text:
Is obtaining a MS degree in Chemistry useful to strengthen your CV if you wish to apply to a top PhD program in Chemistry?
I got admitted to a small MS program in the US with an assistantship and I still have not decided if I should accept the offer or not. The reason is that I want to pursue a PhD and build an academic career in the field of Chemistry. However, I come from a small institution in a developing country with little research, so I cannot just apply to a top graduate program such as Berkeley or Harvard because I would be in serious disadvantage in comparison to the hundreds of other applicants which have publications and vast research experience.
In your opinion, is obtaining a MS degree in an American institution, even though it is in a very small program, something that would improve my chances of being accepted into a decent PhD program in the future?
I could also try those smalls PhD programs in institutions ranked below the top 100 (according to THE or QS) but I heard from a lot of people that a PhD in such an institution would add nothing to your career, since there are many PhDs graduating from top institutions and it is already hard for them to get a job, so your chances of succeeding either in an academic or industrial career would be quite low, and most of them have to find something else to do (work at a home depot, open a clothing shop etc, just kidding).

Short answer is yes, you probably should take it or a position like it if you want a PhD from a top US school. It sounds like you don't have many or any papers as a coauthor and your current school's reputation is unknown. So, getting a Masters from a US school with a good reputation, even though it may be a smaller institution could give your application a boost. Also, you will want to see if you can get an internship during the summer with a major research institution while you're doing it. That will open many more doors than the Masters alone.

Thanks Haendler,
Is it common in the US to do summer research in a different institution while your currently enrolled at another? It sounds weird to me since the department would want you to stay as long as you can on campus to do research inside the department.

Yes it is common to do so. My wife did research at a national laboratory during the summer while doing her under grad and PhD in chemistry.


text:
Authorship for helping collect data for 1 or 2 figures
What is the threshold that must be crossed to go from contributor to author? I am freelancing a bit, helping out another group with their experimental design and data processing. While I do not physically do anything, the graduate student I am working with implements my suggestions. I provide the program to analyze and extract the pertinent data. I am assuming I would be responsible for some of the writing in explaining what is going on.
Obviously, I should ask before going too far down the road on this but I figured I would throw this question to the exchange to see if I am wasting my breath. I am not looking for co, 1st or anything, just wondering if I can eek out a CV entry.

If you're actually writing part of the paper, and actually doing analysis and interpreting the results of the data, then yes you can ask. If it's providing suggestions "try this method/program/analysis" and letting them do the rest, then I'd say being mentioned in the acknowledgements sounds like enough credit.

Experimental design is also an intellectual contribution. Again, if OP is just looking over their DoE and OKing it, that's for an acknowledgment. If OP is adding more substantially, coauthorship is indicated.

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text:
Submit an idea to a conference
I was wondering if it is appropriate to submit a work to a conference call, which only presents an idea without further development.
So far, in my field, computer science, I usually submit works following more or less this structure:

introduction

background

methods

proof of concept

evaluation

conclusion

Recently, I have seen a call quite interesting for presenting an idea related to my previous research. For this reason, I have to admit that I know the topic. However, the idea is not implemented, neither I evaluated it. Let's say, the work is only the method.
This scenario makes me doubt about the appropriateness of presenting my idea in the shape of a paper.
Finally, if doing this is not appropriate for a conference. Can it be for a workshop? Or even more, a lighting talk, or a poster?
EDIT ---------------------------------------------------------------------
Apart from the interesting given answers, it is important to note that there are conferences (or tracks) for position papers:
A position paper presents an arguable opinion about an issue. The goal of a position paper is to convince the audience that your opinion is valid and worth listening to, without the need to present completed research work and/or validated results.

What is the point of doing this?  Our job as researchers is to flesh out ideas.  This wastes reviewers' time.

@Prof.SantaClaus Field peculiarities. "The work is only the method" could be a decent poster in some fields; maybe Bub is originally in that field moving to CS, where conference publications are more important, as Buffy says.

In CS many conferences have an 'abstracts'  track, where you can submit a 1-2 page abstract detailing the idea and the work you have done so far.  there are doctoral symposiums too, as @Buffy said. Posters would work too.

In CS, conferences are like journals in other fields: the normal medium to publish fresh results. But it is results. There might be exceptions for some specialized conferences that make exceptions.
Also, many CS conferences have a Workshop track in which unfinished work can be presented and discussed. Likewise, there is sometimes a Doctoral workshop in which PhD students discuss their ongoing research and get feedback.
But for a normal paper track in a typical conference, a completed work will be expected.

Completed papers itself, they find thousand reasons to reject, submitting this kind of a idea paper is an entertainment for the reviewers.

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text:
2nd vs 3rd author position, early in one's career does this matter?
I am collaborating on project where I originally agreed to be 3rd author, because I did not care about it all that much. My interests have changed a bit and I kind of want to lean on it a bit more as part of my personal narrative. Further, my effort level for the project has increased due to scope creep. The person who is currently in 2nd is no longer around and I have had to help troubleshoot some initial assumptions on the experimental system. So I can make a strong case for the switch.
I am debating how much of a fuss should I make of this... My CV is short since I am just getting started. I am definitely secondary to the 1st author, but I am wondering how much people care about 2nd vs 3rd. When people have an extensive track record this is sort of moot, but just starting out I am wondering if this could be a difference maker.
Should I bring this up? I do not think I would get much push back but you never know. I am still undecided on career path, looking to do something more non-traditional as opposed to pure academic or industry person. I am in the engineering/life sciences field.

Are you still a student? Postdoc? Permanent position?

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/147264/equal-contribution-for-second-and-third-authors related

@Sursula-they- My gripe is I believe I have done more than the current 2nd author but thanks for the link.

@Buffy I am a last year grad student. I am going to be applying for fellowships and what not and I was wondering if slight tweaks would strengthen my app at this stage.

I certainly hope that people don't take detailed measure of these things and use them in any decision making. I'm, sadly, possibly wrong, I realize. But people are (and should be) more interested in the scholarship in the paper, science or whatever, than in author position. Any authorship position indicates engagement with and contribution to ideas, which, we hope, are important.
And, what happens in one paper shouldn't be determinative of a career in any case.
But, I recommend against author-position fights with colleagues. Over your career you will benefit a lot from friendly collaborative relationships. I hope more than from author position. There are a number of questions on this site that indicate ruined relationships over author position and perceived slights. Try not to get into such situations.

If possible, a paragraph or two about author contributions might be appropriate in or near the paper's introduction.

I hear what you are saying... but how do people on hiring and application review panels view this issue. Maybe for some it matters.... hence the question. Most people do not have time to dissect a contributions statement and are just going to look at order of authors IMHO.


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Why are most scientific articles locked behind a paywall?
Can someone give me a legitimate, convincing argument as to why scientific papers should be locked behind subscriptions and paywalls? That unless you happen to be on a campus, you can't get view a manuscript without paying an often extortionate amount?

There is a similar post on Quora. I haven't really found anything concrete in there, but I suppose you might want to read it.

@ÉbeIsaac The closest question I remember and I found is How much would it cost to remove pay-walls?.

Related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/29363/who-is-earning-money-when-users-buy-access-to-a-research-article/29369#29369

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. (Also, comments cannot be moved to chat more than once, so further comments can only be deleted.)

You may be interested in Mark Burgess's blog post Why I stopped caring about peer review, and learned to love the work, which is very relevant.  (Mark Burgess is the inventor of Promise Theory and the creator of CFEngine.)  An excerpt: "Science rarely waits for publications to appear anymore. The process is so painfully slow that when a publication appears, either everyone has already read it, or no one is going to.  It takes months or years for a paper to reach print, and who can afford academic journals anyway?"

Because most research is carried out in universities (who often have a group license for most journals of note) or in industry (where the cost of accessing the latest science is trivial compared to the amounts being spent on salaries, expenses, equipment, etc).

I wonder if you couldn't make the title a little more neutral. When I need a graphic card for my research, I say "I found it for 599$ online" not "It's locked behind a paywall".

Hopefully things will change https://english.eu2016.nl/documents/press-releases/2016/05/27/all-european-scientific-articles-to-be-freely-accessible-by-2020

Why books, newspaper and journals are locked behind paywall?

Once upon a time, before the internet existed, the only way to distribute scientific content to a worldwide audience was through print. There are obvious costs related to printed publications such as paper, ink, printing, distribution, etc. Commercial publishing houses were established, which took care of this task, as well as the editing, the type-setting, organizing the review process (mind that the reviewers are typically not paid, but they still have to be found, contacted, etc, and all of that also costs money in a pre-internet era).
Many of these commercial scientific journals gained a certain reputation over time, and it became attractive for scientists to try to publish in the highest valued journals. For the publishers it was (and is) attractive to maintain the journal's reputation (e.g. expressed in its impact factor, etc), in order to attract an abundance of high quality manuscripts, select the best ones, and keep a large audience.
This was (and to a large extent still is) the status quo when the internet arose. This is also basically the answer to your question.
Now with the internet, it is perfectly possible to reach a large worldwide audience without the costs of printed journals (e.g. ArXiv). Also, peer review could be organized in an alternative manner. However, the commercial publishers have a lot of interest in keeping the old business model alive, as it is the source of their revenue.
So why are things largely as they were 50 years ago? There are a couple of reasons for this. For one, there is the absence of a platform that fully replaces the ring of scientific journals, including a reliable peer review process (or accepted alternative). Furthermore, people tend to do what they are used to doing in the past, and senior researchers (the ones who take the decisions) are used to publish in the traditional venues, and teach the juniors to do the same. Lastly, many researchers are (at least partially) evaluated with respect to the reputation of the venues they publish in, which keeps the old and established journals alive.

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peer-review.stackexchange.com :)

Slightly relevant (though obviously as I was not alive before the internet, I have to take everyone's word for it): https://xkcd.com/1348/

So in short: a mixture of laziness, inertness, missing recognition, high upfront investments and a lack of competition. I would maybe add that researchers do not waste their own money but that of their funding agency - pressure to change actions may be less in that case.

There is also a lock-in effect, where "high-impact journal publication" is the necessary standard to obtain research funding -- so no matter how you may feel about the morality of this business model, you are forced to shovel more money toward publishers to keep your own career alive. It's hard to see how this cycle can be broken.

@andybuckley: Which is especially stupid given that real-world value depends in large part on availability, meaning that, all else being equal, an open-access journal will inherently be more impactful than one that charges for articles, simply because more-readily-accessible articles are more likely to actually be read and downloaded and built upon and otherwise used.  (Thank goodness for Sci-Hub!)

Ah. Mostly a con that prevents regular people from having reliable access to information, thus contributing, at least partially, to the anti-science attitudes present in certain North American countries? Unironically, if we had reliable access to information and formal training on how to interpret information, many of our issues wouldn't be.

The answer by Danny Ruijters already says a lot and mine will have some intersection with his or hers, but there is at least one forgotten crucial element. For simplicity I will consider mainly the classical, still dominant mode of publication, by subscription.

[Added in edit] Short summary:

publishers charge for access because that is how they make money,
they are able to do that because authors sign copyright agreement giving them exclusive rights to do so, see e.g. Danny Ruijters' answer which explains why authors need to publish in specific journals,
these specific, prestigious journals won't leave publishers asking such fees because of inertia, which is in great part explained by the fact that publishers own the titles.

From the print era to the Internet era, scientific publishers shifted from a business whose main job was to distribute scientific works (which entailed composing, printing, shipping) to businesses whose main job is to prevent those who do not subscribe to read the articles they processed. When I say "main job", I don't say "only job", and I don't necessarily say its what they spend the most time at. I mean that it is the central part of their business model, in the sense that every other part could be made more or less poorly, but that part must be done right if they want to obtain any money.
Certainly, a job done warrants a payment, and publisher do many jobs we need (and many we don't, but that is not the point here). But as has been mentioned, payment could be organized differently, directly by the government for examples. After all, We need road builders to be paid, and yet we don't put tolls on every road, do we?
So, needing of payment cannot be the one answer to the question. Inertia, as mentioned by Danny Ruijters, is a large component of the answer. But one element that explains the level of this inertia is the following:
Most publishers own the copyright on the articles they processed, and possess the titles of the journals they run.
The first item means that a given article cannot be distributed by anyone else without explicit agreement from the publisher, and the second item means that even the editorial board of a journal cannot decide to move the journal to another publisher for any reason.
The few defections that occurred implied founding a new journal and hoping to make clear that the editorial board carried his editorial policy and prestige to the new journal. A recent example is given by Glossa, which was founded by the former editorial board of Lingua after they resigned (see e.g. here and there), after Elsevier refused to run Lingua according to the principles of "fair OA".
There are (and have been) many attempts at moving things toward open access, in various guises and business models, and the story is not over. But inertia is tremendous.

What would a direct payment by governments (which ones?) solve in your opinion?

-1 The question is "Why do journals charge for access?" and I don't see how this answers that at all.

@CapeCode: it would enable Open Access to all articles from publicly funded research to the whole world (and the government or public body that think worth to invest in research would be the ones who should be willing to also invest in disseminating it). It is important that the funding is to a journal, not to an author (no big deal of APC!) so that submissions and acceptance decisions can still be made on a scientific basis without payment interfering.

@DavidRicherby: the "why do [traditional] journals charge for access" is answered in my second paragraph: it is how publishers make their money. The first part of the boldfaced sentence also explains who they can do such a thing: they own the full copyright of articles. Then the answer by Danny Ruijters already explained that the main reason why this old model is still dominating is inertia, partially explaining why this inertia. However this inertia is also explained by the point I mainly wanted to raise, possession of the titles.

@DavidRicherby: I added a summary to clarify.

@DavidRicherby check again. The question makes no mention of journals - the question is "why are articles not free?" - journals are only one possible method of publishing articles.

I agree with you that the funding should not come from authors because that introduces a strong incentive to accept papers regardless of quality.

Why are most scientific articles locked behind a paywall?

Scientific articles can be found  behind a paywall, but they are not locked there.
First, a lot of preprints, technical reports, extended versions are already available. Instead of only searching via Google, you can check the author's page (often containing preprints, codes), and a lot of archives and similar services: arxiv, biorxiv, hal, researchgate, academia and many others.  Some older papers are quite often made available freely.
Second: most authors nicely share their preprint, version, etc. Just ask them (email for instance).
Third: in dire situations, there exist less open and legal options. Check for instance: How does LibGen/SciHub affect researchers' research and publishing process?
Last: if one is not 100% online, one can go to libraries, and xerox papers in written journals.

It's a pain to have to ask authors to share their papers. It is even more time-consuming to go to libraries, and the latter need to be funded so that they can afford unlocking paywalled papers.

@FranckDernoncourt I mostly agree on the practical and ethical side. However, I have witnessed than asking papers to authors is not a real pain, and often the opportunity to promote scientific interactions

@FranckDernoncourt yeah, it's sooo annoying having to do things, I agree.

@CapeCode Glad we agree.

From my non-academic perspective, I have absolutely no connections, no vested interest in the field, and no ability or desire to contribute back to the field itself. I just want to read the article. To ask a busy professional to take their time (even just the little bit of emailing a pdf) and give it to someone like me would be rude. I imagine that it wouldn't be as bad for other academics, since you are likely to use the information to benefit the field.

@Jeutnarg I generally send a paper request to all authors, and very often I get an answer. And quite often help colleagues find a paper. And you always can offer something back, albeit a coffee

@Jeutnarg "I have absolutely no connections, no vested interest in the field, and no ability or desire to contribute back to the field itself" -> if you are a taxpayer, you are funding this non-sense. It is not cheap: Reference for annual journal subscription costs paid per university?

Fifth option: Sci-Hub.

It was mention "in passing" https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/80472/why-are-most-scientific-articles-locked-behind-a-paywall/

What @scaaahu said is essentially true unless a journal were to be set up with such a low budget that all of the publications would have to be like arXiv. Suppose you want your repository of scientific papers to have some authoritative gatekeeper to put a limit on crackpot and commercial dreck.
The way it is, is that most journals have unpaid academic associates that review the submissions, but there need to be an editor and staff to receive submissions and dispatch them to reviewers and make decisions about whether and where to publish each submission.
Each of our disciplines has professional societies that are recognized as authoritative and have a journal telling each other and the world what the state of their art currently is. I know my society (the Audio Engineering Society) is just now beginning to do some manner of fair use thing for convention preprints that are not yet Journal papers (and may never be deemed worthy of the Journal). And the Journal papers can be accessed by any of us with membership, but someone on the outside would have to pay something like $20 to get it. (don't like that? become a member.) But for convention papers that are not published (and are preliminary for the authors) they need the ability to disseminate their work, if it is not disseminated in the Journal, without running afoul of copyright law. So fair use is granted.
Usually, if you can contact an author, they are happy to send you a .pdf copy of their papers, whether or not any Journal claims to hold exclusive rights to the submitted and accepted paper.

I don't think that the (scientific) editors that do the selection work are paid, either. Maybe the editors-in-chief.

@FedericoPoloni I don't know about other journals but for IEEE Transactions the Editors-in-Chief are volunteers.

I don't understand your third paragraph. You seem to be suggesting that the journal would retain copyright of even rejected submissions. That would be a very unusual situation: all of the journals I'm familiar with only require the transfer of copyright after they have agreed to publish the article (if they require transfer at all).

@Nullarbor FYI  Should I send a “cease-and-desist” letter to ResearchGate?

Publishing is a service that comes with a cost. That was true before the internet, and it is still true today. You can fund this service in many different ways, one being to charge readers with either a subscription or a single article charge. Contrary to what is often said (on the internet), publishers only charge for the publishing process, not for the work that resulted in the content (research, writing, reviewing, etc.). Nothing prevents the authors from giving you the content for free if you ask politely.
This has the advantage of taking the burden of finding funds, and taking care of the practicalities of publishing away from researchers. In that way, they can use their time and resources for actual research.
Subscription also has the interesting effect of placing the monetary incentive on pleasing readers (the customers), thus encouraging quality and relevance curation. As opposed to, say, author-pay open access where authors are the ones whose needs are being catered for. The scientific community as a whole benefits much more from journals where the redundant or bad content is being rejected. Authors, on the other hand, just want their stuff published.

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Can someone give me a legitimate, convincing argument as to why scientific papers should be locked behind subscriptions and paywalls?

See Why do tenured professors still publish in pay-walled venues? (short summary: pay-walled venues tend to have more prestige, and many professors favor prestige over open access.)
Also related: If an author does not intend to make much revenue from a book, why not make it open-access?
Notice the amount of snarky comments these two questions have received, which tend to indicate how interested academics are in this topic.

That unless you happen to be on a campus, you can't get view a manuscript without paying an often extortionate amount?

I work in a university that pays millions of dollars every year for journal subscriptions, and yet I do not have access to many pay-walled research papers, which prevents me from doing research efficiently.
Some statistics:  Percentage of total scholarly literature available in open access repositories by year of publication broken down by discipline
Other related question:

Why don't major research institutions systematically publish their subscription fees to scientific journals?

(Comment from David Richerby): This doesn't answer the question. Why do journals charge for access?

@DavidRicherby It does answer the question: I focused on researchers, not journals. If many researchers are okay to submit to journals that charge for access, then such journals would be crazy not to charge for access, regardless of their budget. If you want to focus on the rational behind journal subscription prices, it has already been asked: Why are journal subscriptions so expensive?

For the last point, the real answer lies in one of the comments that links to https://gowers.wordpress.com/2014/04/24/elsevier-journals-some-facts.

This doesn't answer the question. Why do journals charge for access?

@DavidRicherby answer updated

Additional info about the quality criterion for selecting a journal to publish in:
The universe of open journals is being polluted by the many vanity presses, to the point that the term "open journal" is starting to become disreputable.   I get ads for open journals that promise to review a submission in 2 weeks!
Other factoids:
Some commercial publishers allow the authors to pay to make their papers open.
The US government is pressuring researchers to make their papers open, regardless of publishing venue.

Pretty much everyone in academia (and probably many outside) is getting spam from vanity presses on a regular basis. However, there are a number of open journals (some established, some fresh) that are just as well respected as classical paywalled publications, and noone reasonably experienced in academia would mistake them for vanity presses (the differences are usually obvious even to the outsider: e.g., vanity presses tend to advertise their impact factors and review timeframes in your face; they put their logo in places where logos don't belong; they use ...

... markup systems inferior to LaTeX; they publish on a wild mix of subjects with only superficial interconnections).

This doesn't answer the question: why are journal articles behind paywalls?

Journals have an asset -- their reputation as repositories of high quality papers.
Academics are rewarded if their papers are viewed as high quality.  Academics want to read high quality papers.
So Academics want access to Journals with a good reputation.  Academics also want to publish their papers in Journals with a good reputation, so others will read it, and others give their paper the doubt as to its quality.
Journals exploit these two facts.  They get Academics to give them high quality papers and assign copyright over to the Journal for no money at all.
They then sell the right to look at the Journal to other Academics for large amount of money.
They have an asset, and are self interested in exploiting it.
The next question is, where do the Academics get the money?  Well, they get it from the university.  Universities want high quality Academics because it makes them look better, and high quality Academics want Journal subscriptions.
Universities want to look better because it helps with fund raising.  It both means some students will pay lots of money to go there (other students are accepted at lower rates based on "quality", which also helps reputation), and alumni are more willing to donate money and get some of that "reflected glory" from being a sponsor of their institution.  High reputation institutions can also use their political capital to influence government funding or other rules that make it easier for them to operate.
Or, in short, most Journals operate in a way to draw money out of the "gift" economy of Academia, where Academics give their research to the commons and gather reputation back.  Universities pay into this "gift" economy in order to capture the reputational value of their Academics and use it to gather funds from other sources.
The "vanity presses" do so in a way that actually doesn't help the Academic trying to succeed in their gift reputational game.
Capitalism encourages people to find monopolies and raise prices to capture the surplus economic value produced by a system.  The exclusive right to the name of the Journal and its repository of past papers is a weak monopoly; the paywall is part of exploiting that monopoly to generate profits.

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text:
How far back do Chinese universities go?
Europe has many universities founded in the Medieval period; in the United States, universities started to be founded almost as soon as English settlers arrived. China, however, I know very little about.
I do know that China has a millenia-long history of scholarship and science, but that is not the same as organizing academia into universities or university-like institutions.
When did "universities" in the modern sense (i.e., permanent institutions that gather scholars to conduct research and provide higher education to students) begin to be founded in China?

Can you be a little more specific about what you mean by "modern sense"?

@Ric I have added clarification.

Please clarify what you mean by permanent institutions. Must it have a campus? Must it have departments? Must it have more than one teacher (professor)?

@scaaahu I don't think that a campus and departments are important for my question, but I do think it should have more than one professor, i.e., it is some form of durable organization, rather than a group of students choosing to attach themselves to a single individual.  I would be fascinated to learn what a "Chinese style" institution of higher learning is/was.

@NajibIdrissi The sense of long-running scholarly tradition is very much a live presence at many European and American universities.  I suspect if Chinese academia has any such similar pride that it will be both an active influence today and also something that many Chinese academics would be readily able to answer.

Western Style Chinese Academy
From Tongwen Guan 同文舘 wiki page

Tongwen Guan (Chinese: 同文舘), or the School of Combined Learning was a government school for teaching Western languages (and later scientific subjects), founded at Beijing, China in 1862 during the late-Qing dynasty ... It became part of the Imperial Capital University (now Peking University) since 1902. ...

Government sponsored Chinese style academy
From Shang Xiang 上庠 wiki page

Shang Xiang (Chinese: 上庠; pinyin: shàng xiáng; Wade–Giles: Shang Hsiang), was a school founded in the Yu Shun (虞舜) era in China. Shun (2257 BCE–2208 BCE), the Emperor of the Kingdom of Yu (虞, or 有虞/Youyu), founded two schools. One was Shang Xiang (shang (上), means up, high), and the other one was Xia Xiang (下庠, xia (下) means down, low).[1][2] Shang Xiang was a place to educate noble youth. Teachers at Shang Xiang were generally erudite, elder and noble persons.

From Taixue (太学) wiki page

Taixue ... was the highest rank of educational establishment in Ancient China between the Han Dynasty and Sui Dynasty ... The first nationwide government school system in China was established in 3 CE under Emperor Ping of Han ...

Privately owned Chinese style academy
From Academies (Shuyuan書院) wiki page

... shuyuan were usually private establishments, ... The shuyuan originated in 725 ...

From China’s Ancient Academies-Academies Tours to China

... According to “Records of All Officials,” a volume of The New Chronicles of the Tang Dynasty, “in the sixth year of the Kaiyan Reign (AD 718) Qianyuan Academy changed its name to Lizheng Academy (Academy of Elegance and Rectitude), the newly created positions of supervisors and copy editors were filled and compiler-academicians became auxiliary-academician ...

Thank you, this is very helpful: following the links, I find it particularly fascinating how these institutions have risen and fallen over the centuries.  The articles are maddeningly vague in a number of places, however.  Do you know: are any of these academies (either the ancient or from the more modern Ming and Qing revivals) still operating today?

@jakebeal Sorry for the vagueness of those articles. Those are the articles in English I can find today. There are some articles in Chinese which may be more clear, but I can't cite here. I promise you I will update my answer if I come across better articles in English. Peking University is one of the best university in China at present. Others are gone, as far as I know. Some people are trying to re-build some of those good old schools, but they are not popular.

What you've been able to gather I already appreciate very much, because it gives names and starting points that would not be readily discoverable otherwise.  Why is re-building the old schools not popular?

@jakebeal In China, most people want to study STEM fields. Many don't think going to those old schools will let them have better life, I guess.

According to Wikipedia:

Peking University is the first formally established modern national
  university of China. It was founded as Imperial Capital University
  (京師大學堂) in 1898 in Beijing

I think this answer is a good beginning, but I am not sure whether this fully answers Jake's question. Note that "modern national" leaves a lot of room for interpretation whether other kinds of universities existed before, and if so which, and for how long.

I have added clarification of my definition... are these in fact the first university-style scholarly institutions in China, or just the first Western-style?

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text:
What can I do after publication with double affiliation in an open access journal?
I published an article last year. The work was done at my previous university, but I submitted when I was studying at my new university.
When I submitted, the journal took my current affiliation along with my past affiliation because I used the current institution's IP address,  even though I put only the previous affiliation. This was an open access journal and my current university has a subscription policy. But when I asked one of the editors about the fees, he told me that it was free for me being the first time. But they took the current university address for the funding.
Is there any problem with that?
Do the university check the article's details during payment?
If this matters, what can I do now?

There is nothing wrong with publishing a dual-affiliation paper. It happens often when a person conducts a piece of research at one institution but finishes writing it up at another institution. This is a genuine dual affiliation because writing is part of the scientific work.
That said, however, I am extremely suspicious of a journal that does not allow you to declare your own affiliation. Your description of that and other interactions leads me to question whether you are being scammed by a predatory publisher.  I would strongly recommend evaluating the quality of the publication and making sure you actually want to publish with them.


text:
Where to put the citation for a review article
I'm writing an article about a topic and I found a review with a block of citations that is really interesting.
If I use the same sources in the same sequence (after paraphrasing with my own words), where should I cite the review? Do I put the citation at the acknowledgement or after the used resources?

Possible duplicate of Is it okay to incorporate a block of citations from a review paper into my own paper?

i read it but couldn't comment there , but my question is how to cite the review?? after the used resources in the literature review or at the acknowledgement ?

Per these comments, I have edited to focus on the location aspect of the question.

Thanks a lot for the clarification

In general, citations should be placed at the point where you actually use the information, not in acknowledgements.
For a case like this, then, you might say something like:

A useful review of this area may be found in [citation], which suggests viewing the field as follows: [paraphrased review material].

Thanks a lot for the clarification


text:
To share or not to share (your student evals)?
It's end of term.  If you're teaching faculty, it means you've gotten your student evals.  We can't be the only ones trying to decide whether, how or how much to share our student evals, e.g., by posting them to the entire class.
Arguments in favor relate to openness and accountability, that it's helpful for students to know that we take their feedback seriously, that we listen to what they say and take it as important.  We’re accountable, just as they are.  It also gives them a check on their feelings:  How did their experience compare with others and how much responsibility lies where?
Arguments opposed relate to confidentiality and privacy, that the surveys were intended to be anonymous and that some of the written comments might be more identifiable than intended if the student knew the comment would be shared, so that at most, only the aggregated numeric data should be shared.  Also, if one instructor shares, that may create unwelcome pressure on their colleagues to share feedback they regard as private.
How are other faculties weighing these issues?  Are you having this discussion?
  Is there anything close to a consensus or a best practice emerging?  Has your institution given you guidance?

I think paragraphs 2-3 may use some editing for clarity. Also, is the discussion about sharing statistics ("aggregated data") or comments? How would this sharing be done? (At my institution, the system publishes all the stats, but not the comments.)

My university explicitly asked us to discuss with new students previous year's comments. So next year I'll address the major issues in the first lecture.

Where I worked in Germany, faculty were required to share the statistical results of the survey with their classes, and allow for time for feedback. So I see no issues in sharing results when no student-specific data would be given away. (Note that the surveys thus effectively represented "midterm" evaluations.)
As far as comments, that's a bit trickier. I'd err on the side of leaving out anything that talks about the student instead of about the class.

I think that X

would be fine, but

Because I transferred and hadn't studied Y at my old university, this class was very hard

would not, since it might give away some information as to who said it. You could present a redacted version:

Because I . . . hadn't studied Y[,] this class was very hard

if you want to remove anything identifying individuals.

"Because I hadn't studied Y before, this class was too hard" would not, since it might give away some information as to who said it. Yup, being held accountable for the things you say/write is a b%tch. Also, I would think that not having studied something before having an impact on student performance would actually be useful for current/future students to know about.

Because I hadn't studied Y before... only gives information away if a the number of students hadn’t studied Y before is very small. (I’m used to teaching classes with 100–400 students, so this kind of narrative comment is generally both safe to reveal and incredibly useful to the students.)


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Switching Tenure-Track Positions Within Same University
Is it common or possible to apply for internal faculty position at the same university? I am assistant professor at a University's department-A and considering applying to a similar position in a different faculty/department-B within same university as the new role provides way better resources (Department B has recently advertised a position online).

Is it common to apply for internal positions at the same university?
Any advice on navigating this while maintaining good relationships in
both departments?

Is a joint appointment a possibility?

Changing from Biology to Biochemistry in the School of Arts and Sciences might well be different from changing from Physics (in Arts and Sciences) to Electrical Engineering in the School of Engineering.

@JonCuster I haven't explored the joint appointment idea yet. However, it might be difficult since Faculty B is heavily funding the new position and likely wants more control over teaching and research duties. Although the departments are in separate faculties, their interests are similar, and faculty often collaborate and teach in both. Your example of Biology to Biochemistry is apt. Another example is Environmental Health Sciences (Public Health) and Earth and Environmental Sciences (Arts and Sciences) at Columbia University.

@Trunk No, Department B has not hopped a ball and entirely my idea. No such recent case exist AFAIK.

It should be possible. I've no idea how common it is.
As for the second question - I would not do this without the blessing of colleagues in the department you're now in and encouragement from people in the department you want to join. Anything less risks hard feelings whether the application succeeds or fails.

Do you need someone’s blessing to break up with them, really? Do you need an employer’s blessing to quit? That’s absurd. Of course OP would need the blessing of the department they want to join, but as for the colleagues in the current department, their opinion may count for something but certainly should not be a determining factor in OP’s decision.

@DanRomik Not absurd. For example, at UCSD, the FTE goes with the transfer, so the losing department has to be willing to give it up. As you can see, the endorsement of the losing department chair is necessary.

@user71659 interesting, I stand corrected. And thanks for the link, that’s a very useful document that sheds additional light into these sorts of situations.

Context: United States. I'm not sure how applicable what I wrote is to other countries.
Moving departments within the same institution is not common, but should usually be possible through an administrative process that is a lot less cumbersome and competitive than getting a position at the institution in the first place. At my institution where I have seen this happen, the main hurdle that needs to be cleared is that the faculty of department B have to take a vote and confirm that they approve of the faculty member from department A joining their department. Then there is an approval process where various deans and committees have to sign off on the move, but if the faculty of department B are happy with it I think that's basically the end of the story and no one else is likely to object.
For this reason, if you are interested in moving from department A to department B at the same university, I would think that the correct process to follow is to start by exploring the idea informally with department B's department chair, and/or other colleagues at that department who you think may be supportive of your move. Most likely you will either find that department B is not really open to that idea (e.g., maybe they think your research profile is a poor fit for them), or instead you will find that they are indeed open to the idea and would be willing to get the ball rolling on the relevant administrative process.
In any case, I'd bet that you would not be required at any point to apply to an advertised tenure track position the way outside candidates need to do. And I'm also reasonably sure that if you do just decide to apply to such a position on your own initiative using the regular application process, you will be informed that this is not a correct or practical way to approach the department switch idea.

Any advice on navigating this while maintaining good relationships in both departments?

If you approach department B politely and respectfully with your request, I don't see why this would hurt your relationship with anyone there. (If anything, they should be flattered that you want to join them.) Possibly they will tell you no, which could be a bit awkward, but that does not seem like a huge problem to worry about.
On the other hand, I can see that under some circumstances your colleagues in department A may take offense to your wanting to leave their department, especially if you are someone they worked hard to recruit and/or whose presence is strategically important to them. So there is a chance this might sour your relationship with some of them. This could potentially be quite awkward, especially if your gambit to move to department B fails. But again, if you approach the various conversations with tact and respect and offer good explanations of why you are trying to move, hopefully your department A colleagues would understand and you will avoid upsetting them too much. But in the end, even with the best of intentions it may be impossible to avoid some damage to your relationships with them.
Good luck!

It is possible.  In the new position you may have to start over from scratch on seniority---negotiate this with the new department.

Or it could be the opposite. For example, any transfer within the University of California (even across campuses) retains seniority and tenure timelines do not reset.

^ That could be a double edged sword as you may need time to reestablish your research program in the new field in a limited time.


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Crazy emails from superstar professor
I'm working on my doctoral degree at a mid-ranked institute. I am visiting a super famous lab and professor for a short time, think the top of the very top in the USA. Some of their research relates to my project, and I thought it would be useful to have this connection. The professor first seemed normal, but he soon began to send me crazy email messages. I can't quite describe it, they do not contain any threats or clear harassment, but their senselessness itself is really frightening. They do not ask or request anything, so I've just been ignoring them.
I don't understand what he wants from me, I've been working very hard, I don't know what else I could do. But here everyone is working very hard, from morning to late night without stop. It's totally different from my lab at my home institute. People here are very distant and hardly speak to me. And when they do, it's superficial. They act like everything is fine, but I think they are just pretending and scared. I am. It's like I'm a total nobody and this guy can do anything to me.
I don't dare to talk with them about these emails. I also don't dare to tell about the situation to my PI at home. He is kind of nice, but I don't think he wants to hear such things. I only forwarded these messages to some of my friends at my home institute. They all agree that the messages are crazy, but they give different advice. Some say I should just keep silent and leave as soon as possible, some say I should confront this professor or make a complaint. I would never dare to confront him, but I do want to make a complaint. This is all just so wrong and crazy.
He still behaves normally when we meet in person, though he does sometimes look like he could snap at any moment, if he didn't like something I said or anything like that. But should it not be the opposite? Why does he not say crazy stuff in person, for which I would have no evidence, but only in emails, which I could show to anyone? I cannot be the first person to whom he does this. He has been working here for decades. What happened to all those other people? Did everyone keep silent about this? Or were they ignored, silenced? How can this guy be such a respected super successful professor, when he is certifiable?
My real question here is, what happens if I make a complaint? What is the worst he can do to me? I don't know what kind of connections such people might have, what they are capable of. Can he stop me from graduating? That's all I want, I don't think I will stay in academia, especially not after this experience. He is not on any of my main papers, I can just request to exclude him from paper reviews, and he does not have a very close connection to my PI or his field, so there is not much he can do, right? He could spread bad rumors about me, but they know me at my home institute, so I don't think that's a problem if I won't stay in academia anyway. Also, if these emails become known, everyone should understand that he is the crazy one. I'm afraid he can make up some explanation. Like that it was just some joke, or it was related to something we talked about. Or he could simply deny he sent them. He used his private email address, but he always uses that one, it's also written online at some places. But what if he still denies it? I see a complicated process described in this law SE post.
But this seems to mean that I would have to sue the professor to get proof. That's not something I'm really up to. Besides, I know that this is stretching it, but what if the email provider does not want to anger this professor with his super powerful institute by providing the evidence? Then he could even sue me for defamation.
But even if the emails are confirmed, I don't know what they would mean legally. I mean, I think it's not illegal to send sort of crazy messages as long as they are harmless on the surface? Or is it? Or in the worst case, if he retaliates, I could go to the press, but I'm not sure they would care. I mean, I never saw headlines like, 'professor sent some crazy emails'. There is no clear harassment, sexually or otherwise. Maybe just one, where he kind of wrote that I'm not doing things as I should, or something like that. I'm not even sure how to explain to people, especially outside academia, why these emails are so frightening.
And I'm totally alone with this, people in his lab would never dare to say anything. They will do anything the professor asks. And there are also a few postdocs here who seem really scary, similar to the professor. I mean, like they could snap at any moment. And they will always be on the professor's side. I can't wait to get away. But I also want to tell about this to someone, like HR, I guess right before I leave, or maybe after. I also thought about waiting for my graduation, but that's years away. But I don't even think anyone at his university will care or do anything about this.
EDIT:
Okay, so about the craziness. Sorry but I can't really reproduce an equivalent, and I don't want to include the originals. But the reply by Significance is off the mark, sorry, I should have clarified that the professor is not crazy in that sense. It is very clear that he is deliberately trying to upset me, either so that I would work harder, or I don't know. Maybe he is just a sadist.
Anyway, to give you an idea about the content, I asked ChatGPT to write random crazy frightening sentences about research and work. Here is a few:
"I noticed the files on your computer changed by themselves last night. Someone must be trying to send you a message."
"Every time you leave your desk, I hear whispers coming from your computer. It mentioned something about 'the deadline that never ends.'"
"The lights flicker in your office only when you're working late. It's almost as if they’re trying to communicate."
Okay, these sound a bit silly, but they give an idea. Sometimes they are a bit more personal, like mentioning my home country or such.
Of course, he is asking me all the time to do work for him, even when it has nothing to do with my project. I never refused anything. I'm fine with that for this short time. He doesn't need to threaten me.
I don't dare to show them to my PI because he might talk with this professor, even if in good faith, I'm afraid it is me who will get all the repercussions. I'm not even entirely sure I'm important enough for my PI that he would take my side against this big professor. Besides, I'm not sure he could help anyway.
Yes, I'm originally from Europe. I think if this took place there, I would immediately confront the professor or make complain to some administrators. But in this atmosphere it seems unimaginable.

Even though your question is way too long when it could have been made much shorter and concise, yet I manage to read from start to finish. The word "crazy emails" could unlock me and others to answer in  a better way. Is it something personal or professional? Is he asking for you to do any research work that could benefit him? It is an undeniable truth that USA & Europe(assuming you're from there) are two entirely different worlds. The behavior/environment you mentioned is known to everyone who is aware of the toxic and super stressful environment in the US/Asian educational institutions.

This needs details - what is actually contained in those emails? Why don't you dare to show them to your PI?

Exactly, it would be very helpful to at least get a rough idea as to what the "craziness" in the emails refers to.

This sounds like an episode of "Black Mirror". Strange things happen, but we never learn what these strange things actually are. Without actually knowing what these strange emails contain, I don't think anyone can provide a decent answer.

Yes, I read the ChatGPT generated emails as bad attempts at humour, so I assume the real ones must be different.

The first thing I would do is tell him I don't understand his emails and ask him to clarify.

Could you clarify a justification for the complaint you wish to submit? That would help answers understand the nature of what your problem is. You mention no harassment or threats. So what is the justification for a complaint? There are 14 questions in this question. With "My real question here is, what happens if I make a complaint? " telling us you want to complain about these crazy emails, but give very little information on anything about what there is to complain about.

I believe this question is unanswerable without any extracts from the actual e-mails, and it should be closed/put on hold until such time as they are provided.  Asking an LLM to hallucinate something that may or may not be similar to the e-mails is not acceptable.

You say that Significance's answer is off the mark, but the sentences you've generated with ChatGPT (you can't just write your own in a similar manner? Or at least give vague summaries?) also sound like schizophrenic delusions to me (not that I have any expertise in that field), so that doesn't really clarify anything.

If the emails could be interpreted by a reasonable person as veiled threats or even at all threatening, even if only by suggesting the prof has some sort of paranoia involving you, don’t ignore it. Not trying to frighten you but your safety could be at risk. Prioritize your safety. Don’t confront the prof in question, but do raise it on your side and if you feel unsafe then get out of there. Paranoid people do sometimes act out violently toward the objects of their paranoia. You really don’t want to be one. Hopefully not the case but sounds like it to me.

Worrying about the legal process to prove he sent these emails is way, way, ahead of the game.

@jwodder I don't think the OP can provide the original emails without compromising her safety, which she should not be asked to do as a requirement for getting answer.

If the question were phrased more as "what are my options" I think it would be answerable.  My answer would be "talk to the institution's ombuds office".  Example explanation from Harvard: "The Ombuds Office is a confidential resource available to anyone from Harvard’s community. A discussion with an Ombuds can help a visitor voice concerns, clarify goals and consider options so that they can make their own best decisions about next steps. Any issue affecting one’s work or studies may be brought to an Ombuds."

This sounds not so much like a "superstar" but an aspiring "supernova" professor.
However, after reading your overview, it is not really clear if that prof did something outright wrong, is mentally unstable (in a medical way), or explicitly uses this behaviour to elicit compliant behaviour from their students.
To be honest, as long as it is not outright threatening or otherwise inappropriate, what you can do is very limited. But of course if there is some crackpot rambling by your supernova host prof, this is unsettling. You make clear that you want to take action - however, if there is a medical reason for the prof's behaviour, this will backfire badly, and not just because they are powerful, but because you are seen as harassing somebody for a condition they are not guilty of. That they happen to be a prof is only a side show here.
Of course, mental instability can project onto the group, but still as long as there is no hard evidence for legally relevant misbehaviour, there is nothing you can do. Note that you mention that not only the prof, but also members of his group look as if "they could snap at any moment". This can very well be the case as groups often copy their bosses behaviour. But on the other hand, people could interpret this that, since you seeing the problem all around you, it might be a "you" problem rather than a "them" problem. Thus, I recommend to tread very carefully.
Personally, I would find some reason why you want to cut short your visit as soon as possible. Perhaps your dog died? You have to sort out some family issues? Something else?
Until then, understand that these mails may be simply random ramblings and, unless they contain concrete instructions that you are to implement, just ignore them and just be generally circumspect.
Just make sure you are not rude and remain respectful. Do not think about what the prof could do to you. They have not, as much as I gather from you, explicitly threatened you. If the prof is indeed mentally unstable (as opposed to explicitly nasty), I am not sure you even have a concrete case for a complaint. Stay out of their limelight and - "Get Out!".
[PS: I notice that you say they always use a private email which they use exclusively for these ramblings and never talks like that in person. Are you sure it is them? Or maybe some crazy twin sibling locked in the cellar? I am only half joking: maybe they have a secondary personality that they only permit to use their private email? Though not something like this, I have been witness to a number of quite strange and sometimes headline-worthy developments, so I am confident in saying that nothing is impossible.
The key for your sanity in the present case is for you to resist the temptation to make their problem your problem.]

It's tricky to answer this Q when OP is so vague, but could you clarify what you mean by the 'supernova professor' metaphor? Best I could come up with is: they trying to be a superstar so hard they will explode, but even then I wouldn't put money on my interpretation being correct! It may just be a throwaway bit of humour but it's in the first sentence so I thought I'd ask in case others are confused too. Cheers!

@bertieb You understood my metaphor perfectly: they who are about to explode ("isti quis exploderint"). Which is pretty much what OP described. I should mention that I encountered a few of those myself, so this is definitely a word that fills a niche in the academic vocabulary and I do not feel I need to change a text where a single word captures a phenomenon.

Thanks for confirming, I wasn't sure if it might instead be a reference to temper or indeed temperament :)

It's his email, he even has it on his homepage. I don't think he is medically unstable, not in a conventional way. Much more likely 'to elicit compliant behaviour'. But I wish he could find less disturbing ways to do it.

There is very little time left, I can bear it. I do not feel that much threatened. Maybe more upset. You are probably right that there is no point trying anything. Maybe he knows this and that is why he is doing it. I would never try to go to the ombudsman as others suggested. I heard many horror stories. I will just leave and try to forget about this.

@user60063 And you will know what to look out for. On the good side, you are not trapped as a PhD student.

If everyone agrees that the emails are “crazy”, perhaps he is struggling with mental health issues. Some conditions, like schizophrenia and other illnesses that cause psychosis, can have “crazy emails” and monologues as a symptom. These symptoms might come and go if poorly controlled. Drug abuse (for instance, using drugs to try to maintain unrealistically high productivity) could cause similar problems, and could result in periods of mania late at night. None of these are incompatible with high IQ and having achieved success up to now. But if this is what is going on, he is in trouble and might eventually be grateful if you intervene by drawing the issue to the attention of his department chair or a responsible colleague. Without knowing the content of the emails, it is impossible to say, but if they are not threatening or harassing you, my guess is that you probably don’t need to worry about reprisals.
ETA: https://www.gvhealth.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/1.-MHFA_psychosis_guidelines_A4_2020.pdf

what is a bit odd though is that the personal behaviour seems to be normal. Maybe the prof is not writing those email, but a crazy student hacked the account?

@lalala We had a case where a professor's ex-wife got hold of his (private) email account and started sending highly inappropriate emails to students. It came to light very quickly as the students complained, the account was secured and the students told to ignore (block) any email that was not coming from the professor's work account.

@Marianne013 Yes, that was one of the suspicions mentioned in my response. My question would be if the person that is writing this email is different from that the OP meets during the day (independently if they share not only their email, but their body or not).

It's difficult to know for sure without having a clearer picture of what is in the crazy emails, but my suggestion would be to politely push for clarification. Something like:

Apologies, I found your email confusing. Please can you clarify: is there something you would like me to action from this?

This essentially gives the professor the choice of backing off - in which case, great! - or doubling down, in which case you will hopefully get a clearer picture of whether this is behaviour that you need to object to or can just ignore. If they continue to be vague - e.g. "You know exactly what I mean!" - continue to be polite but firm:

I really don't, and I don't want to risk any misunderstanding by making incorrect assumptions. Please can you clarify?

Unfortunately, there are unpleasant people who thrive on carefully treading the line so that no single thing they say is unarguably inappropriate, but taken together they amount to abuse, even if there is nothing explicit in there. Without knowing the full details, I'm not saying this professor definitely is one of those people, but they could be.
In your favour is the fact that you have records of the interactions. Make sure you keep a copy saved somewhere outside the institution just in case. Right now you are reluctant to make a complaint but please consider it if things do not improve after attempting to address it directly. You deserve not to be made to feel uncomfortable, and you have my sympathy.

If the emails could be interpreted by a reasonable person as veiled threats or even at all threatening, even if only by suggesting the prof has some sort of paranoia involving you, don’t ignore it. Not trying to frighten you but your safety could be at risk. Prioritize your safety. Don’t confront the prof in question, but do raise it on your side if you feel unsafe. Don’t stick around, get out of there. Paranoid people do sometimes act out violently toward the objects of their paranoia. You really don’t want to be one. Hopefully not the case but sounds like it to me.


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Realistic odds of acceptance into a top 10 bioengineering program from an average public university
Essentially, I want to know if I'm suffering from imposter syndrome, or if I really am unlikely to be accepted to a top 10 PhD program in bioengineering.
I go to a relatively average public university in the US, majoring in Chemical Engineering (there is no major offered in biomed/bioE) with a 4.0 GPA. I've spent 3 years on the rowing club, and 2 as the president of the club. I'd like to think this shows I'm very dedicated and a hard worker. I will also have my name on two publications (3rd and 4th author) in average journals as well as a presentation at a national conference, all of which are strongly related to bioengineering.
I know I will have one very strong letter of rec from my current research advisor who I have worked with during the academic year and as part of an REU program this summer. I'll also have two other decent letters of rec from a past research advisor last summer and a professor I have gotten to know while taking her classes and doing very well in them.
Assuming I put a great amount of effort into my application, especially my statement of purpose, what are my realistic chances of getting into a top program?

I think there is a question somewhere around here addressing this in the general form. It sounds like you are qualified, just keep in mind that fit is incredibly important. You need to spend time finding programs and PIs that will value your unique background, skills, and interests. Even then, remember that acceptance rates are below 10% for most individual programs and apply accordingly.

you can attract more views and increase the odds of getting a useful answer by making this question more general.

It's a possibility - that's really all anyone can say for certain. If you had applied in 2014 I can say the stats for a top 10 program like at University of Washington were this: http://www.grad.washington.edu/about/statistics/admissions/admissions14.pdf Which, depending on the program you chose, had anywhere from a 0% chance (no one got an acceptance who applied to that specialty) or as high as a ~50% chance (half of people who applied got offered a spot, with or without funding).


text:
Collaborating (online) with researchers from other institutes/countries
I am a first year graduate student in a completely theoretical field. How does one go about collaborating online or otherwise with researchers from other institutes/universities? In particular, if I am interested in a problem or an area which is not very well represented at my current institution, how do I approach researchers from other institutes to start a collaboration assuming I have the basic background to start research? Should I have a very particular problem/idea in mind while contacting a potential collaborator, or is it unusual if I approach a researcher just because I am interested in his work and would like to learn more and work on it with no particular problem in mind?

I will sound a bit pessimistic about this, but usually professors are very busy to collaborate with unknown people. Also, they have their own students to help. Once you establish yourself as a good researcher (after having a few good publications under your belt) you can try to collaborate with researchers working on a similar area. Before that, unless you are referred by your advisor, I do not believe that cold emailing people will actually work.

@Alexandros How about collaboration with other PhD students? I think two or three PhD students are capable of doing independent research. Of course, their supervisors must be informed if they want to include the work in their thesis.

Also see How to establish collaborations with academics who you do not know where you contribute to their research projects? and How to ask someone to collaborate on a joint paper?

I have found that it is very difficult to start collaborating with people who are totally new to you. Some good ways to find people to collaborate with are:

Tapping into your PhD/PostDoc advisor's existing contact network
Using your advisor's status/fame to get new collaborators (i.e., the advisor handles the initial contact)
Giving talks in conferences and getting people excited about your work.
Talking to people in conferences and finding some common interests for new projects.

I write this as a PhD student with experience in collaborating within physics/chemistry communities.


text:
How to deal with fellow grad students who want to copy assignments?
How to deal with fellow students who put little effort on their part while solving assignments, and sometimes ask you to spoon-feed them solutions. Lot of times these students end up scoring more on the assignments on average, because I don't generally feel inclined to get any sort of help on assignments, and am content with submitting my best solutions.
It is very difficult to avoid these students entirely cause grad classes are typically small and you don't want to end up alienating them.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

Sometimes, as in your case, you want to protect your best interests without burning any bridges. That's understandable, as I assume some regions have a much higher culture of cheating than others. For example, I know of one nation where people used to hire proxies to take their exams. In this case, I assume you've already participated at some point, so the long-term goal is to protect yourself and wash your hands.
Make an excuse about how you haven't completed your assignment yet. You can easily extend this to the due date and claim you were working on it all night the day it is due. Any other excuses like not starting, and so on, while you have, to hide the fact that you've done so.
This also protects you from being further involved in academic dishonesty without making you look bad to your classmates. Your end goal should be to cover yourself, and lying about not being able to share your work is a significantly better endgame than being caught in a cheating ring.
As to reporting the academic dishonesty, I hate to say it, but I probably would not do so at this point. You're implicated, and if it's a small class, it'd be easy to track back to you.

without making you look bad to your classmates — But why would you care about looking bad to classmates who are trying to take advantage of you?

@JeffE I wouldn't, but the OP cares about his reputation with these people. I'm not here to judge, I'm just here to provide him an answer that meets his criteria.

Wow, I am a little shocked how many would advise the easy way of lying instead of telling the truth about the own opinion... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_courage

@JepZ Without any guaranteed protections for the OP, I am unwilling to tell him to tell the truth and potentially be kicked out of his educational institution. At the end of the day "At least you told the truth" is a really horrible consolation prize for losing enrollment to an institution, and the potential income that enrollment would have provided.

@Compass Normally you will not get kicked out because you talk to a fellow grad student, saying him that you do not want to share your work with them.

@JepZ That assumes that the fellow grad student is on normal moral standing as well, and will accept said outcome. What happens if the fellow grad student decides to blackmail the OP by saying he'll report the previous plagiarism if he doesn't help? Assuming everyone will operate on a normal moral plane only works when we know everyone is on that plane. The evidence provided clearly contradicts that, therefore navigating this plane requires operating on the skewed moral plane where a white lie is safer than a confrontational truth.

@Compass: This is probably the best answer. The problem to this approach is denying gets tiring eventually when you are repeatedly asked for solutions. Also, as I work in my office, fellow students can always walk in and demand for solutions. To be more precise, I do get fellow students come to my office a couple of hours before the deadline when it is is very difficult to refuse them to show them your work. Anyway, thanks a lot for your answer.

@compass Chances are quite good you are not getting kicked out when you ask your university for help after getting blackmailed for doing the right thing (saying "No", at least were I studied (London & Germany) the chances are good). After all you didn't cheat, you just helped others. Furthermore, violating the rules in the first place is what brought you here. But hey, just keep lying and defying, thats what (too many) academics do, isn't it?

when it is is very difficult to refuse them to show them your work — [citation needed]  Repeat after me: No, I will not show you my answers.

For what it's worth, I recently had to deal with a similar situation as a TA. Tl;dr: it ended badly for all involved.

The issue of peer pressure should be taken head on. I prefer not to tell white lies about last minute work. Answer honestly by starting with a simple statement "honestly, I really don't like sharing my work until after it is graded. I guess I am just very private about this sort of thing. Sorry, hope it doesn't offend you. I hope you can understand, I'm just like this."
If your classmates are reasonable adults, they will respect your preference. If they proceed to publicly ostracize you, give a retort along the lines of "In this day and age, we are supposed to be tolerant of each other. Your attitude is childish and distasteful."
Please stay away from being vocally judgemental towards these grad students. Instead, be a role model.
Moreover, in that in most graduate programs, there is a camaraderie that build while you are taking classes and before qualifying exams. Make clear that you are willing to work together with others in solving difficult problems. Alternatively, if you are way ahead in this particular subject, hold informal review sessions to help other grad students solve their learning issues.  These two ideas will make clear you are a helpful person, and if they are just lazy, you won't need to do anything.
Eventually, there might be a course that you find difficult and need help. Then, you can lean on your peers. Alternatively, when you start performing research, there will also be tasks (paper writing? coding? math? oral presentation preparation? moving apartments?) that you will need help with. You will need your peers, so help those who help themselves (and maybe you too). As an added bonus, nothing helps learning like teaching at a black board before your peers.
As for grades, IMHO you can forget about those. You're already in grad school.

There is a difference between working together and stealing solutions. My objection is with stealing solutions at the last moment cause they were unable to do the problems in the given time. As for grades being important, its not about the grades but fairness, personally I don't care for grades and just give my best but its annoying to see fellow students who copy scoring more. As for help during research being involved, research cannot be conducted unless you are totally honest and nobody can solve the problem for you, you can seek help, yes, but this is about spoon-feeding complete solutions

@ramanujan_dirac I agree with your comment! I never tried to imply otherwise. Perhaps I should have only had the first two paragraphs.

This may be seen as a facetious answer, but why not give them some answers that are subtly wrong; have non obvious errors.  After a couple of times they will see that the answers are not getting them the results that they want and will stop asking.

This is largely unethical

So is copying/cheating/plagiarising

Of course, but I don't think fooling him/her is the solution though.

Although it seems a bit hypocracy, I usually first talk to the professor saying that they want the assignment and I cannot say no, show my current work, and then give them what they want.
I also tell them that I have shown my current work to the professor and therefore they should use my work with caution.
If they get upset about me showing my work, then it's their decision. A true friend would never be upset about something that could harm me. I just say "well, it is best if he/she did not talk to me at all, then."
All in all, it is your own academic life that you have to deal with. You are not and should not be responsible what the others do/feel in these matters.

Why can you not say no?

I studied in a Physics where cooperative work was the norm, assignments were done as a group.  Within that group, work was not evenly done, but each member was expected to contribute to their fullest ability, and answers were discussed, not copied.  If a member did not contribute, or distributed work outside the group, they simply were removed from the group.  These were non-trivial tasks so none of us had any qualms of simply telling freeloaders no.  In also worked in Comp Sci, where the opposite was true, work was, and needed to be individual.  Yes, some get their nose out of place when the answer is no, but normal honor codes place the same level of honor on the person providing the answer as the one taking the answer.  If the norm in the field is cooperative work, then cooperation is acceptable but is a two way street.  If it is an environment to individual effort it expected, then anything else is an equal violation by both parties without regard to peer pressure in my experience.  Hurt feelings heal much easier than honor.

To be honest, if I were you, I would not care about it! Why?
The deal is that the problem sheets are graded. But normally the number of points that you get does net get any better or worse if someone copies your solution. You still get the same amount of points. So your performance is graded as your professor said that he was going to grade it.
Besides that, you can always ask your fellow students to tell you if they find a mistake or find a better way to solve the exercise. Often, when I pass my solutions to somebody, they ask questions about what I made and I have to explain them what I did. This makes me think about my solutions and often I find errors in my solutions or I get aware of the fact that there are some things that I haven't understood as well as I have thought. So, this makes me improve.
I personally think that passing solutions to your fellow students is rather a good thing for you. You also profit and you are graded as they announced to grade you.
Besides that, one day you should be better than the guys who were just copying your solutions because they have never learned to solve problems on their own and you have.
Besides that: If you do not want to pass your solutions to anybody, just tell them. Why should you lie about it? It is always better to stand up for your opinion and tell them what youreally think about it. Sometimes you just hae to have the Courage to do things like this.


text:
Choosing between attending conference or PhD interview when a little time gap between both
I have completed my master's and currently have a one-year contract as a junior research fellow while I apply for PhDs in Europe. Recently, I applied for both a conference and PhD position.
The PhD position is at a good institute. The project offered interests me, and I am scheduled for a first-round interview on January 13th. However, I think it will take me substantial time to prepare for this interview, as I have to brush up on the old work and think through how to clearly convey the ideas.
The conference theme matches my current work, and takes place January 7th-10th, though it is 1000 km away from the interview. I am not sure whether I should go. This will be the first time I will present a poster, and it would be helpful in my PhD applications. But posters also require time to be prepared. My guide is saying to focus on the PhD interview as I haven't got any PhD position yet.
Now based on level of interview difficulty and importance in longer-term, what should I do? Skip the conference to prepare for the PhD interview? I feel like I can attend both, but I might be wrongly estimating the seriousness of preparation. Also, in this period  I also have some 6-7 PhD application deadlines.

The last sentence in your question (added in edits) is easy to miss, but it's important: "there are 6-7 other positions with deadlines in this period that I could be applying to". Your question focuses on "should I skip the conference to prepare for the PhD interview?", but if you'd asked "how should I divide my time between preparing for this interview, going to this conference, and applying for more positions", you might have gotten a different range of answers.

Now based on level of Interview difficulty and importance in longer-term, what should i do? Leave the conference and prepare for PhD interview to attend both. I feel like I can attend both, I might be wrongly estimating the seriousness of preparation.

Answering purely this question, you do not (should not) need these four days to prep for an interview so badly that you skip a professional opportunity to "prepare."

Do you mean the conference as a professional opportunity to prepare? Please see I have added some edits.

@Mirae None of your details are really relevant, except the PhD application deadlines.

@Mirae And no, I mean before an interview, you are not studying for it 8 hours a day for days on end.

But this is my first interview, and I must be prepared at my best. I have to review the details of some projects and the relevant softwares I used years ago. Also, PhD applications take time, I have to read papers of faculty offering project to get better idea, are you considering these?

@Mirae Surprisingly, when you came to ask Academia.SE about academia, people familiar with academia come to answer your question.

So your advice is to attend both right? Because these shouldn't take that time.

@Mirae Yes, but ultimately this is a question only you can decide.

A three day gap between events is not at all unusual during your PhD. You might just as well get used to it now.
Don’t let either opportunity pass. You have nothing to lose but a bit of sleep.

Sleep... I think I remember what that is...

I can't see any reason not to do both. The conference might even help you prepare for the interview. But you might ask if there is any chance that you could do the interview at the conference location in case the department will have some people there.
Some conferences are also good places to look for other opportunities for doctoral study.
I'll also note that an inexperienced PI carries risk. You will need to evaluate them as much as they do you. And don't end your search elsewhere until you are sure.

Attend the conference. Unless it is in a completely unrelated field, your preparation will pay off as preparation for the Ph.D. interview as well. You can't really cram for a Ph.D. interview anyway. You have more than enough time to remind yourself of what you did, the interview is not an exam.
Do read up on the work of the faculty offering the project, but you can do this on the way to the conference and back, while you're sitting by your poster at low periods, and any other time at the conference when you're not meeting people or doing something else that's more beneficial to your goals (in your own judgment) than preparing for this one interview.
PS. The last sentence in your question contains important information: There are other Ph.D. positions with looming deadlines that you consider applying to. By all means, apply! If it were me I would do that instead of cramming for the interview, and still go to the conference. Or focus at the ones you really want. But of course it's your call at the end.

Seriously, @Mirae? Your time management is your own responsibility. But while you are at the conference, some conference-related activities (meeting people, listening to interesting talks) are more useful to you than rereading your own old work; some are less important (e.g. listening to a plenary on an unrelated topic), and you can use the time for your interview preparation. You'll have to develop and use your own judgment as to which is which.

Going against the grain here a bit, but I'd say that if you feel that half a week is too close for comfort, it's fine to ask for another date for the interview. If you feel that you need a couple of days after an opportunity to present your work to prepare for the interview I'm sure they will accommodate. Ask them if there is the possibility to do the PhD interview a week or so later and they will probably find you a date that better suits your schedule, and then your can realize both opportunities without having to worry about doing one of them half baked.


text:
Why do some institutions have a Pre-Defense for PhD degrees?
The process of acquiring a PhD degree at  my institution (after successfully completing comprehensive exams) is as follows:

Submitting a research proposal and defending it.

Approving the proposal by a committee where they will be the committee members who will be present at the final defense.

Completion of the dissertation and extracting at least one paper from the dissertation and publishing the paper in a journal.

The student can do Pre-Defense after at least one year since the approval of the proposal.

Doing the final defense after a successful Pre-Defense.

In my institution, a PhD student has to publish at least one paper extracted from his dissertation in order to be eligible for proceeding into a Pre-Defense. The Pre-Defense committee must approve the work done by the student and if the work does not get approved, the student needs to wait a while, and then he will be able to do the Pre-Defense again.
In my opinion, the Pre-Defense is redundant since the paper is peer-reviewed by experts before it gets accepted. So why is there a need for a Pre-Defense?

I'm not really following the process here.

PhD rules vary a lot across institutions and particular countries. That doesn’t mean your question is unanswerable, but it’s impossible to fully understand for somebody not familiar with your particular institution and its rules. Pleas [edit] your question to clarify all relevant parts of the procedure, in particular: 1) What is the proposal defense session and when does it happen? 2) they only have a couple of days to review the final dissertation – so this would be for the actual defense? 3) What exactly is defended at the pre-defense? Do you submit anything or give a talk?

What exactly are you asking? The title already presupposes that some (I.e. multiple) universities have pre-defenses, the body seems to ask whether any more than your university (I.e. just one) have.

@MisterMiyagi, publishing a paper for me seems to be a Pre-Defense already. Why is there a need to conduct a Pre-Defense again?

What exactly is the mechanism you are wondering about exactly? Having an early additional examination? Having an extra examination at all? Or specifically that the committee of the extra examination has no overlap with the committee of the final examination?

I don't see "producing a dissertation" in your list of steps. And is the "pre defense" before or after completion of the dissertation? A research proposal is not a dissertation.

@Buffy, Production of a dissertation is after the successful proposal defense, and the pre-defense is after the completion of the dissertation.

@sherl.lol Please remove all the other things the question asks for, then. Also make it clear you are specifically wondering about the redundancy of publication and pre-defense; right now there are multiple perceived issues raised.

Please place the writing/completion of the dissertation in your list. Is it 2.5, or as late as 4.5? Make it clear. Some places a paper is a step along the way prior to completion of the dissertation, and might even be included as part of it. Where completion occurs drastically affects the answer.

So what's the difference between the defense and the pre-defense? It seems like the work is done before the pre-defense and approved at the pre-defense, so I'm not sure what's left to do at the actual defense.

@cag51, The final defense also needs to be conducted in order to check the work again by the committee members who approved the research proposal.

Still, which part is the "pre-defense"? Are you saying that people prepare a dissertation and a paper, and they can't proceed to the defense until the publish paper is approved by the pre-defense committee?

@– Azor Ahai -him- The pre-defense committee does not care about the published paper and only evaluates the dissertation. But publishing the paper is part of the process and has to be done to proceed into pre-defense.

Why not ask this to your department head?

@sherl.lol I'm more confused now, so I give up. You have five answers anyway.

@sherl.lol, at many universities and PhD programs, publishing an article is just one of the requirements for the defense. There may be other requirements. Many people publish more than one article during their PhD. For my PhD, I was required to publish two or more articles, not just one. In addition, a published article is not a dissertation, and a review of your article is not a review of your dissertation. Usually, your dissertation will be larger and more complete than one article. Please note that they are not the same thing.

One of the comments seems to distill OP's question:

publishing a paper for me seems to be a Pre-Defense already. Why is there a need to conduct a Pre-Defense again?

It seems that OP thinks that peer review and the "pre-defense" are redundant, rather than the pre-defense and defense being redundant. I think this is probably the wrong way to think about the pre-defense. The thesis committee is not deciding again whether OP's paper is suitable for publication in some particular journal: that's the job of that journal's editor. The thesis committee is deciding whether OP is prepared to graduate their PhD program.
Having a paper published is indeed some sort of stamp of approval, but it is not a magical one. Peer review is deeply imperfect. Many journals pretend to provide peer review but actually publish almost everything they receive because they want the publication fees. Peer review can also be undermined by conflicts of interest in the reviewers, just plain lazy review, or sloppy work by the editor. A lot of junk gets past peer review.
From what I can tell, a published paper is only necessary at OP's institution for graduation, but that does not mean it is sufficient. If there is some reason that the published work is not considered sufficient by the committee, it certainly makes sense for the committee to make this known to the student before their final defense. Additionally, requiring one published paper does not mean that the rest of the content is unimportant to the committee. They may expect some other number of publishable (even if not yet published) papers to be found in the dissertation. It seems like this Pre-Defense process would allow the student to be made aware if the committee finds the rest of the dissertation acceptable or not.
At my own institution, there was nothing called a "pre-defense", but these sorts of issues were instead handled through regular (approximately annual) meetings with the thesis committee throughout the PhD. The important point is that the student should be aware about their progress to degree and should not be ambushed at the final defense and find out they are not actually prepared to graduate when they expect to be.

Perhaps a predefense can also be useful for catching cases where a student has a great publication that they don't understand it at all because the heavy lifting was done by someone else.

^ Or, perhaps, an empirical article is required, but some student tried to slip past a review article.

@anyon indeed these days collaborative papers are the norm in some fields so it doesn’t mean much to have a published paper, and it certainly doesn’t mean you can defend the results therein on your own.

If a "pre defense" occurs after the dissertation is complete, then it might be just a way to give the candidate advice on their work and permit them to make changes before a "final" defense.
In some places, a "final" defense is truly final. Failing it means no degree and no possibility of continuation. The student would like some feedback prior to that so that they can bring the work up to the proper standard. One hopes that the advisor can do that well enough, but it can also be useful, and important, to get independent advice from a committee, especially if that advice can lead to improvements. This might be the intent within your system.
However, if one can fail (finally) a pre-defense, the intent may be to weed out inferior and unlikely-to-succeed work, freeing institutional resources. If it is up to the student as an option, however, then I doubt that this would be the case and the prior suggestion more likely.
The required paper is, I think, also a way for the university to get outside independent assurance of the quality of the candidate's work via the normal review system of reputable journals.
I was once part of a less formal system, where the "defense" might result in acceptance, or "back to the drawing board", with a future review planned. Failure was rare unless the student gives up in making necessary changes or argues for incorrect results. I don't remember a case that required more than two iterations to success.

+1 This was more or less the reason for pre-defenses at my university. They’re especially helpful for international students who have already made travel arrangements.

I imagine there's a lot of variety in the reasons for introducing a pre-examination, but one which is missing/not highlighted in the other answers is that the countries I know that have a PhD Pre-examination are those where it is very uncommon to fail the final defense.  In the Netherlands for instance, it is so rare to fail at final defense, that when it happened that a student failed a PhD defense a few years ago in Tilburg, it made the national news!
In these cases, where the final defense is a ceremonial occasion, where the possibility of failure is slim to none, it is, I believe, good to have some form of pre-examination. This performs a final check that the candidate has reached the required level.  In some places this is done solely on the written thesis (for instance, reading committee approval), in other places a pre-examination defense and I'm sure other places have other systems I am unaware of.
I hope this supplements the other great answers here with a different perspective.

After your edits, it sounds like the process is roughly:

Do the actual work, publish it, and write your dissertation.
Have a pre-defense where (some subset of) your committee agrees that you've checked all the boxes for graduation, including having published a paper.
Have an actual defense, where your committee will confirm that your work is sound and significant enough to merit a PhD.

Given this, I think the second step is merely procedural. Imagine how frustrating it would be (for you and for the committee) if you went through the full defense, passed, and everyone thought you were done, only to learn that there was some issue with your publication, or your coursework, or some other technicality that would delay your graduation for months or even a year. This will lead to bad feeling, and the committee may feel some pressure to lower their standards rather than inconvenience you. Whereas by doing this pre-defense, such issues will be caught before your defense is ever scheduled, and everyone will agree in advance that you are good-to-go after you pass the defense.

One peer reviewed paper is presumably only a relatively small part of the research described in your dissertation, so even if it was published in a good journal, the peer review of that paper does not constitute review of your whole PhD.
This will vary by field, but in my field, a PhD thesis should contain enough publishable research for 3-5 good journal papers, though it is not expected that they will all have been published before the thesis is submitted.
Some universities require a pre-submission defence with a committee internal to the university before students are allowed to submit a dissertation for external examination. The internal pre-submission defence is to ensure that the student is ready and the work meets the university’s internal standards before it is finalised and exposed to assessment and criticism by world experts. If the student is not ready, they will be given a chance to make revisions before the final (perhaps public) examination or defence.

The purposes of a (pre-)defence and of peer review are not exactly the same, so peer review does not make the defence redundant.
Peer review checks whether the work is correct, and suitable for the journal.
A significant point of a (pre-)defence is checking that it's the student's own work, or, if parts of it are collaborative, that the student genuinely contributed. Of course, correctness and significance need to be checked too, but this is the reason the defence takes the form it does, rather than just being some people reading the thesis and writing a report on it.