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How early can I submit a postdoc application in the course of my Ph.D.?
I am a finishing CS Ph.D. student (5 months to go). I applied to postdocs positions and I feel like it is a bit early to do so. What would the process resemble in this case?
Do they wait for your until you graduate, even if it takes longer than expected?
Thanks

As a manager at a national lab (not in CS), I post job openings for postdocs when I know we will need/want one. There is no specified time of the year that happens. I'm also well aware that projected PhD completion dates are, well, nebulous at best. In particular, I had to delay my postdoc start date by several months as the reality of finishing up the thesis and getting everything done and dusted came to roost.
Now, if you are projecting to be done in 12 months (more realistically 15-18 months in my mind), that is too early. Three months could well be 6 months, but is just fine. We can wait for the right postdoc for a project. But you'd better believe that if I want to hire you I'll be talking to your advisor about just how realistic your time estimate is compared with theirs.
Further, in my experience, if the student has a job offer in hand then it seems that the time to complete everything magically shrinks a bit all of a sudden - it is in the professors' best interests to get everything wrapped up as well at that point since they know the student has a place to go.
Bottom line - 5 months ahead is not unreasonable, but is it really 5 months?

The problem with answering this question accurately is that the only true definition of a postdoc is "job you get after the PhD." At one one end you have externally-funded postdocs (e.g. NSF) which act more like mini-professorships, in which you are the PI, NSF pays your salary, and the lab (or research group) or university just gives you space in exchange for the overhead money (= the so-called "indirect costs".) At the other end, you have glorified technical positions, in which you are no more than a lab tech, programmer, teacher, whatever, with the title of "postdoc" as an excuse to pay you less than the job is actually worth. And everything in the middle.
Then there's the issue that "applying for a postdoc" is not as simple as looking up the job postings and filling out applications. For example, some PIs have pockets of unencumbered/discretionary money which they can use to fund a postdoc if a great candidate happens to come along. Other people find postdocs by writing grants with established PIs, writing a postdoc position as part of the grant, with the agreement that they'll be that postdoc if the grant lands. Other postoc positions are, like the one I described above, something you get directly from a funding agency after writing a grant application. Yet other postdocs are the type where a PI writes a grant, gets the money, then advertises the position, reviews applications, and hires the first good candidate. And so on.
So when do you apply for postdocs? In a sense, you should start preparing for a postdoc the day you start your PhD, making contacts with potential PIs, visiting other research groups, giving talks at conferences so people have you on their minds when good opportunities show up, growing a list of collaborators (all potential postdoc advisors), etc. The closer you get to the end of your PhD, the more time and effort you should spend tapping into your network, and yes, sending applications out to advertised positions. It really does not matter how you get a postdoc, it only matters that you get one.
When applying to advertised opportunities, 5 months feels to me close to the sweet spot between too early and too late. Some people will reject your application right away, as they only want people who already have the PhD at hand. Oh well, so be it. But other potential employers will welcome your early application and if they like you, save the position for you until you defend your thesis. I've seen in happen many times. But you can't tell who's who from just reading the job postings, so might as well apply to all the positions to which you are qualified.

General advice is not to apply for a postdoc that starts before you intend to defend your PhD thesis. There is a very good chance that they will not consider you. This is not universal of course, but it is a pretty standard policy. You may be able to find some postdocs that will consider applicants that are ABD though those are rare. I've seen a few on mathjobs.org over the years. I've heard on rare occasions of people having postdocs or similar who are in the process of finishing their PhD who were given special consideration (i.e., the department made an exception to the completed PhD requirement). One of the cases I knew along these lines involved someone being a VAP for a few years without finishing their PhD and ended up getting fired for it. (In addition to angering the department, I think there were potential accreditation issues at play.) Presumably the postdocs you applied to start in Fall 2024 by which point you should have your PhD, so you're likely fine on this front.
Some schools may defer the start of your postdoc if something comes up in the process of defending your PhD that is out of your control. A lot can go wrong like advisors becoming suddenly very chronically ill or dying or PhD candidates themselves developing health issues or going through other major life-changing events. Schools will be more accommodating in these situations though it will still likely vary. You would need to be in close contact if anything comes up after accepting a postdoc offer and need to defer. There is no guarantee that a school will do so if the reason for deferment is an issue within your control (like just not finishing writing/defending your thesis without extenuating circumstances or wanting a "gap year").

how early can you get offer for postdoc while a  Ph.D.? could they offer me a position before 3 months of the ending date of Ph.D. to start earliest after graduation?

Postdocs usually start in the fall or otherwise in line with the academic year (depending on where you are in the world). Look at the job postings again. They will specify.

Postdocs at a company or national lab may start anytime throughout the year.

Oh true! I didn't think of a national lab. The job posting should indicate an approximate start date though or can be negotiated during the hiring phase.

This seems to be advice for math postdocs, but the question was about CS postdocs.  I'm not familiar with CS.  For physical sciences, this answer would be wildly wrong.

I graduate in May and have informally contacted postings with a sooner or nebulous deadline and they've all been like "go ahead and apply! we want the best candidate"

I can only talk about my personal experience. I was supposed to defend my thesis in September and start my postdoc in a different institute in November. For some reasons my PhD mentor canceled my thesis defense and postponed the date of several months because his schedule was heavily packed. I ended up defending in May of the following year because the committee members were not available before. Long story short, I started my postdoc position as planned. I just had to provide a letter from the program manager stating that I would be awarded of my PhD title within the next year. On a personal note... dealing with your postdoc work and your thesis defense at the same time isn't something pleasant.
Good luck!

Hopefully, "postponed the date of several months because his schedule was heavily packed" leaves out some important details. Otherwise, placing such huge burdens on your student's life because of a packed schedule sounds unacceptable to me.

you were given an offer when exactly? when you applied to a postdoc at first? how long the process took (from application to offer?)

@MartinMoore I received the offer during the last year of my PhD. The PI was a collaborator and I knew him. We started to discuss the details after I submitted my thesis (approximately 3 months before the defense).

@Ian I found it unacceptable as well. My issues with my mentor aren't the focus of my post. However, since you are asking, I can tell you that my second supervisor (mentor) waned me to rewrite some parts of my thesis, and he came up with this decision 2 weeks before my defense. The thesis had been previously approved by the  thesis committee, including my main supervisor. The changes he wanted to make were totally arbitrary and only reflected his personal preference. After I changed the text as he suggested, took him very long time to approve it. It has been a terrible experience.


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How long does it take in general to write a CS Ph.D. dissertation?
I want to ask about the approximate duration needed to write a CS Ph.D. dissertation in EU?
Or more specifically, when before the end of the Ph.D. program (3 years), most supervisors will advice about starting to write the thesis?
Thanks.

German perspective:
It can vary widely between one and twelve months. I assume you will have the required number of papers published and/or under review. Hence, all of the results will already there, most of the text as well.
Then, there are (at least in Germany) two types of theses: monograph (one single work) or commutative (staple your papers together). The first takes more time since you will have to rewrite and replot your content and fuse it all into a single story. For the second you write a long intro and only copy your papers for the actual content.
However, writing is only one part. The thesis has be reviewed and you have the final presentation. Those two things can take many months. Check very carefully with your university and talk with the responsible secretaries. Sometimes there are fixed dates at which you can officially submit the thesis for review. As always, talk with your advisor as well.

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Is it possible to return to academia after an industry experience?
After Ph.D. I went to pursue a position in industry. But after 2 years I figured that the company culture is not suited for me. Will the hiring professors in academia accept the fact that I wasn't always in academia and hire me as a researcher for example in a university lab?
Thanks.

Are you looking for a faculty position or some sort of contract for research?

Does this answer your question? Returning to academia after a long peroid

Unfortunately, the majority of job vacancies for professors or instructors require industry experience these days (the year 2024). From this perspective, your industrial experience is a huge asset.

Strike while the iron’s hot. What you’re interested in historically runs hot and cold as an asset.

Although the exact answer is somewhat field-dependent, in general I would say that industrial experience is highly valued in academia. You should try applying to research positions of your choice and see how successful your applications are. Good luck.

More so in engineering than theoretical physics (much less English Lit).

@Jon Custer I've seen the case for management

This is extremely field-dependent. It will also depend on whether you want to mostly teach, do research under a professor, or lead a research team in academia.
In engineering, industry experience can be extremely valuable. People who have worked in basically any engineering position in industry for decades can get teaching-focused jobs without much difficulty. People who have done R&D work in industry can get research-focused jobs, especially in a hot field, and especially if they are continuing to publish while in industry. People who have worked in industry are seen as extremely qualified to do research in a technician or research scientist position under a professor, but are rare in academia because they are almost always too expensive for a faculty member to be able to afford to pay them on grants.
In biology, industry experience is not viewed as valuable in the same way. Once you leave the path of undergrad -> tech/lab manager (optional) -> grad student -> postdoc -> PI, it's very hard to get back on that track. Even if you are still in academia -- for example, taking a research scientist position after a postdoc instead of moving up to PI -- it is really hard to get back on the road to becoming a PI. I know a few biologists who have chosen "alt-ac" careers in which they still sometimes interact with academics, and one of them recently shared that they don't feel that they are respected as a scientist anymore. I do not know of anyone who got a PhD, worked in industry, and then returned to a research scientist or technician position, but this would almost certainly be easier than trying to get a job as a PI. The question is just whether your experience would make you more or less desirable to a PI in comparison with a graduating PhD student or super-postdoc who has not spent any time in industry. I'm not sure of the answer to that but I think it would depend a lot on the specific work you were doing in industry and whether it produced publishable research.
Those are the two fields I have the most familiarity with. From the little exposure I've had to philosophy, they seem to operate similarly to biology in that there is a defined track and if you deviate from it, it's very difficult to get back on. I can't venture a guess about any other field, though.
You should reach out to people in your field to get a sense of whether people successfully do this and how they are perceived.

I did that. I stayed 4 years outside academia (of which 2 on maternity leave), then one year in academia but with an administrative role. After that, I was hired as a Postdoc. One of my colleagues in the administrative role went back to academia as an Assistant Professor after two years.
We are in completely different fields (one STEM and the other social sciences) and in two different countries in the EU.
So I guess it is possible.

When I worked at one University, which has VERY strong links with industry, (in fact the Uni built specific courses for the companies) they often took people from industry to teach courses.
One colleague, who was a good teacher, decided that he preferred industry life and wanted to move back. His issue was he was under contract and was worried how they would handle it. Would they force him to complete the contract, or pay it out etc etc.
I told him they would make all efforts for him to leave very quietly: for the simple reason they did not want to "frighten" others from coming to try their hand at teaching.
Sure enough he went back to industry, the contract magically "disappeared" and was easy all round.
Don't ask me for evidence - I know his name and the Uni, and the company he went back to, but they deserve their privacy.

How does that answer the question? It's the complete opposite scenario...

@Itération122442 because that person I mentioned went BOTH ways and so did others. So Academics will hire people from both industry or academia...

@DimitriVulis I don't ask a question or search for clarification, so perhaps you chose incorrectly...

No. After I finished my second post doctoral position and left the academic environment, I was never able to come back, even if I had the doctoral degree and multiple publications that were not so bad (normal journals, peer reviewed) and (initially)  quite recent. I wrote really many applications but looks like in most of the cases was not even briefly considered as a possible candidate. During these years I was able to find a new job in the industry several times as needed, and quite easily.
I do not tie my failure to return to science with something relevant to my personality or lack of achievement, and more suspect that this path violates some unwritten rules. I have few other friends who ended up the same way. It is not possible to get a post doctoral position after few years of work in the industry. It is not possible to get any lower position. Maybe some really extreme history may allow you to become a professor, but I cannot even think out what it could possibly be.
At very least, the industry almost never allows to have publications, even if you are so extremely lucky as permitted to do research work there.

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Can I submit a demo paper to a conference while the journal paper of the algorithm is being processed?
We have submitted a journal paper and it is now being processed with the experiments and the algorithm description.
We want also the submit a demo paper about the user interface software we created to use that algorithm.
Can we submit a demo paper ?
Thanks

You can submit a paper "sufficiently" different from the journal paper, which it sounds like you are doing. (Sufficiently different is a judgement call.)
Note, however, that one of the main criteria for acceptance at most reputable journals is "novelty" of the ideas and conclusions. If you "step on" that novelty in a new paper, then it might cause issues.
Some will wonder if you are "salami slicing" to get two publications out of one idea, but if, for any reason, what you do in the second paper wouldn't have been appropriate in the first then you should be ok.
And,  of course, the second paper may not have the necessary novelty for acceptance.
Make sure you properly cite the first paper, of course. In the short term, mark the citation as "under review". You may need to update that before final versions are submitted.


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How can full-time lecturers find the time to prepare for lectures?
This question is mostly out of curiosity (at least for the moment).  I have never taught full courses but I have had to substitute many times, usually for graduate level courses.  Preparing for a one hour lecture took me 2-6 hours.
I understand that full-time lecturers may be expected to teach 20 hours per week.  I cannot imagine how one could find the time to prepare.  How do they manage?
Also, what about a freshly hired lecturer?  Teaching a course for the first time should take considerably more preparation, creating an extreme workload with 16-20 hours teaching per week.

Not an answer since I'm a grad student, but my understanding is that this is only possible once the courses have been prepared. That is, with all the materials in place and some practice, it might only take ~1 hour to prepare each hour of lecture.

Is 20 contact hours a week a common full-time load? A 2-1 or 2-2 in a STEM field seems like a standard starting Assistant Professor teaching load which comes to 6 hours lecturing per week in the 2-course semesters. 20 lecture hours a week is 6.5 sections of a 3-hour course or 6.5 different classes! I don't think that's standard much of anywhere. Can you clarify, or did I do the math wrong?

@BillBarth I don't know.  I would like to have reliable information on this.  I have heard 16-20, but I don't have direct experience with it.  I'm in a STEM field.  This question mentions 20.  I guess I'd have to ask a separate question for this.

You seem to understand the challenge of teaching. Yes, it's a lot of work. Now you know what the standard "time allowance" for teachers (including primary and secondary school) is that for every hour of teaching, you are considered to have another 1 to 1.25 hours for "other" work (prep, marking, etc.). Clearly prep is going to consume WAY more than that at the start of a career.

@Paracelsus Since you referenced my question, I will simply add that in my part of the world, 16-20 hours of lecturing per week is extremely common for full time lecturers.

Two points:

Preparing for a lower division course takes much less time than preparing than preparing for a graduate level course for several reasons.  First, you presumably have much better knowledge of the material in the lower level course.  Second, you tend to present material at a slower rate in a lower level course.  Third, you should be using more active learning strategies (having the students do work in class) in a lower level course.  I've found that although it takes an hour or two to prepare for an hour long class in one of my graduate courses, when I've needed to substitute in a lower division course (e.g. calculus) for an instructor who is out sick, I can typically prepare for the class in about a half hour.
it's much easier to teach a class if you have taught the course in previous semesters, and its particularly easy if you're teaching multiple sections of the same course in a semester.  So, an instructor with a four course teaching load might actually be teaching three sections of one course and one section of a second course.  This is described as "four sections, with two preps."

Preparing for a lower division course takes much less time than preparing than preparing for a graduate level course — [citation needed] In my experience, preparing for a new lower-division course takes more time than preparing for a new upper-division course.  Because you know the material better, it's considerably harder to figure out how to actually teach it well.  Also, lower-level courses tend to be significantly larger, so any time you might save on preparation, you lose on course administration.

@JeffE: "Any time you might save on preparation, you lose on course administration." Depends on the country. In Germany, professors rarely handle course administration issues beyond grades and handling oral exams.

@aeismail So, in Germany, how do instructors communicate with teaching assistants?  Who do students complain to when they don't like their grades, or when their grades are recorded incorrectly, or when a homework gets lost?  Who finds replacements when an instructor (or a TA) is unexpectedly sick?  Who tracks attendance?  Who decides on grading rubrics?  Who deals with cheating cases?  Who records and reports grades?

@JeffE: The whole course grade is usually determined on the basis of the final exam. Typically the TA's will be responsible for most of the work, including the grading rubric, regrade requests, and so on. (For example, there is a "grade review" where students can request regrades by the TA's.) The professor has charge over approving the decisions, but is usually involved only in "high-level" decision making. It's much more hands off than the US system. Also, keep in mind that the teaching load of German professors is much higher: typically at least 9 class hours per week per semester.

I did undergrad mathematics courses at Oxford where the lecturer had no involvement with students at all outside lectures. The lecturer would set a problem sheet, the students do the problems, the tutors (who are rather more than TAs, indeed some are full professors themselves) mark and give feedback. Of course nobody ever appeals a grade, and nobody cares if you cheat, since it's not part of the assessment for the degree. The person who taught the course may or may not be involved in the exams, up to 18 months later. But then, that's Oxford, nobody claims its teaching methods are cheap :-)

Lectures that are 20 hours/week are not year-round.  A new lecturer who is supposed to start lecturing in a new topic in September might need all summer to prepare.  If it takes 5 hours of preparation to do 1 hour of lecturing, 100 hours of lecturing takes 500 hours to prepare, or around 12–13 working weeks.  That should give a decent head start.  But even with a little bit of lecturing experience, it's going to take considerably less than 5 hours of preparation to lecture for 1 hour — and/or a new lecturer may need to spend more than 40 hours per week initially.

Are full-time lecturers usually paid for the summer months as well?

@Paracelsus That would depend on the location and possibly the employer.  I know that in Sweden, Germany, Netherlands, they certainly are, probably in other European countries as well.  In the USA, maybe not.  But where they are they might also be asked to contribute to summer courses.  It's a different question.

Of course the 5 hours are not usual (substituting in the middle of the semester meant that I had to spend time on the previous lectures as well), but I don't think I could go below 2 hours in the best case. Perhaps, as Brian Borchers said, undergrad courses are easier to teach.

In the US, lecturers (and professors for that matter) are not paid for the summer unless they are working on research grants or teaching summer school.

I regularly spend 5-8 hours in prep for every hour in class for a new subject. To revise the material each semester is much less but still something.

Brian makes good points - lower level courses take less time to prepare for than upper division courses, and there is an economy of scale - teaching multiple sections of the same course greatly reduces the overhead of preparation.
That said, the first time a lecturer teaches a course, the workload is very high - depending on the course content, between 1-3 hours of prep for each hour of lecture (for the first section) is normal (this is an average over a whole semester). So if you had 20 contact hours per week, and that was (for example) two sections each of two new courses, then your prep workload might be something like:

Course 1, Section 1 - 5 contact, 5-15 prep, 1 grading
Course 1, Section 2 - 5 contact, 0 prep, 1 grading
Course 2, Section 1 - 5 contact, 5-15 prep, 1 grading
Course 2, Section 2 - 5 contact, 0 prep, 1 grading

This would work out to 34-54 hours per week for the first semester. In subsequent semesters, the prep time decreases greatly. You might need a minimum of 2 hours per week total using the example above, and if you spend more, that time can go into improving the quality of the lectures. So maybe you would spend 30-40 hours per week in subsequent semesters.
In short, the workload for the first semester is very high, but as you continue to teach the same courses, it decreases a lot. In my personal experience, after several semesters of teaching the same course, I can almost teach it from memory - so my prep time instead becomes "improvement" time. In the same respect, preparing one course makes preparing for other courses easier - you learn how to organize material more effectively, you find ways to re-use content and learning materials, and you develop teaching patterns that can be applied to multiple classes.
For all of these reasons, teaching is not really a profession that can be easily characterized by weekly workload. Some weeks you might put in 50-60 hours, some weeks maybe it would be only 20. But in general, for a full-time position the average should work out to somewhere around 40 hours per week.

I assume full-time lecturers are given the same courses to teach year after year.  In some places professors are given a different course each semester, so the same course is taught by different people each year.  Less boring, but higher workload.  In other places the same course is always taught by the same person.

It depends on the teacher and on the institution, but yes, in general you tend to teach the same courses year-to-year. There are exceptions for developing new courses, for rotating between professors, and for taking over when someone retires. It also depends on the institution and the faculty's preferences.

You forgot office hours, dealing with student email, and other course administration.  If you only spend one hour per week grading, either your classes are tiny, your homeworks are too easy, your grading is superficial, or the teaching assistants who are doing most of the grading for you need more supervision.

@JeffE - I don't agree with you, I think that for a well-designed course with appropriate (and well-designed) assignments, you can easily get the average time spent grading down to one hour per course per week. Remember, that's an average over an entire semester. Of course, a lot depends on the type of class. for example, a writing course will require less time in prep and more time in grading than a science course. I do agree that there are other responsibilities I didn't list here - the point was just to show that the first semester is indeed a lot of work, but later it tends to even out.

you can easily get the average time spent grading down to one hour per course per week — This is simply not possible in (theoretical) computer science.

@JeffE - I'll take your word for it. My answer was not intended to be representative of every course - which is why I used the phrase "it depends on the course."

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Are there censored editions of academic journals?
I was taught as an undergraduate to be very careful when using and citing reprints of older books because they were frequently edited, abridged, or even censored. I was specifically warned not to use the "For Kids" editions of Shakespeare that removed all of the sex jokes and that failure to use the "real" versions would be punishable by catapult significant grade reduction if caught.
It occurred to me that I've never heard of censored editions of journals or articles cropping up. Are they a thing in academia at all? I did find a mention of journals choosing to censor themselves for political reasons, but I'm looking for cases where there are both censored and non-censored editions of a journal or article floating around. For example, I can imagine a "China Edition" of a geology journal in which "soil samples from Taiwan" has been edited into "soil samples from the Taiwan province of China" and in which a certain political dissident has been removed from the authors list. Similarly, I can imagine alternate editions of an educational research article in which literacy test scores in Crimea are alternately aggregated into Russian or Ukrainian statistics.
Do examples of censored journal publications exist, where there are both censored and non-censored versions floating around libraries and labs around the world and where knowing which one you have obtained a copy of might be important?
Cases such as the one I linked above, where a journal chooses to only publish a censored version of research everywhere in the world, do not count. Only cases where there are both censored and uncensored versions floating around (probably in different countries) count.
In response to Anonymous Physicist, I am asking specifically whether "censored alternative journals" exist in cases where a government (or university, faculty association, angry armed mob, etc.) would otherwise completely ban academic publications for political reasons. Such "alternative" journals would have omissions, additions, or changes to conform the research to political expectations (e.g. don't mention the human rights abuses happening in X City or don't acknowledge the scientific contributions of Y Persona Non Grata) while trying to preserve as much of the scientific message as possible.

From your question it is diffuclt to distinguish censored from peer reviewed publication. In additiion, which field and social area are you involved in? More details is necessary since disagreement is widely different from censorship but depends on from where the critical views emerge, peers or social or political environments. So please add details to your question.

In the modern age with universal communication it would seem to be pointless. If China were to object to terminology about Taiwan, they would object in any case. It is hard to see a benefit for anyone.

I have observed several journals that have a policy of neutrality with respect to territorial disputes.  They specifically will not change ROC to PRC or the other way around.

Mostly no.  People who want censorship are interested in popular movies and music.  They subscribe to things like Christian movie streaming sites.  They do not read scientific journals.
In countries where large portions of the internet are blocked, that includes academic journals and means of locating them.  But there are not censored alternative journals.
The internet has defeated most forms of censorship that impact academics who know how to use a VPN.

Presumably a censored version of an academic article would only constitute a separate "edition" if a non-censored version has also been published.  After all, if the only version of the article is the one where the censorship has occurred then that is the definitive article, and anything else is just a draft copy.  Consequently, if you are looking for cases of censored versions of articles, I'd look for cases where there is a published pre-print of an article that looks different to the version in the academic journal.  Draft pre-prints are a common practice in academia (e.g., on pre-print servers, university webpages, personal webpages, etc.), but I'm not aware of any instances where there are separate editions of entire academic journals containing earlier pre-prints or different versions of the articles.  So no, there are not any non-censored versions of academic journals, but there are servers containing pre-prints and earlier versions of articles.
If you are trying to identify earlier non-censored versions of academic articles, you will need to go back and look at pre-print versions or other published drafts and compare them on a case-by-case basis.  One complication in considering this topic is that there are some parallels between conventional ceonsorship and the peer-review process for publication.  In both cases the author submits their work to a gatekeeper who makes a determination on whether the work can be published in its current form (the distinction here being that a censor determines whether the work can be published at all whereas the peer-review process only determines whether the work can be published in academic journals).  The gatekeeper makes an assessment of what authors can and cannot validly assert in their articles.  Consequently, if one were to draw a broad meaning of the concept (which would be consistent with your contextual usage), one might argue that any instance of a peer-reviewed publication that differs from a pre-print version is a kind of "censored edition" of the article.

Right, I'm looking only for examples where there are separate censored and uncensored "editions" circulating after publication. For example, something like, "The article Chang, Wang, and Lang (2006) in the J of Stuff is the uncensored version. Versions of that journal delivered to Chinese universities instead list only two authors (Chang and Wang) because Lang is a notorious dissident who was exiled in 2003 for advocating for Taiwanese independence. There is also some omission of beneficial health effects of Falun Gong practice on pages 4-5 because such practice is banned in China."


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Does a literary or film allusion, done for effect, require a citation?
First of all, I know that academic writing is ordinarily not a place to jam-pack in large quantities of literary, theatrical, film, or other pop-culture allusions, references, or parodies, but sometimes one or two references, tastefully done, can add some levity to content that might otherwise seem quite dull.
Now clearly, if I am writing a paper about a work of literature (or film, etc.) and quote or paraphrase material from that work, I need a citation. My question is if I am referencing a work solely for effect and not for the content of the work, do I need a citation?
For example, consider the following hypothetical literature review:

The prevailing authorities on translongitudinal hypotheosis remain Smith (1987) and Myers & Johansen (1997), but several more recent researchers, including Jones (2006), McGivers et al. (2013) and Frank & Stein (2020), refuse to recognize their authoritah and instead propose that the hyperspacial gradient when n < 3 is not bounded to the translongitudinal apex rotary, citing certain data sets which Brown (2022) asserts are spurious and tainted by multiple methodological and ethical infirmities.

For the above, is it necessary to cite Parker, Stone et al. or would I only cite if the subject of my paper actually touched on the content of South Park?
Similarly, if I am writing a paper on cetacean nutrition and decide to drop in one or two Moby Dick allusions just for effect, do I need to cite it?
Or, maybe something like this:

The work of Hernandez et al. (2017) is a pathway to findings many would consider tainted by precognitive bias and postreticular smoothing.

I think a citation of Parker, Stone et al would just come across as an extension of the joke.

If you absolutely must include a joke like that, I would recommend placing it in a footnote rather than in the main text. That makes it a little clearer that it's an aside and that the reader does not need to expend mental energy into understanding that part.

is the above comment by tparker an opinion from Trey Parker, co-creator of South Park, that he'd prefer to be in the footnotes?

@tparker You've been mentioned.

I am French. South Park does not exist here and the references either look like a typo, or something I do not understand because I am not a native speaker of English. You will lose a lot of audiences outside of the US/Canada.

@BugCatcherNakata No, I am not Trey Parker. No conflicts of interest.

I strongly advise against adding a sentence such as ''Frank & Stein (2020), refuse to recognize their authoritah''.

If your paper is all impenetrable gibberish such as the examples you use, then no possible harm can occur.

I'm a South Park fan and I didn't even notice the allusion until I read the comment about it looking like a typo.

@WoJ: South Park has been broadcast on Canal+ in France for many years. But it is hard to expect a non-US audience to understand the reference anyway.

I don't understand the reference embedded within the quote with which you finish your question. I certainly wouldn't add such a reference to a paper I was writing.

@Taladris ah yes, you're right (I do not have Canal+). But even with this, the population who knows it (and watches it, and talks about it) would be minimal I belive.

It might be relevant that Winnie the Pooh has been cited in proper mathematical literature: https://mathoverflow.net/a/22350/14988

"Recognize" their authoritah? "Recognize"? No-one, and I mean no-one, is going to respect you for that one.

I suspect that the consensus answer in academia is:
Don't do it in the first place.
The standard writing style in academia avoids unnecessary ornaments, and aims for a detached, objective tone. Allusions that require a shared culture beyond the norms of the academic field risk making the text less accessible, less understandable.
If you do it anyway, adding a citation to the sample text would be misleading to an unethical extent: It would make it sound as if South Park directly commented on the reception of Smith (1997) etc. On the other hand, not saying anything makes it even less comprehensible for people unfamiliar with South Park (or whatever else gets referenced), and at least for some allusions like this there might indeed be a sufficient stylistic contribution that giving credit seems necessary.
As such, if you insist on having such allusions in your text, my suggestion would be to have a separate list of "Memes invoked" or similar, and then point to that rather than the bibliography here.

Sadly, I would have to agree.  I'm all for having this kind of 'fun', but it's hard enough to get published as it is without extraneous matters interfering.  If one reaches the place in one's career (e.g., have tenure) where it no longer matters, it could still be risky if the reference is offensive, which it very possibly could be.

If you have to explain a joke, it ceases to be funny. So going the route suggested in the last paragraph makes the allusions pointless.

Imagine a person 100 years in the future reading your paper. They shouldn't have to sift through pop culture references to understand what you're trying to get across.

If done well, cultural reference jokes can elicit a smile from readers who get it, and go all but unnoticed by readers who don’t (so no harm done); e.g., I invoked Star Wars once when linking the recent discovery of the Higgs-Boson particle with an old linguistics theory by segueing, “Meanwhile, a long time ago in a field far, far away, Linguist Researcher (1896) said…”. But the example given in the question is just bad. It clashes with the tone of the paragraph, it doesn’t make sense, and whether you’re familiar with the meme or not, you’ll almost certainly be left nonplussed.

To give a personal example, I simply assumed that "authoritah" was a typo and I kept waiting to find the allusion you mentioned, and it wasn't until I clicked your link that I even understood what you were talking about. I also have no idea who Parker, Stone et al. are.
By the same token, even having read Moby Dick a couple of times, I have no idea what the allusion is in your second quote.
In other words, there's a very real risk of alienating a considerable part of your audience with things like that.

That's because the second quote is nothing to do with Moby-Dick: it's a reference to Star Wars Episode III.

@EspeciallyLime There ya go. :) I saw that film at least five times, and I didn't recognize the reference. (Then again, last time was ten or fifteen years ago...) Thanks for the clarification.

I don't understand the reference embedded in that quote and I've seen the movie many times. Does "postreticular smoothing" have anything to do with "smooth brain", and what does it have to do with RotS in particular?

@LieutenantZipp: The wording of the sentence is a reference to the line "The Dark Side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural."

@user2357112 That... is obscure beyond belief. Even if there were laws enforced by courts about adding citations to references of literary works, no one, and I do mean no one, would ever come to terms over the two words "some consider". I use that expression regularly in my day-to-day speech, for instance. "Pathways to" is maybe a bit of a stronger link, but I don't using a particular turn of phrase even counts as an allusion, let alone a citable one.

...I figured "postreticular" was a reference to The Sims

@user2357112 Huh. I guess I can maybe see the reference now, but speaking as a Star Wars fan, I know I originally completely missed it.

Without a citation, many references to current entertainment culture, especially things like TV shows, will be simply lost on many people, especially those from a different culture. They might be left puzzled as I was by this and by some things at XKCD.
If you want to make a humorous reference to current or local culture, remember that your audience may not have the same set of experiences that you do.
I'm not so strong on whether you should or shouldn't do this, but if you do, make it clear. Let your grandma in on the joke.

Instead of the link and naming XKCD, suppose I'd just written "some references made by Randall". Or even "Randall Munroe", though the latter would make a Google search easier.

I disagree with other answers, and think making the reference is itself benign (and may amuse some people), but the one thing you should not do is explain it.
João Mendes suggests there is a risk of alienating your readers. I disagree, because the people who don't recognise the reference won't know there was a reference to recognise, so won't be alienated. And this is not a problem, because they lose nothing (from an academic point of view) by missing it. You should just treat it as an Easter egg. What might alienate people is having a footnote basically telling them "there was an amusing[citation needed] reference here, but you missed it".
The alternative is to lose a reference that some people may appreciate, without any benefit to anyone else. Physics would be slightly duller had Murray Gell-Mann never made his gratuitous James Joyce reference, and I say this as someone who would not have recognised it. (Gell-Mann did feel the need to add a citation of Finnegan's Wake here, although his earlier "eightfold way", itself an allusion to Buddhism, went unexplained.)

I agree with this, with one large caveat: The text must be readable and understandable for somebody who does not get the reference. If it flies completely over their head and is unnoticed, then it is hard to claim any kind of harm. For example, I don't think "recognize their authoritah" is a good reference to put in - it looks really odd unless you know South Park and breaks the reading flow. On the other hand, the second reference is perfectly readable, if somewhat flowery, without knowing the reference.

@Frodyne yes, agreed. Although like João I would have just assumed "authoritah" was a typo. That is also the sort of thing that an equally oblivious referee might "correct", and I think the author should accept such a correction.

Such a sentence about recognizing authority is of course also very out of place in academic writing even without the "typo". One never recognizes authority. A much more appropriate sentence would talk about disagreement and explain why there is disagreement. There is no authority in science. If I read this intro I would at the very least assume the author to not be familiar with academia and academic writing. I would probably assume worse and not read the paper.

This works if you're Terry Pratchett, who could spin a joke over most readers' heads without them even noticing it, while those who did get it were delighted. Most people don't have that skill.

@Kvothe Not only that, but isn't the line in South Park "Respect my authoritah"? The only allusion is the spelling to match how Cartman pronounces it (spoofing southern cops).

Just about every policy on plagiarism I can find exempts "common knowledge" from citation.
I suppose the example you cite suggests that the SouthParkian "authoritah" has reached the status of common knowledge (or you wouldn't be using it in that way), and therefore, it arguably does not require citation.
My own suggestion here would be to stick to the facts, and not try to funny it up.

Bringing up a litarary or movie allusion requires a citation, unless the saying is known to anyone, see an example below.
While generally it is not advisable to bring such allusions into scientific texts, there exists one notable exception where this is permissible: mottoes, both to articles and to separate sections.
In one paper, I saw a section presenting some derivation in such a painful detail that it would be more appropriate to a textbook. To justify this, the authors equipped the section with the motto: " What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence."
(Samuel Johnson)
Another paper contained a section devoted to an extremely slow astrophysical process related to the formation of planetary systems in the universe, over timescales from millions to billions years. That section had a right motto: " The mills of God grind slowly..." -- and without a reference to the source, because this saying is known to everyone.
Aside from mottoes, I would not recommend you to use literary or movie allusions.

"and without a reference to the source, which is known to everyone": Never assume that in an international context. In fact, I didn't know that expression.

@Michael_1812 Don't underestimate the impact of language on recognizing phrases. The phrase in English didn't ring a bell for me. Once you mentioned that it's from the Bible, I translated it into German, and voila.

@Michael_1812 Where does "the mills of God" appear in the Bible? I've found references to first century Greek literature (Plutarch), and of course Longfellow's translation from a 17th century German epigram, but I find no Bible references.

Though unintentional, I think this is a brilliant answer that perfectly illustrates the danger of assuming that any universal references exist.

@Llaves You are right and I am wrong. The quote is not from the Bible. I think, I got it from Longfellow's translation of a German poet, but it seems to be much older
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mills_of_God

So it seems like this should say "without a reference to the source, because the original source is not known." Which is a good enough reason not to attribute it.


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Feasibility and procedure for getting graduate admission in CS with non-CS-related engineering background?
It is often said that branch change is possible while going for MS/ PhD in USA. But almost all examples (as seen on university sites and various blogs) are of someone completing undergraduate studies (ie BE, BTech) from ‘Circuit’ branches of engineering i.e. Electrical, Electronics, Telecom, Instrumentation etc and joining MS/PhD in CS.

How difficult it is to go for MS or PhD in CS, having studied in ‘Non Circuit’ branches like Mechanical, Civil, Chemical and Aeronautics Engineering?
Are there people out there?
What one should do if one has a strong drive, skills and suitable projects, seminars, publications to support the same?

(My query refers mainly to top ranking colleges, say top 20)

You may be able to raise your chances, if you are shooting for something interdisciplinary research (and find a professor in the field) that can be partially built on your existing experience. I.e. someone mentioned robotics: if you are in mechanical engineering, you may have invaluable skills that standard CS candidates do not have.

Yes, it is possible to get an admission for MS or PhD in a US university having studied Bachelor degree in 'Non Circuit" field. This is more true if you have strong drive, skills and suitable projects, seminars, publications to support the same. However, to get into the top 20s would be a special case though not impossible.
Try approaching professors from top universities in CS showing them your credentials. If you are able to convince a professor, the battle is more or less won.
One of my friend did his Bachelor in Civil Engg. from a reasonably good non-US university but got admission in Electrical Engg. in a US university of medium rank.

Having to deal with applications for admission to a taught MSc CS programmes, I am sorry to say that we only accept CS BSc graduates or ``equivalent''.
Even if applicants come form ``related'' areas such as electronic engineering, they usually lack experience in basic (and non-basic) CS areas such as programming, databases, operating systems, security, discrete math, and web technology.
Sure, it's possible to learn about these matters but to enter the programme you must prove you've mastered them on a formal basis. (Otherwise, we might as well let anybody enter.) We're willing to accept applicants with provable industrial experience, provided applicants can back up the experience with a relevant CV and some references.
When it comes to non-CS BSc graduates, we simply cannot accept them unless they can prove they've studied CS on a formal basis. In short this usually means you always need a BSc in CS or the equivalent of a CS conversion degree.

I've up voted this answer as helpful, because it's important to know that there are graduate programs with these restrictions.  But not all CS graduate programs require an undergraduate CS background. Many departments accept promising graduate students with non-standard backgrounds and then offer them additional time for remediation. And some professional masters programs are just glorified undergraduate degrees.

@JeffE In some countries requiring that students spend additional study time is simply not allowed. That's one of the reasons why we usually always require that applicants have a CS bsckground.

As @Stat-R said, it is possible to change fields for your M.S. or your Ph.D., but it is harder to get in and you need all those things that @Stat-R said. In addition you may find some M.S. programs in C.S., offered for non-CS major students. I know that U. Penn has such a program. If you are in Mechanical Engineering, you might have worked with robotics. Robotics Institute of CMU offers both M.S. and a Ph.D. and they accept Mechanical Engineering major students too.
I think that it is harder to get into a Ph.D. program, especially if you haven't done any research on related topics, but I think you can easily get into an M.S. program.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


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Why do editors sometimes accept a paper even if a reviewer recommends rejection?
For the last many days, I have a question in mind related with the editorial decision of accepting or rejecting the manuscript after peer-review:
Few days back I got a review report from a very reputed mathematics journal in which reviewer 1 had given some good points and suggestions to further improve the paper while reviewer 2 had given some points and rejected my manuscript.
Although, its not tough to revise the paper as per the suggestions of reviewer 2.
I would like to know why editor has given me chance to revise the manuscript while reviewer 2 has rejected it. I asked this question because in the past I had bad experience of rejection despite of getting acceptance from one of the reviewers.

The converse: Why does editor reject when reviewers recommend acceptance?

What was the referee's reasoning for rejection?  Did they suggest that what you did was irrelevant or uninteresting? Some journals don't care about relevance, only about correctness. Did they suggest that the paper has mistakes? Perhaps the editor decided to give you a chance to fix those mistakes. The reviewer's main job is to give objective feedback. The decision whether to reject is subjective and it's up to the editor, not the reviewer. An erroneous paper won't be published but the editor may always decide to give you a chance to fix those errors. Especially if there's a publication fee...

@Szabolcs There were no mistakes in the work.  Some reasons were like : need for some more comparisons, some more numerical experiments.

A sufficient explanation would be that the editor agrees that "it[']s not tough to revise the paper as per the suggestions of reviewer 2".

It is up to the editor whether to accept or reject. The reviewers only make recommendations.  Even if the reviewers give positive recommendations, the editor can decide to reject a paper.
If both reviewers give negative recommendations, it is much less likely for the editor to accept a paper. If there is a mix of opinions the editor  has to make a judgment, subject to whatever internal procedures the journal has in place. It seems like, this time, the decision was favorable for you.

Nice information here. But this does not answer the question. The question is why would this happen, not if and how this happens.

Well, maybe the Editor was not convinced by the points risen by R2. Or he took the point but thought that on balance, the paper was still worth publishing, perhaps after correcting these points.

To make sure I understand: you submitted a manuscript and got two referee reports.  One of them was favorable (?) but the other one recommended rejection.  Nevertheless you have been given the opportunity to revise the paper.  I hope I got that right.
From the sound of it, the editor sees more merit in your paper than the second reviewer.  I agree that when one review is positive and one is negative, rejection is the most common outcome.  (I think the extent to which this happens is positively correlated with the reputation of the journal.  Most of the journals I submit to are roughly in the "very good" range, and in that range they can and most often do only accept papers with uniformly positive feedback from reviewers.)  However, that need not necessarily be the case: most frequent referees know of at least one example of a paper that appears notwithstanding the fact that they recommended rejection.
I would be wary of making changes that are (i) time-consuming and (ii) you do not agree actually improve the paper, because it is still by no means assured that the paper will be accepted by this journal in the end.  However, if you agree with the suggestions and think the journal is very reputable: sure, make the changes, resubmit and hope for the best.  Sometimes you catch a break: enjoy it.

Thank you very much for the answer. I have tried my best to implement the suggestions of the reviewer 2. Still I am worried as he must be having negative thoughts about my manuscript.

An editor might regard one referee's report as more reliable than another's on the basis of how carefully they seem to have read the paper and how well they have understood it.  That sort of information might be in the official reports that the author sees, or it might be in their confidential comments to the editor.

Assuming the editor is not an expert in the paper's subject matter, he/she will defer to the referees regarding correctness and importance.  However, the referees do not necessarily have a clear understanding of the journal's standards.  Sometimes the standards change over time (a low-quality journal may be gradually improving, or a high-quality journal may not be able to attract quite as high a caliber of papers as it did a few decades ago), and the referees may not be up to date on these changes.  The standards may not be the same in all areas: sometimes a journal manages to attract excellent papers in one niche but doesn't want to restrict its coverage to just that area and is therefore willing to accept somewhat weaker papers on other topics if necessary.  Sometimes a journal is not so well known and the referees simply don't understand what it's looking for.  Sometimes a journal is famous enough to have mythical standards attributed to it that would be completely unworkable in practice.  And sometimes referees are just out of line with the rest of the field in terms of their personal standards: some people are consistently harsher or more lenient than other referees, and the editor may know this.
In principle the journal's public description and private instructions to referees can help alleviate these issues by establishing standards.  However, it's difficult to write clear and unambiguous standards.  Past examples give far more information than any description of reasonable length, and the editors will be more familiar with those examples than just about anyone else.
The net effect is that although the referee's recommendations are very useful and often followed, the editor's decision is made in a broader context that is not necessarily fully visible to the referees or the author.

The decision on a manuscript is usually based on more than one review, often two. As an editor you are faced with many different view from reviewers. Often reviews point in the same direction and may be differ by one providing a major revision and one a minor. But, it is no unheard of that one reviewer can suggest rejection while the other a direct accept.
In all cases, the editor should evaluate the reviews and arrive at some well-balanced decision for how the author should use the reviews to improve the manuscript (in addition, cases where MS are accepted without revisions are very, very rare; direct rejections are of course not so uncommon). If reviewers arrive at widely different recommendations and there are no obvious ways in which the editor can see how to reconcile the differing opinions, requesting an additional review by a third reviewer should be the solution. It is in this process where your question can appear because the way in which an editor values reviews depends on the scientific content, for one, but also on considerations such as the integrity of the journal and the publisher. Often such considerations lead to rejections rather than acceptance.
Accepting papers that have received more negative reviews can usually occur because the editor believes, for example, that the revisions suggested are not as severe as the reviewer indicated by suggesting (in your case) rejection, or, that the reviewer is off in the judgement as a whole. I have for example, seen rejection suggestions that are based more on antagonism than scientific reasons.
In the end reviewers make suggestions, editors (hopefully) provides an educated and insightful "verdict" that you need to adhere to in your revisions.
ad endum: When you receive more "extreme" negative reviews, you should ask yourself: is this because I am not very clear in some way? The answer is often yes!

The last paragraph cannot be highlighted enough.

@Peter Thanks for the reply. There is no such points in the review that can not be work out. I have addressed all the points in the revised manuscript. What made me worry is the fact that reviewer has negative mind towards my paper. Despite of my hard work if he rejects, it would trouble me a lot.

I had the exact same item happen recently in quite a well renowned journal. One very strong review, one very weak review. Accept and decline. The editor acted as a referee and said he felt the reject review was over "petty" and moved the paper forward with minor edits. I think it was good practice by the editor as he clearly read both reviews and then made the call. This is essentially their job. I think in other cases the editor may have gone with the reject if he felt it was the more robust review. I would say it is just the way it falls sometimes. I would say your goal under revisions is to move the "reject" reviewer to a position of indifferent. Make them at least not block the progress of the paper.

There're a lot of possible reasons. Some possibilities:

The reject review(s) are weak while the accept review(s) are strong. I once had a paper were one reviewer said "this paper is clearly wrong, if we accept this methodology one can prove anything, reject" without elaborating. The paper also had three other reviewers who all took the paper seriously and gave suggestions for improvements. At this point it's either trust the word of the first reviewer (bringing in secondary factors like seniority, publication record ...) or ignore the first review. I think most people will think the latter is more reasonable.

The reasons for rejection are not fatal. This is the most common reason. In the above example, suppose the first reviewer had gone into why the methodology is clearly wrong, and provided good reasons for it. In that case the paper is fatally flawed, and so rejection is obvious. On the other hand if the flaws can be corrected, then revision might be better. This comes down to the judgment of the editor, and different editors will react differently.

The journal lacks papers. The ugly side, but does happen. If the journal is having trouble filling its issues then it might be more inclined to send your paper for revision than reject outright. Conversely if the journal is receiving way more submissions than it needs, it might incline towards rejection. This is also when biases can play a role. For example, a journal could be trying to expand its author market to [X country]. If you're from X, then they might incline towards revision.

The editor had received confidential information. This usually leads to the second possibility (when the editor rejects even though reviewers recommend accept), but it's possible it leads to acceptance. There are two main sources for this: the "confidential comments to editor" box when writing a review, and the "please explain why you are declining to review" box.

The reviewer(s) might have a history of recommending rejection (or vice versa). Editors can see a reviewer's history of recommendations. If the reviewer has been recommending reject for most papers (including those that were accepted and went on to generate lots of citations), then the editor might put less weight on the review.

Ultimately, the job of the editor is to decide whether or not to accept the paper, and it's a judgment call. Just like different reviewers might have different opinions on a paper, different editors can also reach different conclusions.
Edit: here's an explicit example of why an editor might accept a paper even with outstanding reject reviews.
The authors are modelling [phenomenon], and they did it with a 2D simulation. The reviewer said 2D is not good enough, and requests a 3D simulation. Obviously 3D simulations are a lot more expensive to run, so the authors decline to do it, and the reviewer recommends rejection as a result.
Note that even if the reviewer is right, the 2D simulation might still provide a useful first step. It does mean the paper is not going to be revolutionary (and hence a top journal will likely reject it). However, if the paper is still a solid piece of work given the limitations of the method, then it still might be acceptable.

Some venues have a more fine-grained scale. For instance, I have seen "weak" and "strong" accepts/rejects.
A "strong accept" may cancel out a "weak reject" and then some, especially if there are few submissions with stellar reviews.
Even if this is not made explicit in the "recommendation" field, the editor may very well have inspected (the language in) the reviews in full and put them in relation themselves.

I had a quite similar situation: the paper was accepted after one negative review and two positive.
At the beginning there were only two referees. The negative one was shallow and gave a negative opinion stating that he did not see the aim of the paper since there was previous literature in the subject. The second one was more robust; he suggested reconsideration following revision and indicated some points that could be improved.
The editor gave me the chance to respond to the reviewers and then he asked the opinion of a third referee at the second round of review. At this stage the the third referee gave a positive opinion and well founded and the paper was accepted.
I concur with comments above, editors usually takes more seriously the most solid and well founded opinion, whether positive or negative. Sometimes they give the author the chance to respond.


text:
How to find size of academic literature in a given discipline?
The question is related to the trend of research and focus on different disciplines.
Is there some trend assesment which shows the number of articles or conferences on a specific disciplines?
If someone would like to see the trend of research on let's say Nano Technology or Semantic Technology is there some source of information which shows the number of conferences related to the discipline and the number of articles tagged for these disciplines?

There's a lot of literature on how to do this sort of work. Please can you edit into your question, a summary of what you've learnt already from the literature?

There is an entire branch of science devoted to this. Over the years, it has been variously termed bibliometrics, informetrics and scientometrics. Please see this link for more information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientometrics

The typical way to do this would be to enter your topic as search keyword into a bibliographic database such as Web of Science or Scopus, and have the number of published articles using the keyword charted over the years. That's what I often see when someone wants to advertive a "hot new topic" in conferences or seminars.
Unfortunately, I never saw a chart where someone corrected for even simple statistical artifacts like total number of publications in the database for a given year, or a time-varying coverage of the literature by the database. Thus I am typically not valuing these pictures highly.

It is not that easy to determine the current trend. Many search engines for publications give the number of the search query.
It is important to continuously dealing with your area of expertise. The best way to identify the current trend is to go to conferences and read professional journals. In addition, one also needs a lot of expertise to be able to assess as something.

Actually I was more looking to support a claim that a specific discipline is gaining a lot of attention. I feel that is true due to personal observations of increasing number of conferences on this discipline, of papers related to the practice but cannot claim without a proof or a study supporting my claim.


text:
Where to upload a reprint (post-print) of my publication?
I used to self-archive papers on my homepage in the institute where I was doing phd. I just noticed that my homepage and the reprints were removed -- that's normal, I'm not working in that institute anymore.
I can legally self-archive these papers. For example, J. Appl. Cryst. allows authors to post reprints

on their own personal website, on their employer's website/repository
  and on free public servers in their subject area.

What are the best "free public servers" to upload electronic reprints?
(IIUC arXiv is for pre-prints rather than post-prints).

What's wrong with http://www.nieto.pl/?

@JeffE: nothing wrong, but I'm wondering if there is a dedicated service that makes papers easier to find that one's own website. Although it may not matter, google will index it anyway.

As Piotr says in his answer, arXiv is definitely not just for pre-prints (it's not even primarily intended for pre-prints).  The arXiv calls them "e-prints" to avoid the issue of whether they are preprints, although this name has not really caught on more broadly.

arXiv also has that annoying rule that you need to be invited by someone (or whatever they call it). That can be a problem.

@marcin People search on Google Scholar then they visit you website (see this answer http://academia.stackexchange.com/a/9863/49). So the point is on how it is easy for Google to find it and how  it is likely to stay for a longer time.

@FaheemMitha Not exactly (I got an account "as it is"), but see http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/4812/whats-arxiv-endorsement-policy (unless you are a crackpot, it shouldn't be hard to know someone (even via a SE site :)), who wants to endorse you).

@PiotrMigdal Well, you can get an account, but need an endorsement to post. I had problems with the endorse thing. I couldn't find anyone I knew in the relevant areas who actually used arXiv. Apparently contacting to strangers can work, but I didn't try that.

@FaheemMitha I was lucky enough to not need endorsement to post. So, what is your field, etc (but actually, it may be more for a priv than comments here)?

@PiotrMigdal I was trying to post in statistics and biomedical (two different papers) if I recall correctly, but I forget the details - it has been some time. We can talk in chat if you want...

let us continue this discussion in chat

arXiv is not only for preprints (actually, updating after publication is highly encouraged). So if you can self-archive*) and you have an intersection with an arXiv discipline, it is the best place to place it.
*) The only objection to post-publication is in case where you are not allowed to self-archive and don't wan't to mess with it.
For other disciplines, see Preprint services other than arXiv (for other fields).
Or (maybe even better) just - putting them on GitHub repository. It is a stable service + makes it easy to upload work with source code (tex + figures) (much alike arXiv, but on GitHub it is more convenient). Just make sure to link the pdf file in the README.md and reference it properly (i.e. the full citation, the best with a DOI link) so to have its status clear.

I don't think this is legally allowed. The Figshare terms of service state that "All publicly stored research outputs are stored under Creative Commons Licenses"; he does not have enough rights left to publish under one. As for Github, I seem to recall that you can only publish open source code there, although I can't find anything specific on the ToS now. A post-published self-archived pdf surely is not open source.

@FedericoPoloni Good point, I've removed the Figshare part. On GitHub it is you who set the license. Open source (i.e. source is visible) does not carry any license per se (AFAIK). Posting PDF without source there, AFAIK, does not differ from posting it on your homepage.

Will Google pick up and index a paper posted on Github?

@FaheemMitha If you link it explicitly in README.md - I guess it should (all in all, you can search for GitHub repositories). But I haven't tested it in practice (maybe I should?). Do you have any arguments why it shouldn't take it (e.g. some no-index/no-follow?).

@PiotrMigdal: No, I've no idea whether the Google indexing would work or not. I don't currently have a good place to put my papers either, but I hadn't thought of using GitHub. Though I'd be more likely to use BitBucket, as I use that already.

@FaheemMitha Most likely BitBucket is as good as GitHub for this purpose.

Google seems to pick up PDF files on github just fine: http://www.google.com/search?q=filetype%3Apdf%20site%3Agithub.com

@FedericoPoloni Well, the acid test would be searching for the title of a paper on GitHub without especially searching GitHub, and seeing if it came up. :-)

@PiotrMigdal: Thanks for your answer. I've put the papers on Github for now.


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If one got good feedback from a double-blind review, is it ever possible/ justifiable to find out who the reviewer was?
I got some impressively lengthy, detailed and mostly positive feedback in a double-blind peer review for a paper. Is it ok (or even possible), or is it against best practices (and considered taboo), to try to find out who the reviewer was - just in case you can get more feedback and share ideas related to the topic at hand?

If you have questions, you can forward them through your editor. But asking to unblind the reviewer is not a suitable request.

As @SE318 explains (+1), it is unethical to try and find out who a reviewer is.  However it is not unethical for a reviewer to identify themselves if the so choose (some journals specifically give this option in their review form).  I can't see much problem with sending the journal a polite request for the editor to pass on a message explaining what you had in mind so that if the reviewer was interested in collaborating they could contact you.

boy that was quick, downvoter, I'd be interested to hear your objection.

I am not the downvoter but I do have a slight objection to this. This is, at least in my mind, a morally grey area. It seems innocent to ask the editor to pass along a message, but you must be careful. If someone reviews something double-blind, then receives a letter asking to reveal themselves, it can put undue pressure on them(Albeit, his pressure is light, but not non-existent). They might feel bad if they don't reveal themselves, but might not want to. If this was common practice in double-blind reviews, that would eliminate the ability of a review to be completely honest while reviewing.

@SE318 thanks for the feedback, I would say that the pressure generated by this was essentially negligible.  As the author has no idea who the reviewer is, there will never be any awkwardness caused by not responding to the message (whilst being pleased with the complement of the review implied by the invitation).  Also any potential disadvantage has to be evaluated against the potential benefit of the opportunity for collaboration (which is an important part of science and where many advances in science originate).

You're probably right that it is negligible. I sometimes have an overactive imagination, and fear that if this was allowed to be common practice now, in a few decades it could be considered rude not to respond(slowly built from people expressing their frustrations when they don't hear back from the reviewers), in which case the idea of the double-blind review would be compromised.

I very much doubt it would happen so frequently that that would ever be an issue.

@SE318 Even if it became rude, I think the internet has proven to us that people don't have a problem being rude when anonymous.

@ChrisHayes
I would like to think(not sure if this is true, just wishful thinking) that the people who you are referring to, and the people doing double-blind reviews are in general not the same types of people. Maybe I have a romanticized idea of academia, but I would like to think that most people in it are able to be respectful regardless of if they are anonymous or not.

It is not just taboo, it is unethical to try to find out who the reviewer is, and would defeat the purpose of the double-blind. Part of the idea of double-blind is that one is able to be completely honest since they know their comments cannot be tracked back to them. I strongly advise against trying to find out who the commenter is.
Theoretically it may be possible to find out who the reviewer is, but this is a problem with the system, and you should not attempt to do this.


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Journal editor made bad edits to my (accepted) paper - how do I respond?
Earlier this year I had a paper accepted to a well-recognized journal in a particular (humanities) subfield. I finally received proofs of the article, and was (more than a bit) upset at the edits. A lot of the changes were at the sentence level: phrasing, punctuation, word choice.
These edits often 1) obscured my intended meaning (e.g. turned ONE grammatically correct sentence into TWO sentences that, because of the addition of a weird transition phrase, no longer says what I intended), and/or 2) over-simplified or diminished the prose (e.g. adding "to be" constructions, adding awkward and unnecessary "ultimately"s, "for example," etc.).
So, how should I respond? Ultimately, I'd like to have 95% of the changes reversed. I would be mortified to publish the piece in its current state.
I've published several times and never had this issue - usually edits are small (more proofreading than anything). Because I was sent PDFs, the process of sending back my "corrections" will be arduous (on some pages every sentence now needs fixing). I don't want to alienate the journal or the staff member who made the edits.

Have you asked others in your department who have a history with this particular journal or the editor who handled you paper? What did they say?

The answers thus far are from people who apparently are unfamiliar with the humanities publication process (including me), so treat them with some skepticism.

I'm not an academic, so feel free to disregard, but would it be prudent/possible to ask them to explain why they've made the changes that they have, highlighting a few key examples? Asking would trigger a few things; introspection (they might realise the changes are unnecessary/redundant/unjustifiable), when they reply you'd be better informed what their reasoning was (so you can persuade, or implement changes that fulfil their needs yourself), and you'd have the pre-existing dialogue necessary to politely ask that they reverse their changes, explaining why they're problematic.

Have you signed over the copyright for the article yet? If not, you can just deny them the right to publish it if they don't revert your unauthorized changes.

@nick012000 Yeah, it would be good to clarify whether the copyright transfer has already been executed. Of course, this is not to say Miffed should jump straight to denying permission to publish on copyright grounds; it's merely one option.

I like Giles Coren's take on this: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2008/jul/23/mediamonkey

You've come to the right place to ask this question.  People are always editing others' questions here and messing up the meaning.

Don't understand why it arduous. 95% is easy. Just go back to your original draft, and correct the 5%. Done. Now 50% would have been a pain.

The journal production office (not the editor) has sent you the page proofs for one reason, and that is for you to check wether they have messed up anything.

What specific field is it?

@candied_orange Er, have you ever published a journal paper? The asker has been sent the page proofs of the final version, with the final formating, etc. They're being asked to OK (or not) the changes that have been made to that version, not to resubmit an earlier version with different formating, etc.

@DavidRicherby if you're being asked if it's OK then it's not the 'final' version. Just saying the proofs are not OK is useless. Say what they should be.

@candied_orange since you ignored my explicit question and, instead nit picked my poor use of the word “final” I assume you’ve not published a journal paper. At this stage of the process, merely sending a correct version of the text is not what is required. Having said that, it may be the most effective way to proceed: effectively, this would be saying “You mangled the text so badly that we’re going to have to start again. Throw away all your typesetting work, and typeset this.”

@candied_orange I never suggested just saying that the proofs are not ok.

@DavidRicherby sounds like that's exactly what they should do. I'd add a note that if they see anything else in need of editing they are welcome to send that correction back BEFORE doing any type setting work. Save some work and time.

@candied_orange The journal isn't going to change its publishing workflow just for you.

@DavidRicherby then the journal is going to have to deal with wasting their own time and effort.

I finally received proofs of the article, and was (more than a bit) upset at the edits.

How to respond?  Do not respond while upset.  Wait until you can respond in a calm way.
This is a perfectly normal occurrence.  Remember the journal relies on getting your work for free in order to get subscription fees to pay its expenses.  They need you more than you need them.  Do not hesitate to ask for anything that will help your publication improve.

I agree with @Buffy that the changes are probably from a copy editor.
I disagree some about requesting just the  minimal changes that "affect the meaning".
This is a humanities paper, so style may matter much more than in a math/cs/science paper where one could argue that "correct" is sufficient.
Write a polite(!) letter to the editor asking about rejecting many of the changes since you think they often change the meaning. Perhaps include a few examples. Then you'll have to do what the editor suggests in order to publish in this journal.

Write a response to the production staff that spells out which changes you'd like to revert. Feel free to use text if you can't indicate it on a PDF, e.g. "Page 2 column 1 paragraph 3, change 'write' to 'written'". If it goes as high as 95%, then just say use the original file but indicate the 5% of changes that you want to keep. That said, I'm skeptical it reaches 95% - that's 19 out of every 20 changes - and there's a good chance you didn't notice all the changes that were made.
The copyeditor is not likely to fight you over these changes - after all, they know that you understand the intended meaning better than them. In fact chances are the production staff will simply implement your requested changes and move on to the next paper. Don't get angry. It's kind of pointless, and if they're already going to revert the changes, it'll lead to the same result anyway.

This answer agrees with my (limited) experience. I once had to revert a lot of the copy editor's changes in a paper, and the journal complied. The only bad thing that happened was that a co-author also wrote to the editor without first calming down sufficiently.

If OP didn't notice all the changes that were made, that reflects even worse on the journal. Any journal that's going to make non-trivial copy edits should make sure they send a proof with the changes clearly marked.

@EspeciallyLime I'm referring to trivial changes which many people never notice. Hence the 95% rate is difficult to believe - I'd guess there were trivial changes made that the OP simply never noticed.

That's why the @EspeciallyLime said the journal should send a proof with the changes highlighted so you can go through them one at a time.  For an article written in LaTeX, for example, you could do it yourself, e.g. diff the original vs. copy-edited LaTeX source to find every difference.  (Or use GUI text diff tools which at this point are very good, because programmers and sysadmins need to do this for source code and config files all the time.)  But for other formats like Word docs you're dependent on your software having such a feature.

Newer versions of MS Word do have a solid built in comparison tool.  It has a side by side mode similar to how diff tools for code files work, as well as IIRC a mode that can insert all the changes from the newer version into the older as tracked changes.

@Allure I can confirm that I have seen cases where in the 90%+ of changes caused problems. Usually when they take one bad rule and apply it a lot of places. The worst cases are when they do substantial edits without track changes, at which point you need to reject all changes and force them to start again because you don't know what they broke. Anybody doing diffs is letting a bad editor waste their time.

This sounds like the work of a copy editor not the "editor" in charge of the paper. Such folks usually know the language pretty well, but not the subject matter. So, the errors they make are semantic in nature - pretty serious.
My suggestion is that you correct the ones that need correcting; those that affect the meaning. But probably let the others go.
Write a report back to the editor (the real one) detailing each change and saying why. Leaving the minor ones go gives you a shorter report and more likelihood that they will be accepted.
I've had this happen too. But fight for the important ones primarily. A few more probably won't hurt, but 95% will probably get you on the wrong side of someone.

95% or not: it's OP's paper. OP should make their point politely, but firmly. I am tolerant for changes which are not wrong, albeit I am particular with the language of my articles. But I am in a technical field, and these guys write for humanities - style is so essential there that they even read preformulated sentences in their talks.

But also note that technical writers can be blind to the implications of how they state things, assuming knowledge that the reader doesn't have, or being overly pedantic. We can all use help in our writing, I think.

I respectfully disagree with "But fight for the important ones primarily. A few more probably won't hurt, but 95% will probably get you on the wrong side of someone." Wrong is wrong. I don't think the poster should accept any incorrect changes.

I agree with the other commenters.  The OP should certainly consider if each change is an improvement or not, but they should ask for each one that is not an improvement to be reverted.

I also agree with other commenters.  The author is ultimately responsible for the content of any paper, including is presentation.  Poor writing reflects badly on the author, not on the anonymous copy-editor.  Yes, of course we can all use help with our writing, but it's not the copy editor's job (or intention) to "help" us.

@JeffE and others: Bad writing also reflects badly on the journal if it publishes the article. Being insistent on every word, if there is disagreement with the real editor (not the copy editor) is likely to result in a judgement that you are an uncooperative author to be avoided. I only suggest you fight the important fights, not the trivial ones. The journal is about to take copyright and put its own reputation on the line also. If you want absolute control, then self publish.

@Buffy I'm sorry, but I can't wrap my head around the idea that insisting that the copy editor get out of the way could make the author seem uncooperative, as opposed to making the copy editor seem incompetent.  Real editors are our research colleagues; they understand very well the importance of precise language. Ideally, you and the the real editor are both pushing back together.  (That said, if you can't convince the real editor that the changes are necessary, they aren't; let it go.)

@Buffy An email I received from a copyeditor contained the following sentence: "As per Journal instruction we update style alone for this article and not changed any language in the proof." I count three separate grammatical errors. Unfortunately, the presumption that copyeditors are good writers doesn't seem to always be true.

I've had the same experience when publishing a book: copy-editors who not only didn't add value, they actually made the text a lot worse.
This was a technical book, and it's understandable that they didn't realise that an XSLT stylesheet is one word, while a CSS style sheet is two. But before doing a global edit to use the same term throughout - a global edit that can't be easily reversed - they should have checked.
They also tried to apply an editorial policy about the use of pronouns (I, you, we). But I had been very careful in my choice of pronouns, using "I", for example, only where I was expressing a personal opinion or describing my personal experiences, and they destroyed all the nuances.
I managed to get all the harmful changes reversed but it was an enormous waste of everyone's time.

Unless the editor made a provably incorrect statement with their changes I do not do anything.  Do not like it but the editor gets the last say.  Push too hard and they may decide not to print what you submitted at all.

I once had a conversation with a newspaper reporter, and we surprised each other with the difference in the meaning of "editor" in our fields. Apparently, newspaper editors can alter a reporter's story pretty much at will; academic editors cannot. My experience is that, in academia, "the editor gets the last say" about things like the format, but the author gets the last say about the content.

@AndreasBlass Indeed. A newspaper editor's job is to actually edit. Academic job titles often have little connection to the everyday meaning of the words they use: our editors don't edit, our doctors don't heal people, our lecturers spend a small fraction of their time lecturing, our assistant professors don't assist anyone, ...

Have you genuinely ever had an editor change their mind and not publish your paper which they had previously accepted, because they disagreed with you on the editing?

The OP said they would be "mortified" to publish in the current state. Never put your name to anything you don't want to back up. If given a choice between publishing something you don't agree with signed with your name, and not publishing, one should not publish what they don't agree with under their own name.


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What does "examples of achievements in non-research related activities" mean?
I am applying for for a PhD psychology program. Does it mean my clinical work, or other awards and leadership recognition's during my education?

Olympic medals come into mind (although participation can also be mentioned)

From my perspective, the committee wants to know your overall personality besides all the grades and coursework you send them.
Imagine getting a new family member: you do not just want to know just their grades; you also want to know how they are "non-academically" because they will have to spend the next 3-5 years with you. Such achievements do not have to be awards of honour. Any certificate of participation in non-academic activities can show your overall engagement and give a glimpse of your personality.
Perhaps they want to see if you went the extra mile to do something for society using what you learnt in college? Maybe you ran a marathon? The question is open ended!

This is the opportunity to showcase interesting things about yourself that would otherwise not fit into any box. I use this for two main purposes:
Context: If you were a collegiate athlete throughout undergrad, it puts your other academic achievements into context. Similar things can be said about volunteering work, such as organizing conferences, talks and activities.
Personal traits: It can also reveal desirable qualities by showing that you excel at something objectively hard, but unrelated to academia. People who excel at one thing usually have the qualities to be good at other things, given time and work. For instance, I always mention that I am an international level strategy games competitor. It had always been discussed in a positive way in every interview I've had.


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Optimal project stage (ripeness) for conference presentation
I need to choose one of two recent experiments to submit to a psychology conference taking place 10 months from now. Both studies are equally relevant to the conference topic, but they differ in terms of their maturity stage:

I have only recently started to analyse the data of. In the Abstract I would submit I would just mention my hypotheses and methods, and speculate about results. Thus, this study feels a bit 'unripe' to base a conference submission on, and indeed might rightfully get rejected as being too high-risk (unclear if a "null result" would still make for an interesting research report).
I've been working on its manuscript for a while, which has very recently been accepted as a peer-reviewed journal article. This study, on the contrary, feels to me a bit too 'ripe' to present at a conference since, as a soon-public article, it's no longer newsworthy on any extra 'channels'.

The two choices I am faced with lead me to a question that I've long been pondering: what is the optimal stage at which an (empirical) study is best presented at a (scientific) conference, i.e. how early or late into its lifetime? Else put: should one err on the side of too ripe, or too unripe
My guess is, somewhere in between having (almost) final results for analyses (but no write-up yet) at one end, and having the manuscript under-review but not yet accepted, at the other end. My current choices are just a bit outside of this ideal interval, on either side!
We've all seen people at conferences pushing both ends, i.e. either putting themselves out on a limb and winging work that is obviously still in progress; vs taking "on an academic tour" work that isn't by any means recent anymore and in some cases even recognisable from previous conferences/papers. But my question has to do with the optimal stage at which to present stuff, from the point of view of both the presenter and the audience.
I see this as a trade-off between how well the presentation would come across  ((1) risky: conference public being the first to see a "first draft", vs (2) safe: presenting already-reviewed data that's likely to be well received) and how useful said presentation actually is in terms of getting feedback ((1) very much so, since there will still be time to implement feedback; vs (2) not at all since the work is done and published, if even just very recently so).

If you have an advisor, ask for their opinion. Sometimes the best approach is to write a vague abstract and adapt the focus of the talk closer to the conference.

Are you interested in psychology in particular, or all fields?

I would say all fields where typical presentations consist of empirical work. As project life-cycles are different across the various experimental sciences, the ideal answer would be particular to experimental psychology; but certainly more general perspectives would also be helpful.

For me, the best stage of presenting work at a conference is when you feel submission is imminent, and then you stop presenting it once it's been published. The rationale here is that you are using conferences to basically sell your work, and that timeframe is when you have the most to sell and when you actually also need to sell it, either to get it published or to start new collaborations.

Thanks! When you say "submission is immiment" I assume you refer to journal submission, right? Also, the paradox I was describing still applies, as between the conference submission and the conference presentation typically 6-12 months will have lapsed, thus you are efectively presenting published work, which goes against your principles as stated :)

Yes, that would be journal submission. And I'd try to aim it such that at the moment of the conference, you are close to journal submission. It makes conference applications a lot more difficult, of course, since you effectively have to predict when your projects will be ready.


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Citation for quoting a current accepted value in an abstract?
In the abstract of a scientific report, when comparing an experimentally measured value to a current accepted value, should you provide a citation for it?

Similar to http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/4971/are-citations-in-abstracts-considered-bad-style however I am considering the specific case of writing a current accepted value

Check the journal's style guide to see whether they want you to include citations in your abstract at all.  My general impression is that most journals don't.

It is typically not necessary to report the currently accepted value of a quantity in the abstract, but, indeed, you should report it in the scientific report (with citation). In the report you should also discuss the compatibility between your result and the currently accepted value.
However, if there is a significant discrepancy between the accepted value and your result, and the main aim of your report is to discuss the cause of this discrepancy, then it can be useful to report the accepted value also in the abstract. In this case, the citation is needed, but take into account that, frequently, citations in abstracts follow different style conventions from those of the main text.
Pay particular attention to the source of the accepted value. For example, for fundamental physical constants, the Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA) publishes around every 4 years a new "adjustment" of the recommended values (here you can find the values of the latest adjustment with references). These recommended values are calculated on the basis of the best available measurements. The CODATA adjustment should be considered the only reliable source for the accepted values of fundamental physical constants (values reported in books are typically outdated). Other official sources exist for values of quantities related to other fields.

As Nate says, check the guidelines for this.
From, some experience i had in a paper that got published a few months back, I was told to leave the cite to the intro and not the abstract.