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A negative graduate class experience and maybe some factors in cultural differences
I am a master's student in the US studying international relations, and I had a negative experience in one of my classes last week. It is my last semester of my master's program, and I feel very exhausted from being a student. I have a story about what happened in one of my classes last week, and would like to know how I should cope in the class for the rest of the semester.
Situation
Last week, in one of my classes (in a subject I am not too familiar with), I had to give a presentation based on a paper I wrote. The assignment involved writing a paper based on the course readings for the week that we signed up for and presenting it on the due date. I presented, but I admit that my presentation was quite poor because of my lack of confidence in my paper. This was definitely a situation of the input being much greater than the output, which is definitely one of the greatest frustrations that anyone could ever have. I know that it is a stupid calculation on my part, but I was just planning to present in a dull way so that other people would not ask any questions; the presentation did not seem to be weighted much.
The professor attacked my presentation in front of the class and gave it as an example of what not to do. However, I would have preferred that I just receive a bad grade in private, as opposed to having to feel embarrassed in class. I could tell that the professor was quite disappointed. 'Humiliated' might seem like a strong word, but I felt very embarrassed and helpless for the rest of class.
Now, there are three weeks left of the course, and I feel like I would not want to stare at anyone in the remaining class sessions. I am considering training my mind to think of myself as a corpse for the two-hour duration of each of the remaining classes. The papers for last week are already graded, and based on what happened in the class, I am already mentally prepared for the worst in relation to my paper grade.
I am from an eastern culture, and in my culture, it is considered one of the worst insults to publicly embarrass someone; this is done in cases when the person is mean-spirited or it is likely that the people involved will never see each other again.
Questions

Is the professor's reaction common and justified in the US or other western countries in situations like mine across different fields?

How should I cope for the last few weeks of the semester?

I just can't wait for this course to finish. If such an experience were to occur, I would have preferred that it happen on the last day so that I would not have to look at familiar faces in the classroom ever again.

I have seen profs requesting public criticism by the whole class. Everyone, not just the authority figure gets to chip in. It's quite unpleasant, possibly even more than your case, and even for non-Eastern people, but it prepares one for life. Take it as an experience for life; there will be the moment where it will come in useful.

I'm sorry. What happened to you should be very rare, but it does happen sometimes. In US higher education I have seen otherwise good professors embarrass someone by accident (not realizing the effect of their words on the student, or saying something more extreme than they had thought through), and some extremely blunt professors who say this sort of thing on purpose (this group is mixed in whether they are otherwise kind people).
I highly doubt that what the professor did was "justified," but this may depend on the tone they used. In my opinion, intending to embarrass you for this would not be justified.
As for coping, I suggest you think about whether the professor has done this sort of thing to other people. If so, then other people know what you feel like. If not, then it is unlikely that the professor considered how his words would make you feel.
It may feel empowering to go to the professor with direct feedback that this was very embarrassing to you. I think that directness might help the professor learn but would even better free you from some of this shame. However, that's expert-level self-confidence and emotional intelligence, and not at all what I did when I was in a similar situation (grad student giving final presentation on my work, and the professor said a few slides in that my approach didn't make sense/wouldn't work; that sort of deflated me and I ended the presentation there--I was the last student to present, the class had already gone over time, and the prof was complaining before my presentation that he needed to leave.). In my case, I never brought it up, there was no direct feedback on the presentation, and I continued going to next term's class with the same prof even when I felt like I was going to cry. I felt embarrassed for a while when I ran into my fellow students from that class. But eventually I figured out my feelings, realized that professor is extremely direct (to put it kindly), and the pain dulled over time.
To prepare for your remaining classes, really be kind to yourself. If you have a friend in this class, try to arrange to come to this class with them so you're not alone at the beginning or end or class. Bring a comforting hot drink with you to class. (Or ice cold drink, depending on weather. :) ) Wear jewelry or put something in your pocket that reminds you of home & loved ones or a meaningful accomplishment. And try to remain engaged with the ideas right in front of you in the class, rather than replaying that class in your mind. If possible, finish a draft of what you need to do for the rest of the class as soon as you can, so you can mentally close the door on this class.
You are almost done with your program! I am sorry that there was this awful experience at the end, but please try to celebrate what you have done!

As an additional coping strategy, maybe talk to other people in your class? Get their perspective, if possible from different cultural backgrounds? I strongly agree with @cactus_pardner that this is rare in western cultures as well, although possibly not as rare as in eastern cultures.

What exactly did the professor say?

Did the professor comment on precisely on your character, you as a student or person or anything of the sort? Or just your presentation?
It's definitely wrong if the professor said you were a bad presenter, bad student or negatively described you specifically.
If the presentation, it depends a little on what was said but more on how it was said. If it was indeed an attack, then that's wrong.

Talk to university counselling. Also, do you know Brené Brown?

1 minute article: Brené Brown on The Difference Between Guilt and Shame
Videos:
Dr. Brené Brown on Faking It, Perfectionism and Living Wholeheartedly | SuperSoul Sunday | OWN (4:49)
Brené Brown: Why Your Critics Aren't The Ones Who Count (22:40)
Brené Brown on Blame (3:25)
Brené Brown on Vulnerability (20:19)
Listening to shame | Brené Brown (20:38)

I wish I could upvote this post multiple times, especially for the links you provided.

@cactus_pardner thanks. people on christianity se didn't seem to really like Brené Brown XD (see my posts if you want)

Ok, so first point I would assume is that the presentation grade is separate to the paper grade - there may be another grade involved for the overall grade. I separate them - they have different marking criteria.
Were you the first to present - had you been given the marking criteria - usually it is made available or at least an outline.
As for the rest of the course - go and benefit from the classes, the prof won’t be “out to get you” based on the presentation.
If, as you say, the prof held the presentation up as something not to do - and did not make comments about you personally - then it was for constructive critisism for the whole class and if that has been the method employed for all the other presentations, if not, then that is not so fair.
I had students give presentations where, at the end, both I and the audience of students would ask questions and make comments BUT all were warned that any Q / comment had to be constructive : this was good, needed more on this or what about X... etc.
So, go to class, finish the course and don’t panic.
One comment could the prof could be thinking is what happened - the paper was great, I was expecting a rolls-royce of a presentation - mind you it can happen - bad day etc...

Is the professor's reaction common and justified in the US or other
western countries

Common, yes; justified, no. If you felt humiliated, then I don't think the professor behaved appropriately, since the point of class is to provide you with an environment to flourish and learn. However, as others have pointed out, there is a chance that the professor is unaware of the effect (s)he had on you. In my experience, some academic communities can be brutally harsh, and this is an accepted (sometimes even welcome) norm. Members of these communities can forget that not everyone interacts like they do.

If you want to make it right with the professor, you can go and be honest. Explain that you know it was not your best work, and that you didn't mean to be disrespectful -- you had a lot going on with your other coursework, and didn't have time to produce your best output. If you really want to go the extra mile, you can ask if there is a way to make it up.

If you want to prevent this from happening with other students, then you should definitely mention your feelings to the professor in a non-confrontational and unemotional way (if you can). You can do this after the semester is over so it doesn't affect you negatively.

Otherwise, just let it go and focus on getting through the next two weeks :)

It is my last semester of my master's program, and I feel very
exhausted from being a student.
one of my classes (in a subject I am not too familiar with)
The assignment involved writing a paper based on the course readings
for the week that we signed up for and presenting it on the due date.
I presented, but I admit that my presentation was quite poor

Three observations, based on your description of the problem.

Originally, you didn't seem to think that the assignment was very important or critical;
This topic doesn't seem to be your main strength;
You knew you weren't performing at your best.

Based on that, you may feel a bit better if you can try to put the situation into perspective (I know, with the embarrassment, that this can be really hard). Consider this:

Your presentation was boring, but you designed it to be boring because you weren't happy with it! And, you weren't happy with it because you spent your time focusing on other important things! The professor may have been disappointed because (s)he expected you at 100%. But you deserve some slack.
You got to the last 3 weeks of the program without anything like this happening - which means you've put in 1-2 years of good work. So while I am sure that you feel terrible, I don't think you're actually doing terribly.
The professor criticized you, but it doesn't sound like the other students said anything. So, there is no need to be embarrassed before them. Usually, when this happens to students around me, I don't think worse of them or assume that my work was better -- I just feel relieved that I didn't get yelled at.

For this type of reasoning, you can take a look at David Burns' book on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, called "Feeling Good" (a nice summary here -- see "Distortions"). Practicing this kind of reasoning with yourself might help you build some confidence before next class.
A second, and maybe faster/easier tip, is just to try to spend some time before each class refreshing yourself on your accomplishments. Look at a paper you're really proud of, or the big stack of all of the articles you've read over the semester. Think about a compliment you got from another student, or a way in which you helped someone else. Focus on things that remind you that you are talented and capable and not limited to one presentation in one week of one class!
Also, try to remember that as long as you pass the class, everything will be fine. I screwed up a final assignment for my master's degree and scored the worst grade I've ever gotten in anything. To be honest, I don't think anyone has ever even looked at it, or if they have, it's never come up to my detriment.


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24 years of personal research which needs to be academically recorded but how?
I need some guidance, 24 years ago I started to research a specific topic which slowly developed into my collating related documented evidence that I accessed worldwide. Today, my research is finished and ALL the related historical documentation etc compiled. But now what? I am being told by those interested in my research and findings that I need to publically ensure such is available to others, but how. Unlike those that embarked on a PhD journey, my journey was one of a personal nature that ended up being Thesis style, any suggestions?

An easy, cheap method to get knowledge out into the world is to make a website.

It's not clear what your goal here is. Can you [edit] your post to clarify? "What to do" and "how" depends very much on what it is you want.

Would you mind telling us what field this research is in? Science? Math? Humanities? Or something else?

Research is research is research (but only if of sufficient quality). Really, it doesn't matter that you did it on your spare time or as a part of a PhD, if it is good, you can use the usual roads for dissemination.

Also, and I say this without knowing anything about you or your research: I have seen many cases of independent researchers that devoted years to build a body of research with incredible internal coherence, but no connexion with reality whatsoever. Make sure you are not one of them.

Options that come to mind:

Publish a monograph or a book. This requires either paying or somehow getting an academic publisher interested; depends heavily on what others think of your work.
Submit article(s) to a peer reviewed journal. This option will likely not work in practice if you have no ties with the academic world.
Produce the electronic version of the book, and offer it as a pdf in your own website.
Expose the research in blog form.

Exactly what do you mean by the second point?  It seems ambiguous to me.  Reviewers should not review an article based on how connected and known the author is, but on the quality, relevance, and importance of the work.  In that sense, the point is invalid, at least in principle.  However, lack of experience with academia and publishing tends to impede a would-be author's ability to judge these things properly, and write accordingly.  In this sense, the point is accurate.

I meant exactly what you say in the second part of your comment. A person with no ties to academia is very likely to produce both content and format that are not very amenable to what a reviewer might be expecting. This will likely vary a lot for different research areas.

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Freedom in acknowledgments section of dissertation - writing in native language
I am currently finishing writing my MSc thesis. I am considering separating the acknowledgments section in two:

Personal acknowledgments (sorted as advisor(s)/family/SO/friends)
Acknowledging financial support

Point 2 is straight forward. My issue is with point 1.
What kind of freedom do I have here?
My thesis is in English (not my nor the university's native language) so, am I allowed to, for example, write some paragraphs on my native language when I am acknowledging non-native English speakers?
Slightly different topic but do I have the freedom to write "inside references" that likely only the person who I am writing to will understand, when addressing friends or SO?
Essentially, what will be frowned upon by the referees in the acknowledgments section?

The only way to know is to ask someone who is familiar with your university's policies.

There are a couple directions to look to see how your school handles this sort of thing:

Your supervisor probably has an idea of what's been done in the past.
Theses in your school or department's library - school's keep past theses that have been accepted on record - have a look at what people in your school, department, and program have done in the past.

In general - a quick survey of what my colleagues have used in the acknowledgements section of their master's theses has determined:

Inside jokes are ok.
Multilingual messages are ok (we are in Canada though, so French and English is pretty common)
None of us believe the any of the referees bothered to read the personal acknowledgements.

Thesis acknowledgement sections are — in my experience — one of the few places in academic writing where pretty much anything goes (within reason — nothing obviously offensive, etc).

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How to reply to an unofficial offer from my second choice when I also have an unofficial offer from my first choice?
Here is my situation. I am looking for a post-doc position. I have two choices, A and B.
My first choice is A. And I already got an un-official offer from A. I was told that A is working on a official offer. But I haven't got the official offer yet.
Now, my second choice, B, also send me an email. B tells me that he would like to give me an offer if I am interested in joining his lab. How should I reply? Is it appropriate to tell him that I am interested?

If you're interested in both, then email each of them and say so.
If you don't have the formal offer then you don't have the job and shouldn't make decisions without it.

"shouldn't make decisions without it."  Considering the slow pace of university bureaucracy, that is not always possible.

Related: How secure is a post doc job offer in an email from the department chair prior to receiving the official written letter?

IMO- Tell the 2nd professor guy B, in your own words, that you are very curious about what the offer is, and that you are awaiting a separate offer from another professor.


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Average age to start a PhD and correlation to future career
Which is the average age in which persons start their PhD? Is this age in some way related to the post PhD plans a person does?
In my (European) experience I have 3 groups of people, with the relative distributions:

(70% of the total) Those who started right after graduation (let's say when they were 24) without any job experience. Most of them (with exceptions, of course) are a bit fed up with research and willing to try a "real world job experience"
(25% of the total) Those who started 2,3,4 years later (so between 24 and 29), taking a full time phd. Generally people belonging to this group seem to be more motivated for academic career, even if starting a phd when one is 29 years old might be a bit late (or not?)
(5%) Those who start in their 40ties with the idea of taking a part time PhD as an out of job activity, and don't plan to leave their job.

Clearly there are all the possible shades between the above categories.

This seems to be a case of "71% of all statistics are made up on the spot". Anyway, independently of your numbers, it would make sense to me if people who have worked in industry for a few years but decided it is not for them are less likely to long for "real-world experience" than those that never made this experience so far.

I imagine it depends a lot on the field.  For example, a Ph.D. program in medieval literature, where there is little or no prospect of getting a job afterward, may have a lot of those 40-year-olds.

@xLeitix And 93.7% of people believe them whether they are accurate statistics or not.

@OP, it's not clear what you mean by "started" in some parts of the question. E.g., "started right after graduation (let's say when they were 24)" == graduation from bachelor's program? master's? In my day, you were graduated with BA or BS at age 21 or 22 after 4 years, or MA/MS at 22-24 after 1 or 2 more years, if you weren't going directly into the doctoral program. Starting at 24 would generally be after a couple years in the workforce.

@shoover  OP is talking about Europe. Here universities often require a master to enroll in a PhD programme, and studying towards your master usually takes at least 5 years. So no, starting a PhD at 24 is usually pretty much directly after what is considered the "undergrad" around here.

@xLeitix Thanks, I missed the "(European)" when I read the q.

There are many confounding variables (field of study, country, citizenship status, sex, race/ethnicity, probably many others) that correlate with both age at doctorate (as seen below) and post-PhD plans. This makes it difficult to directly measure the relationship between age and post-PhD plans.
The median age at doctorate varies by country and by field. Here's some OECD data:

It also varies over time. In the US, from 1978-2003, in the science and engineering fields:

And in the non-science and engineering fields:

See this report for more details.
For the US, we have data on the distribution of students' age, not just the median, and it's also broken down by  sex, citizenship status, and ethnicity and race.  From 2014:

While strong data for the first part, this is missing the "correlation to future career" part, which I feel is what the OP is really after.

@xLeitix This is why we have the one question per post rule.

Can we subtract the median age at doctorate by the total time to degree to get the median age at PhD start like the question asks?

@Sam: No, not really.  They aren't uncorrelated.


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Differences between research in private labs and university (computer science)
I will talk about computer science.
Which is the difference between doing a research job in an industrial research lab (as Google, Facebook or microsoft Research) and in a university?
Looking at my field (artificial intelligence) I can see many big shots moving from university to private R&D labs, so I am wondering which are the main differences, say under the point of view:

Salary
Freedom of investigating what you actually like
Competition (is more difficult to get a job in a university or in a R&D lab?)
Stability of the job

Salary: Private labs will 90% of the time pay more (with slight variances when comparing small companies and large university labs).
Freedom: Unfortunately freedom isn't vary high no matter where you UNTIL you become well-established. At Universities, you have to research where you can get grants and people won't give grants unless they like what you propose. Companies obviously need you to be doing research that is their best profit interest. When you get well-established some universities and companies will want you so much that they will give you the liberty to do what you want because of how successful you have proven to be. This doesn't happen very often.
Competition: They are about the same actually. A renown university like Carnegie Mellon is just as competitive as places like Apple and Google.
Stability: Typically, companies are more known to give out longer contract agreements, so even if your project fails, you are guaranteed to be moved around to other research areas. Sometimes at Universities, if the project you are working on tanks, there goes your grant and sometimes there is no where else to transfer to.

If you have tenure at a good university, you probably have the most stability anybody can have anywhere. (Yes, the university can fire you by eliminating your department, but if you're in CS, what are the chances of that?) However, for research positions, companies are probably somewhat better.

Absolutely correct, though, depending on the University, the road to tenure is not always stable.

Yes, the university can fire you by eliminating your department — Not necessarily!  Tenured faculty at my university have tenure in the university, not just within their home department.  So even when the university closes a department, tenured faculty have the option to move to a different department.

I suppose the private research labs are more driven by the research and development of their own products or features or sometimes methods.
whereas university labs are more focused on generic development of theory or sometimes applications of existing methods.

The question asks for a comparison in terms of salary, competition, freedom to research what you want, and/or job stability.


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What kind of papers is it acceptable to read during working hours?
In academia, one is forced to read papers that come out. Some of the papers I read are directly related to my work and then it is reasonable to read them in my working hours. Others are completely irrelevant and I read them just for the pleasure and to broaden my knowledge in other areas. These, I think, should be read in one's free time.
But then there are papers that are not directly related to what I am doing but may turn useful for my work, e.g., they may use a method that might come handy although they deal with a slightly different field. Should I read such papers at work as well or should I read them in my free time? How do I decide where the border between work-related and leisure-read papers lies?

I get some of my best ideas when doing things that are not directly related to my work. I actually make an effort to make time for that, since I view it as part of my thinking process and a way to induce creativity.

There may of course be differences between different academic cultures and systems but in essence you should be free to read whatever you want. Yes, you will of course need to read some literature to keep yorself up to date with your field to the extent that you can teach whatever courses you need to teach. I assume teaching is something you are ordered to do. Your own research adds the need to read other papers but since you decide your field you also decide what you need to read. If you find other areas of interest (still within your or related fields) then I cannot see that as a problem. There are many aspects of science such as methodology that can be extracted from, for example, neighbouring fields.
In my own case, I find I have a different problem: simply not time enough to keep myself updated to the level I would like. So, reading literature irrelevant to my major field is simply not imagineable.
So in the end the answer will depend on what your job situation looks like and what the expectations are, what you are ordered to do and what is your own initiative as well as what might result if you do not fulfil the goals of your employer.

So, do you think it might be a good idea to clarify this point with my supervisor or can I just read whatever I want whenever I want?

I would say that as long as your work is not suffering in any way, it should not be a problem.

A perspective from (theoretical) computer science:
One of the things that distinguishes academia from some other lines of work is that there is no well delineated line between "working hours" and non-working hours. Since you can probably be better paid elsewhere, academics tend to enjoy research. You seem to as well, since you read papers during your free time.
But that is the great thing about academia. Reading papers that you enjoy is work, since as you observe, reading in a field different from your own can nevertheless give you tools useful for your own work. So, I would say that you can read any paper you like during "working hours" and not feel bad about it.
Incidentally, one can always switch areas. If you feel that you are "forced" to read the papers that come out in your area, but there are other areas that you read for pleasure, perhaps you should work in those areas!
(Disclaimer: needless to say, to have a successful academic career, you can't spend all your time reading -- you have to spend some of your time writing! But there is no need to arbitrarily partition the reading into a work and pleasure pile.)

no well delineated line between "working hours" and non-working hours — There is also no well-delineated line between "directly relevant to my research" and "potentially useful later".

In academia, one is forced to read papers that come out.

Not in academia. You are not forced to read anything at all after you get your PhD. As a graduate student, you may have regular reading assignments given by your adviser, but those are just like any other class assignments, so I don't think you are talking of them here.

Some of the papers I read are directly related to my work and then it is reasonable to read them in my working hours. Others are completely irrelevant and I read them just for the pleasure and to broaden my knowledge in other areas. These, I think, should be read in one's free time.

One funny thing in academia (if we are talking about academia and not about an industrial job that pretends to be one) is that you never know what exactly your work is. Any time a colleague may stop by and ask a question, a paper may come for refereeing, etc., which may give you an opportunity (not "force", because you can reject anything you don't want either bluntly or in some fancy way like "Interesting problem but, unfortunately, it is outside my area of expertise") to think of something you've never heard of before. Another funny thing is that there is no work time (except teaching and meeting hours) and free time. You can wake up at 2AM and work like crazy if you have a good idea, or you can lock your office and go for a long stroll in the town if you don't feel like sitting and bumping your head against the brick wall will result in anything any time soon. I read whatever I want and wherever and whenever I want, and suggest that you do the same, provided that you meet your obligations and do not go on reckless reading (or non-reading) sprees.

But then there are papers that are not directly related to what I am doing but may turn useful for my work, e.g., they may use a method that might come handy although they deal with a slightly different field.

Zillions of them! No chance to read them all, of course, but, by all means, look out and around whenever you have a chance.

Should I read such papers at work as well or should I read them in my free time?

Whichever you prefer. I like reading when lying on a sofa and I don't have one in my office, so I read everything at home. Some people prefer to clearly separate the work and the social life, so they do all their reading at the office. There are no rules and no obligations in this respect.
How do I decide where the border between work-related and leisure-read papers lies?
Currently there is no such border in academia. We enjoy the total absence of the "reading police" and the internet made everything (well, almost: the copyright still spreads its shadowy tentacles far and wide but they are cut out one by one every day) available at a click of a button. The real danger is not in the "legal issues" but in the effective management of your time, which is the reverse sign of the freedom coin. But that is a totally different story...

My take (for profit company) is anything that clearly improves your domain knowledge in a way that can be tied back to your business.

One funny thing in academia (if we are talking about academia and not about an industrial job that pretends to be one) is that you never know what exactly your work is

This is true in the business world as well. My boss has no idea that we need to consolidate user directories, set up a configuration management system or implement a system that lets us visualize netflow information. He comes to me with problems, I need to read to be able to reply with answers.
So work related stuff is almost always good.
Oh, and xkcd. Anyone should be allowed to read xkcd at work. Except bus drivers, but that should be obvious.

It is kind of obvious, that reading work related stuff at work is OK. The question is more about where the border between work related and work unrelated stuff lies. Especially in academia, where one never exactly knows what one's work is, this can be rather tricky...


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how to assess student experiences from research opportunities?
I teach a Course for Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) on marine soundscapes and communication. Throughout the semester each student leads a project of their choosing using my own databases, participate in all the components of research, and at the end they write a blog describing their experiences. I want to understand if my course is helping them to find their STEM identity (it doesn't have to be in the marine sciences),  what kinds of  analysis are available to use their blogs to examine this question and use it to improve my course.

Are you now at the end of the course or is the for a future course?

Probably anything formal here is overkill - just read the blogs and take notes or do and outro interview.

Perhaps have a look at the learning outcomes of research degrees. Universities or accreditation bodies usually spell out what they expect of students who have a higher degree. You can then mark students based on whether they have demonstrated these outcomes (or come close).

You are asking a question on assessing an educational intervention. The right people to get on board for this are education professionals, which most universities have of course.
(Having gone through this sort of exercise, I will unambiguously state that while I thought "it can't be so hard to make that assessment myself", my position now is "I had no idea how to do that, and I'm glad that I asked professionals in the area". If you teach in marine sciences, you're unlikely to have the background to actually do the data in your blogs any justice and/or to come to conclusions that are statistically valid. If you intend to publish your experiences, you might also run into problems with privacy concerns for which you need ORB approval -- also a reason to have education professionals be part of whatever you want to do.)

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Do semester, weekly, and daily planners work for undergrad or grad students?
I always feel like I’m pressed for time but don’t get as much done as others around me. I’m busy all day, but then I need to pull an “all-nighter” to finish something I couldn’t complete during the day. The day (or sometimes the week!) slips by and I feel like I haven’t accomplished anything. I have read that maintaining planers (semester-wise, weekly, and daily) is often helpful. Some of the universities (Univ. of Melbourne, Michigan State etc.) seem to provide planer templates for students.  Making a planner is not very common where I studied. I would love to know some personal experiences. How well does this work?

Planners are good for certain things, but they aren't going to solve your problem.
Fundamentally, they are good for recording future obligations, such as project due dates, exam dates, doctor's appointments, and the like. But they won't give you better study habits.
Let me suggest two things that might help to get you on a better "schedule".
First, do an inventory of what it is that you are actually doing and compare it to what you think you should be doing to be more effective. All nighters and cramming for exams are an exceedingly poor way to succeed. The worst exam I ever wrote was actually an open book (timed) exam, for which I'd stayed up all night preparing. I couldn't actually think when it became important to do so. But, figure out whether you are wasting time, even time spent studying ineffectively by pushing too hard without breaks. Your brain needs occasional breaks. Aerobic exercise is a really good way to take a break.
Second, make a habit of carrying a pen and a few index cards with you wherever you go. Some of those cards are blank and available for recording notes, but others are summaries of recent lectures (perhaps), and one of them has a list of things to accomplish for the day. You can add time requirements as needed. You can check them off. I suggest actual index cards and not an electronic equivalent, since cards can be easily updated at any time and take up little room in your pocket.
You can read about the Hipster PDA at an answer I gave at CSEducators for more on effective use of index cards. Use that as your "planner".

More than half a century ago, when I was an undergraduate, the top student in my graduating class (valedictorian) carried a hipster pda at all times. I later used one to help manage my teaching.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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Respected journal uses only a single reviewer and has a high acceptance rate (>85%); could this be an acceptable practice?
I have recently noticed a failed case of peer review at The Astrophysical Journal (ApJ). It is a solid journal in which researchers of astrophysics can present good science without worrying about the topic being fashionable (as opposed to, e.g., Nature and Science). The peer-reviewed paper in question was published in ApJ but retracted by the journal within a week after it was reported as a case of plagiarism.
However, the issue I'd like to raise is not about plagiarism but about the review process of the journal. In the aforementioned paper, there are obvious technical errors that do not even pass a basic sanity check. I believe that had it been properly reviewed, the paper could in no way have been accepted in the first place, plagiarized or not.
(For more information, see my comment on Jeffrey Beall's blog post about the incidence of plagiarism. Moreover, my Astronomy SE post contains some technical details. The latter was posed as a question but I'm now sure that my suspiscion---that there are blatant errors in the paper---is well-founded. I had at first shied away from the obvious conclusion just because I have no expertise in astrophysics.)
It is disturbing that the acceptance rate of the journal is very high (between 85--90%) while only a single referee participates in the review process. (ApJ seeks an additional opinion only if the acceptance decision cannot be made without one.) As the low quality of the retracted paper demonstrates, any such a single-reviewer model falls apart when a referee hastily signs off the paper.
This incident seems to show the poor review process of ApJ. Could this be justified simply on the grounds that no better practice is available in the field? Or is this worrysome even after acknowledging that academic customs greatly vary across different fields?

See https://aas.org/files/resources/aasjan2014_burton.pdf for the review practice of ApJ.

Related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/58502/journal-paper-and-conference-proceedings-note-appear-to-be-identical-is-this-pl

In the acknowledgments they claim that Kip Thorne also looked at their paper.  Presumably he didn't tell them it was wrong.

@DavidKetcheson Hi David, thanks for your edit to make the title sound more natural and also for your comment. Considering the dishonesty (plagiarism) involved in the paper, I also find it doubtful that Kip Thorne really read the paper and gave comments to the authors, as they may have liked to imply in the Acknowledgments.

I find some of the statistics here eye-opening.  An acceptance rate of 85-90% is not inherently problematic, but it is surprisingly high.  Also publishing 20,000 papers per year boggles my mind: my Fermi-type calculation puts this at the same order of magnitude as all papers published in astrophysics in a given year.  So this journal sounds culturally exceptional to me.  Perhaps it functions more like a preprint server than a conventional journal: i.e., you expect to find a large portion of papers in your field there, and you expect the stuff there not to be nonsense, but that's about it.

What makes this journal a respectable one? It seems either the standards of the scientific community are very low or exceptionally high ( they send out papers so good that no reviewer can improve it).

@Greg - "What makes this journal a respectable one?" - There have been some good works too that it has published. e.g. G. E. Brown and H. A. Bethe, Ap. J. 423, 659 (1994). But I'm not taking sides..

@PeteL.Clark - I am curious regarding your statement "my Fermi-type calculation puts this at the same order of magnitude as all papers published in astrophysics in a given year". How did you arrive at that?

@TheDarkSide: Well, I hope you know that a "Fermi-type calculation" is fancy language for "a quick/lazy mixture of calculation and guesswork", but e.g. see http://arxiv.org/year/astro-ph/14.

@PeteL.Clark Sorry, it's only 4,000 papers a year.  I was looking at the wrong slide in the linked pdf.  Corrected now.

'@David: Ah, that makes a lot more sense.  :) "Only" 4,000 papers then.

If there was a respectable journal with even just 50% acceptance rate, it would be flooded with "spam" submissions. Hey, this is unfinished or did not work, but let's try submitting it there anyway?

It is not as if Math would be a single community, submitting to the same journal. You have logics, statistics, numerics, ... they are each their own communities, with maybe only 1 or 2 faculty at your university.

@Chris: I didn't mean that the journal does business like a preprint server -- I assume the papers get refereed -- but from a certain point of view, if half of all the astrophysics papers which appear on the arxiv appear in one journal, then that journal bears a lot in common with the arxiv, if you see what I mean.  Moreover the phenomenon that the majority of papers in a field get published in two journals is very different from what happens in other fields I know about (especially math)....

....I also think that you may be understating the relative size of the astrophysics community.  The number of arxiv math papers in 2014 is between 2 and 3 times the number of astrophysics papers.  This means (I think) that astrophysics is much larger in size than any one subfield of mathematics.  But most subfields of mathematics have at least a dozen journals devoted to that subfield and the vast majority of mathematics journals are not subject specific.....

...So e.g. as a number theorist I could plausibly submit to hundreds of journals, and the distinction in quality here is tremendous.  I am a tenured faculty member at a nationally ranked research university, and I have never published a paper in the top tier of math journals (which consists of at least five journals).  So from my perspective it is remarkable that such a large community does all its business with basically two journals.  It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it is certainly very different, and it's not really clear why abuses like the one described here don't happen more often.

Apparently, the editor of ApJ is the former advisor of Dr. Park, one of the authors... It probably is only a coincidence (Wikipedia sais 8.5% of the Koreans have this name), but his mother is called "Park Ok-seon"? Again, this is a very common name, apparently.
Oh, and Korea has a copyright problem in science: http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20151124001042

@Anony-Mousse: The question is about the general publication practices of a very high volume journal.  I don't see the point of harping too much on one of 4000 papers the journal published that year after it has already been retracted: it does not seem very representative of the general case.

@PeteL.Clark well, that comment is rather precisely on that one article, isn't it? But as is, every single discipline seems to have a review problem (the difference is only if we acknowledge this); and more and more universities seem to offer a bonus for every article published - so there is an increasing demand to publish whatever gets through, unfortunately the wrong incentive to publish... so I am surprised and scared that ApJ has such a high acceptance rate and only one reviewer. Sounds like heaven for low-quality submitters to me. I'm used to 20% acceptance rates.

@Anony-Mousse It is indeed a conincidence that Dr. Park (the advisor of the boy) and the boy's mother have the same surname. Dr. Vishniac (ApJ editor-in-chief), being Dr. Park's former advisor, recused himself in the investigation of plagiarism. It appears that Dr. Park and Dr. Vishniac personally exchanged emails while this incident was ongoing. Dr. Park even told the media that the editor-in-chief reassured him that there is no problem. But later he conceded that Dr. Vishniac really said that conference precedings are not in general considered as a prior publication.

@Anony-Mousse In this case, however, the conclusion of the investigation was that the paper is a case of plagiarism. It is almost identical to the conference proceeding published 13 years ago, and the lead authors are different.

The main critizism in the retraction actually is that it wasn't cited at all, despite being the single most relevant prior work... which raises the same question again: how come the reviewer did not notice?

@Anony-Mousse You are right. I should have been more careful in what I said because it could be misinterpreted as representing the exact wording of the official retraction statement. Still, note that according to the retraction statment, not citing the 2002 publication had significant effect on the peer-review process. It implies that the 2015 paper would have been certainly rejected had the authors cited the 2002 publication.

By saying

This incidence demonstrates the poor review process of ApJ

you are already asserting an answer to your question.  What you can say based on the facts you have presented is that the peer review process failed in one instance.  The document you have linked indicates that the ApJ publishes roughly 4,000 papers per year, so one failure per year would represent just twenty-five thousandths of a percent.  Extrapolating based on that seems wrong (and in any case, you haven't mentioned any failures of the system in previous years).
The term acceptable refers to agreement of a group of people.  The refereeing process of the ApJ is clearly not only "acceptable", but in fact accepted, as it is a leading journal in its field.
More generally, should a high acceptance rate be a cause for concern?  Independent of other indicators, I think the answer is no.  A high acceptance rate for a leading journal may be surprising to researchers from other fields.  But it seems the ApJ is mainly interested in the correctness of a paper (rather than, as you say, whether it is fashionable).  So the acceptance rate should depend on the ratio of correct and incorrect papers submitted.  Here of course "incorrect" means fundamentally incorrect and unfixable.  I don't know of any fundamental reason that there must be a large fraction of incorrect papers.
Should the use of a single referee be a cause for concern?  For many (including myself) this is very surprising and goes counter to familiar practices.  But the ApJ is being up-front about this, so any group that wants to change the practice could start a new journal or lobby the editors of the ApJ.  I think this question is one the astrophysics community should handle for itself.  So far, their answer seems to be "no".

@arendellean: For what it's worth, the majority of journals in my field (mathematics) use a single referee, including some very prestigious ones.

I disagree with the acceptance rate discussion. If a journal has a high reputation, it will receive a substantial amount of junk. If you had the reputation of a high acceptance rate, you would become the one place where everybody dumps their junk. I read that e.g. Science rejects 80% of articles prior to peer review. It's not as if every author would only submit "correct" papers - in particular not if you know a venue has a high acceptance rate. Because high reputation and acceptance rate attract low quality submissions, and you will have to either drop your quality, or your acceptance rate.

Simple correctness doesn't make a paper significant or any kind of quality. Stating that the only requirement to be published is to be formally correct is a very low scientific standard in most fields.

(Typo corrected) Thanks for your detailed answer. I think I should have toned down in the part you quoted. I, too, believe that the high acceptance rate alone isn't necessarily problematic. But in combination with the fact that they use a single referee, it sounds surprising.

@PeteL.Clark According to my mathematician friend, it may be that, in effect, arXiv eases the burden for mathematics journals. That is, almost all papers are posted on arXiv so that they can be read and assessed by experts in the field much earlier than it is actually published. Then, the journals may be able to use only a single referee without worrying about quality control. In fact, what I have said is generally true for astrophysics. (Nevertheless, this particular retracted paper has hever been posted on arXiv.)

@DavidKetcheson I think the question about acceptance rate cannot be divorced from the volume of published material, which seems quite high given that this is a "niche" field according to the prior discussion.
Also, I think the original question could be entirely resolved by instituting open reviews. We would then be able to see the review which argued for acceptance of the paper in question, as well as all the other reviews. It would be straightforward to judge how well these papers are being evaluated. Furthermore, it would be easy for substandard reviews to be augmented by the community.

Just to give an example: Advances in Colloid and Interface Science also has an unusually high acceptance rate (I've seen numbers from ~65% to ~85%), and is very reputable / high impact. It has a much lower volume, though.
You can find acceptance rates for all Elsevier journals, but it's a very round-and-about process. I really wish they would give you the same list searchable by journal names. (I'm all ears if someone knows how to find this). Here's how I've been able to find them:

Go to the Elsevier Journal Finder: http://journalfinder.elsevier.com/
Put words in "Title" and "Abstract" that will give you the journal you're interested in (this is tricky)
The result is the 10 journals "most relevant for the title/abstract", with the following statistics:

Name and Scope (click "Scope and Information")
Impact factor
Acceptance rate
Average time to first editorial decision
Time from accept to published
Open access status (none/optional/mandatory)
Open access fee
Embargo time (time from published until access is free (as in, no subscription needed) )
License (Creative Commons etc.)


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Is it possible to get a PhD by writing only review and survey papers?
Suppose that a PhD (in engineering) student has 3-4 review/survey papers in their domain, and has received more than 500 citations in total. In a situation like this, can they pass the oral defense and get the PhD degree without a research paper?
What I want to know if review/survey papers can compensate my lack of research output. Any examples and stories that I can refer to?

I would say no.  A lit review is usually just a chapter in the thesis.  It is not counted as a contribution.  My advice is to have a look at the examination criteria of your PhD program.  At my university, a lit review is only one out of 10 criteria; i.e., if you only have a lit review, you will get 1 mark -- a bad fail.

It seems not a very realistic situation.

It is actually a real case that I know, and I am kind of understand this situation. There are people who enjoy reading papers rather than doing experiments. By reading a lot, he/she can easily tell you what is happening in the field and results reported in different papers. However, he/she is unable to do something "novel" enough to be accepted as a research paper.

If you know someone who did, the answer is a clear yes, so please post it! 2) Keep in mind that phds are often awarded without any papers (your comment sounds like he/she did some new things but they were not accepted in a journal. 3) In most of the cases, you only have to convince the supervisor -- the commitee often doesn't want to oppose them (for political reasons).

Review papers are often by invitation these days, and it will be well-established researchers that are asked to author these, not PhD students. A paper is also unlikely to rack up 500 citations by the end of your PhD.

Prof. Santa Clause, Capt. Emacs, Tom -- please consider converting your comments to proper answers; answers-in-comments are subject to deletion.

@cag51 Done. I hope I have not too much duplicated other answers.

The comments and answers here do not seem to all explicitly state "no". I assume that you are working towards a PhD under the supervision of some professor, and I would suggest simply asking them if your work is valuable in earning your PhD, or asking how to get back on track towards earning your degree. They should be familiar with both your school's and the committee's stance on PhD criteria.

It is possible to get a PhD without writing any papers; the formal requirement is of writing a thesis, and many people do just that. So I think the formulation of your question is a bit misleading.
But cutting to what I think is the actual intent behind your question rather than the specific choice of words, the answer is almost certainly that you cannot get a PhD without doing original research. Just making expositions of research already done by others, no matter how detailed or how many citations you get for them, is not what a PhD is about and wouldn’t satisfy the requirements.

@user2768 let’s not get carried away with the academic’s bad habit of qualifying every statement with endless caveats and asterisks. I’m sure one can while away many hours arguing about what it means to “tease out new knowledge”, but it won’t change the fact that you can’t get a PhD for writing survey papers.

I respectably disagree, I think you could get a PhD from the "right" survey papers. For instance, surveys revealing and plugging significant holes in the literature. Especially when holes would likely not be identified without surveying. I certainly wouldn't recommend that route! The OP can chime in on whether there is any novelty in their surveys.

I should perhaps make it clear that survey papers can - and in some cases are expected to - include novel research, which blurs the lines.

Thoroughly reviewing the literature can yield new analysis that would be considered original research, but in many cases it would be a particularly inefficient way to proceed. Imagine you want to know if sugar improves tea taste and no single paper exists on the subject. Option one: test (recruit volunteers, make double-blind taste ratings). Option two: find a newspaper survey about sugar in coffee, a figure of a physiological study of tea effects on the brain, and an appendix table of a food chemistry interaction guide, and try to glue it all together. I know which I would prefer...

In my lab in grad school, it was very clearly expected that a person defending their thesis would be able to plainly answer the question, "What is it that you are doing that is new?"

Note: the formal requirement depends on country (and possibly subject within that country?) and does in some countries require you to have published.

@JackAidley yes, good point. But there is no universal requirement to publish for a PhD, and generally speaking the best universities don’t have such a requirement (at least as a formal criterion) as far as I’m aware.

In our PhD program, students are required to be the primary author of a publication in a top-tier venue in their research area.

@Tristan “new survey papers”

The naive answer is yes. All you have to do is convince a panel that what you did warrants a PhD. This will be different for each school/department/panel/student. Typically this requires contributing something novel to the field. Something novel does not have to be a research paper.
A couple examples:

A colleague wrote a review where he extracted related data from a
multitude of papers. He did this for a single minor figure in his
review. Turns out others wanted that data already aggregated and it
spawned many more research papers. He ended up creating a website/database and
maintained it throughout the rest of his PhD. This database was
a significant portion of his PhD (and probably his strongest
portion).

Another colleague created a machine to automate a particularly labor
intensive process in the lab (2 years of development). This was then used by many other
researchers in their own novel research papers. Again this became a
large portion of his PhD, and made him very popular among those who wanted to use it.

It doesn't have to be a research paper but it does need to be novel and contribute to the field. A review in and of itself is not necessarily novel, but it can be. As @JonCuster pointed out, the 'new' stuff was not the review nor a research paper but new tools that helped the community do further research.

In your two cases, each created a new tool that was a step forward in the field - that was the 'new' stuff they did, and indeed those steps are items worthy of being part of a PhD.

@noslenkwah Jon Custer's positive comment got more upvotes than your answer. Consider incorporating it.

@CaptainEmacs - Agreed. Done.

Survey papers are useful and will give you citations if well written.
But for a PhD, you need to add to the existing body of knowledge, not merely reorganize it. Unless it is a massive contribution, such as a reformulation or neater repackaging of existing knowledge (for extreme examples, consider parts of Euclid, Cartan, Wielandt, the latter of which merely found a shorter proof of a known theorem, but it was much shorter), which itself is a scientific contribution, it's a very clear no.
In fact, if you are able to create a simplified map through a difficult and ill-understood landscape, that's definitely a PhD.
Others talked about new tools as worthy of a PhD, in a way, this is a similar situation. Identifying what makes a field hang together is a new tool. Done well, it can change a field.
However, this is most likely to be far harder than to pick a concrete problem and study it. However, it is also far more than just a literature review.

Information Systems professor here. I chair a dissertation every year or two. Short answer is no.
(1) You need to prove that you can independently execute the scientific method and complete a sufficiently complex research project that extends the body of knowledge in your area.
(2) I wouldn't be doing you any favors if I let you leave the program without a good body of work that you could use for conference papers and grant proposals.

Your advisor and your university determine whether your work meets the requirement for the degree. That's where to go for guidance.
I suspect (as @DanRomik says) that a literature survey, no matter how thorough and useful, will be insufficient.

You might be able to get a PhD in metascience.
To quote Wikipedia, metascience is "the use of scientific methodology to study science itself", performing research on the process of research. Part of this process would involve writing a bunch of literature reviews in order to analyze aspects of the scientific literature to determine information about the scientific process. For instance, you might code a thousand recently-published Information Technology papers to determine what the most popular scientific methodologies are, and how the methodology chosen affects other aspects of the paper like reproducibility or the availability of software artifacts produced during the process of writing the paper.
As a result, when you perform a metascientific analysis of the literature, you're not just taking existing knowledge and packaging it into a more convenient location, but producing new knowledge about the scientific process.
This isn't just speculative, either; when looking up the publications of authors who created popular scientific methodologies and gotten thousands of citations on their papers introducing them, you'll sometimes find that they've created a career out of publishing papers on metascience and scientific methodologies.

Obligatory xkcd.

@DanRomik Basically, yeah.

It seems to me that what you're actually asking is can a person be classed as a researcher if they only write review papers. I think that you know that the answer to that is no, unless the review papers have significant research results embedded in them.  Generally though, review papers are requested, and just randomly writing up a survey paper and getting it published is very difficult, and actually not recommended unless you are an expert and have been studying the subject for a long time.


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Journal that rejected paper to disclose identity of referee to the next journal?
I've just had a paper rejected by a certain math journal -- nothing new so far, but the journal made a (rather unusual?) offer in the rejection email, and I'm not sure what to make of it.
They said that, if I want to, they can disclose the identity of the referee to the next journal I submit to. To do that, I would need to tell the managing editor of the next journal to contact the journal that has rejected my paper.
Here's more background info:

The reason (they think) I might want that is that the referee report is actually positive, so (they think) it might help me.

Yes, the paper was rejected despite the fact that the report was clearly positive. The journal acknowledged the fact that it's positive, but said they have to choose from the papers with positive reviews. (In fact, I even submitted a major revision a few months ago, and the referee was happy with the changes. The whole process took almost a whole year and there wasn't a single negative or even lukewarm report. I'm naturally quite sour now.)

The journal is a well-known strong-but-not-top generalist journal. (Think something like Crelle / Compositio / Math. Annalen -- it may or may not be one of these, but that's the level.)

For my next submission, I'm aiming at the same level and type of journal. I'm worried though that I might run out of journals of this sort, so I have to play my cards carefully (this is 'only' the second rejection, but all these journals seem to have issues).

The paper is in my opinion strong and reasonably significant (and the referee seems to agree), but not in a 'hot' subarea. Also, I'm completely unknown, and the more senior people working in this subarea are good, but not superstars either.

I'm genuinely unsure which of the editors handled my paper.

In any case, here are the questions.

Is this common? Did it happen to you/someone you know? What do you think of it?

What should I do?

If I accept the offer, the downside is obviously that strong journals aren't eager to publish papers that have been rejected by similar journals, and it doesn't help me to put a "I was rejected" label on my paper's forehead. The upside is that the same referee seems fairly likely to recommend the paper for publication if they're chosen.

Will the managing editor even bother (to contact the previous journal, if I ask them to)?

I have no comparable story to report, so will comment rather than answer. I think the positive review and the editor's offer suggest that reporting the original reviewer's name to the new editor is a good idea. You can explain your reasoning in a cover letter. If you get a second rejection then ignore the history when you submit elsewhere a third time.

A gamble, for sure...  I'd wager that the referee report was not positive, and that they're thinking that you'd want to avoid having that same referee again. Do you know for sure that the referee report was positive? I'd be surprised if you paper would have been editor-rejected in that case... clarify?

@paul garrett -- yes, the report was positive. I saw it, and the journal commented too that it's positive

Hm. Then the situation is a little hard for me to understand. Positive referee report but editorial rejection. What in the world is the "next" journal supposed to think about this? Is it conceivably some prestige-gate-keeping thing? "A good paper, but not good enough for us"? Seems a volatile game to be involved in...

That's sort of how I'm perceiving this too, though I'm not sure.

@paulgarrett It's become (relatively) common in some biomedical journals to directly forward peer review on to a lesser, affiliated journal. The model is that a flagship journal is responsible for publishing the most exciting/impactful results, but they also have discipline-specific and/or broad open-access offerings that will publish anything that meets standards of scientific rigor rather than also considering impact. I'm still not sure what I think of this model, but it seems like OP's editor is aiming for a "manual" version of what some publishers are doing automatically in-house.

I think you have a right to be sour! Of course, prestigious journals will sometimes need to reject on the grounds that the review, while positive, is not enthusiastic enough, and that's fine. However, they really should make that decision before asking for a revision IMO.

This is reasonably common.  I've had this happen to me as an author and as a reviewer - note that the identity of the reviewer should not shared with anyone without the consent of the reviewer.
You should take up this offer if you are resubmitting to a journal clearly lower on the prestige scale.  It's not clear what you should do for a journal roughly equal on the prestige scale.
I might add that all the generalist journals have various biases in favor of or against various areas.  You should definitely take this into account when considering where to submit.  You should also be trying to submit to journals where some member of the editorial board is known to like your subarea.  If, as you say, some of the senior people who do work in the subarea of the paper are good, then at least one of them should be an associate editor for some reasonably high level generalist journal.

This has happened to me once or twice, and is becoming more moderately common in math.  My understanding is the main reasons to do this are to:

Get a quick turnaround because the reviewer shouldn't take long to re-review it.
Save overall refereeing efforts.

Taking the journal up on this offer may result in a quick acceptance, or a quick rejection.  In my opinion this is the main upside you are missing.
However that the new journal you submit to may or may not take you up on this offer, and refereeing may take the usual amount of time, or they may want a second referee anyway.  And if it happens to be the same editor, they might send the paper to the same referee whether or not you mention this (or even a different editor may do this by chance).
As for the downside you mention, that is a potential drawback if it is a different editor, but also sometimes journals have long backlogs and accept very few papers, so it could be chalked up to this.
I think this is a personal choice with no right or wrong answer, but if getting a quick decision is important for you, then I would say try disclosing this information when you submit, at least once.

But, Kimball, what is the intellectual content, if any, of such a "judgement"? Is it just a side effect of the game? I'm asking seriously.

@paulgarrett Sorry, what/whose "judgement" are you asking about?

I'm confused about the meaning of the "rejection" judgement. What does it mean, then? That the work is flawed? Redundant? Incoherent? Or just not high-status enough for the given journal? I realize there is an accidental "omuerta" about refereeing in higher-end math, but it's not really defensible or informative, I think. I know other people have other opinions!

Sure rejection could be for any of those reasons, or a fit issue, with the "not good enough" reason of course being the most subjective.  For reject after positive report, my guess is this is mainly from editors having to follow either rough or strict quotas imposed on them, and so they have to somehow pick the articles with the most effusive reviews or which best fit their personal tastes.  Of course behind this is journals wanting high prestige and editorial opinions about what is good math... I suppose I personally thing the systems has both pluses and minuses.

Sigh. Well, ... I guess... You, K., know me a bit, and you know that I have (what are often construed as) "radical" opinions. I do wonder whether mathematics can escape such stuff...

@paulgarrett I'm not sure about math specifics, but in other areas a reasonable rejection reason might be essentially "the paper is good, but we intended to publish X papers and we got X other papers which seemed a bit better than yours".

I can't advise you what to do, but only point out a few things that might help you make a decision.
Keep in mind that a paper can be rejected for a variety of reasons not related to the quality of the paper, though a breakthrough paper wouldn't get such treatment.
First, a paper can be rejected if it is out of scope for the journal. It is less likely in a generalist journal than a specialized one, of course. Second, the editor might not have a "slot" for the paper. This can happen if the queue is full (especially for a print journal) and the editor has the next year or two already laid out and committed. Third, a paper might be rejected because it is too similar (in field-specialty, probably) to papers already in the queue and the editor is looking for balance so as to make each issue appeal to a wider audience.
If your review/reviewer is sent to another journal, the editor there is likely to understand all of these things, and for a positive review (that has been through a few cycles) decide that it was rejected for one of the "extraneous" reasons, not the quality.
The upside of letting this happen is that your time to publication would likely be reduced if the review time is reduced. You already pointed out the downside.
Perhaps there is something in the letter you got from the editor that lets you grok the true reason. I would guess that if the coin flip is unbalanced a bit it would be in favor of doing this. But you may have more information.

I can't predict what the managing editor of the new journal would do.


text:
Did requesting more info/contacting admissions too early hurt my chances of getting in?
Before saying anything I would like to point out I have no knowledge on the how to apply for graduate schools and this may very well be a stupid question.
I'm getting my Bachelor's degree in Spring 2017 and I plan on applying for graduate programs for art that Fall. I have been looking at different schools and requesting more information and asking the admission offices about the programs I am thinking of applying to.
BUT, a friend of mine told me I definitely shouldn't have done that until I am almost absolutely sure I will be applying to that school and especially not a year ahead. I was just casually requesting more information, and I didn't know they took that so seriously.
So my question is did I somehow hurt my chances of getting into those schools by contacting the admissions very early? Especially when I am interested in more than one program?
I would also like to clarify that I did not contact a faculty member in the program, just the admissions office.

Your friend has no idea what they are talking about.

The only ways this could affect your chances are if your questions were so terminally bad (clueless, rude, incoherent, etc) that somebody remembers you (or worse, somebody circulated your question to the entire admissions department to give everybody a good laugh) - or that your questions were so incredibly profound and perceptive that they also remember you. But 99.9% of applicants don't fall into either of those categories.

I have been part of the admission process of two two-year long master-level courses in the Management fields. While these are not the same as graduate program in the US (e.g. MSc + PhD program), as far as your question goes, I think there is little difference.
I was specifically involved in responding to emails directed to the admission office and I am confident no damage came to you from asking questions.
The reason being that the person who reads the email and handle this kind of questions is an administrative employee which rarely, if ever, speaks with members of the admission committee directly. Those people are the ones who will make the decision w.r.t. your admission, they are typically busy professor and they never got remotely close to reading an applicant emails, as any menial task is kept away from them.
Emails first pass through the employee, who reads them and replies to all standard questions or questions he has been trained to answer (like 98% of the times).
If answering requires a higher level of responsability/expertise, said employee will ask the course admin/manager (who is typically not a professor, but that might depend on country/institution), yet this is done usually without any reference to the name of the specific applicant (because the information is irrelevant to answer the query).
Furthermore, the reason admission offices put their email out is so that people can ask questions, any questions, so to ensure that the application process is as easy and smooth as possible on both side.

I'd go further to suggest that the more information you have, the better, because part of your application will be to convince them that you'll be an asset to their program as an apprentice of sorts and then possibly later on to partner on research, projects, and writing while you're a grad student. It's essential to make sure your interests and ultimately your personalities match. I'd go so far as to schedule a visit or talk to the faculty you'll be studying under, if you've done your background work.
This is an exciting part of your life, and graduate studies are less about getting a job and more about finding a compatible place to grow and work.


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Can I ask a postdoc who has closely supervised my research to write me a letter of recommendation?
When I apply to a PhD program, may I ask a postdoc who closely supervised me to write a recommendation letter? My supervisor also has written one for me, but I believe the postdoc can comment on my research skills in a more detailed and precise way. Does a postdoc have enough authority to convince admission committee?

While it's possible that a postdoc letter (in the absence of further context) might carry less weight, there are good reasons to ask them anyway:

the letter is a testimonial about your ability to do research. A postdoc who's worked with you is in a much better position to say something nontrivial about this. Lines like "I closely worked with so and so" carry weight.
the postdoc might know faculty at the university you're applying to. In that case the letter carries even more weight (I'm likely to pay more attention to letters from people that I know)

The second point is also an argument against asking a postdoc. Generally, a postdoc is less likely to have a network that extends to the university you are applying to then a professor, right?

Depends on the postdoc.

In my experience a postdoc is also less likely to have negative connections. Among professors there tends to be a lot of petty political arguments that you have no idea about when you're at the PhD level. Not that that is something you should worry about,  but it does show that you have a limited level of control over these things...

You can also sometimes ask the PI to cosign the letter if you have some limited interaction with him/her.


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Is there anything I can do if a professor agreed to supervise me but I was rejected by the admission committee?
Some time ago I contacted a professor at another university and, after some discussions, he agreed to supervise me and told me to make a formal application to the department. Unfortunately, the admission committee rejected my application. I asked that professor why, and he said he had no idea and I don't know if he tried to follow my application.
I am sure I meet the program's minimum requirements, submitted all necessary documents and even indicated that professor as a supervisor in a dedicated field. I would like to ask if I can do something, like making an appeal (although the department has no such thing), or keeping on sending email to the professor? Is this situation common?

I have had this experience about five years ago. Agreeing to advise pre-admission seemed to me more about the advisor saying they will take you as a student if you procure funding and acceptance. A few I asked pre-grad school said no due to other obligations (e.g., being chair), so it told me if they were available, nothing more. That said, usually the issue is funding when it comes to acceptance. If you procure external funding, they may reverse an admissions decision. That's the only case where they did it for me. I would not go after a decision reversal without your own funding.

No PhD program that I am aware of guarantees admission to every candidate who meets the minimum requirements for admission. Moreover, an agreement to supervise you is not a guarantee of admission, either.
Most likely what happened is the usual in such circumstances—there were enough other qualified candidates that the admissions committee did not choose to extend you an offer. I'm afraid that there's not really much you can do here. Writing the professor will be a waste of your time, and filing an appeal isn't likely to get you anywhere, either.

Of course I do not mean everybody met the minimun requirement will be admitted, but I just wonder if prior agreement between me and a professor should be a major plus. In other words, why should the department bother if there is a professor who promise to supervise a student?

This answer seems factually correct, though I don't know that it would always be a waste of time to contact the professor. It really depends on the level of interaction you've had. In my past experiences, the professors who have agreed to advise me were also professors who wanted me to work for them in their labs. In these cases, they may very well be interested in advocating for you. If this is the case, I'd just write an email to the professor seeking advice on the next steps if you still want to work in the lab. It's to your benefit to maintain contact and I see no downside.

why should the department bother if there is a professor who promise to supervise a student? — Because you are not just the advisor's student; you are also the department's student. What if you quickly realize that you and your advisor aren't a good match, and you start looking around for a different advisor? What if your advisor has a track record of taking on too many students and not effectively mentoring them? What if your application was far enough below average admitted student to raise doubts about your ability to thrive in the required courses?

@EricMarsh: "Keep contacting the professor" seems more like pestering than polite inquiries.

Right, I wouldn't do it repeatedly. But I would probably send a single follow-up email and make sure not to burn that bridge. Maybe the professor will have some insight on the current climate in the department and maybe he'll say to try again in 6 months. Or maybe not.

Try again next time
Technically, you can try various things right now. In practice, most of those things will simply harm your chances of admission in the next session, so IMHO you shouldn't do anything about this particular rejection.
Instead, work on making sure that your application is more attractive next time, keep in touch with that professor, work on research in your spare time, look for relevant seminars/workshops/etc there that are open to general public and not only to students, perhaps study some relevant topics in MOOCs like Coursera.

Selection can sometimes be very political. I sat in on a board meeting recently while selection was being discussed. I was really surprised at the "selection process". The selection committee is not allowed to use a quantitative assessment, it has to be qualitative, which seemed absurd to me, especially considering grades and GRE scores are quantitative measures. Additionally, although my department is comprised of a majority of international students, none of them count as minorities, because they're not US citizens. Taking that into consideration, we have a very low minority student body (in this case, minority is anyone that is not a white male). Therefore, our department has received less funding from the college (which also seemed absurd, if not discrimination)... to increase funding from the college, we need more minority students. So I was not surprised when the minority students were accepted into the program.
I don't believe you have many options. I would at least follow up with the professor, he may know of other opportunities.

Grades and scores are quantitative measures but they don't necessarily quantify the right thing. Student A having better grades than student B does not guarantee that A will do better on a PhD programme so it wouldn't be wise to base admissions solely on grades. (To take a strawman example, it would be ludicrous to base admissions on the students' height, even though that is a quantitative measure.)

If I were hiring people for a private company, I would make use of all available data to ensure I hired the right person. It would be both quantitative and qualitative. Height would likely not play a role in my decision.

One of the possibility is that the professor is not that keen on having you on board. Otherwise, as far as I know, professors have some influence on the selection process if he really needs you to carry out his project and you meet the minimal requirements.
In this case, it makes no difference you send an SOS to the professor.

Just wonder if he is not keen on supervising me, why should he tell me to apply anyway? He can just tell me 'I don't want to supervise you'.

probably the professor is just lazy or he has got another candidate, there can be hundreds of reasons. you can try asking help from the professor, it's no harm after all.


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Pros and cons on working in an industrial research lab without a PhD
I am from engineering, and I would like to know if I am able to find a job in industrial research lab after finishing my master, will there be any advantage or disadvantage compared with entering the same lab after finishing PhD? Possible advantage may be that I have more industrial experience as I enter the lab earlier, and possible disadvantage may be that without a PhD position I cannot be promoted to certain senior positions or lead a project. Are these true? Are there more advantages or disadvantages for this?

What country are you in?

For many research positions in industry, a PhD is a requirement to apply for the job. With just an M.S., you simply cannot be considered for these positions. Some research jobs I have seen in industrial labs are available to candidates with either a PhD or an M.S. with several years of industry experience, but I don't see as many of these.
Industrial research labs often also have non-research positions (e.g., staff programmer) that do not require a PhD. However, these positions tend to not be on the research "track": you cannot easily be promoted from "staff programmer" to "junior member of technical staff" in many companies. If you are interested in doing creative research, staff programmer jobs are not a direct path to research scientist jobs.
Smaller companies tend to be more flexible, so that it may be easier to get a research job without a PhD in a tiny company than a large global one.
Of course, this can vary by industry and geographic region. (My experience is in the field of telecommunications and computer networks, in the United States.)
You can find out more about your particular field of interest by going to the "Careers" page of the labs you are considering, and looking up the requirements for the jobs that you would like to do.
However, as a rule, if you are interested in doing creative research (and not just working in a support position in a research lab), you will have more opportunities available to you with a PhD than without one.

These are some experiences I've seen with people with similar dilemmas.
In my area, computer science, many people used to go to Yahoo after their Masters or BS, and for a time it was well.
After the Yahoo huge layoff, I met many people who were being denied high level positions because they did not have a PhD, we are not talking entry level position, but people with many years of experience in the industry.
I do not think a PhD is essential to move ahead in the company, but it sure is a huge help if you have one. Also, I'm not sure the research experience you will have in an industrial research lab will be comparable to the research experience you will have as a PhD student. Not that one is better than the other, but Grad school has certain liberties that industry does not.


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Can images with a "noncommercial use only" licence be used in teaching and academic presentations?
Can I use images with a "noncommercial use only" license (such as CC-BY-NC) in my slides, both for teaching and conference talks?

I'd bet it's probably fine, but there's no way to get a definitive answer without asking the copyright holder (this is one of the weaknesses with the noncommercial Creative Commons licenses).  The Creative Commons definition of commercial use is use that is "primarily intended for or directed towards commercial advantage or monetary compensation".  Most teaching and conference talks seem pretty clearly noncommercial to me by this standard.  But what if someone argues that you're only doing that teaching to earn money?  Does the mere fact that you are using this material to help you do your paid job transform it into commercial use, or can you argue that in fact your use was not motivated primarily by earning money? What if you're getting paid an honorarium to give a talk - does that make it even more of a commercial activity?  You could end up in all sorts of debates about what the "primary intentions" are, with many borderline cases, and there's no objective way to resolve the disagreement.
The Creative Commons organization does not attempt to settle these issues, but does note that "not all educational uses are necessarily NonCommercial uses, so your use of an NC license may preclude use of your work in some educational contexts".  There seems to be no official guidance as to what this is intended to cover.  Maybe it is limited to cases such as selling teaching materials, or maybe it is much broader.
In practice, I imagine most people using a noncommercial license would not object to these uses.  There is a study of what users have in mind when choosing such a license, which doesn't directly address your issues but may shed light on them.  However, it's worth noting that people have in fact had nontrivial disputes over what constitutes noncommercial use, with at least one court decision that disagrees with what I would have predicted.
I can't really imagine anyone would sue you over ordinary teaching or conference talks.  The worst plausible scenario is probably offending the copyright holder (and being asked to remove the image), not getting sued.  That could be a risk worth taking if you believe that these uses should be considered noncommercial.
Of course I'm not a lawyer or an expert in Creative Commons licenses, and I don't know the real risks, so you should take this whole answer with a grain of salt.

I would speculate that the aim of the teaching institute (for-profit private / non-profit private / non-profit public) would be relevant.

@gerrit: That sounds like a reasonable first approximation, but it's not necessarily determined by this.  (In the guidance on what noncommercial means, they emphasize that it's a matter of the type of use, not who is involved or what their corporate status is.  In particular, some things nonprofits do can fall under commercial use, and some things for-profit corporations do can be noncommercial.)


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Which undergraduate major leads to a research career in development of new medical drugs?
Let's say someone wants to study biochemistry and his main goal is to do research in drug design  (development of new drugs). So, his main interests concerns with Pharmacology, right?
However, there are few undergraduate programs available in Pharmacology (there are some in England and other European countries) because most of Pharmacology programs are graduate programs.
So, the question is, what should this person do?

Go directly to a undergraduate pharmacology program.
Take another undergraduate program. In this case, what would that be? Chemistry? Medicine? Biochemistry?

Can you specify where you want to study? Where I come from, specialisation starts at the undergraduate level and undergraduate programs in pharmacy are commonplace.

@Wrzlprmft "Pharmacy" and "Pharmacology" are two very different degrees, not sure which you meant in your comment but a degree in "pharmacy" is not what the OP is looking for.

There isn't a single "correct" undergraduate major for people interested in research careers in this field. Any of biology, biochemistry, biomedical science, chemistry, pharmacology, and several others would be fine.
Much more important than finding an undergraduate degree with the right "name" would be finding a program where students have the opportunity to carry out undergraduate research with faculty doing the kind of research you want to do.
For example, the profile of the Einstein 2016 incoming PhD class in biomedical science includes the following range of undergraduate majors:

Undergraduate majors: Biology, Biochemistry, Biological Sciences, Microbiology, Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, Molecular Biology, Biotechnology, Chemistry, Genetics, and Learning Sciences

But all had a lot of prior research experience:

100% have had a sustained research experience in a scientific laboratory
57% have published a scientific paper in a peer reviewed journal
65% have presented their work at a scientific meeting
31% have also spent a summer in a research program
Mean Months of Prior, Full‐Time Research Experience: 32

thank for your answer but, I was asking in the sense that if someone go directly to a pharmacology degree it may be bad because the program can lack of  a high amount of background that is important to know (because this program can be a very specific one) whereas another undergraduation program would provide this background. But, a pharmacology degree, in principle, would ''go faster'' to the Drug Design theory / practice than the others programs. So, here lies a dillemma and that's why I posted this topic.

obs: I am not asking this because I intend to pursue this career, I was just curious about.

@gustavoreche An undergrad degree in pharmacology is not a "faster" route to anything. To do research, you generally need a PhD, and you do not finish that PhD faster if you came in w/ undergrad degree in pharmacology vs undergrad degree in e.g. biochemistry.

I'm not saying about finishing one PhD faster, I just wonder that in a undergraduate pharmacology program, one will probably study Drug Design earlier than other students in other programs. That's the point.


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Is an Executive Doctorate different from a typical PhD with respect to the level of assistance that is permitted on the dissertation?
I began tutoring an Executive Doctorate student last fall in a class that he was taking. After that class ended, he was able to begin working on his dissertation and wanted my help for it as well.
Here arises the problem and the question. He has been asking me for increasing "help" on his dissertation to the point of asking me to read articles and find citations and to rewrite sections of his dissertation to address concerns from his committee.
My initial thought is that this is something I should not do, but as he is not a typical PhD student, I am unfamiliar with the expectations. So, what exactly is the difference between an Executive Doctorate (also called an Executive PhD.) program, and a typical PhD program, and does that difference allow for him to receive this much assistance on his dissertation?
More information: Looking a little more, the program he is enrolled in is listed under the Doctoral Programs section of the page listing all of the programs offered by the department.

Is "executive doctorate" a post-masters degree? If so, the student is asking way too much.

@Regel Looking a little more, I found (and added to the original post) that it is considered a Doctoral Program, and is listed on the department webpage with all of the other typical PhD programs.

I edited the question title to highlight the specific difference you are asking about, as it was very broad otherwise. Please check and make sure I haven't misrepresented your question.

"read articles and find citations and to rewrite sections of his dissertation" - frankly, this is even beyond the degree of assistance I would provide to a Bachelor student.

Based on this article, I would guess the answer is: officially, no.  It seems quite unlikely to me that there is some other standard of intellectual honesty specifically set up for "Executive Doctoral" student, since it is such a new category.
It certainly sounds to me like this person is asking you do an inappropriate amount of work toward their doctorate; doctoral students aren't expected to be completely isolated (much of my thesis was based on joint work), but asking you to rewrite seems like crossing a line.  It's up to you to decide what you want to do, and whether you feel comfortable with the work.  You could always contact the person's advisor, but you should be prepared for that to burn your bridge with this person.

Maybe ask for a joint meeting with the student and the advisor to get guidance for both the OP and the student on what sorts of help the OP should be providing?

@PatriciaShanahan I would count requesting such a meeting as being in "burning bridge" territory.  Maybe one could float the idea to the student and see how they react; my guess would be they do not want their advisor to know that the OP exists at all, let alone having a detailed discussion of which parts of their dissertation they aren't doing themselves.

If the student is hiding the level of help from the advisor, it is definitely not appropriate, and the student knows it.


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Should I mention that I refereed a paper in my CV/SOP?
The journal I published in invited me to referee a paper and I would like to know if such experience can can be mentioned in my CV/SOP when I apply for masters/PhD degree?


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Is it ethical to have a former student serve on my hiring committee at a community college?
Recently in an interview for a full-time faculty position at the college I work as an adjunct; one of the members was a former student of mine. This student barely passed my class the first time and retook my class a second time to raise his grade. This seemed like a case of conflict of interest. The other adjunct in my dept, who also had this student was advanced to the second level of the interview process. I know this student is not a fan of mine and could have viewed this as a chance to "fail" me. I have spoken to our union rep but their answers are vague. Do I have reasons to take my issues to the next level-HR?

There are two different issues: Having a student on the panel, and having someone on the panel who has had prior interactions with a candidate that did not go well. There could be a similar issue if the OP had taken a class taught by a panel member, and complained about how the class was taught.

Is this person currently a student, or just a former student who is now at a later career stage? The question is unclear on this point.

I see no problem with having students on such a committee in general. There is, however, a problem when the student in question has (or even appears to have) a conflict of interest in a particular situation. If the student has failed a class taught by the candidate, I'd call that a conflict of interest, and I'd expect the student in question to be recused from that interview and the ensuing discussion and vote.

Some colleges and universities have students in hiring committees, either as observers, non-voting members, or full members. In the university where I studied, power was shared roughly 40% / 30% / 30% between faculty, staff, and students. Hence it was obvious that there would be student representatives as full voting members in almost every committee.
Individual members of the hiring committee tend to have conflicts of interest with individual applicants, especially because the committee is often selected in advance. When such conflicts occur, the conflicted member should find a way to handle the situation, e.g. by observing the interview instead of actively participating in it.
The situation gets interesting with internal applicants and student representatives, because every potential student representative probably has a conflict of interest. If university regulations state that there must be a student representative, then the student repersentative may have to participate in decisionmaking regardless of conflicts of interest. The relevant principle here is that if every potential representative has a conflict of interest, then no one has.

I've seen another way to solve the problem where everyone has a conflict of interest. Our college executive committee once encountered a case where a candidate for promotion had appointments in so many departments that all the natural science faculty on the committee had to be recused. So the dean picked a former member of the committee (me --- I had been on the committee a year or two earlier) and put me on the committee to replace the recused folks for this one case. I think such a solution could be used also for student members of a hiring committee.

@AndreasBlass With students and internal candidates, it's entirely possible that every potential replacement also has a conflict of interest.