, and academic rank, in a manner vaguely similar to salaries at a large corporation.
Thus, high funding correlates with high salary because a well-funded professor is also likely to be progressing in their compensation package, but there is typically an effective "cap" on the amount that a professor can receive through their university (consulting, startups, and patent licensing fees may be an entirely different matter, but again are not actually determined by research funding, just correlated as being another common product of a successful research).
As for the actual compensation of specific faculty: for most US state-funded institutions, you can find complete salary databases published as public records.  For example, here is one for Berkeley.  Private institutions have relatively similar compensation rates (or a bit higher), since top private institutions are competing with top public institutions for the same talent.

I worked at an institute in the US that 1) paid faculty a fixed salary but 2) reserved the right to reduce that salary if faculty were not bringing "enough" outside funding. The expected funding levels and the salary reductions were determined by a formula that accounted for various factors (seniority, admin responsibilities, etc).

I am just interested here in compensation for grant-making ability. So, if that is a factor in salary, I would like to know the effect on salary.

While it is very unusual, the University of Arkansas has a Faculty Salary Funding Incentive Plan faculty can earn cash rewards up to 25% of their regular salary for bringing in grant money that covers their regular salary.
But, the total amount of this "bonus" is still a percentage of the base salary, not a percentage of the grant funding.
In the United States, two major sources of grant funding are the NSF and the NIH, both of which limit how much PI salary may be charged to grants:

The NSF limits the amount of salary senior personnel can receive from grant funding to 2/9 of their regular base salary. (See this question for more on that.) This roughly corresponds to a professor getting up to 2 months of their base salary from grant funding, while they typically get 9 months from the university.
The NIH limits the salary that one may receive from an NIH grant with a salary cap.

Professors work hard to get grant funding not because they earn a lot of money from it, but because (a) it's often expected for promotion and tenure, and (b) it allows them to buy equipment and hire students to help carry out the research they want to do.

In Germany, one Euro in grants will typically not automatically increase your salary by x Euro-Cents. Instead, professors will have (possibly multi-year) targets: "Over the next three years, bring in at least x Euro grant money as principal investigator." If you reach your target, you will get a temporary salary increase (Leistungszulage) until the next target review. Reaching your target multiple times in a row may lead to this increase becoming permanent. (Of course, professors' targets usually also include publications, teaching and service.)
As elsewhere, more success in acquiring grant money will strengthen your position on the job market. You will get more offers and have a better bargaining position for Berufungszulagen and Bleibezulagen, so grant success correlates with your salary indirectly.
I have attempted to describe the German academic salary system here: Do professors in Germany have other payment than their standard salary?

In Australia, the salary of an academic is not a percentage of grant income. However, there are a few connections between salary and grant income.

Promotion: Getting grant money is one of the best ways to get promoted up academic levels. The pay scale for the five academic levels are available on most Australian University websites.  For example, the salary of the top of level A (Associate lecture) is typically about half that of Level E (Professor). As a rough guide (and this varies a lot across disciplines, universities, and whether you focus more on service, research or teaching), you would be expected to have some grant income when going for Level C and above.
Professor-plus positions: Some universities have special professorial positions for exceptional researchers. These academics are typically paid more than regular professors, and in some cases may even be on separate contracts that they negotiate. Being in charge of $30 million in grant funding would make you a good candidate for getting one of these professorships.
Maintaining a pure-research position. If you work in a pure research role, you are typically on "soft-money". Thus, if you don't continue to win grants, then you may be out of a job. So that's a difference between having a salary and having no salary.
More money for a better academic life: If you have grant money, then subject to the grant provisions and university expenditure policy, the grant money can often be spent on all sorts of academic activities. While this is not income that you can spend on yourself, if you are an academic that enjoys going to international conferences and so on, then you are going to have more money for those kinds of things. You won't have to spend your own money to top-up such trips. And you might be able to stay in a reasonable hotel rather than an ultra-cheap hotel.


text:
Will US graduate schools accept me retaking a GRE subject test in the spring?
I just took the GRE Mathematics exam and I think I didn't do very well. I answered only 39 of the 66 questions due to lack of time (I knew I could answer a lot more but it would take some time to do the calculations so I left them for the end and never managed to return-I didn't even get to question 60). What I want to say is that I know I can do better but I am not that fast. I tried to register for the October exam but it is impossible-everywhere in my country! So I want to ask:

Will my score be sufficient to at least have a chance in good PhD programs (my goals were UCLA, UIUC, Berkley, Stanford...)?
Do you think that these universities could accept my application if I say I will retake the test in April?

Welcome to Academia.SE. Please do not ask multiple questions in a single post. Also, please take care your question to be on-topic to this website's disciplines and policies.

I have deleted the questions about registration, because they are directly answered on the ETS website. (The reason you can't register online is that the late deadline for the tests is now past.)

Regarding your first question, there's no way to say whether your score will be sufficient, since we can't predict your score.  If you had answered 39 questions on the practice test at http://www.ets.org/s/gre/pdf/practice_book_math.pdf and gotten 90% of them right, you would have received a raw score of 34, which corresponds to a scaled score of 670 (59th percentile).  That's not a great score, especially for Stanford, but it's not so low that they would throw your application out.  You just need the rest of your application to be strong enough that the GRE score looks like an anomaly.

A poor test score is not disqualifying if the rest of your application is strong.
However, an April test date will not work for admission next fall. The reason for this is that the US admissions cycle requires acceptance decisions around mid-April. Since the test is in mid-April, and scores won't be available until mid-May, they would have to accept you "blind," without knowing what your scores would be. So you're essentially "stuck" with the scores you have, at least for admission for the upcoming fall semester.


text:
How do I modify the title of a paper I submitted to ArXiv?
I submitted a paper to the ArXiv, but after it has already been announced, I realized that there is a typo in the title (nothing catastrophic, but still..)
Do you have any idea how to slightly modify the title?

Short answer: I believe the only way is to submit a revision.
Long answer: As per this page:
It is not possible to make changes without generating a new version
Why? To allow authors to make changes to the comments and other metadata fields of publicly announced articles without generating a new version, and hence date stamp, would effectively mean that all changes would be backdated to the time the last version was submitted. This is open to abuse and thus not allowed.
The exceptions to this rule are the addition of journal reference and DOI information. The journal reference field may contain only full publication information for the article; the DOI field may contain only a DOI.

My suggestion: Although this replacement process would not be time consuming, it would be quite redundant and generate a new version of the paper. Since that would anyway happen whenever you revise your paper (say, after you incorporate the comments of referees), I would suggest -- under the assumption that the typo does not look glaringly bad -- to wait until you have a next version ready.

This is good information.  However, I am someone who thinks any spelling error, especially in a title, looks glaringly bad (or at least distracting).  Personally, I would go ahead and submit a revision (arXiv uses the term "replace").  Sure, your paper will become "v2" and generate another line in the daily mailing, and people will be able to see the original version if they really want, but I don't see that as a problem.  If you write in the comment field "fix typo in title" then people who have already read it will know that they don't need to pay attention.

Actually my typo is not awfully bad - since me and the coauthor use a different style (British vs. American spelling), the title and the rest of the text are in two styles. I don't think everybody will even notice, but i would prefer it to be correct. I guess it is best to wait for the revised text and just change all the text to fit the title :)


text:
What to say in PhD application when potential advisor is moving to another university?
I am in the process of applying to PhD programs in Computer Science. A professor with whom I'm interested in working is moving from university A to university B. While he is not super well-known, his research interests and mine align very well, and I am quite sure I would have been admitted to university A had he remained there.
He will not moving to B until latter half of 2015, which means that he will not be able to give input into PhD applications to university B for the 2015 admissions cycle.
I will be applying to university B (with the hope that I can work with him), but is there anything that I can (or should) do with regard to my application? Or just mention it in SoP?
(B is slightly more competitive than A, and both are top 15 schools)

Faculty are mobile. You shouldn't apply to a school for the sole purpose of working with a single faculty member. Depending on how desirable they are on the job market, they may move yet again. Instead, you should choose a program based on its overall profile.

which means that he will not be able to give input into PhD applications to university B

This is incorrect. He certainly can, if he chooses, e-mail the director of graduate admissions at B, say that he's interested in working with you, and ask him/her to consider your application favorably. They don't have to admit you, but that would be true even if he were at B now and had been there a long time.
I'd recommend mentioning this in your SOP, and perhaps also e-mailing him and letting him know that you are applying to B with the idea of working with him. (If you have not done so already.)
That said, "I am quite sure I would have been admitted to university A had he remained there" sounds possibly a bit presumptuous, although I don't know your circumstances. In any case, do what you would have done if this professor wasn't moving: apply to the graduate program where he'll be, let him know, and hope for the best. Good luck.

I re-read what I wrote and that does sound presumptuous--wasn't my intention, sorry! Thank you for your suggestion--I'll email the professor.

It's possible that this situation will actually help your chances of getting admitted to university B.  With a new faculty member, they'll want to help that faculty member get started working with graduate students as soon as possible.


text:
How to gain admissions to graduate school with postgrad diploma, but no degree?
At the age of 21 I entered an (UK) M.Sc./Postgraduate Diploma Programme in Software Engineering.
I entered without an Undergraduate degree based upon modules I undertook in a distance learning Masters Programme from a reputable UK University that required no formal entrance requirements (very unusual situation that I took advantage of).
Out of a cohort of 40 students on the new M.Sc. course I was the only one without an Undergraduate degree although I had Postgraduate credits as mentioned. Again this was unusual.
I graduated with a UK Postgraduate Diploma (but not an M.Sc. as I could not fund the remaining twelve week/3 month project), however my marks were excellent.
Here I am twenty years later with no degree. I wish to undertake further study in Software Engineering and am at a loss to effectively know where to start. I am way too late to go back and do the three month research project to get my M.Sc.
[For those outside the UK a Postgraduate Diploma is effectively the taught/exam component of an M.S/M.Sc. and usually compromises 75% of the course. It is an M.Sc. in all but the three month research project. Most students complete the project but some do not, usually due to funding or academic reasons. My reason was purely funding.]
I am not qualified for an Undergraduate Degree in Software Engineering (effectively a waste of time as I'm somewhat beyond that syllabus) as I do not hold School level University entrance qualifications and I'm not qualified for an M.S/M.Sc. ironically (even though I previously were on an M.Sc!) as I have no first/Undergraduate degree.
If I had finished the extra 12 weeks I'd be qualified to enter a Ph.D. programme but the failure to do the twelve weeks (wholly due to the fees at the time which were huge for the Project) makes me qualified for nothing even though I hold a formal Postgraduate level qualification.
What to do?

All the universities I know well allow for admission in "special cases" (typically related to having a lot of work experience but missing a formal degree). This is usually up to either the dean of studies or an admission committee. Have you talked to somebody at the university administration about this yet?

Is moving country an option? From a random PhD announcement in Sweden, entry requirements are quite lax: "1. taken a second-cycle qualification
2. completed course requirements for at least 240 higher education credits, including at least 60 second-cycle higher education credits, or
3. otherwise acquired essentially the same knowledge in or outside Sweden."

I am quite puzzled by your question. You do not have an undergraduate degree, you do not have a MSc degree (which you did not finish) and you want to do a PHD, 20 years later? Why?

As Alexandros says, it would be good to know "why?". That's because the best answer for you, will depend on the reason why you want to study. Is it for formal accreditation for some specific purpose, or just to learn, or to begin an academic career, or ...?

Have you completed a research project ever?
I know you didn't complete the masters project, but have you completed another?
I know in my part of the world this is almost required for PhD entry.
Whether it is a Master's thesis, honours thesis, undergraduate research project, or otherwise. I am fairly sure you can also count publications, and if you prepared a R&D whitepaper for a company, you could probably count that.
Admissions will want something that proves you can write things and do research.

Is it really too late to do the research project for the MSc? Steven Spielberg completed his BA about 33 years after dropping out.

I can't vouch for the UK, but here on the other side of the puddle, once you've been out in the Real World (TM) for some number of years, your classes start mattering less and what you've done with them starts mattering more. A school's concern, if you're coming back for an advanced degree, is whether you have enough knowledge to cover the prerequisites and enough aptitude to complete the degree in a reasonable amount of time with a reasonable grade. (In other words, whether you'll be a student whom they're good for and who makes them look good.)
For PhD there may be some bias toward folks who are already researchers, but "research" comes in many flavors, not all academic.
(I could have gotten into Columbia in NY for a MS simply on the basis of "you can't be an idiot or IBM wouldn't have hired you" -- plus having aced a few of their extension classes. Can't imagine things are very different there.)

I'm going out on a limb here, but if you would like to get into academic research, perhaps you could manage to get a paper or two published on your own.  My understanding is that if these are well-received, they could make up for any missing formal qualifications.

It is very unfortunate that you miss your project, especially since you do not have an undergraduate diploma either. A project is very important, not only for your ability to do research, but also for your ability to write a long coherent document arguing your research questions. I tend to ask for any thesis from prospective students to verify their abilities.
Lacking a project, you should endeavour to compensate. You should have some long-form written document that may compensate and demonstrate your abilities. This could take the form of a research paper (even unpublished). Your best bet of getting in (assuming you're good enough - a PhD is not for everyone) is to do a thorough review to identify your research group and possible supervisors. Then try to contact them personally, and convince them you're worth their effort. They should be able to guide you through the rest of the process.
Be aware though that academics tend to get lots of unsolicited emails from "prospective PhD students" of varying quality. These tend to be especially from the middle east due to government sponsored scholarships without entry requirements on the sponsoring side (if students get accepted they get the scholarship - if they fail, they often have to pay back the scholarship).


text:
How to treat an under-performing coauthor?
I am a postdoctoral researcher in a lab, having person (e.g.) X as a colleague, also a postdoctoral researcher like me, having obtained a PhD two years after me.
Here is the problem: In the last two years, I have taken initiatives that have led to a number of publications. My collaboration with X was not so close, since I ended up doing 80% of the work, in addition to having the original ideas, and he/she was only helping by e.g. writing a Section, having general discussions, or giving general comments.
I have tried "pushing" (with frequent emails, meetings etc.) but it did not have a good result, as I understand that he/she does not feel motivated by me: the result has included some "ugly" emails, not an oral though.
I have been doing this, waiting that in exchange, X would include me as a coauthor in one of the papers that would occur from his/her research (none so far and nothing in-progress from their part, as far as I know).
How to treat this person, given that he/she will not leave, as the professor seems to have some special interest in them.
In my domain, the order of the authors in publications matters, so in our "joint" publications I am the first author, but is this enough? I am thinking that if we both continue independently we would both lose, but do not know how to motivate him/her. I suppose the pressure has to come from the professor, who let's say that cares but has other more important priorities. I have mentioned the problem to the professor, he/she just told to X that they should produce more, and that's it.
How to handle this situation?

For a single paper it might be a problem. But for further: either the person is essential (or helpful) or is not. So, what is the problem?

Is there a specific reason why you do not just stop working with him if you feel he is not pulling his weight? I understand you say that he is here to stay, but certainly this does not mean that you need to publish with him, right?

George, are you contributing significantly to your peer's research?

You might simply consider that the current situation is fine: you say that you do get help from your collaborator, so there is little reason to stop working with him or her; you lead the collaboration and, for this, get first authorship. This will earn you much (well deserved) better opportunities; by comparison, your collaborator will have a hard time, because no recent first-author publications will look bad on his or her CV.
You might have wanted a more active collaborator, and it is a good idea to try to help him or her do better, but you just cannot push someone against their will. It is possible that he or she does not have what it takes to handle more core tasks, or that so he or she believes. In this case, pushing too hard would amount to cornering him or her into an impossible situation, no good would happen.
Learn to change what you can (e.g., if you have the option to start another collaboration with someone else it might be a very good idea; if you have another job available with potentially better co-worker, you might want to try it, etc.) and do with what you cannot change. Ultimately, you have the upper hand on your own work, and that is how it is supposed to be.
Ho, and about getting co-authorship in exchange for your work: no one is supposed to give you co-authorship in exchange for anything; you can rather be invited to work on a project, and then this work is what grants co-authorship. I am not sure how you meant it, but giving co-authorship as a mere reward for something unrelated to the publication is a serious academic misconduct.

I agree, but I caution everybody against "trying to help [equals] do better", especially if "better" means contributing more to your own research agenda. Frankly, I am not at all surprised that the OP's attempts have failed, and I am quite sure I would also react very badly to them.

I am not saying about giving co-authorship as a mere reward for something unrelated to the publication. As Pete L. Clark puts it, I would like them to "pull their own weight".

Your last paragraph is gold. This whole co-authorship exchange business could be viewed as an Ethics breach. I missed it from the OP question, is he/she helping the coauthor in HIS research?

(Let me say that I wrote my answer concurrently with this one.  I think it is an excellent answer, and if I hadn't already typed most of mine when it appeared I might not have felt the need to leave one of my own.)

(Peter Jansson's answer is interesting, and I personally do like the idea of documenting contributions more explicitly than is currently fashionable.  But I think it is fair to say that this more like tomorrow's solution than today's: though people like us would like to see these protocols followed, at the moment those who follow them assiduously seem to be in the minority, so it will probably not be effective in the short term to try to hold a "lagging" collaborator to this standard.)
In my opinion there is relatively little you can do to force your colleague to pull his own weight on your current and past projects, but on the other hand your situation is not so bad.

Here is the problem: In the last two years, I have taken initiatives that have led to a number of publications.

That is certainly not the problem!  Rather, that sounds great for you.

My collaboration with X was not so close, since I ended up doing 80% of the work, in addition to having the original ideas, and he/she was only helping by e.g. writing a Section, having general discussions, or giving general comments.

At least X did 20% of the work; that's a lot better than nothing.  Seriously, a lot of people on this site are complaining about being pressured or forced to add coauthors who have literally done nothing helpful on the paper, or who have even dragged them down / wasted their time.  I think that in most academic fields, 20% contribution is certainly sufficient for coauthorship.

In my domain, the order of the authors in publications matters, so in our "joint" publications I am the first author, but is this enough?

That's really the good news: by consistently appearing as first author, you are getting the lion's share of the credit.  If it makes you feel better: I work in a field in which author order is alphabetical, and in my experience it is relatively common for some coauthors to have contributed less than 20%.  So cheer up.  By the way, your quotation marks around joint look a little uncollegial: your coauthor did some of the work, so it is joint work.  This and other clues make me think that you may be overly worried about this and perhaps pushing a little too hard.
What can you do in the situation?
1) If you don't value someone's contribution, don't pressure them to include you on their own projects.  Moreover, if you feel like someone is not pulling their own weight on a project, adding a project where you don't pull your own weight may seem just with respect to the two of you, but from the perspective of the larger academic world you're each trying to take credit for more work than you actually did.  It would be easy for most of us to multiply our apparent productivity simply by "exchanging more papers" with our collaborators.  We must resist that.
It sounds like you are, or perceive yourself to be, a more productive / serious / insightful researcher than Dr. X.  If so, the story you want to tell is that Dr. X did some work with you but that his contribution is not a major part of your research program.  You accomplish that by doing your own work, not letting your interactions slow you down, and making sure that in your joint work the primacy of your contribution gets documented (as it has been).
2) Make sure that your supervisor knows the situation and can speak and write accurately about your respective contributions.
If you are getting first authorship every time and your supervisor has told Dr. X that he needs to work harder, then you are laying groundwork for him to describe you as being the prime mover in your collaborative work with Dr. X.  It would be a good idea to speak to him explicitly about this.  Assuming he agrees, he is then ethically obligated not to try to characterize Dr. X's contribution as equal to your own.  If you are in doubt that he might not see it that way, I would suggest erring on the side of showing (not telling) your supervisor how capable and productive you are.  You do this not by complaining about Dr. X -- just get the facts across; don't rub it in or be bitter about it -- but by going on to do more and better work.
3) If you don't want to collaborate with Dr. X in the future unless he does at least X% of the work -- you can choose a specific value of X, at least up to 50 -- hash that out with him now, before you work on any new projects.  You are more than within your right to do so.  Indeed, as Peter Jansson indicates, that is a best practice.

That's a superb answer. The only thing I would underline a bit more is your last point. I see no reason in the question why you have to collaborate with this guy. If you feel it is not beneficial to you and your work, stop doing it.

I believe one possible solution is to bring in understanding of what the scientific community puts in the terms authorship and contributorship. Note that the term contributorship is gaining interest because it focusses on the entire research process, not just the authoring, which can be misread as writing.
The Vancouver Protocol (exemplified here by the ICMJE version; you may find it worthwhile to do a search on "contributorship", "vancouver protocol" and "authorship") provided a first stated criteria for accepting someone as author. Putting this on the table for discussion is always a good idea. Many will probably not like the quite strict rules but when one considers them they do provide a good framework for accepting someone as author. Defining what you or the group within you work sees as acceptable grounds for being listed on papers should definitely help avoid discussions in the future. Anyone disagreeing will have to set their contribution in the light of the rules and convincingly show they fulfil them. Of course some may have a very inflated view of their own contribution but within a group such discrepancies will be harder to maintain.
An interesting idea for establishing is also provided by the authororder.com (I am not in any way associated) site.


text:
Is it realistic to prefer a non-tenure-track research position?
I am a PhD student in a biomedical field in the United States. After seeing professors' Google calendars and figures like this (link) about how limited the time tenure-track faculty get to spend on their research is and how many other demands on them there are, I am reconsidering whether or not that is something that I want to do.
The idea of being a "research professor" who is free from those other demands and has research as a primary focus appeals to me - but I am not sure whether this is a realistic option as a career choice. I have heard some people say soft money can be relatively stable as long as you are collaborative and don't put all your eggs in one basket, but I have also seen a lot of other people who think these positions are unstable and highly stressful and something you should only do for a few years while trying to get a tenure-track position.
So my questions are:

Is it realistic to hope to spend my career as a research professor, or is this usually something people only do short-term?
Can I have reasonable job stability doing this by working collaboratively?
Do research professors tend to be more or less stressed than tenure-track professors?
If you have experience with this career path (or know people who are in this career path) is it something that you would recommend to others? Why or why not?

I think I address parts of this question in my answers here and here.

The chart you link seems highly suspect to me. What, professors have no leisure time? I'd like to see the article this came from, otherwise without any context it seems like nonsense. In general, people tend to make sweeping generalizations about how busy professors are, how stressed out they are, how they have no time for research etc. Yet all the professors I know seem quite happy and mostly have healthy balanced lives (with occasional stress factors as with any professional job) and publish a lot of research. My advice: don't listen to clichéd stereotypes, find out what will work for you.

@DanRomik good points, but possibly there's an element of sample bias? (Or dare I say it, survival bias)

@YemonChoi of course. Professors who don't know me are, naturally, a lot more unhappy and stressed out than those who do. :-)

@DanRomik, here is the article that graph came from: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/04/09/research-shows-professors-work-long-hours-and-spend-much-day-meetings . The graph shows how working hours were allocated, not all hours of the day. Participants averaged 61 working hours per week.

Thanks, that's helpful. It confirms my suspicion that the data in the chart has zero relevance to me or to anyone I know.

@DanRomik glad to hear that! May I ask what field you are in, and how you find that you and others you know distribute your time between various tasks?

I’m in math. I don’t keep accurate track of how I distribute my time, so don’t feel comfortable making public estimates of such things that could end up being wildly incorrect. Besides, sorry if this will come across as condescending but in my opinion it would be just as inadvisable for you to rely on anecdotal data from me and other strangers on the internet as it would be to rely on the article you linked. If you want anecdotal data, ask me if I’m happy with my career choice; I can report that I am (but this could also be selection bias at work as @YemonChoi pointed out).

By the way, the distribution of time is very nonuniform across the year. In many disciplines, summers can be used almost 100% for research for example. In some universities teaching can be concentrated in half the year. These are some of the reasons I found the survey you were citing not useful.

I actually think it is a fact that many if not all professors work very hard spliting their time between research, teaching, admin, and service. I disagree with Dan Romik that these figures are exaggerated over generalizations.

Background: Answering this as a biomedical researcher currently in a tenure-track position who definitely looked at some non-tenure, 100% soft money positions. One thing to note, there are also effectively 100% soft money tenure-track positions out there in the world. What a tenured, all-soft money position actually means is left as an exercise to the reader.

Is it realistic to hope to spend my career as a research professor, or
  is this usually something people only do short-term?

There are people I know who spend their careers like this, and some of them are happy. But there are also a lot of people who either leave for tenure-track positions, or switch over to tenure-track in time. But it is a career path - indeed, one of my former departments has an entire structured program for these people to make a career out of it, including wrestling with how do you evaluate them for promotion, etc. Of the people who have left, there were two major complaints in my experience:

Instability, in terms of having yearly contracts, no salary support, etc.
Many departments restrict non-tenure track faculty in some ways - most commonly, deciding on tenure, but also potentially on hiring committees, advising, etc. Some people resented feeling like 2nd class faculty.

Can I have reasonable job stability doing this by working
  collaboratively?

Ironically, the most stable people I know in these positions are essentially "super-postdocs", and not actually on lots of grants, but well supported by a single, large center-type grant.
I will say that, as someone who works very collaboratively, and is also in a position where one of the most common tracks forward is building up a somewhat piecemeal funding portfolio instead of a single "one-and-done R01", I don't find it particularly stable, or at all less stressful.

Do research professors tend to be more or less stressed than
  tenure-track professors?

Depends on the position. The ones I knew who were funded as part of a center, core, etc. where whether or not the application failed wasn't particularly on their shoulders? Less stressed.
The ones trying to scramble to keep 10x 10% effort projects alive and going at the same time, while worrying if they'd get their contract renewed? Very stressed, because you can never get off the treadmill.

If you have experience with this career path (or know people who are
  in this career path) is it something that you would recommend to
  others? Why or why not?

I ended up taking a tenure-track job, and choosing one with a fairly generous amount of hard money, and don't regret this at all.
If you can find someone who is willing to put you on a large, stable grant that can support a substantial % of your salary, even if it is technically hard money, that's a decent path I've seen some people enjoy immensely. But if you're expected to find and bring in all your own money? You're going to spend as much time, if not more, scrambling for funding, without the carrot of tenure at the end.
It also depends on why the position is not tenure-track. In some places, that's just the way things are - for example, in one institution, PhDs basically couldn't get tenure, so their positions were non-tenure track, but their contracts were for long periods. In that case? Not a red flag in my mind. In another, it felt very much like those faculty members were very-low commitment bets on the university's behalf, and if they didn't work out, they were disposable. That's not a position I'd want to be in.

"What a tenured, all-soft money position actually means is left as an exercise to the reader."  Perhaps I'm not being imaginative enough, but I'm having trouble picturing this.  A person whose employment is all but guaranteed coupled with a salary that is just the opposite?

@HermitianCrustacean "We can't fire you, but we don't have to pay you." Only really useful for the political protection of tenure. It's often used in medical schools and the like, because clinicians can make up their salary via service in a way PhD-types can't.

Thank you! Do you have any other suggestions for what might be a good career path for someone who wants to be "mostly research" and not teach?

If you don't want to teach, and you don't want the stress of raising your own salary, the best option can sometimes be industrial/governmental lab research. This obviously depends on your field, but there are intellectually satisfying, valuable things being done out there, and I wouldn't rule it out just because it isn't academia.

@Tapeworm As mentioned, industry or the government may be good paths forward. You can also try to find a position as a staff scientist, although these are rare, and a pretty steep ask for the labs involved. It should also be noted that my current position is tenure track, has a decent amount of hard money, and no teaching obligation. That's...rare...but not so rare as to be non-existent.

@Fomite - tenure track, hard money, and 0% teaching - wow! What does the "hard money" part of your job involve doing?

@Tapeworm Research :)

@Fomite wow! :-) Any tips on how to someday find a job like this?

@Tapeworm Cast a wide net. The position I took wasn't one I thought I would apply for in a million years.


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(Relatively) stable research careers other than tenure track?
(For the purpose of this post, relatively stable doesn't necessarily mean "job for life" like tenure, just that you don't have to constantly worry about losing your job.)
I have observed that tenure-track professors are incredibly busy, and most of what they are busy with is not research but teaching/administration/service/managing their lab, and that they often get very little time to do hands-on research the way a PhD student or postdoc does.
For those looking for an alternative career path where you do get to spend quite a bit of your time with hands-on research, what options are there?
I know that there are "research professors" who are non-tenure-track, often 100% soft money, but that level of job insecurity sounds incredibly stressful...
My questions are:
1) How do jobs at "research institutes" work? Or jobs at major hospitals that have research programs?
2) Are there any positions where you have relatively good job security because you are there to help/consult/collaborate on multiple other peoples' projects, but still get a chance to have a little research of your own too?
(FWIW, my PhD field is epidemiology, so I hope I could be useful to consult/collaborate similar to the way the biostatisticians do - but I'd hope to have at least a little of my own research too - either the option to get my own grants when I can but not be worried about losing my job when I can't, or even just doing secondary analyses of public datasets that didn't need funding.)

There are permanent research positions in Europe (eg CNRS).  Is your question US centric?

I'm from the US, but willing to move to Europe if jobs/work permits/etc. worked out.

I'm an Epidemiologist, so I'll answer things from that perspective:

"How do jobs at "research institutes" work? Or jobs at major hospitals
  that have research programs?"

Assuming it's not, as mentioned a 100% soft-money faculty position, you're essentially working as part of a larger research group. This does mean that you get to spend lots of time doing research, but it also means you're still both beholden and dependent on grant money. It's just someone else's job to get it. So you have as much job security as said grant money can provide, which can range from a huge amount to almost none at all. This is also true for hospitals - you're essentially a staff scientist, but that money needs to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is grants.
It might not be as stressful if you don't have to get them yourself, but there's also no promise of any sort of academic freedom. There may not be the time and resources to do any of that.

Are there any positions where you have relatively good job security
  because you are there to help/consult/collaborate on multiple other
  peoples' projects, but still get a chance to have a little research of
  your own too?

This is a very hard path to climb. I'm a modeler, so much of my work is essentially doing this - shoring up my own research agenda while spending a lot of time as "Specific Aim 3" on someone's grant. I'd suggest that doesn't actually have a lot of job security behind it because it means there's lots of points of failure and a perpetual need to keep things going so that you're 100% covered. There are research organizations which hire epidemiologists, and where you're essentially paid through contracts with other companies, which may be what you're looking for, but again, the chance to have a "little research on your own" might not exist. You're working on someone else's dime, so your own passion projects are essentially an indulgence on their part.
If you're genuinely interested in research without grantwriting and a stable career, I'd suggest looking at research positions in the federal government. What agencies will depend on what aspect of epidemiology you work in.

Thank you! Do you know if any career paths exist where there's the option to write your own grants, but at times when you're not funded you just switch to working on other peoples' projects instead of losing your job?

@Tapeworm Honestly, what you've described is a "dream job". The closest thing you're likely to find is a position with a substantial hard money component, so while you still need to do some grant getting, not everything will come crashing down if you don't succeed. These jobs are hard to come by in Epi thought, and if you really fail, tenure will still be an issue.


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how to deal with difficult students who do not reply to teacher's email?
I hope all is well,
I find myself in a situation where one student keeps a grim face when I teach. It seems he is not happy with the way I deliver the material. This makes me feel uncomfortable and it affects my mood.
I tried to be nice and accomodating. I also tried to explain why I could not run the session the way he pleased. However, instead of understanding, he used the arguments I provided against me to my senior colleague who took his stand and started to point out the problems and the negative feedback I received and ignore the positive ones.
I understand that there is room for improvements, but it seems that dealing with a superior whereby he takes an extreme view of one student is very emotionally challenging and is causing me mental distress.
My senior colleague is a perfectionist typed individual who likes everything perfect. It is tricky first to teach a particular class to make things perfect from the first time. However, my colleague does not seem to be kind in pointing this out or appreciating the positive feedback. It is tough to impress him. I need to impress him so that he does not write a negative comment on my performance. I can say that I am learning a lot, though and I appreciate both the comments of my senior and that of the student.
However, the student does not want to give details on what is staggering him with the teaching. He does not like my teaching and delivery, but he does not want to engage or inform me what is puzzling him or how I could help him or improve my delivery. He just wants to complain.
I tried sending him an email as a gesture that I was willing to hear him and informed him that I stood by his side, but he decided to ignore my email and my presence during the session entirely.
Although he comes to class, he completely ignores my presence, smiling and laughing with his colleagues. All is fine, but it came to the point where he spoke to my support colleagues, discussing lets say not nice stuff. This annoyed me, but I kept my patience to understand how to deal with such challenges in academia pedagogically.
I have many students who mostly are happy with my module and delevery, but some are not, which is normally the case in any module. I really tried to be helpful, but he is not engaging, and I do not know how to approach him anymore.
Any advice would be appreciated.

Are you the professor for the course or a TA? How does a student seem to have such power?

@Buffy I am the teacher not TA

"My senior colleague is a perfectionist individual who likes everything perfect. [..] It is tough to impress him. "
why would you like to impress him?

I guess I am not clear what the problem is; having a few students who openly dislike the teacher is not so unusual, especially in large, lower-level classes with less experienced instructors. Is this student disrupting your class? Is the student's behavior undermining your reputation with your colleagues / administration? Is your "senior colleague" doing so? Are you worried about getting fired?

@cag51 and EarlGrey I paraphrased my answer. I do not understand why I am voted downward. Is my question wrong or inappropriate ?

There are two issues here, an educational issue and a political one. They may be at odds.
For the educational issue, I'd let further communication with the student go until it becomes necessary. Not every student will be pleased with you no matter what you do since there are differences in how individuals learn. A brilliant student might not actually need any lectures at all. But there is little point in arguing with them, and making changes to suit a single person will likely displease others.
I'm a bit more concerned about your senior colleague. If they have power over you then you may just have to go along with their (misplaced) ideas to some extent. However...
There are very few students who will learn anything with a single "perfect" statement of it. I have evidence from my own long history that it just doesn't work. Anything with any complexity at all requires reinforcement. Some of that reinforcement is just saying things in different ways and using analogy and metaphor to give a general idea along with the technical. Another reinforcement mechanism is student exercises that the student gets feedback on. Not just grades. Perhaps your senior colleague doesn't understand any of that, though I can't diagnose at a distance.
Your job (IMO) is to teach every student. What that means is setting the conditions in which learning can occur if the student is willing to put in the effort. Not all will, and some will prefer that you do things differently. Setting the conditions means more than just providing information. Wikipedia does that sort of thing pretty well, but is inadequate for real learning - especially for novice learners.
(Note that a previous US vice-president used "setting the conditions" as a euphemism for torture. I think about that sometimes.)
As an example, from mathematics, of the perfect being the enemy of the good, the formal definition of the derivative of a real valued function is incomprehensible to students on first reading, though it is perfectly concise and correct. It takes even good students quite a long time to grok it properly. Why does it have this structure? What are the implications? What does it tell us about the behavior of functions? It is a magic incantation for a while and takes a lot of work to sort it out. True, a student can memorize it without understanding, but that isn't learning.

As a perfectionist who is sometimes someone's senior colleague... You have been told you're not doing a good job. Your question makes it sound more about your struggle and less about the issue at hand, which, I believe, a perfectionist would have a huuuge issue with. "It is hard" is not an argument that lands well with people like myself. Sure, it is hard, so what? Do you outright refuse to work towards that goal? Well, this is precisely what bad reviews are for! There is nothing inherently bad in getting one, by the way -
you are free to choose to spend more effort and get a good review or spend less effort and get a bad one, if you decide that the demands are unreasonable.
To deal with the senior colleague, you would need to provide an outline of how are you going to respond to this issue. The one they will approve of - that will also potentially be a big learning opportunity for you. If they actually have brought up the authority/seniority card before, even better! They would almost surely love to pass their experience on, and hate being argued with. Do not think poorly of it based on the interaction alone - their knowledge is often bona fide very valuable.
In the process of doing so, leverage your senior colleague to deal with that student. Instead of assuming a defensive stance which is unsustainable - indeed, the biggest problem listed in your question is "he just wants to complain". Say that you are willing to work with this student. Try your best to help them. Evidently, approaching them directly did not help. Ask your senior colleague: "I would like to help, but I do not even know where to start, I do not know what are they unhappy with and how to accommodate them better. What would you do/What should I do?" Try to be cool-headed and not let emotions heavily impact your first responses. You are not getting anywhere by shielding yourself from further interactions and being dismissive.
And if anything, if your colleague's approach also fails, it would be a lot harder for them to blame it on you.


text:
Keep my promise not to work?
Short version: a potentially upcoming 5-authors maths paper already have authorship dispute drama. I am not among the 5, but I believe I found the solution to the part they got stuck on. Should I tell them?
=====
Full story:
A is a new graduate student, never have any papers, decided to work with B a post-doc (who had a few paper before) on a topic. They did some significant amount of work, but still nowhere close to a result. A tells his friend C (another graduate student with 1 paper), not to ask for help but just to let him what kind of thing he is working on. But unexpectedly, C got interested and work on it for a while and get some new results, before telling A and B. The work is significant, but A claims that give it a few more weeks and they could have gotten that themselves. C's advisor come to his defense and insist that it is only fair that C got credits as well. Unfortunately, C asked D - an undergraduate in his junior year - to develop a computer simulation, which ended up allowing C to realize that a tweak to the hypothesis is necessary. C never told D what it is for, but D realized that after chitchat with B. Now D's advisor also want him on the paper, since he did some work, and it would really help him in applying to grad school if the paper can be done soon. Neither A nor B is happy about this of course. To make thing worse, E a post-doc from CS department, happen to see the problem and some work on the blackboard. He knew some papers in CS that happen to solve some aspect of the problem, and told B about it, which eventually cause their earlier work to be much more simplified. B thinks E deserve coauthorship too, much to A's resentment.
Now I was not there for the drama. A told me about this over beer a few months ago. I curiously asked what the problem is, and A told me everything including what they are stuck on, after making me promise to never work on this and never tell anyone else about the problem (A don't want to have a 6-author paper). I kept the promise, until recently, when reading some papers, and I found something and realized that this could be as well the key to the problem. After some more computation, I am 90% sure that this method would solve the problem, but I promised not to work on it, so I did not work out everything. Now I am torn. They are unlikely to ever know about this method (I'm in a very different specialty), but their effort had been walking in circle for a few months now. I had never had a paper before, so if I do put effort into this, at least I wanted to be recognized for it.
EDIT: as far as I know, there are only 10 people who know about the paper, us 6 and 4 professors who don't really care nor contribute; it is not public. I think A considered me his emotional crutch which is why he told me about it. The work is probably not good enough for publication, right now it consists of a bunch of different approaches and reformulation that all seemed very close to solve the problem, but did not.

There might be two choices: Tell A about your work and make it a 6-author paper or write a new one after they publish it. If they have made the paper open to public, there is no reason that they stop people from improving it.

What's wrong with six authors?  I consider that few authors.

@Anonymous Physicist In some institutions, getting a job require a minimum factor. This factor is calculated for example as the sum of impact factors of the journals the researcher published divided by the number of authors, for every paper.

@MikeyMike I would not want to work anywhere that mindlessly applies metrics like that.

@AnonymousPhysicist clearly you don't work in pure math, where a vast majority of papers are written by 1-3 coauthors. There's nothing "wrong" per se with six coauthors, but it is highly unusual and would mean that the credit each coauthor gets will be fairly low.

Send A the paper you were reading, say "I think this might help" and then get out of the way.

It sounds to me like you're asking this question in the  hope that someone will come along and tell you to do the right thing. Well, here goes: you need to do the right thing and not break your promise.
Honestly, aside from the obvious moral and ethical argument (which by itself is already pretty compelling), even from a purely selfish and utilitarian point of view I don't see how anything good can come out of you surreptitiously solving the problem and then claiming your place as the sixth coauthor. Given that apparently this is not going to be a very major result or paper anyway, the only thing you will achieve is to make an already messy and acrimonious situation only more messy and acrimonious. Most likely the paper will never get written, and even if it does, everybody including you will come away with a bad taste and little to show for all their efforts and frustration other than a dubious coauthorship, whose value will be more than negated by the effects on the reputations of a few of the people involved, especially you for breaking an explicit promise.
With that said, I think there are two options that could potentially let you participate in the work and benefit from your idea without breaking any promises or acting dishonestly:

Tell A that you have an idea that may be used to attack the problem. Make it clear that you intend to honor your promise not to work on the problem, unless he gives you explicit permission to do so (until the 5-author paper is made public, at which time your promise becomes void anyway). At the same time, you are also under no obligation to tell him your idea, and may legitimately ask to be allowed to officially join the project (with the implied promise of coauthorship of the paper in the event that you end up making a meaningful contribution) as a condition of revealing your ideas to the group. They can then decide if that's something they're interested in or not - either way you are morally in the clear in my opinion.
In the event that you prefer not to discuss your idea with A and the rest of the group, or if you ask them to join the project and they refuse, you can simply wait until they make their results public, and then (as John Ma proposed in the comments) you will be free to use your methods to improve their results and publish your own paper, assuming your improvement is sufficiently interesting to make for a publishable result.

Finally, I should add that although six-author papers are relatively rare in pure math, there is nothing wrong or shameful about publishing such papers, and if each of the authors can indeed claim to have made a reasonably meaningful contribution, then the paper will still have positive value to everyone's careers. Furthermore, going from 5 to 6 coauthors does not involve such a major dilution of the credit (beyond the level to which it is already diluted), so if you have a genuinely new and useful idea to contribute that could make this a pretty attractive proposition for the existing coauthors.

It sounds to me like everyone has got their toes trodden on a little, but if the paper is still not publishable then no one author currently has a claim to precedence. While I can certainly understand each person feeling protective of their work, they will have to get used to it, because it can happen reasonably often.
It seems to me that in this case everyone would actually be better off by forming a collaboration and getting on with improving the work together. If having 6 authors is considered particularly unusual (it would be in my field), then having a small number of such papers and a growing group of collaborators would be a plus point on a CV (given that this is clearly not going to be a single-author paper). Also, pulling together a range of different techniques into a coherent whole would be a good outcome.
From your point of view, there's probably still something to be gained by thinking about the 'social' side of your choice. Asking someone not to work on something seems a little silly, although understandable.
You could simply tell your friend that you came across something that you think would work, and that you didn't go out of your way to work on the problem but came across the idea while doing other work. You contribution may or may not end up being worth authorship.
Alternatively, you could choose to not actively pursue authorship (I don't think what you've done so far would be enough necessarily; it sounds more like acknowledgements-level), and instead take a more circumspect route with something like 'I came across this in my reading and it reminded me of your problem; do you want to take a look?' You might then end up being asked to contribute and become an author, or they might do the work themselves. But you would have less chance of upsetting them that way, and might put yourself into their category of 'people I might work with in future'.