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Career change: Entering Academia realistic at 36?
I am thinking very hard about making a big career transition and could use some guidance. My end goal is to work in Academia as a Cognitive Neuroscience researcher.
For the past ten+ years I have been working in tech as an engineer. My bachelor's degree is in Social Sciences and
I did very well academically (4.0/.40 Summa Cum Laude with Honors - from a US institution). I have been thinking about going back to school for several years, and the thing that most predominantly interests me is Cognitive Neuroscience. I listen to podcasts, read books and papers on the topic, and generally spend a lot of time thinking about the field outside of work. I am also at the point where I have realized I do want to leave tech, and honestly the only reason I haven't made this move earlier is finances and uncertainty.
Important note, I am a US expat living in the Netherlands and plan to stay here long-term (and potentially go for citizenship at some point).
Primary Question:
So the question is, am I insane to make this change at this point in life? I would have to go back to school for a second bachelors > masters > PhD. As I understand it this is a fairly competitive field. I'm willing to put in the time and work, even take on the student debt, but it would be good to know if my prospects for actually getting a paid job after all of that are non-existent.
Some things going against me or that make the transition difficult:

Age: I am 35 (I would be 36 by the time I start my second bachelors, potentially 37)

8+ years of school will mean I won't be starting a new career until I am in my 40s

Cost: This means taking on a lot of student debt (my previous debt is paid off)
Also this means not buying a house and going back to student housing
I have never done any kind of academic research before
My previous bachelors degree is in an unrelated field
Being a expat complicates things a little bit as well but I think that is manageable
If have a depreciable skill-set so if I go back to school for 8+ years and can't make the cut that could be a problem.

Some Key Uncertainties:

It seems even getting into a graduate program is dubious; and I am not sure what my real prospects are for a researcher job once I achieve a PhD.
From what I understand, doing academic research after achieving a PhD means more or less leading research and managing other people. I'm not sure I would be good at this. I believe I could do research on my own, but managing other people sounds very difficult, I wonder if anyone can speak to this?
I really enjoy learning things outside of neuroscience as well. While I imagine that would become my primary focus, does joining academia to research a specific topic mean you basically have to give up reading/learning outside of the field in order to compete? I really enjoy some specific periods of history, philosophy, as well as cosmology and others.

Some things going for me:

High interest in thinking very deeply about this topic and contributing to the field.
Previous Academic performance (overall I excelled in all areas).
I absolutely loved school and honestly have missed it a lot, so  doing the work won't be a problem for me.
I have some savings since I was saving to buy a house, so I have some wiggle room.

Do you intend to study in the Netherlands or elsewhere, including the US? Europe generally?

You're aware that there are probably companies in neuroscience-related areas looking for engineers?

Why do a second bachelors? If you're sufficiently motivated, have built up enough background knowledge and have relevant tech skills, you might be able to go straight into a PhD.

You might be interested: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/150493/how-do-i-determine-if-a-phd-is-financially-feasible-for-me

Should you need a bachelor's to get into a graduate program, you should look into remote/part time degrees. For someone as motivated as you it would be fairly easy and allow you to keep your income while working towards your goal.

Random thoughts. If you become a Dutch citizen, it will probably be free of charge to enter a lot of universities in all of European Union (Erasmus program). You might be able to avoid some additional debt if you work part time at least when doing the Bachelors.

Frame challenge: Being interested in something does not mean you should pursue it as a career. Not even close!

In the Netherlands you will probably need to also do a masters in excess of the bachelors to be allowed to start a PhD. According to the Bologna Process standardizing upper education in the EU (Actually quite a bit wider than the union if you look at it) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bologna_Process

You do not have to manage people to be an academic or scientist.  You do have to manage people to get paid a good salary.

Perhaps this is a question of opportunity cost. By pursuing an academic career, what is it that OP is foregoing?

Have you considered pivoting your engineering career towards a field you're passionate about instead of making a complete shift to academia? I'm a Machine Learning Engineer collaborating with one of the world's leading genomics labs. Our projects range from bacterial species classification to RNA folding, among others. Even though I didn't have any prior experience in genomics, my expertise in ML combined with my genuine enthusiasm for scientific endeavour's made the collaboration possible. I'm also listed as coauthor on all the papers we work on.

Should you choose academia despite the prevailing advice, view your decade in the tech industry as a distinct advantage. With your strong programming background, you can tackle research problems that require computational solutions, giving you an edge over other candidates. Additionally, your experience in collaboration and problem-solving, honed in the tech industry, can greatly benefit your academic pursuits.

Quite a lot of helpful comments. A couple responses:
@Buffy my plan was to study in the Netherlands, but I might consider elsewhere to achieve my goal.

@ScottSeidman: that might be an interesting idea, but I am thinking of moving away from engineering overall.

@N.Virgo: So I was mainly looking at institutions here in the Netherlands, and at least as far as I can find it is necessary to have a masters before getting a PhD, and to even apply to masters Program you have to have the pre-reqs in official coursework that either allow you to do a pre-masters, or you have to do bachelors

I'll answer as a life-long academic (now retired) with a PhD in biomedical sciences. I have true appreciation for your motivation and admire your willingness to take such a courageous career step, but I must answer you with the frankness and honesty that your question deserves. Don't do it. Absolutely, do not do it. You mention that the educational track will be 8+ years. Actually, the average time needed to go from a bachelor's to doctorate in neurosciences is 7 years. A second bachelor's will take 3 years at the minimum (given that you might be able to transfer general education credits, etc.), so that comes to 10 years at the least. THEN you will need an additional 1 or 2 years in postdoctoral study in order to even apply for an academic position. So the actual time frame would be 12 - 14 years of full-time study. At the youngest, you would be 47 years old -- maybe even in your 50s -- when you started to compete with bright, young applicants who are in their mid- to late 20s. AND the academic/research job market is VERY competitive, even for the younger go-getters. Forgive me if I sound harsh, but you probably wouldn't stand a chance. Others may have different and more hopeful opinions. I'm just one voice among many.

Upvoted. I think you should adjust the arithmetics a bit, though. After a period of 12 -14 years of full-time study the OP's competitors in a similar career stage (i.e., also after 12 - 14 years of full-time study) won't be in their mid- to late 20s, but rather in their early 30s (or mid 30s if their paths hasn't been completely straight, either).

I think the asker wants to be a postdoc, not a professor, so maybe a few years can be shaved off of the plan.  Overall, this answer is right.

I think 2 years post-bac, 2 years masters, and 6 years PhD is more realistic. Some people can enter the PdD without the masters too, so possible to get out in 8 years.

Thank you. I appreciate the candor, it was really helpful.

Entering academia with the expectation of a career is not realistic at any age.
It's one of those vocations where people are taking a shot at something with very small chance of success, like struggling actors in Hollywood. There's a lot of desperation, uncertainty, sacrifice, and glorification of all that as commitment, grit, and living the "academic life". People hang their identity off it, they sacrifice relationships and move home for it. Every couple of years if not more, in the first decade or so. Almost none of them make it to tenure, without which there is no job security.
Many older people return to university, including for PhDs and perhaps a bit of postdoctoral research. And I bet they get what they wanted from that, because the work is so meaningful, and the people are just so intellectually stimulating. You have these amazing conversations with amazing people, and get to go away and work on those ideas with freedom to explore, and someone is [pretending to] pay you for it.
But I say that assuming those older entrants are not in it for a career - they've typically already had one, and now want to do something for themselves. When I've worked with them, their outlook, expectations, and risk of exploitation are very different from the young grads.
(To be fair many grads now also go in expecting only to spend a few years before moving on, but too many still pin all their hopes on being the 2% who will one day make tenure.)
If what you want is intellectual stimulation, or an experience you've always wondered about and regret not trying, then academia is unparalleled. But it's not a realistic career choice for anyone.

"Almost none of them make it to tenure, without which there is no job security." You're not the only person to mention "job security". As far as I can tell, outside of academia, there is almost no such thing as "job security". In many parts of the US, you can be fired from a job any time for almost any reason, or no reason (so called "at will" employment). Is there something different about academia where "job security" is more important than every other type of career?

@ToddWilcox yes, I am referring to fixed-term contracts. In academia their length ranges from 6 months - 2 years, although some are shorter or longer. Academics in this "postdoc treadmill" stage are always frantically/desperately trying to line up the next contract while their current one is ticking down. This often forces harsh sacrifices like moving state or country, dragging your partner with you or leaving them (the other "two body problem"). The longer one spends in this treadmill phase, the harder it becomes to persuade your betters in the field to promote you out of it.

This seems the biggest point.  Achieving the goal of a permanent academic position is very difficult and unpredictable at any age — but that doesn’t mean “stay away”, it means you need to consider how you feel about the more likely scenario, of doing a PhD and maybe spending a few years in research but not getting a permanent position.  If that scenario also sounds fulfilling and financially acceptable to you, then following this ambition may well be good.  If not, then you should probably avoid the risk.

@ToddWilcox even if you are CEO of a company, you have more job security in the private world: there is more than one company needing a CEO in a range of 25 miles from your current house/employment.
In the academia, if you are a Professor on temporary contract, the next contract may be anywhere in the world, but almost for sure not in an university being closer than 25 miles from your current institution. This is a different kind of job security, but still worthwhile to consider ...

Thank you, this was helpful

I must agree with Douglas Perry PhD that it is very risky. Especially since you would be taking on debt and being limited to the Netherlands. However, I wonder, why would it have to be a traditional academic career? You mention that you work in tech. There are some tech firms, that go into neuroscience and there are some labs that hire technical staff. If you want to get closer to research, it might be worth looking into those options. Those positions are probably very competitive, but then so is academia.

Additionally, while those positions are likely to be competitive, you're in a good position to be exactly what they're looking for.  Rather than going all-in on a full-time doctorate, try taking some courses on the side (perhaps one per semester) while you maintain your current career.  Once you have a few courses under your belt, you start looking very shiny to the sort of place that does cognitive neuroscience work but needs tech staff.

I'm going to disagree in principle with the first two answers here. I don't, however, know much of anything about the possibility of starting late study in Europe. In the US, it would probably be possible. I've seen it happen.
The reason I disagree is that, while you might not finish until you are well into your 40's, you will be there in any case. What will you have when you get there if you do and if you don't try? You only live once and it is a (deadly) shame to waste your chances at what you really want to do. I'd guess from what you say that you would probably be successful in a doctoral program if given the chance. You will need others, however, who know you well to attest to your likelihood of success.
And yes, it will be something of a struggle to get a permanent position, especially at a (primarily) research institution, but others have done so and it would depend on what you produce along the way.
There are no guarantees in life, but giving up dreams isn't a sure path to a happy life. If you really want to do it and can accept the cost and risk then at least explore the possibility with a few institutions.

"it will be something of a struggle to get a permanent position" Hmm, I don't know about the state of affairs in cognitive neurosciences, but this sounds like quite an... understatement? Even more so towards someone who hasn't started studying for a degree in this subject, yet.

"I won the lottery, back when the odds where 100x better, so you should spend your life savings and 10 years of your life buying lottery tickets if it is your dream to be a lottery winner!  YOLO!"

@Yakk Buffy made it clear that it is hard to get a permanent position, gave a much more moderate and sensible answer than you are implying, and talked about other aspects of the question which you are ignoring. The answer is helpful and I don't think there is any reason to be sarcastic.

@toby544 "something of a struggle" Someone admitted to a PhD program getting a Tenured job at a primary research university is about the same chance (ballpark) as a someone who plays Football in High School getting signed to the NFL.  Make plans for the 95% likely outcome, not the < 5% outlier cases.  You only live once.

@Yakk, nothing ventured, nothing gained

@Yakk It is obvious that "something of a struggle" was not meant to be taken literally to mean that getting tenure is only slightly difficult. We all understand that getting tenure is very difficult.

Likely just a US/UK language issue. Americans do not tend to use understatement as an intensifier. British people VERY much do. This has historically caused loss of life, including much of the Gloucestershire regiment due to an American Major General who did not understand what "things are pretty sticky" means to a British soldier. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_understatement - so "something of a struggle" is fine and understood in BrEng, but in AmerEng, it's... something of an understatement.

"You only live once and it is a (deadly) shame to waste your chances at what you really want to do." I can't think of anything I would rather tell my younger self and everyone else in the entire world, including the asker.

@ToddWilcox your point (and Buffy 's) about regretting not attempting one's dreams is completely fair and true. Surely it needn't be a binary choice between regret or false expectations. My own answer sought to balance legitimising the dream with telling the truth. If OP becomes one of the majority who leave academia having given it years of sacrifice, I want it to have been an informed choice. I don't want them to feel they were mislead into it or exploited by a rose-tinted culture. If you want to defend the sector's attractiveness, improve its conditions rather than hard-selling to naives.

@benxyzzy That’s fair. The asker has a bachelors in social science, summa cum laude, and is in their mid 30s, so I feel like they could be considered far less naive and vulnerable. I recently re-entered academia and also recently turned 50, and I expect the asker will figure out very quickly that they have some assets that none of their younger peers have and also where they might best fit and succeed in their life goals. I’ve also seen so many cases of people not ending up where they thought they wanted to be but someplace even better suited.

@benxyzzy Another way to make my same point might be to paraphrase a view of romance: “it is better to have tried for your dreams and failed than never to have tried at all”.

I think one can try it, why not. But in the central European context, the asker's plan would be an extreme risk endeavour at the very least. Maybe it's easier in the US. The asker should at least be aware of the conditions and competition before deciding to come late to the game.

I work in this topic, and have a software engineering background (which came second). My academic career was across Australasia, some of Europe, and a little experience in the US. There are some important points missing from other responses. In short, absolutely do not take this path the way you describe it. Thinking more laterally, there are options.
The US is not the world
The US system is quite unlike many other countries - the road to being treated as a respected researcher is much longer and the goal of most academics in that system is to obtain tenure because it offers job security. While I do not know the Netherlands well, outside the US you can expect much better job security because a multi-year contract or permanent role is enshrined in law.
In the US, post-docs are trainees who follow orders. If you talk to post-docs from countries such as Australia, New Zealand, or the UK, you often will find those are independent or (more commonly) semi-independent researchers, paid reasonable salaries, can have their own students, and so on. I personally had my own grants as a post-doc and met my supervisor once a year to rubber-stamp my progress paperwork. That is not typical, but quite possible.
The US system also takes much longer to get to this stage. An good student can, in many systems, go from no degree to a PhD in 7 - 8 years. If you have relevant credits, you may be able to obtain a graduate diploma + MSc, rather than BSc, or at least shave some time off the undergraduate degree.
Academic Science Careers are about trajectory
There are two serious bottlenecks in careers in this space - getting a post-doc, and being promoted from post-doc. During the second of these, panels are often eyeing up where you could be in 15 or so years time. They want to promote people who have the potential to build a large, stable, laboratory group of their own. Your age, I'm afraid, will count against you, because you will retire before you make the most of senior positions. You're extremely unlikely to pass this second bottleneck.
Pop science isn't science
If you're hoping to be closer to the biology side of this topic than the social science side, you will find quickly that existing reading in this area counts for very little. These topics can get very deep very quickly. The day-to-day of academia also looks nothing like reading about exciting discoveries. Almost all experiments fail. A more typical view of the day-to-day, especially at PhD level, is spending 6 months (or longer) trying to solve a single minor issue, to add only an incremental improvement, with precisely 0 hits on Google to help you along. Then again. Then again. It's common for people to enjoy their PhD, but it's also common for people to find after a few months that it was not like they envisioned.
Neuroscience is less narrow than you think
Most people I have worked with in neuroscience were computer scientists or physicists who never went back to study at an undergrad level. Some laboratories in Europe even hire software engineers to help with data processing pipelines. There are also plenty of businesses in this space who hire software engineers who simply have an interest in the topic, but no formal knowledge. Such companies can pay a salary twice as high as you'd see in academia.
I can't recommend following the path you've suggested. There are, however, alternative avenues that could see you in this field much faster and leverage that skills you already have. I would scan job boards in industry, or non-university organisations, to find some topics you could pick up quickly given your background (e.g. adverts requiring DICOM experience), and consider jumping there.
The other option, of course, is to satisfy your hobby by doing some undergraduate papers without quitting your day job. You'd hardly be the first.

Thank you, this was very helpful.

I am a US expat living in the Netherlands and plan to stay here long-term

My end goal is to work in Academia as a Cognitive Neuroscience researcher.

If I ignore all the other things in the question, in my opinion this is not a realistic plan.  The Netherlands only has about 14 universities.  Between them, they will only hire a handful of cognitive neuroscience researchers a year.  People from all over the world will seek those jobs.
Your plan to live in the Netherlands is a much bigger problem for your career goal than your age.

Thanks for your input. Do you think it would more or less be necessary to be in the US to have any chance at this (or maybe somewhere else)? I'm curious which side you fall on if you take this factor out of the equation (i.e. if I was willing to move somewhere else).

Follow-up. Would you say it would be better to study in the US or EU (NL preferably) if I was willing to move elsewhere to actually find a job?

If you want a professorship at a university, you need to have a very well known PhD supervisor at a very famous university.  The country does not matter.  Accumulating residency visas for wealthy places can help you.

Say you're at your early fifties now. Which one would you regret more?
(a) You pursued your dream. You've been applying to a lot of jobs and see no hope of getting one soon.
(b) You did not pursue your dream, but you still kept your interest and have been doing
your own independent research since then.
If it's (a), then you may be better off taking Doulas Perry's advise;
otherwise Buffy's answer would serve you better.
You can take another strategy: take baby steps towards your career goal, continuously re-evaluating your decisions and
revising your ambitions as you trod along. For instance you can search for a Master's program where Cognitive Neuroscience
courses are offered. The program itself may not be Cognitive Neuroscience (say Biology or Computational Neuroscience), but the idea is to get
yourself closer into the field of Neuroscience. Ask professors for advice, join some student club and talk to like-minded people. Build your own network of peers.
After a year or so of immersing yourself into the periphery of your chosen field, you will be better positioned to answer your questions now.
Personally I very much agree with Buffy's advice, as I myself is in the midst of a career change. It's just a matter of execution—with our non-traditional starting age the traditional path wouldn't suit us well, and so we need a more creative way to get there. In the end I may not end up where I initially wanted to be, but the experience I've gained and the people I've met along the way who share my passions are priceless, leaving me with no regrets. Perhaps you are the same.

Thank you, yes that seems to be what it comes down to.  I feel like I would rather be in the (a) category, but then again in that case I could be flat out broke and in debt, which at that age would not be ideal

Having started my PhD around age 40 with a much much much less significant change of direction (from one to another closely related fields, neither of which is close to yours) I am only qualified to add this observation:
The choice is yours to make, and you should take everyone's feedback seriously, then make your own decision.  But the longer you wait, the older you will be when you start and finish.
This is significant in two ways:

First, the amount of career you will have left in front of you

Second, and probably more importantly, the amount of day to day energy you will have, as your body ages, from when you start to when you finish the program.

Do not discount either of these, even though no one can predict how aging into middle-age will affect them.

Do it. Get into Academia.
I have personal experience with this. I started grad school at age 37. I got a PhD at age 47. I received my PhD from a small-name university in Engineering. I live in the United States.
I was hired as faculty before I finished my PhD at age 46. At a university, in the United States. In my opinion, getting the faculty position was easy.
I found that working in industry for 15 years prepared me very well for grad school. Three critical skills I developed while working:

Good at presenting information, orally and in writing
Good at prioritizing work and focusing on key items.
Most importantly, I understood how to network and develop professional relationships.

Just as in your current work, these  3 skills are important in academia. Of course, I needed to spend a few years developing my technical skills in my area of research. However, once those technical skills existed, I found learning how to author journal articles very easy, as well as organizing and writing grant applications. Even more, I avidly attended conferences and presented with flair, and had drinks and socialized with top scientists in my field. Younger researchers did not have the subtle professional networking skills to do this.
Just like in industry, I came to be known as someone who was dependable and someone who was pleasant to be around. When a position opened up, a colleague invited me to apply. Now I'm 50, and still laying groundwork to develop my research plans. I enjoy teaching very much more than I thought I would, even though it is time consuming.
One problem is that when I finally get my research group where I want it to be, I will be about 60. I notice that generally speaking, many researchers start to slow down around this age. I don't know if that will happen to me; I'm something of a late bloomer. However, the past 13 years have been great, and the next 10 will be great also (god willing). I am happy that I took a risk and switched careers.
Even more, there are other positions besides faculty. I would have been happy to spend my 50's as a post-doc. They are well paid, and they get to do research full time. I still consider quitting my faculty position to be a post-doc.
There are also many staff researcher positions around, especially for someone who is able to do grant writing.
So, the focus of this answer has been that it is possible to start a second career as a research scientist in your 30's and 40's. I am proof of this.

Note 1: Make sure to work out your finances. I didn't mind living on $20k/year while I was a grad student. I had enough savings to make it work. I didn't need to take out any student loans.
Note 2: If you have never done research before, reach out to a few people and give it a try. At the very least, you will figure out if you like spending time with academics. At the best, they will help you into a research program through the back door (that's how I started).
Note 3: Managing graduate students and post docs is much easier than managing subordinate employees. To a certain extent, managing grad students is more-or-less just making sure they can find something to do that interests them, and that this aligns somehow with your research interests. In addition, I know some academics who don't take grad students, and just do research on their own. This is a definite option.
Note 4: It is good that you have broad interests. I found that picking a good adviser was more important than picking a specific research topic.
Note 5: There were two nice comments to your OP:
"You're aware that there are probably companies in neuroscience-related areas looking for engineers?"
"Why do a second bachelors? If you're sufficiently motivated, have built up enough background knowledge and have relevant tech skills, you might be able to go straight into a PhD."
I agree with both of these ideas. Find a researcher, and start your PhD. Asses your skills, take a few remedial classes only if you need to. I think you can have a launched career in less than 10 years.

This is interesting, especially the point about the skills you developed in industry. But OP needs to take into account that stories like this are very rare.

Thank you, this was helpful.
So at least in the Netherlands you need to have a masters before you can pursue a PhD, and you have to have (as far as I find anyway) the necessary pre-reqs to get a masters. Otherwise you need to do a pre-masters or a bachelors. It does sound like most people are saying it would be necessary to go outside of the Netherlands to do this work anyway.
Can I ask what the best way to try out research extra-curricularly?

@number37 FWIW, I received two master's degrees prior to getting my PhD.


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How to include workshops/hands-on sessions on CV?
I'm in my second year of PhD in the field of astronomy and have recently been invited to a scientific meeting with about 20 people to give a 1:30h workshop/hands-on session about a certain simulation tool that has been developed in my research group.
The workshop inlcuded a 20 minutes presentation of general information and a 1:10h hands-on session with prepared code examples, that everyone could try out themselves.
The preparation took several days and, to me, it was quite a big thing, so I thought about listing it on my CV. The two questions I have now are the following:

Would you list something like this at all on your CV?

Where or how would you list this? I don't think it's quite on the level of a (invited) talk given at a conference, but I think this is probably the standard category that comes closest to it. Any opinions?

Absolutely put this on your resume!
It could be something complex like "Planned astronomy simulation workshop for 20 colleagues with a brief presentation of the simulation followed by hands-on work using my prepared sample code scripts."
Or it could be simpler like "demonstrated new astronomy simulation to 20 colleagues at a workshop."
You worked hard on it, it should show in your resume/CV.

Sure, I would probably list it. This is might be something that a late-career researcher would choose to omit or categorize differently (I'm not at the point in my career to comment on that with any actual experience though - that's just my gut impression). But I think it is valuable in building a resume as a student.
I would treat it like any other invited talk. The fact that it is at a smaller event doesn't really change that.

yes
"I don't think it's quite on the level of a (invited) talk given at a conference": you are very right.

In fact preparing for a workshop is much more
demanding than invited talks at conferences. Invited talks are
"just" the sum of the work of the past n years and their personal
experience and anedoctes (both extremely useful, interesting and I
always enjoy them) of the speaker.
So I would suggest you to put it in the conference section, or to create a new workshop section (but please stress that you were actively contributing to the workshop, otherwise it may be read as "audience in the workshop").
Honestly, depending on the target of your CV,  I would even put it in the working experience or in the education part ... but surely, my general rule is that something that took more than one day to prepare for has definitely its place in one's CV!

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IEEE Xplore Significance
Just wanted to ask what exactly IEEE Xplore is. I will be presenting at an IEEE-affiliated conference and the organizers said that the paper will be published in IEEE Xplore. According to online sources, it is a "digital library", but how difficult is it to publish in IEEE Xplore, and will it count as a "publication" equivalent to publishing in a journal?

Usually, if you are submitting a paper or abstract to a conference, they publish it in their proceedings. Where that goes exactly is field and conference dependant - in your case it is going directly onto IEEE Xplore.
So to answer your first question, IEEE Xplore is a repository/library of IEEE (and other) publications.
As for your next two questions, however prestigious/selective the conference is determines how hard it is to get a paper in (thus how difficult it is to get published). Assuming you are submitting a full paper it can be "equivalent" to a journal - in fact in some fields (computer science comes to mind) it can be more prestigious, and is more common, to publish through conferences vs. journals.

I’d add  a clarification that one doesn’t really “publish in IEEEXplore — one publishes in an IEEE journal or conference (which as you note have various degrees of prestige/selectivity), and IEEE hosts that publication online via IEEEXplore.

As an additional comment, it should be stated that in the past, IEEExplore also included the proceedings of some conferences that are clearly "spamferences". I think they cut back on that issue and now IEEExplore inclusion requires some basic steps by the conferences, I think. But that still means IEEExplore inclusion nowadays still really does not mean more than "not obviously garbage" - it is the reputation of the respective conference that counts.
Some conferences highlight IEEExplore inclusion because it means that the paper will appear in some index that some universities care about.

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PhD search optimal stopping problem
For personal reasons, I need to spend the majority of my time in city A. I have, however, been offered a STEM PhD (3 years) in neighboring country B, which I can perform remotely as long as I visit somewhat regularly (~1 week per month). It is possible to live with this set-up but I am afraid I may miss out on some of the essential parts of a PhD: connecting with fellow students, getting to know local staff, etc.. I am also aware that working remotely my drain my motivation in the long run. I can pass on the offer and hope that something better comes up in my city A, but I don't find it easy to let go of the opportunity and keep looking.
Am I right for thinking that by not being there much I may miss essential parts of the PhD?
Do you have any advice or experience on what makes a PhD offer "good enough" for you?

Is it legal for you to live in A most of the time while working in B? Is the university willing to handle things like taxes for an international employee?

I doubt that it will be a big problem since you are aware of the issue. You may need to be "especially" social when you are on site having both personal and professional conversations with people (as the pandemic permits). If your advisor is also aware of the issue, and the need for collaborative contacts then it can ease the situation.
You can also try to establish electronic communication with some of those you meet and find it comfortable to discuss things with.
I'd let other factors be decisive in whether this is an opportunity worth taking or not: quality of the program, helpfulness of the advisor, etc.
The world isn't perfect but awareness is a big factor in dealing with it.

I taught in a "remote" doctoral program where the students met face to face with each other and faculty only two days a month. But we had very close collaboration via electronic means and it was continuous with lots of contributions by students throughout.


text:
In CS fields, are extended journal versions of conference papers considered separate contributions in academic research when taking a job?
Recently, I've noticed many top conference papers in the CS field have extended versions submitted to and published in reputable journals. (At least in mobile computing)
While such extended versions generally retain the original paper's title, they sometimes have a slightly different title. Anyway, when I've read both the original and the extended versions, the main contribution of the latter seems to typically lie in additional experiments and analyses.
So, I am wondering that despite the underlying idea and methodology remaining largely consistent between both versions, are these journal-published extended versions of conference papers considered separate achievements?
If yes, extending conference papers seems like there would be significant advantages when seeking positions in both academia and industry. Nevertheless, why don't some people choose that way?

My answer is probably very opinionated.
If it came down to just bean-counting, a published paper is a published paper is a published paper.
But "curriculum evaluation" in academia, and in industry, is (should be?) more than bean counting, and good hiring committees/managers should go beyond the number of papers, and should consider both the set of papers holistically, and each paper individually.
In my opinion, consistently publishing extended journal versions signals an attitude: one's desire to go deep about one own's results (by doing the extended analysis, experiments, extensions, ...), and one's desire to communicate in the best way possible (by adding examples, figures, intuition, roadmaps, ...), the best result they can achieve.
This is an attitude that I personally find highly desirable in a colleague.
Thus, while an extended journal version could certainly be a separate contribution, it can also play the above additional role, which is not to be discounted: don't forget that departments do not necessarily try to hire the best researcher they can, they try to hire the best colleague they can.

Please note that different countries and different disciplines use different rules. EE departments sometimes only count journal publications and so do certain universities in certain countries. Publishing in conferences under these circumstances thus only serves to establish priority, a reputation, and derive benefits from attending a conference. In this case, only the journal version counts towards advancement and salary increases.
This of course does not apply to most Computer Scientists.
Journal versions are (usually) extended. Typically, 30% of the journal version or more has to be new. So, an adversarial bean-counter that uses a conference publication as 10 points should give the journal version 15 points. The adversarial bean counter is of course acting ridiculously.
For longer time evaluation, citation counts are being used. Journal publications might be easier accessible and therefore higher visible, gathering additional citations. For a really good, important paper, the total number of citations is probably almost the same, whether the researcher published only in a conference or gave an extended journal version. However, researchers who cite the contribution will tend to cite the journal version as the more final word by the author. Thus, for evaluation by citation count, journal papers might only give marginal benefits.
Hopefully, evaluation is done by actual looking at the record and the individual contributions. In this case, as Matteo's answer shows, taking the trouble to generate a more definite version that takes the discussion at and after the conference into account is evidence for a much better attitude to obtaining and publicizing results.
To answer your question: The journal version is of course not an independent contribution. Writing it is difficult and tedious, and many people do not receive enough benefits. There is also a certain amount of excitement gained by solving a completely new problem, so spending time on writing a journal version is maybe not the best choice for the individual.


text:
Is the Journal of Asian Health a predatory journal?
I recently had a paper accepted to the Journal of Asian Health. Their editorial team seems to consist of one professor, and it seems that they just published their first volume in 2021. However, they do seem to be published by Stanford or at least affiliated with them. Does this journal seem predatory and if so, is it even worth it to put this publication on my resume?
Thanks!

Does this answer your question? How do I identify predatory and low quality journals? With Beall's List gone, how can I tell if a journal is spam?

I disagree that this is a shopping question (voting to reopen).  This asks a specific question about the journal rather than simply seeking help choosing a journal.

@Ben https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/4201/63475 https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3657/why-was-my-question-put-on-hold-for-shopping Evaluation of individual journals is included in the category of shopping questions. We don't want a collection of these questions for every possible journal

@BryanKrause As this comes up from time to time, why not introduce a canonical question about journal reputations? Predatory journals are not an irrelevant topic for people in academia.

@Sursula https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3824/what-potential-duplicate-targets-should-i-know-about-as-a-reviewer

@Ben this is clearly a shopping question as it asks for "assessment" but it should have been closed as a duplicate.

@Sursula I've changed it to being closed as a duplicate of such a question.


text:
Are University Policies and Procedures in (public) Canadian universities supposed to be public?
I recently attempted to access the current University Policies and Procedures for a (public) Canadian university from the university's website. But when I clicked on the link to the PDF the browser popped up a login prompt, which precludes anyone without credentials from accessing this document.
My understanding is that because this university is a public institution, their policies and procedures document should be public.
Is that not the case?

While their policies may be public, the means of accessing them might be different. They are probably available otherwise through a national or provincial site.

"on the internet" is just one form of being "made public" so I do not follow your logic.


text:
How to avoid verbose titles for re-analysis papers?
There are a couple of studies in which I don't agree with the analysis methods but the authors have graciously made the data available.
I'm considering working on some re-analyses of these studies using this publicly-available data. Broadly the structure of these papers is to

discuss issues in the original analysis,
propose statistical and causal analysis methods that remedy those issues,
run the analysis,
compare and contrast to the original analysis and
discuss the new implications on domain knowledge due to the improved analysis (if any).

Some of the titles are already quite long, so prepending something like "Re-Analysis of "<Original_Title>"" seems horribly-verbose. Indeed, any naming method that prepends something to the original title is going to have this problem.
How should I go about titling papers that are essentially a direct response to the methods of a particular study?

Two years ago, I published a paper that was largely a re-analysis of some of my own prior data, plus some additional data not previously published as we tried to understand the conflicts between the other data sets. The title didn't emerge until late in the process, but ultimately focused on the comparison that we performed: "Comparative analysis of three studies measuring fluorescence from engineered bacterial genetic constructs"
I would likewise advise you to not worry about the title until you know what you have actually learned from your re-analysis:

If you learn something novel and interesting, that will be the focus of your title, e.g., "Circadian patterns in mosquito flight trajectories." The fact that it came from somebody else's data is a mere detail for explanation in your background and methods sections.

If you learn nothing interesting beside the fact that original work is flawed, you might not be publishing on your own, but instead be writing a "comment" article that urges a correction or retraction.

If it turns out the original article was sloppy in a way that turns out not to be very interesting or to significant affect its conclusions, you might not find it worth publishing anything at all, unless it's a pattern in the field. In that case, your title will be about the pattern, not the individual papers, e.g., "Bayesian statistics produce misleading conclusions about mosquito flight trajectories."

Note that in all cases, the title depends on the results that you get, so you shouldn't worry about it until you finish your analysis. Once you have learned from your analysis, your title should tell your reader about what you have learned.

Depending on the extent and type of analysis you intend to perform, you could consider the term "secondary data analysis". In the medical field it is not uncommon.


text:
Copyright transfer of with inclusion of previously CC licensed content
When publishing in a non-open access journal, one (Author) is usually required to sign a copyright transfer agreement with the Publisher such as this.
Now, when the paper includes some work, say a photo, by a third party XYZ, obtainable under a CC license and properly noted ("Photo by XYZ, licensed under CC BY-ND 4.0"), I assume that it is understood that this is not part of the transfer, but Author assures the Publisher that Author and Publisher actually have the permission to use it.  (Since the CC license is non-exclusive, distribution of the article by Publisher will then be business between Publisher and XYZ, right?)
If that understanding is correct, now my actual question: what happens if Author and XYZ are identical?  Say Author has produced some photo, and previously posted it somewhere under a CC license.  They then reuse the photo in their own paper, with the same kind of attribution ("Photo by Author, licensed under CC BY-ND 4.0").
Author in this case actually holds the copyright to the photo, and it looks like they are in a position to transfer it, which they cannot escape from when signing the (unmodified) agreement.  At the same time, it seems to me that this transfer does not work -- there are previous rights granted to everyone else!  Can Author in this case (implicitely) transfer the copyright of the rest of the work, and independently grant usage rights for the photo throught the pre-exising CC license?
And even worse: suppose the work in question is not just an arbitrary photo, but depicts something obviously specific to the paper (say, photography of experimental setup, or a diagram relating to the research).  In such a case, if Author dutyfully adds a copyright notice, they practically reveal their identity to the reviewers!  How is this case resolved?

Background: I'm new to academic publishing and was a bit appaled when I saw what kind of copyright transfer agreements I am supposed to sign. I came up with this idea to at least be able to CC license my diagrams, and was wondering how much sense it makes.  Related to this question, but not the same.

In copyright law, nothing prevents the author from providing different licenses for the same material to two different parties. In this case, however, the author may desire to explicitly not convey copyright of all the material to the journal, and the form usually has ways to denote this.

"In such a case, if Author dutyfully adds a copyright notice, they practically reveal their identity to the reviewers!" No journal I'm aware of forwards the copyright agreement to the reviewers. In either case, accidental unblinding of authors is not a big deal, particularly this late in a refereeing process.

Also, the question at hand doesn't depend at all on whether the author of the paper is identical to the author of the image. In either case, rights already granted are taken back, which is legally rather questionable. This is an interesting question, with a wide span of possible good answers (my impression is that the de-facto standard behavior differs widely from what is legally justified), so I'm trying to simplify it to make it work as a canonical FAQ.

@darijgrinberg Good point. Also, in my experience copyright transfers are signed only after reviewing has finished.

@darijgrinberg CC licenses are irrevocable, so it’s not just legally questionable, it’s actually impossible to take back the legal rights in this particular situation.

This is extremely relevant. As a matter of fact I see that publishers now ask for "permission to reprint" of figures that appear both on arXiv and on academic journals. When the arXiv paper is on CC-BY license this seems really not necessary to me. I can easily cite the arXiv version of the source of the figure instead of the published one, but they insist that if the figure has been published somewhere else one needs to get permission. I have so far not succeeded to convince them otherwise. Any opinion?

The situation of transferring copyright over material which is already licensed under a Creative Commons license is very common in mathematics, where papers almost always get uploaded to arXiv before they are accepted to a journal. The publishers are aware of this, and the copyright transfer agreement will typically list a series of standard exceptions to the publisher’s ability to assert the copyright, to account for the rights the author has already waived away by uploading their content to the arXiv (and to give authors certain freedoms that they generally like to have, like the right to post a preprint version of the paper on their home page). So, there is nothing unusual about such a situation, and it does not make it impossible to transfer copyright, it just means this must be done with appropriate caveats.
In your case you should also make it clear to the publisher that even though are transferring the copyright, you have already waived certain rights in connection with the image. Do so before you sign the copyright transfer form to allow them to suggest how to proceed before you sign away legal rights that you effectively no longer have. But the example above with mathematics papers shows that this is not a difficult situation for publishers to accommodate, so I’m reasonably confident they will find a way to allow the process to move forward, probably by making a slight adjustment to the language of the copyright transfer agreement.

If you give a license you don't hold unrestricted copyright any more since you have yielded some rights. You can only give rights you hold. If you license something under CC as you suggest, then I have some rights to use it that you can't withdraw. You can yield any and all of your remaining rights to the publisher or anyone else.
So, the situation is exactly as before. You can give a publisher copyright, but only the rights you retain after giving a license. The publisher will understand the implications as long as they know of the license. And, you should inform them to avoid problems in the future. Note that the publisher already has license for that photo (or whatever) since you granted it to the commons, of which they are a part.
In short, the boilerplate agreement with the publisher needs amendment before you can sign it. If the publisher isn't willing to do this, then they won't publish your work.
With respect to the no derivatives clause, that still applies to "the commons". But you have the right to make derivative work yourself. You haven't given that up. And if you yield all remaining rights to the publisher then they get that right as well. So there is no conflict. But you then don't have the right to make derivative works thereafter unless the publisher permits it.
Note that CC licenses are irrevocable and hold for the term of the copyright (seemingly infinite these days in the US) and become void (only) if the terms are broken by the licensee.
So, if you want to CC your images before yielding copyright you can do this. That isn't a problem. The problem arises if the publisher won't accept an already restricted copyright in exchange for publishing your work. I suspect that the risk is small but not zero, depending on how much of the "value" of the work is in he images.
Note that the purpose of copyright is actually to retain value to creators for a limited amount of time.

Usually agreements contain a clause where you certify that you are the sole author of the work and you have "full power" to transfer copyright; for instance clause D in the agreement linked by OP. You would be violating that clause, I presume?

@FedericoPoloni, you need to inform the publisher that license has been given. This is the same whether it is you or another that has given the license. You can't give what you don't own. The agreement requires amendment.

Correct, but I suspect the OP would be happier with some sample language for amending the copyright agreement. (I'm not the one who -1ed this answer.)


text:
What happened to Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (TAM) departments in the United States?
I’ve read about and personally heard of discussions among senior faculty about Theoretical and Applied Mechanics departments no longer existing today in the United States.  Some of those professors from TAM are now in math departments within applied math, or are in mechanical engineering departments.
What is the history behind the demise of TAM departments in the United States? Was it due to funding issues?  A lack of students majoring in / wanting to be in TAM?

Cornell still has theirs. Always seemed a little bit of a niche department type, with aspects of it covered in various other ones. Not many places had a separate T&AM department. Kind of like many metallurgy or ceramics departments have been subsumed into a broader materials science department.

@joncuster Cornell’s TAM department doesn’t exist anymore — I know a prof. from there.  Also, if you googled it, you might still see the TAM department name, but graduate school applications go to their mechanical and aerospace engineering department now.

Oh dear - I did not know that. That said, it does not surprise me much - even ~40 years ago they were closely tied to mechanical & aerospace. For a materials person it was hard to see what was unique to the department.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/01/08/outmoded-engineers


text:
Fundamental Background for western humanities
For an engineer, knowing some math is critical. What about modern humanities which is mostly western humanities? Which resources you recommend?

"the humanities" is way too broad for there to be any single critical thing.

Do you mean which of the Humanities are important for an Engineer to know? I think that might be answerable - there's one or two particular fields that would be important.

Many universities teach a course in Western Civilization. The textbook for such a course might help. Likewise something in the history of philosophy that is western (Greek and thereafter) might work.
It depends on what you mean by "The Humanities". It is pretty broad with many specializations: Philosophy, History, Religion, etc. etc.


text:
Proper credit when original author left
My company has tasked me with writing a paper to be published on some of our software. The what and why isn't particularly relevant to the story except that it's purely software driven approach. No major dataset or time consuming experiment. All the relevant time was spent on software development. When the code was originally written (some of it years ago) I was only a junior developer with minimal contributions to these sections of the software.
The original author left the company several months ago and I'm now the technical lead. I feel more then qualified to write a good paper on the technical aspects as I've spent plenty of time with the code base. It feels wrong to make myself the author on the paper though as it's not really my work or ideas. When had it been written months ago with the original architect they would have been the author. Worth noting that none of the paper has been written yet and none of the major contributors are left at the company. High turnover what can you do.
What is the accepted way of giving credit to the original inception of the idea and developers, but who can't be part of the paper authorship? Are they still listed as authors?

Why can't they be part of the "paper authorship", by which I guess you essentially mean "paper writing"? Is this company policy or a refusal by the contributors?

Company policy, since they've left the company they don't want them anywhere near the code. There might be a situation where they help author the paper without looking at the code base, but it's been awhile since they've written it, and the management hoops to allow that would be nightmarish. Company would prefer authorship stays internal since they own all the rights to the software.

And yeah I mean paper authorship in the since of paper writing. I'm not very academic myself, but from what I'm reading online "authors" are supposed to help write the paper and authorship carries a lot of value in the academic world. The original architect is a pretty well known paper author in our field.

Reading this again it doesn't seem to be about academia. Maybe it belongs at the workplace. https://workplace.stackexchange.com/

@Buffy This question seems to be answerable by either academia or workplace. To me it seems to be somewhere in the middle and require expertise from both sides.

What type of paper? Is it an academic type journal article or a company white-paper?

Academic paper, initially I think they're targeting a few specific conferences so I think it would be a conference paper as opposed to a journal

I think we need to know more detail about the type of conference.

Authorship in academia does not literally mean "writing the paper". Authorship means:

having made contributions to the research (how large a contribution needs to be for authorship depends on the field)
having read and agreed with the contents of the publication

From a purely academic standpoint, your ex-colleague should at least be a co-author of the paper. Of course you cannot add them without their permission, so you should contact them, see if they agree to have their name listed as co-author, and share the draft of the paper for their approval before submitting it for publication.
Of course you should have permission from your company before sharing the paper. Because the published paper will be public, there should be no reason not to share it with your ex-colleague. This does not mean they require access to the current code, just that they agree with what is written.
Finally, it seems odd to publish an academic paper that is exclusively about software without making the software available. For all the reader knows the software consists of a magic wand and some tea-leaves. Readers should be able to reproduce the results, and if they can do so without the software, so can your ex-colleague.

You seem to have assumed, with little or no evidence, that the software was written in the context of a research project as opposed to a product. For proprietary products, the rules are not the same as in academia. Contacting the other person should be approved by company management in this sort of case.

Sure, it should be approved by management - I added this to my answer. But simply ignoring the person who did most of the work would be wrong. And it remains questionable whether the results are actually publishable without sharing the software - of course we cannot tell from here whether this is indeed the case here, but it seems odd to be allowed to publish something (making it public), while not being able to co-author the paper with the ex-colleague.

Contact potential co-authors at the beginning of the project
Firstly, it is great that you are thinking about this --- too many people start projects like this without thinking about the credit they ought to give to other contributors.
To avoid getting into a mess, or an authorship dispute, I recommend you take the time to contact relevant contributors and agree on authorship terms before you start writing this paper.  If you are the one writing the paper then it is certainly reasonable for you to be an author, even if you had little input into the code.  Similarly, if there are other programmers who contributed to the code, it is reasonable for them to be co-authors even if they don't add much to the paper.  (I'm assuming that your paper is about the code, such that contribution to the code constitutes a significant contribution to the paper.)  If their contribution falls below a level that warrants co-authorship, you might still want to add them to an acknowledgement in the paper.  As the other answer here points out, there are all sorts of contributions to a paper that can warrant authorship --- it is not always just about who wrote the actual paper.  So you will need to make a judgment about what contributions warrant authorship.
The best thing to do here is to make a list of all the people who you think have made a sufficient contribution to the code to warrant co-authorship, and then contact them to see if they would like to be co-authors on the paper.  If in doubt, contact them anyway and see if they think they've contributed enough to warrant co-authorship or acknowledgement.  (You might ask them to have a hand in writing/reviewing the paper, or you might decide that they warrant co-authorship credit even without this.)  Have a meeting with all of them and make sure you all agree on the authorship of the paper --- i.e., you all agree on whose names will be on the paper and the order in which they will appear.  Also make sure that everyone knows and is comfortable with their role on the paper going forward.
If you are unable to contact one of the contributors, or if they are non-responsive, then you probably cannot add them as a co-author (journals generally require all co-authors to consent to publication, except possibly in the case when a co-author is deceased or incapacitated).  In this case you could add the person to the acknowledgements instead of as a co-author, and note their contribution to the code.


text:
How to cite an image from a website like this and which part should it be under?
could anyone please tell me how to cite a picture properly from places like this? https://d2l.ai/_images/lstm-0.svg
The current latex code is.
\begin{figure}[!ht]
    \includegraphics[]{imgs/lstm-0.svg}
    \caption{LSTM}
\end{figure}

should I cite it under reference? or in the image caption? or in the footnote? or in the main text of my thesis when I mention this figure?
Is using the link of the image enough?

You can access likeso:
@MISC{myimage,
    author = {{famous-scientist-on-departament}},
    title = {science-stuff},
    year = {2022},
    note = {[Online; accessed on access-date]},
    url = {https://d2l.ai/_images/lstm-0.svg}
}

thank you! so it should be mentioned under the reference part instead of the main body of the thesis?

and instead of in the footnote

Yes, you are correct.

I would cite it in the caption of the image (\cite{myimage} in Bruno Peixoto's good answer) and avoid footnotes as much as possible. You can also do so in the main text. I would not think that just putting the image in the reference section is a sufficient attribution. I am publishing in CS and know that other fields follow different conventions. Follow those first.

If you use \cite{myimage} in the caption in the image, the link of the image will appear in the reference part in the thesis? Do you think this is proper for the reference chapter?

It will appear in the bibliography, and that is good. I am unclear on what you mean with the reference chapter. Sometimes, there is a Related Work Section in a thesis.

Thank you! oh by reference chapter I mean the bibliography, cause it is under the reference chapter in my thesis. I felt doubtful because I didnt see others citing a picture in the bibliography before.

You should cite the image source in the caption or in the text when the image is described. I would greatly prefer it in the caption because people look at images sometimes without reading the text.


text:
Do I need to specify pages when citing a book?
I am citing the book Statistical Power Analysis for the behavioral sciences from pages 77 to 81. It seems @book in bibtex has no option for pages though. (I know I can use @inbook but if pages information is so necessary then why it is not included in @book?)

Have you tried using \cite[p.~77--81]{bookhandle}?

The title asks if citing pages is necessary, the question rather focuses on how to include pages in bibtex - in case of which this question would be a better fit in LaTeX SE. Please clarify what you want to have answered.

@Sursula Basically I want to ask if it is necessary to include pages, for I don't want to waste too much time on bibtex if it is unnecessary.

If the book is very long and/or challenging, it is very helpful to the reader to have a specific reference.

Oh I love it when I read "The claim now follows from [8]" in a math paper, while the authors actually mean "The claim now follows from a minor modification of Theorem 4.2.5 in the 600 pages book [8]. One just has to be careful that our space can be infinite dimensional, while it is assumed to be finite dimensional in the cited theorem - but we only use conclusion (iv) of the theorem, and a quick look at the three pages proof and the two preceding propositions (along with an easy application of Zorn's lemma) shows that (iv) also holds in infinite dimensions."

I agree with the comment of @JochenGlueck, but I'd add that I'm also unhappy about "the claim now follows from [8]" even if all the relevant information is explicitly and succinctly stated in the book [8]. The author ought to tell me where in [8] to look --- a page number, a section number, or a theorem number. I'm not going to search the whole book.

@AndreasBlass: Yes indeed. I'd say the general point is that I expect the authors to include all information that is necessary to properly and smoothly understand their reference - including the theorem number (or page number, etc), of course. (But of course, one can achieve a nice "synergy effect" in stealing the readers' time by mentioning neither the theorem number nor the necessary modifications, to make sure that readers don't even know what precisely they are looking for in the 600 pages book.)

Citing pages is rarely needed and better avoided in most cases, because page numbers may vary through book’s editions or even for reprints of the same edition.
You can cite the book section in the text, specifying the book edition in the bibliography. In LaTeX you can do this with
\cite[section~X]{Book}

And possibly check the publisher's style guide whether they want section capitalized or not.

Great answer, but I suggest to use a capital S in "section".

@FedericoPoloni It depends on the journal style: some journals (chiefly British) do not capitalize section, chapter. So, I leave to the reader the capitalization according to the journal style (I'll edit to specify). Personally, I find texts more readable with less capitals ;-)

American English is really obsessed with capital letters to make everything BIG

Instead of "section X," you could use \S X (in LaTeX).

@JoelReyesNoche I used to use that paragraph symbol in the past, but I discovered that many people is not familiar with that and asked about the meaning. So, since then, I prefer to write section in full. I think it's a pity because in the long run this cause an impoverishment of the symbols and the language.

I'd say if there is something more specific you use than a section, e.g. a theorem, it makes most sense to refer to the theorem number.

@user151413 Sure, but since the OP specified a range of 4 pages, I guessed that's probably a section rather than the statement of a theorem.

I see, I had chapters in mind (guess as you wrote Section X and not Section X.1). Sections do indeed also make sense if they are not too extensive.


text:
Submission status of the journal "Advanced Science" from Wiley
I have submitted a manuscript to the journal Advanced Science and the manuscript status has been Under Consideration for three weeks. Could anyone having experience in submitting to this journal let me know if the status changes to Under Review if the manuscript is sent out for peer review or does it remain Under Consideration till the review is complete?
Does this mean the paper is still with the editor or associate editor? Is it advisable to contact the editor if the status does not change for another week?

It does provide a general idea, but I am specifically interested in the process of Advanced Science, preferably the experience of someone already submitted to this journal.

Sorry, our policy is not to take the N*M different permutations of "What does status N at journal M mean?" Even when we have taken such questions in the past, the answer was almost always "hard to say, ask them...or better yet, just wait and they'll be in touch."


text:
Hiring freelancers for research projects
Professors in research universities often rely on graduate students as research assistants who work on a variety of tasks including analysis, coding, experimentation, and writing. When funding is available, hiring graduate students shouldn't be too difficult.
In the place I work, I don't have much access to graduate students (very few, unmotivated students are there). But I have been thinking of hiring freelancers to do some of the dirty work I might have. For example, I may want to write code for a method that I have developed. This might be done by a freelancer that has some good background knowledge in my area.
But I haven't done this before. I want to ask this community about whether professors do use platforms such as UpWork to hire freelancers in their research projects. Is this common? Has anyone actually tried this? Can this work?
I appreciate your answers.

related: Are there "gig economy" resources in academic research? Are they fundable? and Have there been hiring and/or funding changes in academia allowing non-colocated research positions, full time, part-time or gig-like (lockdown)?

It is not impossible, but it is fairly rare.
First, a few examples of this occurring.

A collaborator's lab hired a "consultant" who specialized in a few specific techniques. He came for a few months: set up some new equipment, calibrated/adapted it for the lab's particular needs, trained lab members in its use, and then moved on. I think he had been a research scientist and was now semi-retired; he wasn't otherwise affiliated with the equipment manufacturer or university.

Two friends are working as contract coders. They help standardize, document, and polish labs' motley collection of scripts. One of them worked on an analysis "platform" as part of his PhD, and he also helps move work from those ad-hoc scripts onto the platform.

My current lab outsources some fabrication work to a machinist. We don't do enough of it to justify having our own shop, but what we do want sometimes want something with tight tolerances or made from odd materials.

However, these are relatively rare occurrences. Why?
I partially agree with Brian Borchers' answer, but I think it's a bit more subtle than that. Many funders aren't explicitly opposed to contractors, but their policies implicitly discourage them. Trainee labor is relatively cheap, if sometimes in a penny-wise, pound-foolish sort of way, and can be funded in a lot of ways, some of which don't tap into the research funding (e.g, training grants, fellowships, etc). Contractors are more expensive and can only be paid out of the research funds, making them a better fit for projects with large budgets and tight timelines. Indeed, some DAPRA work is done almost entirely by contractors!
Freelancing usually also involves tightly-scoped, easy-to-verify tasks: build the specific thing in these blueprints, write code to connect this to that, etc. Research is often more exploratory and open-ended: not only do you want to implement your proposed method, but also understand it--and perhaps the problem it is intended to solve too. It will be tough to ensure that any lessons learned along the way transfer back to the"research" component. You'll need to verify those conclusions too, along with whatever work product is produced. I think this is often tough to do, and universities have surprisingly little infrastructure that helps with it.

In the US context, this could be very difficult.  The first issue is that it is likely that the grant budget allocated money specifically for graduate student research assistants (and often undergraduate students.)  Funds for student support appear under different budget categories than outside contractors and thus the money could not be spent on non-student freelancers.
Yes, you could write contractors into the grant budget from the beginning, but you're likely to find that the funding agency doesn't want to fund contractors. Funding agencies like the NSF prefer to fund this kind of student support because it supports the broader impact of more graduates in the discipline.
The second issue is that most institutions in the US would prefer that grant funds be spent on student support rather than paying contractors.  Even if your funding agency allowed hiring contractors, it's likely that your university administrators would say "no."
It is true that many social science researchers have used services like  Mechanical Turk to recruit paid subjects for their research.  However, the amounts of money involved are typically quite small, and in many cases, the work requires research subjects who would be hard to recruit in a college environment.  There's a big difference between paying someone $15 to fill out a survey and hiring a contractor to do $50,000 of programming work.

With $50,000, you could hire an entire team to make shrinkwrap-level software in an year's time... :)

@Lodinn I don't know which part of the world you are thinking of but in the US $50,000 might buy you one software development freelancer for 6 months but certainly not a whole team of them for an entire year.

@quarague Hiring on UpWork has an added benefit of doing so globally - I have a friend in Switzerland whose company outsources all of their IT needs to a team of ~5 in Ukraine for what would be below the minimum wage in Switzerland, and both sides are very happy with the arrangement :) Outside such extremes it is still cheaper in most other countries. There is, of course, an issue of being able to spend funding that way - works for the industry, not so much for state-funded endeavors I would guess.

I don't see any problem with this, though you need to consider whether their work rises to the level of shared authorship. Mostly it would not if you direct their behavior (your IP, not theirs). Of course you need to find funds for this.
Large scientific projects (think CERN) hire a lot of techs to manage the equipment, though many of them are also listed as co-authors on papers.
Another possibility, of course, is to establish a collaborative contact or two where the team as a whole has all the necessary skills.
And some projects might even be used to motivate the unmotivated.

This is not very common; students make for a cheaper workforce. Of course, everyone is after skillful and motivated students, but hiring them outside of the relentless exploitation of labor in academia easily costs twice to quadruple as much. Companies do ridiculously long internships for essentially the same reason :)
So yes, one could do that, but unless the students are hopeless and the project is boring and unable to stimulate that, it quickly becomes unfeasibly expensive.
And given the nature of the work in academia, it is common to have an industry professional or a team to work part-time in the lab or outsource projects to them; often that would be coming from old academic connections... And once again, it is possible to pay under the market rate if your project is interesting enough - as it should be the case in science.
It is all about the resources and their availability. Besides the "cynical" part outlined above, knowledge-based work, especially in science, comes with a lot of hidden costs. Notably, it pays off to have long-term working relationship with someone to not bear the cost of them learning every single time. Knowledge is sticky.
So all in all, this is completely possible, but the return on investment is simply not good. As a move of desperation - maybe.

The other answers suggest that using freelancers for research is rare, difficult, and uncommon. That has not been my experience while freelancing on Upwork from 2022. Most of my jobs were to help with the statistics and, especially, the software side of academic research projects (probably due to my PhD in statistics and software developer background). It does seem easier for final-year PhD students to spend their funding on freelancers*, but requests from career academics are also on the rise.
This could be due to the increasing importance of getting research software right and the realization that the best person for this job could be outside the research institution. Ideally, however, the developer would understand the science behind the research, which is not always the case with freelancers. Work quality also varies a lot between freelancers.
So it could be worth assessing the benefits of a freelance developer — faster completion, better code, saved researcher’s time — versus the costs (money, onboarding time, dealing with 20-100 proposals, etc). For some academic projects, a freelancer might be the more efficient alternative.
*Disclaimer: I never help with homework assignments, and it is against Upwork rules (which, sadly, are often unenforced). I always make sure that a PhD student is authorized to seek a freelancer’s assistance.

But I haven't done this before. I want to ask this community about whether professors do use platforms such as UpWork to hire freelancers in their research projects. Is this common? Has anyone actually tried this? Can this work?

From my own experience of freelancing via UpWork, professors and students^1 do hire freelancers. Note that in case of students it is obviously unethical when hiring to do homework, but when PhD students or postdoc solicit expertise from a different field to help in their research work, it is probably as fair as when a professor does it.
The most important ethical issue is that the collaborator is usually not offered co-authorship - unlike the collaboration with a student or a qualified colleague.
The most important practical issue is that one is likely not supposed to spend the money earmarked for PhD students or consultants. As far as I can judge, the money usually comes from personal funds and the amounts are simply too small by western standards to justify serious effort by a freelancer. The best that one can hope is finding somebody from a third world, for whom such a small amount of money might be not insignificant... but this often implies sifting through lots of bad candidates (and possibly spending some funds on them.) Note that you will be in competition with real companies (startups and small businesses in search of expertise) who are ready to pay real salaries.


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Do we need to have strong foundation for research in the future?
I have done my PhD in theoretical computer science two years ago. I am currently working in a teaching university in India. I have done PhD on problems related to algebra and also during postdoc. I have started learning applied machine learning and published couple of research papers. I have seen a very new trend in research that now we don't need to have a solid background of topics, just surface level idea with implementation is fine.
It seems to me that the research in the future will be like a tent. If we have move from one research area to another we have to just fold our tent and move to the next and place the tent at that place. I think 10 years ago it was different it like making a house with solid foundation using stones. That foundation used to take time but now we can't afford that level of foundation. This thought came to my mind after listening to views of Yuval Noah Harari.
I have a simple question that do we need strong foundation in research? The goal of mine is to publish good papers and get a grant from government or private organizations in the future.

Surface level foundation will contribute only to surface level knowledge. And you risk building on something that will eventually collapse. If your aims are getting a grant, that might work. If your aim is to advance human knowledge, that won't necessarily work.

It sounds like you are confusing a rapidly evolving field for a field that only requires surface level understanding. Whenever there is something new(ish) like machine learning, there is inevitably low hanging fruit. That does not mean that A) you don't need a solid foundation and B) that the field will not develop to a point where those sorts of "easy" projects dry up. There is also a difference between changing research interests and hoping from one "hot" topic to another just to secure funding.

Depends.  In my discipline, there are many researchers who remain in a field for many years.  There are some who go from field to field depending on funding opportunities.
I often see top researchers who have very strong foundation in X, e.g., convex optimization, and then branch off to Y and apply X.
In general, having a strong foundation is important.  Otherwise, once an area becomes dated, your skills are dated too.


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If you did not get called for an interview, is it safe to assume that your Ph.D. application was not shortlisted? (Please see additional details.)
Last year, I submitted an application to a PhD program at a Canadian university. The university's website says that shortlisted applicants must expect to be interviewed in February 2022. If I don't get called for an interview this month, can I safely assume that my application is not shortlisted and thus rejected?

Wait for a reply from them. Assumptions aren't productive. You can also ask for a status update.

What would you do with the information if in fact you've been rejected, and how would that be different than if you were unsure? Do you have other offer(s) for which you are waiting to respond until you hear back from this university?

Note that it is helpful and efficient for a university to definitely tell people that they've been rejected to avoid follow-on correspondence. The "shortlist" can mean a lot of things and may be a bit volatile. Likewise the "expectation" about February can be a bit "loose".
The most likely thing, if you haven't heard, is that they are busy filling slots and working down the list in some preferred order. Not everyone interviewed will be accepted and some of those who are will drop out, opening a potential slot for someone else. It is impossible to make accurate predictions without hard evidence.
February isn't over yet, of course, this being only the 16th, so even more reason for a bit of patience. But you can ask for an update if you like, and should do so if other deadlines are imminent. But, if it is just to  reassure yourself without a definite reason, I'd suggest patience.


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Authors sharing accepted paper reviews
For transparency, I would like to share my accepted papers' anonymous peer reviews, if my coauthors unanimously agree. Some journals partner with websites such as openreview.net (which share reviews even for rejected papers), others may have that included in their process, but in most cases, nothing is said about sharing reviews by the authors (though it is sometimes explicitly said that reviews cannot be shared by the reviewers).
Are there any ethical issues with that?
I could perhaps see intellectual property issues (are reviews the property of the journal? of the reviewers?), though in our field, journals at least allow to have the author's version of the paper downloadable from the authors' website (so, why not the accompanying reviews?). More importantly, nothing is explicitly said about that on the websites of editors and journals.

"Transparency" is no value of its own. What do you want to achieve?

Several things. First, showing strengths and weaknesses of the paper as evaluated by experts and how we ultimately responded. Second, showing that in our community, reviews are of extremely good quality (typically, 3 to 6 reviews of consistently high quality and can be a page each), and this can help young reviewers. Third to show if the paper was "barely" accepted or a strong accept. Fourth because except copyright issues as pointed out here, I do not see any reason to hide them. Entire communities are moving towards websites such as openreview.net for these reasons.

Showing that reviews are of high quality adds credibility to the paper (e.g., predatory or very low quality journals generally have barely any reviewing), and can clarify the accept decision process (we've all seen low quality papers that were surprisingly accepted, and wondered if reviewers missed the problems or if the editor did not take reviews into account in the final decision -- e.g., the joke article "SARS-CoV-2 was Unexpectedly Deadlier than Push-scooters: Could Hydroxychloroquine be the Unique Solution?" and its open peer review report: https://sdiarticle4.com/review-history/60013).

I get your point, but relevant readers know which journals are crappy. And you also get lousy reviews for very good papers, even in good journals. Will you show the bad (superficial) ones, too? And anyway I never want to rely on experts and authorities, much less on unknown experts, for my judgement. I don't have to bother what the reviewers said, because I can read myself.

Even good peer-reviewed publication venues regularly produce a significant lot of crappy reviews, and publishing crappy reviews is worthless. Publishing only good reviews would be biased, so why bother publishing any of them at all? Moreover, papers are often improved based on the reviews, and so most reviews may be completely irrelevant to the published paper.

Unless it is an explicit part of the reviewing process, or there is some rare overriding concern, you musn't publish the referee reports you've received.
This is actually a rare situation where copyright law and academic norms coincide. Basically, you cannot publish stuff other people have written unless there is something that says you may.
Initially, copyright of the report lies with the referee, as they have written it. By submitting it to the editor, there is an implied license to use the report internally and to share it with the authors. Barring other arrangements, there is no basis for assuming that the journal has additional rights to the report. As the author, you don't need any particular rights to do stuff with the report, so there is no implied license here. [Individual parts of the report may come with a very generous license, eg if the referee suggests formulations.]

Another exception worth mentioning would be: "you have the explicit consent from the referees". One can always ask, and in this case of an anonymous review, the editor can act as the communication channel.

Mustn't publish doesn't imply that you can't share reviews with a limited set of people. I don't think there are ethical issues with this.

Ethically, perhaps not, but legally, it would still be a copyright violation unless you can argue otherwise based on fair use or some similar exception defined in copyright law. Anyway, a separate point: the answer seems confusing where it says "you don't need any particular rights to do stuff with the report". I'm probably misunderstanding what that's supposed to mean, but at face value it seems wrong because you most certainly do need some rights if you want to do stuff - e.g. sharing on a website - with the referee report.

@DavidZ: in order to accomplish what the report was conveyed to you for ("do stuff"), you don't need any rights for sharing etc., so no such license is implied for authors (unlike editors).

@NickMatteo Agreed, except that I'm not seeing how "do stuff" is equivalent to "accomplish what the report was conveyed to you for".

@DavidZ I think it's intended to be read as "do the stuff authors do with reports".

@NickMatteo It is indeed!

It is NOT a good idea to do this:

you risk identifying referees through their writing or formatting styles.  There might be specific turns of phrases or expressions specific to a referee (especially if the referee did not write in their native language) that could be tracable to papers authored by this referee.
What do you do if one review is positive but another is not so positive?  Do you cherry pick only the positive reviews?

I think the trouble is then that people would rely on the reviews instead of reading the article.  These are only in place to allow for formal acceptance or formal rejection, the reviewers can miss very obvious and important mistakes.
An expert reader will not care much about these reviews as they can read the article and come to their own judgment.

Good answer (+1). One comment though: An expert reader will not care much about these reviews may not always be the case. When reading some posts (notably Hacker News) I usually start with the comments because of the high quality of the exchange. I read the actual article in maybe 20% of the cases - when the comments make it worth it. This of course relies on the comments being high quality and is especially true for areas with a wide range of topics.


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Will having an online undergraduate degree negatively affect grad school admissions?
I've just finished high school and am looking at different options for undegrad. My long term goal is to get a PhD. I wanted to know what admission committees think of online undergraduate degrees. Are they considered on par with regular offline degress? I'd prefer an answer from a STEM perspective because my field of interest is Computer Science.

What sort of online degree? Who will offer it?

@Buffy We don't want to be reviewing individual programs.

@BryanKrause, there are reputable programs offered by accredited universities and there are others offered by commercial entities. There can be a big difference. Hence my question.

I'm talking about degrees from accredited universities @Buffy

Admission will depend partially on whether the previous institution is accredited and has a good name (in the eyes of the evaluator). There are a few online degrees that are considered to be on par with a traditional university, but not many.
As a member of the admission committee, I would also worry about the lack of socialization into academia that comes with presence on a campus. I would not have this problem with an online MS degree.
Online education has certainly received a boost due to Covid, but the experience in general seems to me to be that the online years were not good and left students without some essential skills.
TLTR: There are very few undergraduate online degrees that are considered to be good and on par, (such as Open University or Fernuniversität Hagen).

Note that the two institutions you mention have a long history of distance education, far preceding COVID. And yes, both do a good job of it.

While those two examples may be excellent at what they do, and rankings may be dubiously useful, they do not have good rankings when compared with traditional universities.

If the university is respected it won't make a difference if it is online or on campus, but personally I found online leaning difficult. I tried doing it online myself and the lack of having peers around me made it very difficult to stay motivated. I changed to a traditional university and the support networks are on another level. I could share ideas with students or get feedback from lecturers in person without needing to wait for responses. It won't be an issue if you do achieve an online qualification, but it is also important to consider which method of obtaining the degree will give you the best grade as your long term goal is a PhD.

Yes, feedback is extremely important and hard to get online. Sometimes impossible in massive courses.

Academia has a pronounced bias towards supporting people who have prestigious backgrounds. "Prestige" is composed of two parts: the experiences of those in power, and money.
If your PhD admissions decision is made by faculty, most faculty at PhD-granting universities do not have experience being a student in an online undergraduate program.  Online degree programs tend to have less money.  Therefore, in general, they have less prestige.
In my opinion, prestige should not be your primary concern, either in choosing an undergraduate degree program or in selecting PhD students.


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How do I demonstrate that I've read relevant research in a motivation letter
I am an undergraduate applying for a research internship at another university. The application guidelines for the position specify that the motivation letter must show that the applicant has read a few papers on the research topic. How do I include this information in the letter? Should I mention specific papers or just express what I've learned from reading some of the research on the topic?
The field is Computer Science, in case that makes a difference.

Cite specific papers that motivated you and be genuine about this
Since the selection panel want you to demonstrate that you have read a few papers on the research topic of interest to you, you should cite specific papers that have been interesting to you and which motivate you.  Stay on track by keeping the discussion related to your interest and motivation in the field (this is not the place for a literature review), but give examples of papers that you particularly enjoyed, or even just little nuggets of insight within a paper that you found interesting or important.  To give insight into your motivations, it is useful to explain why you liked a particular paper/idea/method, and it is important to be genuine --- don't bullshit people --- don't just say you were motivated by a paper because you know it was an important paper in the field or because it was written by one of the academics in the faculty to which you are applying.
To make this task easier, it might be useful to write your motivation letter in tandem with your research proposal, since the latter will include a literature review in your topic and it will mention many relevant papers in the field (all of which you should have read).  As you write your literature review and read all the papers giving context to your research, you will surely find that there are some interesting ones that you enjoy reading and which motivate your research.  (If not, reconsider whether a research career is a good choice for you.)  Keep track of this as you go and cite those papers in your motivation letter.

The problem right now in computer science (in the US at least) is that there are just way too many students compared to the number of professors. In my department, every time we offer any course, it immediately fills up and there's a waitlist out the door. Same goes for when we offer a summer research opportunity. What this means is that, in order to avoid being overwhelmed, existing undergraduate research programs are asking more from applicants, to demonstrate that they really are interested in the research problems specifically, and not just applying haphazardly to a zillion programs hoping to get into something that they can put on their resume and get a job later. By raising the bar for the application, one hopes that students who are not that interested in research won't apply, and the number of applications to sift through will be more manageable (and higher quality).
As an undergrad interested in research in computer science in some program at university X, the first thing to do is to carefully read the webpage of that research program. Ask yourself:

Who are the professors who are going to be supervising research?
Have they posted specific research problems they want to supervise?
Does this build on existing work they have done?
How does my background enable me to jump into this kind of research?

If the website does not list specific papers they want you to read, you can find them from either the descriptions of the research provided or by looking at the webpages of the professors and reading their recent publications that seem related to the undergrad research program. Then, in your application statement you can list which papers you read, what you found interesting about them, how it relates to your background (i.e., your coursework and any independent projects you've done), any ideas you had while reading the work that you would like to investigate, and why you think you are a good fit for their program.
I know that sounds like a lot of work, but hopefully other applicants will be dissuaded and you will have a better chance of being accepted if you read the relevant papers and make a compelling case for how your background prepares you to successfully carry out research building on those papers.


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Where to find industry funded PhDs?
In the fields of Mathematics and computer sciences, what are possible options to do a well funded PhD? In Canada or the US.
Is it better than doing a PhD as a part time student, while taking a job ?
I heard that one can find some opportunities in applied mathematics, in which case if the student is interested in pure mathematics, or computer science, can he just finish working on the required research to find time to do his own?
(I always considered applied mathematics easy, and not a science in its own right, like physics or mathematics).

Your question is best answered on Mathematics stack excahnge