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The Ethnography Of Obscure References
I want to understand how absurdly obscure references are discovered by authors when preparing papers for publication.
Although the availability of large online searchable databases obviously makes things easier today, I still occasionally come across a paper or a book, sometimes from decades ago, which somehow discovered a paper or letter to the journal editor, written 50 years ago, in another country, in a foreign
language, in an obscure long gone journal, from an unrelated field, which deals with a highly specialized problem, that has a shockingly generic title, and presents not the same idea, but one which can be shown to be equivalent to it, in a brief parenthetical comment, using defunct jargon, dead
nomenclature and outdated notation.
Although you don't often find strictly all of the above to be true at the same time, some generous subset of it does occur more often than one would expect.
How are these references discovered? Is there an army of science historians scouring agricultural journal from 19th century Prussia for proto-theories of quantum entanglement? Does every academic department dedicate a portion of its budget for the care and feeding of some tiny Hungarian septuagenarian savant with eclectic tastes and photographic memory? Or is the reference librarian a vastly unappreciated form of superhero?

Please consult the help before posting; on this site, at least according to the rules, entertaining anecdotes are discouraged.

(1) Some folks, particularly in the humanities, are shockingly well-read in their field.  (2) In some fields, a paper or some ideas behind it could have been presented to 50-100 people from all over the world before being published, and one of them might have suggested the reference.  (3) Undoubtedly many such references are indeed missed, and you're only noticing the few cases where they are found.

I find the aspect of references in languages other than English already significant.  I am not sure we always take the time, or have the ability, to dig through old journals in other languages, even if some of them were prominent less than a century ago.

Have you tried searching some of these obscure references on Google?  Might give an idea where they were found.

And, yes, reference librarians are vastly unappreciated superheroes. You would be amazed at how a good one can separate the wheat from the chaff to find that one paper.

Seeing that you updated this interesting question, you might consider adding a separate answer instead.

@henning--reinstateMonica, I'm not sure what do. I had hoped to hear some stories from researchers about how it works in their part of the world, but It's not clear (I admit) what an "answer" would look like. On the other hand, I'm not sure what other venue would be more appropriate/successful.

Update #0: Case Study: Logistic Regression
As an example, consider the origins of the logistic equation as a model for population growth. I came across "The origins of logistic regression" , Cramer 2002 on wikipedia in the context of machine learning. Cramer traces history back to the independent rediscovery of the equation by Pearl (Bio statistician at Johns Hopkins) and Reed in the 1920s which appeared in the "Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences", in "The Quarterly Review of Biology" and others. Cramer notes that the name Velhurst is first mentioned in a footnote in one of their papers which he cites by year but does not appear in the bibiliography (Pearl and Reed 1923), and on page 560 of pearl's 1924 book  Studies In Human Biology we get the following:

(This criticism distorts the facts, according to Cramer).
Pearl and reed cite Verhulst which published, in french, in the 1844 proceedings of the Bruxelles Royal Academy, but actually earlier in 183/8
in a journal published by his teacher Quetelet (Who Developed the Body Mass Index], in the Netherlands.
Du Pasquier cited this work in a paper published in 1918, 74 years later after Verhulst, in The " Vierteljahrschr der Naturforsch" ("Nature Studies Quarterly"?) which was apperently a german general published in Zurich, though Du Pasquier's paper on population models, "Esquisse d’une nouvelle theorie de la population" was in French. How did Du Pasquier learn of this 75 year old paper? According to WP he studies in both France and Switzerland, and was not only a mathematician but also "a historian of mathematics and mathematical sciences" (!). It seems plausible that Reed and Pearl could have been aware of a paper published 2 years prior,even in foreign language and journal. And if not directly, their wider circle could have turned their attention to it. Though, reading the quote, they seem to  possibly be saying that they reached the Verhulst paper by a different and unspecified route.
So, in this case, a polyglot European mathematician with a passion for math history, discovered (again, in 1918, from a foreign journal) an obscure 80-year old work, cited it in his own paper, which was enough to get it over the ocean to america two years later, where the same ideas had been redisovered, but much more effectively publicized. With that, the citation link was forged, and now we have the Pearl-Verhulst logistic process.
One conclusion is that you don't necessarily need someone who knows the obscure paper, you just need to transitively traverse the citation graph and hope that someone cited it at some point, and that you hit the natural limits of exponential growth before you stop looking.
Update #1: Before Information Overload
a suggestion received from an unexpected source. In reading the 1988 article "What's Wrong With This Lagrangean?" by David Mermin, he suggests a fact which explains how knowledge of sources used to be work:

We've known for some time that, roughly speaking, nobody any longer
reads anything but preprints, the archival journal of choice, which
for many years now has been Physical Review Letters, and secondary
references cited in these two primary sources. But the preprints have
been coming thicker and faster. And Physical Review Letters now
publishes almost as many pages each month as all of Physical Review
did back in 1956, when I was starting graduate school.

[...]

the disaster looming over science libraries, and therefore over
science itself, as a result of the irresponsible way we have allowed
scientific journals to proliferate; and, not unrelatedly, the
lamentable decline in the quality of scientific writing.

In other words, a hundred years ago, before volume became unmanageable, people actually used to read what was published.
Update #2: Memory In Judaism
Regrading the role of persons possessing exceptional memory abilities, specifically in the scholarly context of judaism, here is an extract from "The Esential Talmud", Ch.6, by Adin Steinsaltz:

The work of preserving and codifying the vast body of oral law went on
for several generations, but its importance waned as the main focus of
Torah scholarship shifted elsewhere. Those scholars who engaged in
memorization of the vast number of baraitot were still known as
tannaim, but the term took on new significance. Tannaim were no
longer creators of the oral law but individuals gifted with
phenomenal memories who did not always comprehend the full
significance of what they were memorizing. They were to be found for
many generations in the larger academies, serving as living archives
utilized by the sages in order to clarify and elucidate various
problems that cropped up in the course of the study of the Mishnah.

See also the related, tragic, short story "Mendel the Bibliophile" (1929) by Stephen Zweig. These persons are rare, but have played an important role in preserving knowledge throughout history. I've ran into more than one, behind the counter at this or that second-hand bookshop.

I don't know about this specific reference and your findings/speculations, but there are plenty of ways mathematicians would learn about obscure papers. The four main reviewing journals I know of are Jahrbuch über die Fortschritte der Mathematik (1868−1942), Revue Semestrielle Des Publications Mathématiques (1892−1947), Zentralblatt für Mathematik (1931−present), and Mathematical Reviews (1940−present). I made extensive use of all 4 of these for my 1993 Ph.D. dissertation, which was before their digitization, so this done by flipping through actual library volumes. (continued)

Also, several math/science journals, especially in the mid to late 1800s and tapering off mostly by the 1960s or 1970s, tended to include tables of contents from other journals as a service to readers, and sometimes short summaries of papers were published (this mostly in the 1800s). A fairly well known example is Bulletin Des Sciences Mathématiques et Astronomiques, which published summaries of math papers from 1870 to maybe the early 1920s or so. Also Science Progress had a very useful column "Recent Advances in Science" in which the Mathematics section (continued)

was originally written by Philip E. B. Jourdain (1917 or perhaps earlier until around 1920; Jourdain died in late 1919) then by Dorothy Wrinch for two or three years then by F. Puryer White . . . I think the last mathematics column was by J. H. C. Whitehead in Volume 34 (1939−1946). Many of the general science journals in the 1800s (e.g. Philosophical Magazine) had book review and "news and information" columns that often had useful information and references. Then there are books like this, (continued)

and Thomas Muir's multi-volume encyclopedic history of determinants (basically gives a very informed and detailed summary of every publication relating to determinants up until the 1920s), and Dickson's multi-volume treatise History of the Theory of Numbers that are treasure-troves for obscure and little known publications on their topic. Finally (for me in these comments, at least), there's the extensive Royal Society of London's Catalogue of Scientific Papers 1800−1900 (continued)

(e.g. Pure Mathematics and the many lengthy volumes of Encyclopédie des Sciences Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées (e.g. Volume 1) (several editions over many years, both German and French).


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Is offering jobs to students I'm teaching as a "representative of industry" OK?
I have a simple question to which I was unable to find a simple answer. I was hired by a university as a "representative of industry" to deliver some courses. In my groups I have several promising students to whom I would like to offer a job after the course ends.
I think this would be OK from students' point of view (the job comes to them, instead of requiring them to spend time in job fairs etc). I think this would also be great from a company's point of view (they can get a student whose abilities and skills they can be reasonably confident in). However, this looks almost too good to be true and I have a feeling that there's some conflict of interest here.
Is such an arrangement common (i.e., hiring your students) or is it inappropriate and I should avoid it?
Edit to provide more details: the students are about half-way through their degree and the summer break is slowly appearing on the horizon, so the job would be a limited-term apprenticeship while they do not have any university obligations. The country in question is Poland.

Are the studemts about to graduate? Or is it a part-time job similar to what many students would have during school anyway?

You didn't indicate the country, but in the US you should be aware of the rules pertaining to "government owned entities", where offering a job to a relative of someone your company has [an unrelated] business with could land the company, and you, in hot water.

If this happened in the US when I was a student, I would be all over it. Got a summer internship that turned into 7 years of full time employment in a similar, though not quite as direct a manner.

I agree completely with the others that you should check with your university and your company. Their opinions are the ones that matter. Still, it is quite possible that your institutions will not provide guidance in either direction, so I will not end the answer there.
The only conflict of interest I can see is if you are grading (or otherwise holding authority over) students while simultaneously encouraging them to apply for a job. In this case, students could feel coerced into applying for or accepting a job (or could construe this as a reason if they don't like their grade, etc.). The simplest solution would be to wait until the course ends (and some would say this is your only ethical option). But given that a successful hire is a huge win for all involved, and that hiring is often time-sensitive, you could consider other mitigations, such as having someone else from your company handle the recruitment process, and making it clear to the student that you will intentionally be kept "out of the loop" until the course ends. And of course, be transparent about what you are doing by proactively informing your department chair of your plans (preferably in writing).

"wait until the course ends"  More precisely, wait until grades are submitted.

Or maybe you should wait until their graduation. You (or the university) may not want students to drop before completing their full education programme for a tempting job offer that appears to be "supported" by the university because a "teacher" made the offer.

@Louic at that point, a promising student is liable to already have a job.

@Tim That strongly depends on the field and the country. But it mostly depends on what the university OP works for wants, as my own answer states.

@Tim You can extend job offers -- even binding and in writing -- that are dependent on them getting their degree. So if they are promising and you don't want them to get poached, give them an offer that is only valid once they get their degree. And maybe put a time limit on it. Its the best of both worlds, you get a promising employee, encourage them to graduate quickly and they don't get poached. You could even employ them part-time during their studies and offer a full-time position upon graduation, and make that offer in writing long beforehand. its actually quite common where I come from.

You should talk to the university. What they think about it is more important than what "random" people on the internet think.

+1 . Also, some countries and companies have hiring requirements where jobs need to be posted to the public.

Yes, working through the university is a must.

I really dislike these kind of answers. Yes, it's technically correct, but offers absolutely zero insight into the question. The answer from cag51 is far more informative

OP was literally looking for a "simple answer", I gave him one. There are many factors to consider (some, but not all are outlined in answers below), but in the end the only factors that matter are the ones that said university considerers important.

To break down the abstract concept of the "university" to talk to: a) your department chair and/or who formally invited you b) your departments or universities ethics commission. At least for the latter, it is exactly their job to answer these questions, and they will be glad to help since you asked before you did anything :)

@Louic I totally agree with you on that point, but you could choose any random question on this site and chances are good that "talk to the university" would answer it. That would make for a pretty boring website, not to mention that its brevity is edging into sounding dismissive - two things that work against building a strong community. A discussion about the kind of thought processes the university would have can much better prepare someone when they do go to talk to them.

@Phill In all my other answers I give this level of detail. In this question however, I have not done so deliberately: my interpretation of the statement "unable to find simple answer to simple question" is that OP already searched on the internet, but got confused by the (sometimes contradictory or opinion based) discussions about what a university may or may not like. I therefore avoided these and kept it simple and to the point.

This answer is not even a good self-fulfilling prophesy. By telling OP to go through the University, you're actually putting them on track to the correct solution. Internet opinions are a good resource, especially if you choose your forum correctly.

@MadPhysicist You are missing two important points here: (1) OP asked for a simple answer, (2) This is the only correct simple answer, because any other answer depends on the university or country. Bottom line: some universities may welcome the job offers, others will oppose them, therefore: do not listen to random people on the internet, but ask your university. In my reading of the question, the long discussions about  why a university may or may not like lecturers offering jobs is exactly what led OP to ask a question here.

We're in violent agreement. My point was that you say not to listen to strangers on the internet, but then you, a stranger on the internet, proceed to give what is essentially the only rational answer in any situation like this: talk to the stakeholders. I was giving you a half-joking backhanded compliment.

@MadPhysicist Ok, thanks :). I did not get that.

A point missed by the other answers:
The university will be very upset if you hire students into permanent, full time jobs before they graduate.  Inducing students to leave the university without a degree is irresponsible.  It is bad for the finances of both the student and the university.  Students with incomplete degrees are usually paid less (correlation, probable causation).
You will probably find that hiring graduates, nondegree students, summer interns, and part-time employees is encouraged.

@Trunk "After the course ends" presumably means the specific course term in which OP is teaching them, not their entire "course of study"/degree program. So if they took a job it could be after this course but well before graduation, if this is not their final term.

Yes, "course" means different things in different places.

@Trunk Yeah, +nanoman is right. I was thinking of offering them a job after my course. But I see your point, and I have to conclude it's a valid one. Thank you.

OP did mention afterwards that this would be a summer job, which I would assume would be highly encouraged by all parties involved.

@MadPhysicist Yes, the question has changed.

The University likes it when their students get jobs, and invites industry representatives precisely for that purpose (but usually less directly -- "we'd like your grads to know more X" or "we definitely want to send people to their job faire"). They won't get mad you hired their grads too quickly.
But you want to avoid the appearance of impropriety. You don't want other students saying some people only got A's because they were working for you, or that you spent too much class time looking for hires. You don't want your University contact person to get a bad impression. So simply encourage those students to apply at your company, listing you as a reference. Keeps it at arms length. And sure, sure, ask your contact person at the U, or maybe an advisor.

I'm a (former) student who was hired by the company of my adjunct professor. I was taking a PHP web design course at a community college in the US. He informed the entire class that his company was hiring and encouraged us to apply. He didn't single me out specifically, and he also didn't have any outward say in the recruitment, like telling people they'd be great for the job or that they'd get hired for sure.
I interviewed with people completely unrelated to him and was offered the job independent of any grading, etc that would have happened for the course. It was the semester that I was supposed to graduate from the college, so I was allowed to finish all my courses and work full time around that.
Once I was hired, my professor stayed slightly distant at the job until I had finished his course, at which point we became good friends and he's now my personnel manager. As long as there's a clear distinction between the company and the professor and they aren't involved in the hiring process, I think it's a great opportunity for students.

Sounds like a professional guy. You can be very sure that his word was responsible for 90% of the final hiring decision.

I've done this in New Zealand. I was a guest lecturer at a university and a representative of industry (government actually.)
What happened was that I had a good student who was looking for a job, and I encouraged him to apply for a job in my company (government department) after the course ended.
Perhaps I should note that he was actually a postdoc who was taking courses because he was finding it hard to get a job and considering a transition to industry, so he was a bit more mature than the average student.
(The New Zealand situation is maybe a bit different though, since we have an extreme nepotism problem, so everyone is happy that we hired someone good rather than the boss's nephew!)

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How to write well-balanced conclusions? To re-describe findings, make statement, make implication?
Conclusions are so important. However, there seem to be many ways of writing them. How to write well-balanced conclusions? I give a simple made-up example. The example simply says that care was inaccessible for patients and 20-year temporal trends showed marginal improvement.
AIM
Describe/assess patients care during 2000-2020 in a country.
RESULTS

70% of patients received no treatment despite needing it.

During the 20-year period, the probability of receiving treatment increased only by 5 percentage points [95 CI: 2.4; 8.1]; however, only 33% of patients received treatment at the end of the observed period.

CONCLUSION OPTIONS
A) I can re-describe the findings but this does not seem like a statement. However, it seems a really safe (hard to argue) option.
Most of the patients received no care during 2000-2020. Despite the probability of receiving treatment increased during the observed period, two-thirds of the patients still received no treatment in 2020.
B) I can state something to say was these patients' management good or bad but this says less about the situation.
These patients care conflicted with multiple international guidelines as patients often received no treatment during the 20-year period.
C) I can say what needs to be done but this is more like an implication.
There is a need to review particular healthcare resources to ensure care for this patient population, as they were mostly excluded from recommended care.
D) Your option?

I think this is too based on opinion and specific circumstances to be answered generally.

What do other articles in the journals you submit to do? They will provide models for you to modify.

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When siblings contribute to a research paper, do they need to declare their relationship in the competing interest form?
Siblings contributed to a research paper. The publisher asks to fill no competing interest form. Citing the journal in question, it contains the following check box:

☐ The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to
influence the work reported in this paper.
☐ The authors declare the following financial interests/personal
relationships which may be considered as potential competing
interests:

What the siblings are obliged to declare? Does "personal relationships" requires them to declare their personal relationship? But what if their relationship certainly does not influence the work? Any suggestions on whether to declare their relationship or not?

Did you want to say "to fill a/the No competing interest form"? Or the publisher actually didn't ask to fill anything?

The publisher asked for it.

There is already an assumption that authors working together have some level of positive relationship - whether colleagues, advisor/advisee, or relatives. These things need not be declared, because they don't influence the content of the work besides all the authors standing by it (which is a minimum requirement for even submitting the paper).
If a sibling has a stake in a company selling widgets and the paper is about how widgets are superior to doodads, then this likely should be reported because the paper could be influenced by a sibling's desire to help their relative's business.

Or perhaps if the author is related to one of the editors

@AzorAhai-him- I think that would be more on the editor to handle but yes, the authors could report that as well.

I suppose I meant one of the "editors," not an action editor, how would one AE know if an author and the editor of the journal were related if they didn't share a name?

@AzorAhai-him- Not sure I follow.

@ BryanKrause: I guess @AzorAhai is thinking of a situation like: Journal has a board of editors including Alice Atkins and Bob Brown.  Bob’s brother-in-law Chris Chang submits a paper, with Alice as its handling/corresponding editor.  Alice can’t reasonably be expected to know or guess that Bob and Chris are related; so Chris should declare the relationship.

Yes, PLL has the right idea

@AzorAhai-him- In that case I would suggest that Alice doesn't actually need to know, because Bob should recuse himself if he is asked to handle the paper (rather than the authors worrying about it). Seems like mentioning editors who have a conflict could be included in a cover letter, but I wouldn't think of it the same way as a conflict of interest regarding the paper content.

A conflict of interest is when you (the person with the conflict) has an interest in the results that counters or competes, or appears to counter/compete, with the desire to discover the truth.
The fact that the co-authors are siblings, doesn’t in itself, cause a conflict of interest.  In fact, I find it rather difficult to come up with a hypothetical scenario where it would lead to a such a conflict. At the most, I suppose that one of them might be participating in order to bolster the other for some reason, but in that case, I would assume that the sibling has an even stronger motive, which should be disclosed or obvious (confirming their own previous research).
A conflict of interest should be understood as a motive sufficient to cause you to endanger your career and reputation by falsifying data. This is frequently monetary, but it doesn’t have to be.  But it has to be comprehensibly compelling.  This is why companies frequently have a limit on the value of gifts to employees, because it’s not expected that someone would jeopardize a job for a single gift that was of no real value. If you are investigating the effectiveness of a drug, and the CEO of that company once gave you a pack of gum at a trade show, that’s not going to cause you to knowingly make up your results as a way to say thanks.  If on the other hand, the same CEO had gotten your child into an experimental trial for the drug, and saved your child’s life, you might, out of gratitude, be willing to exaggerate the effectiveness.
The reason for the rules on disclosing conflicts of interest, are two. One, it gives the opportunity for heightened scrutiny, to find those that have let the conflict override truth.  Two, disclosure increases trust, and conversely non-disclosure is superficial evidence of fraud.
If you owe a life-debt to someone or they are your primary source of income and fail to disclose that, upon discovery everyone will assume your results are both fraudulent and useless.


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Is co-authoring with friends a good idea?
Not sure if this question is a bit weird... I'm still a young researcher. I was wondering if it is okay to co-author papers with one's friends who are also doing research in a close field to one's research.
Having friends who conduct research (even if it is at another institution) that is close to one's research is a really motivating factor, and being on close terms with someone, in my opinion, may really improve the workflow and the harmony in the work. In your opinion and from your experience, what do you think about this?

There are two possible outcomes: either this will end your friendship or make it stronger. Well, not that extreme, but just make sure it's clear it will not affect your friendship if there is no result, or one side does not pull as hard as the other or someone drops out, etc.

There is this joke I got told in my first semester, that in mathematics you have no friends, only people to study and do your homework with, because these are the people you spend all your available time with. I have always interpreted this as aimed at the student life, but while reading the question, I may or may not have noticed some uncomfortable relevance to my research activities...

I would liken it to living with somebody. It's way better to live with somebody you already like! But it's really important to pledge to open communication and respect for the challenges that will arise.

Conversely, you might well become friends with your coauthors!

I disagree pretty strongly with @CaptainEmacs, I’ve had friends who I didn’t work great with as collaborators and we just stopped collaborating and stayed friends.  Also once you all move away your collaborators are the only friends you’ll regularly visit and stay in touch with.

@NoahSnyder As for disagreeing: You will notice that I followed my black-and-white sketch by "not that extreme". Keeping the friendship intact after an unsuccessful project is possible but needs work; or are you saying "no worries, it'll be fine"? If so, then you are lucky, and do not make assumptions about others. Clearly OP needs to be alerted to the possible outcomes.

By all means, go for it. As always when co-authoring: agree on the order the names on the paper beforehand and explicitly. This prevents conflicts.

It reminds me of Adam Optimizer's paper, where the naming order was decided on the coin toss.

Working with friends can be a lot of fun. It can also be an unpleasant experience, and everything in between. Your experience will depend on your personality, your friend's personality, and luck.

You may feel more relaxed about sharing ideas because you are talking to a friend. Alternatively, you might find you feel more self-conscious, because it's not solely a professional relationship.
Your friend may feel more inclined to put time and effort into the project, because they enjoy working with you and value your friendship. Alternatively, they may feel more able to miss deadlines and drop balls, because 'you will understand'.
You may feel less pressure, because your friend 'will understand' if you miss deadlines or drop a few balls. Alternatively, you may feel more pressure because you don't want to let your friend down, or because you feel obliged to pick up their slack.
You may find it easier to assert yourself when dealing with someone you know well. Alternatively, you may feel you have to accept your friend's way of doing things, because you don't want to create trouble.
You may be able to disagree vehemently on some aspect of research, yet still spend a convivial evening together in a bar. Alternatively, you may find that professional disagreements spill over into the personal sphere.
You may be able to have a blazing row with your friend about their political views, yet still work respectfully together. Alternatively you may find that personal disagreements spill over into the professional sphere.
You may feel more able to walk away from a project that's not working for you, because the relationship is bigger than the project. Alternatively, you may feel compelled to flog a dead horse because you don't want to disappoint your friend.

TL;DR: Having a clear differentiation between first and second author helped us a lot
After authoring a paper with a researcher from a pretty different field I became friends with the first author (I was a co-author). What we actually did was to write two papers: One for the other researcher's field (biology) and one for my field (statistics). Then both got a first-author paper out of it.
In my experience it helped a lot that it was clear who was the one responsible for the respective research paper and who was the sidekick. The first author did most of the writing and setting up the experiment structure and so on - setting the plan if you will and being responsible for the respective paper/project. The sidekick focused on their part. For me it helped to not argue about things and to have clear responsibilities. The last thing I want is to get into a inter-personal conflicts. Research is hard enough.
So, it turned out to be actually good that one of us clearly put in more work and that this was the first author and that this was fixed before starting to work on the project.


text:
PhD Math/Applied Math for Fall 22 - asking for suggestions and advice
My background:
Applying for Ph.D. Math or Applied Math
International student, Ukraine, female.
Undergrad Institution: junior year - 20ish in Math globally (US institution), first two years - community college(US)
Double majoring in Math/CompSci
GPA 4.0/4.0, same for college
Some honors classes (hopefully will graduate with honors in math), but none graduate level.
Research experience - currently doing a summer research program, should result in a paper with 3 co-authors (all undergrads too)
Done a literature review in statistics with a pretty general topic.
I am a rising senior, planning to apply this Fall for Ph.D.
I am interested in graph theory, but I haven't done much outside of it, so I might as well become interested in something else.
My questions is:
What can I do to increase my chances of acceptance as of now if:
i. my schedule for the senior year is fixed, there is no way to change or add anything
ii. I'm an international student, so any paid/compensated job outside of my uni requires a working permit, which is unnecessarily hard to get?

I honestly don't think you are going to have much trouble finding a good doctoral program. But, I have two suggestions to help maximize success, other than continuing to do well in your studies.
First, make sure that you, and your skills, are known to at least a few faculty members. If you haven't yet cultivated relationships with potential letter writers, do so. One way is just to ask questions in class. Another is to bring questions to office hours. But you want people to be able to honestly and sincerely predict your future success. A letter needs to say more than just "She got good grades in my courses."
The second is that when you apply, cast a wide net. Focusing on too narrow a range of universities could leave you without a bid if they all have very similar criteria.
You will have plenty of time in grad school to choose a research focus. Some might come from the advanced courses required to set you up to pass comprehensive exams.
Also be aware, as you go on, since you have a near perfect record up to now, that it might get much harder when (not if) you hit your natural boundaries and learning beyond that becomes extremely hard work. Some students don't make it over that hump and get burned out before they finish. I was "lucky" to learn my limits early and was able to push past the burnout.
Financing your doctorate will also probably be easily done through a (most likely) TA position. It takes some time and effort from your studies but provides good experience about academia in general and can even lead to some insight - especially in to learning. It provides a tuition waiver as well as sufficient funds to maintain a modest life style. There is high demand for TAs in fields that have a lot of undergraduate majors, so it should be a natural. They are also open to international students and don't raise additional visa issues.

"If you haven't yet cultivated relationships with potential letter writers, do so" - I think it's good to communicate with professors about grad school goals early, especially those leading smaller upper-level classes for specialists. I think professors are naturally biased towards students interested in further academic work (it's a shared interest!) and are often eager to help out, whether that means suggesting or offering research opportunities or student jobs, or just paying more attention that can help in writing a letter.


text:
Why doesn't my PhD&Postdoc supervisor want me to be successful?
I'm currently a postdoc working with the professor with whom I did my PhD work, and it counts up to 7 years for the time working with this professor.
Basically, the situation is that I'm the only one who can generate new ideas and publish on 1st-tier journals each year in the group, while the rest peers (postdoc&PhD students) can only publish on 2nd,3rd-tier journals. My supervisor himself has no capability to supervise me or generate new ideas.
With my efforts over the past few years, my publication record is very solid. The problem here is that every time I talk to other professors in other universities during conferences or visiting, my supervisor seems very unhappy and wants to know what I have discussed with other professors in our field. My feeling is that my supervisor does not want other people to see how successful I am.
This bothers me a lot because normally supervisors all want their PhD/postdocs to be successful. I don't really understand why this happens. My guess is my supervisor does not want me to leave his group.

I'm not sure if this question is a good fit for this site because we cannot read your supervisor's mind. But then, you potentially already answered your own question. There is a certain percentage of actors in academia who have a rather ego-driven and exploitative mindset.

Well, if you are the workhorse of his group, of course he is not happy that you plan to leave. However, the question is whether he sabotages you or is just unhappy.

Surely it is time to move on. Why it happens is too hard to say. Perhaps he depends on you too much. Perhaps it is jealousy.
If he could arrange a permanent position for you and give you a path to take over more explicit authority in the group you could stay, but, otherwise, your prospects are better elsewhere.
You should be applying to some permanent positions, I think. Or at least working actively toward the next phase of your career. I hope he will help you with good letters and it might be difficult for him to explain any other behavior.
But, at least, keep talking to those others and exploring options with them.

If the work you are doing is "sensitive" in any way then he might have a reason to know what information is getting out that isn't being published soon. That isn't quite as bad as the other options.


text:
I collected interviews/questionnaires but didn't know I had to do an ethics review. What do I do now?
For my master's thesis, I completed a systematic literature review and supplemented it with surveys and patient interviews. The topics required no medical information of patients.
My supervisor was aware of both the surveys and interviews and ethics board was never brought up.
All participants completed a consent form, but I understand now an ethics review may be needed. My submission is soon ... is this an auto fail?

Please don’t write answers in comments. It bypasses our quality measures by not having voting (both up and down) available on comments, as well as having other problems detailed on meta. Comments are for clarifying and improving the question; please don’t use them for other purposes. Existing answers in comments and other discussion has been moved to chat.

Two important clarifying questions for @AlexT: (1) How did you come to understand a review may be needed? Did your supervisor tell you or somebody else? (2) If you are comfortable sharing, what country are you in?

I need to disagree with the hard-line answers saying that you are just plain out of luck. An ethics approval is not always required with human subjects research.
In the United States, DHHS maintains a set of flow charts for decision-making about human subjects research.  Most relevant to this question, there is an exemption that specifically addresses "survey procedures, interview procedures", as long as the subjects are not identifiable or there is no reasonable risk associated with disclosure of identity. Similar exemptions may apply in other countries as well.
From what you have written, it sounds like your supervisor believed that such an exemption applied to the work that you are doing. Otherwise, from sheer self-protective reflex they would almost certainly have brought up institutional review processes.
I would suggest that you bring this up with your supervisor from this perspective.

If you can document that your work is already covered under an appropriate exemption and complies with your institution's processes, then your worries may be over and you can simply go on using your nice, consented data set. From what you have written, this sounds possible, though it is impossible to know without knowing the full details of your circumstances and your institution's regulations. Your advisor might even have gone through an institutional process without telling you, if it was just a routine exemption.
If the exemption does not apply, but there was a reasonable case to believe that it did when you began, then it may still be possible to bring it to the institutional review board as an emergent situation, again depending on the particular circumstances.
If both of these fail, you may indeed need to discard your data and begin anew, but your advisor should work with you to see if the situation can be salvaged first.

for sure ----- we might note some universities and publishers do still want you to file with the review board and get their official determination of exemption

@MikeM Certainly: and we cannot know the details without knowing the institution.

+1 - it is important to properly implement ethical review, but this seems like a very good candidate for exemption. Collecting survey data that could have no foreseeable negative impact on the respondent even if linked back to their identity is often not a problem. It's easy (but incorrect) to skip the formal review when dealing with something that intuitively seems quite far from the realm of "unethical", but formally determining exemption in a retrospective manner can confirm the initial impressions on the ethics.

Research that is "exempt" from these rules still needs to be submitted to an institutions IRB. The IRB determines that something is "exempt", not the PI. Now, it is entirely possible that the IRB will determine retroactively that the research done here is exempt and provide retroactive approval, but this is not guaranteed and, most importantly, it is not up to the PI to determine that whatever was done is "exempt".

@WolfgangBangerth That depends on the regulations of the institution. I have had an experience, for example, with an institution that needed to use contract IRBs rather than hosting its own "free" IRB, in which the policy was to determine if the exemption was obvious before deciding whether it was necessary to pay a contract IRB for assessment. Some things might also be assessed at the project scale rather than at the scale of individual studies. All of this boils down to the same base: it depends on specific regulations, and the professor needs to navigate those regulations.

OP suggests that a review was needed in their case. I suppose it's possible they are mistaken, but it seems more likely to me that even if their research is "exempt" it does fall on some sort of review process to determine that, whether that's a full IRB process or something truncated. It sounds like they're dealing with patients as well as providers; the former is more likely to require scrutiny. OP says there's no medical information, but also suggested in a comment that their research is related to a "treatment intervention" which suggests the survey might have been targeted to people...

...based on medical information. I think "If you can document that your work is under an appropriate exemption, then your worries are over" is not necessarily true, because if the institution has a process for determining exemption that was not followed, then although it's not as bad as if it were not exempt, it's not simply "everything okay" either.

Not only is this wrong as @WolfgangBangerth has explained, we have a whole question about how it's wrong.  https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/143701/my-human-subjects-research-is-exempt-under-us-regulations-does-that-mean-i-ca

Also, I have never heard of an institution that had students which used outside IRB routinely.

I have added clarifications to the answer and made shifted the fail case from implicit to explicit.

We don't talk to patients unless we have privacy training.  In fact, whoever identified the patients as eligible may have violated privacy policy

The situation strikes me as that of a mentor not used to doing human subjects research who just didn't know policy, more than an investigator who thought the work was exempt.  It happens.

Jake, it seems like you're in engineering. Have you ever worked on humans subjects research? Or passed an IRB? I ask because your answer contradicts mine and Brian's, and I know we both do work in human subjects.

@AzorAhai-him- Yes, I have dealt with this before. I actually think that your answer and mine are compatible --- the main difference is that I spell out how to try to salvage things if they are salvageable.

I am very unhappy with the edited answer.  The question is clear that the asker should have applied for an exemption but did not.  The first paragraph is highly misleading.  This answer is much clearer: https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/170499/13240

It is impossible to say because we don't know the rules of your institution. But the answer is it probably should be. You need to immediately tell your advisor and be prepared for bad news. I'm sorry your program failed you on this.

I'm not inclined to agree with this. It's often possible to retrospectively get ethics board approval. Obviously, it's not ideal but as long as the end result is an approval, then no harm no foul.

@persistence I disagree that it is often possible

@persistence Can you link me to your institution's (or any's) process for retroactive approval?

I was told retrospective approval is forbidden in the USA.  I have never heard of a successful application for retrospective approval.

@AnonymousPhysicist I suppose it's not quite the same thing, but the in the hypocrite commits controversy,  the researches apparently obtained an exemption from their IRB after the research was conducted (and the paper submitted to IEEE).

@muru I do not find your source to be convincing support for Persistence's claim.  But it's an interesting case.

@AnonymousPhysicist indeed, this case is very much not a case of "no harm, no foul" - I think the exemption made things worse for the researchers and the university too.

If you were in a field that tends to do research with humans you probably would have taken some sort of course that explains to you research ethics procedures and such, and so you would have known this was a needed step. I had dozens of versions of this training as a student even though I was only doing animal research at that time. It seems like you have at least some familiarity with research ethics if you've gathered informed consent and such, but as you are now finding that is not enough.
Ethics reviews for research aren't an easy process, and you definitely need some mentorship your first time through, so it's a failure by your advisor to not shepherd you through things and at a minimum to let you know you need this training.
It's likely your work can't be published if it wasn't conducted under proper ethical procedures, but that doesn't necessarily impact your graduation. Whether you "pass" or "fail" is completely up to some academic unit - your advisor/committee/department. We won't be able to tell you what their decisions will be, you'll have to work with them. Start working with them as soon as possible to find out what your next steps are.
Good luck!

A lot of questions like this we get seem to often be people in non-(human|animal) departments who decided to collect a survey for their modeling or whatever. Perhaps that's what happened here.

@AzorAhai-him- Yeah, could be. Likely that will influence the committee in deciding what's next for OP and could help them. I am kind of perplexed that those departments don't also push this sort of training, though; I'll try to find what the norms are at my institution for, say, CS students.

Thanks for the input! My program is a bit complex (joint degree between 4 universities). Unfortunately, there was no formal class on research ethics. My project is on the economic modelling of a treatment intervention, completed a SLR but the committee said it wasn't sufficient so then the qualitative component was added.

@AlexT Not sure what SLR is, not an acronym I've heard before. Yes, that sounds like a circumstance (joint between 4 universities?!) where some things can be missed, but I'm very surprised you got anywhere near patients without a formal review. I think if they decide it wasn't your fault you're in better shape, but be upfront and don't try to hide anything. Talk to your advisor(s) sooner rather than later. Don't delay, and don't do anything to make results public.

downvoted for victim blaming in the first para. As OP has since said in the comments, your presumption of their getting teaching on this was incorrect, and even had they taken such courses these things end up being a question of culture and precedent in reality. Your second para is therefore the correct one, OP's supervisor failed to do their job. (If leaving ethics to guided precedent seems fraught I totally agree, but I guess it's not the supervisors' degrees on the line is it?)

I am from computer science, and I can confirm that ERB is not part of our usual training, since most computer science graduates never do experiments with human subjects. I myself only learned about ERB after I won a grant that required ERB approval. Faculty members who do not win such grants might be totally unaware of what ERB is.

@benxyzzy I softened it a bit. You're right, this training may simply not be standard for the OP, I just find it really hard to believe someone could be in a field where they'd possibly be interviewing patients and not have university-required human subjects training. But the fault is possibly more with the universities and advisor.

@BryanKrause Agreed something like what AzorAhai-him- said must have happened. falling between the gaps. They hammer it home in the human-focussed fields I've experienced. When I've seen a similar failure to gain approval occur, they were coming into the lab from Computer Science

At least for CS, one of the reasons departments don't push for this sort of training, is they really don't have room on the courses. There are already so many things in security, operations, networking, systems design, logic, set and group theory, hardware etc that departments struggle to teach in 4 years, that research ethics, something which is relevant to a tiny proportion of the students, really is down on the list of things that are missed.

@user1937198 I'm not necessarily thinking in terms of full-blown courses for credit, but rather training courses that take an hour or two at most that ensure people at least know the basics. They aren't nearly enough to get someone through the whole IRB process, but it's enough to get them to know that it exists and that they have to go there if they plan to do research with humans.

@BryanKrause Does your university have a system where students would take such courses if their advisors weren't aware of them and encourage them to take it outside the normal courses? Because at least under my experiance, they would just be ignored, unless the advisor was already aware, meaning no real improvement over the current situation. Unless its something required as part of a course, I doubt any students would take them. And then its competing with the hundreds of other things, like threat modelling, which would also like said hour.

@user1937198 It's required for everyone in certain departments/schools, and anyone receiving funds from NIH or NSF regardless of department. Required as in you get emails that start polite and then eventually get scary if you don't do it. As others have pointed out, students in areas that don't typically interact with people as research subjects might not get prompted to take them.

@ErelSegal-Halevi it probably varies a lot per institution, and countries.
I was in computer science and electrical engineering in Australia. I was given no training on Ethics Approvals, but all PhD students in the university were told about needing them in orientation, and require to submit write-ups on if they would need them (and details if so) as part of their PhD proposals.
(and even as an undergrad in those coursesI was made aware of them as one of our professors had to get them before the class could have option to interview people at companies during projects on real world practices)

Talk to your committee and your advisor.  Submit to IRB now.
It sounds like you were genuinely unaware that your University's IRB board had to sign off on the experiment.  Talk with your advisor and figure out the best way to submit to IRB after the fact.
You may be able to get after-the-fact approval.  This is a situation where your advisor shoulders a good portion of the blame.  It's their job to shepard you through the process, of which IRB is a part of.
The worst case is you'll have to leave the survey info out of any published work.  If your field doesn't regularly involve humans as subjects in tests, it's possible your advisor genuinely didn't know about IRB approval.  IRB boards are made up of individuals - they may be convinced this was an honest mistake.
Do not publish on this work without IRB approval

As stated, conducting research on humans without prior ethical approval is a grave transgression. The work becomes unpublishable because no journal would touch it (as a matter of universal policy) and you are open to formal censure.
However, this depends on nuances of your country, institute/department and possible categorisation of your work. Not all human research is ethically equal, and this is why a supervisor's guidance is crucial. Their academic well-being should be on the line over the activities of their mentees, and yours failed to do their job, but that's a rant for another time.
What follows does ultimately hinge on supportive engagement of your supervisor, so it is doubly dismaying to hear what sounds like distancing noises from them. If they are jettisoning this very professionally hazardous mess on to you then I am sorry, and I wish I could say it was rare.
In UK Psychology departments provision is often made for "generalised" ethical approval based off the Principal Investigator (your supervisor), or prior approved research from which the present does not materially deviate in ethical terms. There might well be rules which say no, or only cursory further approval is required for a study which essentially extends a previously approved study, i.e. by deploying the same methods to study the same topic/cohort such that no new ethical considerations are raised. If your supervisor is lucky (these days), they might have wangled blanket ethical approval for a whole class of prospective experiments on this rough basis: same kinds of methods on the same wholly mundane participants for roughly the same ends. Some kind of special remit is also typically extended to final year undergraduate project students, given there are so many and their projects are often trivial recapitulations of wholly harmless designs reused yearly by the supervisor in this way. (Note that those are usually very strongly stipulated conditions of being able to go this quicker route, which still entails prior ethical approval just through a faster cut-down process, and a signed statement of taking responsibility from said supervisor).
Ultimately then, the slow and onerous ethics committee approval process will probably include allowances to make specified cases of especially low-risk research more expedient, and although the bounds of these are very tightly specified because of the gravity of ethical risk, many PIs are wont to exploit the letter of the law (academics are professional arguers after all). As I've said they typically do so for two reasons: to circumvent the sheer onerousness and slowness of the full approval process, or to retrospectively render disorganised and messily planned research ethically approved. I have seen these rules creatively interpreted in the service of either goal far more often than those writing such rules would like.
Your case might fall into the second category, and it should be clear here why the benevolence and alliance of your supervisor is key. I have seen supervisors protect their juniors (and their findings) from the mess that you are in, following similar disorganisation and poor mentorship, by finding a way to frame the research conducted as coming under the remit of previously granted ethical approval. Perhaps this rogue study can in fact be argued as a mere extension of a previously approved study. Perhaps this study's ethical ramifications are sufficiently trivial that it could fall under some aforementioned triviality type allowance. Significantly, all of this is meant to be obviated by the iron imperative to resolve any such approval ambiguity before conducting the research - but perhaps there are only one or two, non- or back-dated bits of paperwork that need be collected to bring the study back into defensible territory.
None of this is at all on the table unless the supervisor wants it to be however, and if they don't, the mere suggestion of this to them will be responded to as a grave professional hazard. It sounds unfortunately like your supervisor specifically might prefer what is now smeared on you, to remain smeared on you alone.
I saw this kind of thing happen as the not-unusual solution to a full approval process being too long for certain deadlines, valuable juniors (or their findings) being jeopardised by the kind of situation you've been allowed to get into, other forms of craven programme disorganisation, or combinations thereof. Is this whole thing very uncomfortable if not inappropriate? I invite you to read some other responses on this site regarding how much inappropriateness is forgiven, when it is not a mere junior in the firing line.

Where are you seeing an indication of "distancing" or "jettisoning" by OP's supervisor?

@nanoman you're right, I have read into that perhaps too far. I am referring to OP's reply to CaptainEmacs 's question on the original question. It sounds like the supervisor left a big gap in their otherwise clear instructions to OP, and I read (perhaps too far) into that a subsequent reluctance of supervisor to fix their mess. It sounds like a stark if not sustained mismatch between OP's and supervisor's expectations here, as if some washing of hands might be occurring. Mainly I was trying to emphasise the risk of approaching the supervisor with request to bend rules, but I could reword

Sorry, I had to DV, because the blanket statement in the first sentence is just not generally true.

@henning I am sure I will get downvoted for various actual reasons, but please do give an example of human research without ethical approval being non-transgressive

@benxyzzy surveys, expert interviews, partcipant observation, if no sensitive personal data is collected and the data is pseudonymized/anonymized. In my country, ethics board approval is not required in these cases.

@henning Then I guess our countries take very different approaches to ethics, because all of those things would count here ("participant observation"??) Juniors - masters, PhDs, undergraduate final year project students - have the importance of ethical approval and the liability of breaching it heavily impressed upon them, in formal mandatory workshops from members of the dept approval board. This is probably why OP is so concerned, and why several other answers confirm the potential seriousness. My answer describes how it can actually play out with the benefit of a PI's power and latitude.

@benxyzzy I suppose this is another instance of https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4471/academia-varies-more-than-you-think-it-does-the-movie And with that caveat, i found your answer quite useful.


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Can I cancel a university offer acceptance in Canada?
I just received an offer from an Ontario university for a post-graduate program and it requires me to reply very soon. However, I also have a professor at another university who is very likely to give me an opportunity to do research for him as a master's student. I really want to do research with that professor, but the "likely" doesn't mean a guarantee, and it also doesn't mean the offer from the other university is going to arrive before the decision deadline. Could I accept the offer first, then, if the other university accepts me, cancel that same acceptance even after the decision deadline? There is no funding or scholarship involved. It is just an offer with a decision date.

Though the linked question involves Europe, the answer in this case doesn't really depend on that.

The linked question involved contracted money exchange, so I don't think it applies to my situation

What about this https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/183646/university-admission-offer and this https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/41105/rejecting-a-phd-offer-after-having-accepted-it-advice ?


text:
How to arrange sabbatical leave in the age of COVID?
I am putting together my sabbatical year plan where I hope to get a visiting (research) position in a research university in USA that will provide at least half of my salary. My field is applied mathematics.
However, in the age of COVID, there may be various issues with travel restriction, family life, or my own health. Staying in a university far away from home may be much more difficult in the next year or two.
What are the options for arranging a productive sabbatical leave in USA?  E.g., are there virtual visiting positions in USA now?

For a paid position, I think this would be unlikely. Outside funding might be a better bet.

My answer here https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/170268/63475 was about remote PhD positions but I'd say it applies equally to other remote academic positions. I could imagine a non-remote position becoming remote due to public health emergencies, but not the existence of an intentionally virtual position like this.

@Buffy, The field is applied mathematics. Edited, and also broadened the question a bit.

Would "put it off until Covid is over" be a viable option?

@nick012000, Yes. In the worse case scenario, we could just delay by a year or two or just have a one semester sabbatical leave with full salary.  But certainly I'd prefer to have a productive year, as I couldn't get much work done since Spring 2020.

My impression is that many people have postponed sabbaticals, intending to take them when the pandemic is over and everything is back to normal. As a result, some administrators are worrying about how the university will function if all those people take their postponed sabbaticals simultaneously.

I'm going to take a stab here, but may come back if other ideas occur. I do think that a university funded virtual research position is unlikely unless you are a superstar in your field already. Lots of regulatory issues stand in the way.
First option. Find some funding to support yourself adequately. This might be in conjunction with someone at another university on a common project. Since this might take a while to arrange, it might be necessary to delay the sabbatical for a while until you secure the funding.
Second option. Find a collaborator who already has a fairly large grant and is doing something that interests you. I think that applied math might offer some opportunities here. If you already have a wide circle of contacts in your field of interest, start to ask around what they can suggest. Maybe send you along to someone else, even.
Sub option under #2. Perhaps you have a colleague elsewhere who is willing to "sell" your participation to their administration and make some guarantees as to the quality of your work. That is, you don't apply directly (at first), but arrange to get invited. This would require a pretty strong argument on your colleague's part, but it could, in principle, catapult their research to everyone's advantage.
Third option. Not a research university, but some research lab (governmental, commercial, non-profit...) that is very interested in what you do and needs help badly enough that they are willing to provide funding for a virtual team member. Probably rare, but not as rare as a university funded position.
As you know, the virtual doing of it isn't all that impossible nowadays, but the funding for a person who never shows up and introduces difficult tax and supervision issues is a hard sell.


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Academic career without travel
I haven't really traveled since the Spring of 2020, and I will unlikely to do so within the next year or longer (not counting local visits within driving distance). These are all due to family and personal health issues, and it's hard to say how soon will situations change.
My field is applied/computation mathematics. Participating in conferences and visiting colleagues have been an important component in "working". It is even more important to me, since I'm in a very small department. Now these have all stopped.
Is it possible to maintain a career in mathematics with limited travel? If yes, how?

Additional background: I am recently tenured, and I have a developed a pretty good network of colleagues so that I'm still "talking" to people albeit not in person. I have plenty of questions to work on, and, for now, I have funding. Although I suppose this question may apply to many people.

For a year? Or the foreseeable future?

I think you need to be clearer about what your career goals are.

If you're tenured, then yes, of course it's possible to maintain your career.

I just returned from a conference where the organizers decided to only allow presentations from physically present people. You could listen in and ask questions vitually, but to present a paper, you had to be onsite. Personally, given the technical problems in a hybrid conference (either fully offline or fully online were far easier), I support this decision. In such a case, it depends on how important presenting your paper is. If you already have a network, great. If not, such a situation will make life very hard. (I assume justified exemptions would be possible at this conference.)

@GregMartin, "maintain my career" as in not get fired? Well, I'm hoping to do slightly better than that.

All sorts of things happen virtually these days, from writing reports for scientific organizations to writing papers with colleagues to developing scientific software packages. I see no particular good reason why it should not be possible to have a productive scientific career without traveling at all, and I know colleagues who for family reasons have not been able to travel in any significant way for several years already.
The question is, for the most part, whether you have a scientific network that can sustain your research career for the next few years. That means having existing and finding potential new collaborators to write papers and proposals with, who invite you to give (virtual) seminar talks at their institutions, etc. This works pretty well for me, for example, never having written a lot of papers with people from my home institution to begin with. But it's a question about your past style of collaboration, and how willing and interested you are in getting yourself into new collaborations with new people.
In other words, I think it is possible and maybe not all that difficult either. At the same time, I can also totally see how for some people who are maybe more reserved, not being able to travel cuts them off from the rest of the scientific community. It all depends on your style of work and your existing network.

I've been forced to isolate a few times over the years, and things are much better now in terms of technology than even in 2017.  Most academics have learned to use video technology, shared folders, shared editing etc.  Some were previously motivated by climate change to reduce their travel, but it was the pandemic that really got things moving. There are many things you can do to stay connected, and having grant money will really help.
I have found that most sources of travel funding can be used to have others visit you just as well as for you to travel to conference.  You can host a very small workshop and bring in a few people you work well with, or have them visit you one at a time. This assumes are are able to still meet in person locally.  Ideally you have colleagues who can travel easily.
If you write joint papers, you can perhaps have your coauthor give talks and report back to you.
If you are in a field that uses conference proceedings as the leading form of publication, things are harder.  I am not qualified to comment on that.
So, yes, you can do good research with little or no travel.  I've been on restricted travel for many years.  Certainly, little travel is easier than no travel.  In some cases you can get extra funds to cover higher travel expenses.  That depends on local factors so it is hard to be specific.


text:
How should I write a proposal in which one of the PI does nothing?
An NSF research proposal was prepared last year.
Even though all scientific work planned at the university will be done by two postdocs and 2 - 3 graduate students, the university requires a tenured/tenure-track faculty to be a PI. As a result, they couldn't submit the proposal.
This year, to satisfy this requirement, a tenured faculty was chosen to be a "place-holder PI". This PI's research is not directly related to the project, and he also has little interest to get involved. He's just there to satisfy the university's requirement.
Will the existence of such a place-holder PI hurt the chance of such a proposal being funded?
If not, how should the proposal explain the role of the place-holder PI?

More detail:
The proposal in question is actually a collaborative proposal
(also interdisciplinary: math + biology),
and there is an experienced biologist
who will be the PI in University B.
The two post-docs, in University A,
are on the mathematical side.
The university rule is that they cannot be the PIs.
A tenured/tenure-track faculty in University A must be the PI.
That's why a place-holder PI was picked.
So the proposal's personnel structure look like this:

University A: 1 Place-holder PI + 2 post-doc co-PIs + students
University B: 1 PI + students + ...

So my question is mainly about whether or not
the appearance of one useless PI can be problematic.
(the other PI is not useless)
Just to add more detail,
in both the proposal development stage
and the proposal itself,
more experienced professors are indeed involved.
The post-docs' mentor
(who was also the advisor of the graduate students)
was deeply involved in the development of the proposal
but can no longer be the PI
(for reasons that are too unique to mention here).
A slightly more experienced researcher outside University A
(me) is also listed in the proposal
for the role to provide some guidance
--- basically fill in the hole the original PI left.
And I will provide a letter of collaboration.
My original question left out these important detail
(to avoid the rather unique situation being easily identifiable).
This misled earlier answers to focus on the appearance
that we have two post-docs are leading the project,
which does not look like a good situation.
This is actually not the case.
But those answers are, of course, still very good answers.

I would think that if/when the PI cannot actually bring any expertise to the project, that's clearly worse than a competing project with a contributing PI...

Even more strange is having graduate students on the project without their supervisor.

I think the post-docs should smarten up and find a tenured faculty, somewhere else, that can effectively support them. Or look for other fundings sources.
Current potential PI is saying something like "nice, you are trying to bring in funds for the department, good idea, good luck!" which can be understand as "you naive young guns, you put a lot of efforts in writing the proposals, you bring in the money (500k £*$/€, from the number of people involved), you may even win it but you have no guarantee from the university you will be employed here?! Good luck!"

@Trunk "Start 2-3 PhDs"?

I assume Trunk is saying that the postdocs are going to start the PhD students' efforts in the project, not start their PhDs.

I regret leaving out some detail whose importance I did not realize. This is actually a collaborative proposal involving at least two universities. In this university, post-docs cannot be PIs so a place-holder PI was chosen. In the other university, there is a real PI leading the whole project.

Also, there was certainly a mentor/advisor involved. It's just this mentor suddenly departed. But this project is still worth perusing, and the two post-docs left behind are the right people to do it (at least in their mind).  Of course, it's way too late for the graduate students to change topics in the final years of their study (also, they have to funding now).

Since post docs are involved, may I suggest looking towards applying for mentored Grant's,  this is what they're for.  I don't believe your current proposed strategies will be well received during review.

Generally a funder won't provide funding to a project unless the host institute guarantees the grant holder will have a job for the length of the grant. Generally institutions will only do that if the person in question is tenured or tenure track.
The phrase we'd usually use is something along the lines of "Prof Jones will provide strategic guidance and team management". The point being that if you and your co-investigators decide to do something else with your lives, it will be up to ProfJones to find people to replace you so the research can still be provided to the institution's customer (ie the funder).

"Prof Jones will provide strategic guidance and team management": I'd guess that in some fields this is exactly (and only) what the PI does in any case. Their reputation is on the line, of course.

@Buffy Including my field.

I disagree pretty strongly with your first sentence.it simply isn't true, at least for the NIH and NSF.  It's hyperbolic, at best.

@ScottSeidman. I'm british, so I don't really have experience of NIH or NSF. But its definitely true of the UKRI (United Kingdom Research and Innovation), the Wellcome Trust (the world's biggest charity funder of medical research) and ERC (the european research council).

@ScottSeidman See for example: https://www.ukri.org/councils/bbsrc/guidance-for-applicants/check-if-youre-eligible-for-funding/applicants-and-co-applicants/

That's still different from a "guarantee" of employment for the life of the grant, which is what I meant by "hyperbolic".  No counsel for any employer in the US would ever allow such a guarantee in writing.  Also, the NIHand NSF don't ask for this, so "generally" is simply wrong.

I agree with Dan that you should not try to misrepresent the role of the PI, but this raises a broader issue that you seem to have avoided with the premise of your question.  Presumably the university rule in question is there to ensure that there is an experienced researcher with a permanent faculty position leading and supervising the research.  This has some obvious advantages in ensuring continuity of the research and ensuring that junior researchers can draw on the experience of a senior person.  It is not too surprising that the university would impose such a requirement on a funding submission.
In view of this, you should rethink your approach of appointing a PI only as a "placeholder" to overcome a bureaucratic obstacle, and instead think about how you could have the PI perform the role that is the underlying goal of that rule.  This would not only assist you to satisfy the university requirements for submission of the proposal, but more importantly, it would give you the benefits of experience and guaranteed continuity that is the underlying goal of this rule.
This would require you to find a PI who is willing to take on a genuine role as a "principal" in the research, which means taking responsibility for the progression of the research and supervising the more junior researchers.  It is possible to construct the PI role in a way where it is largely managerial and supervisory rather than being involved in the nitty-gritty of the research, but it still invovles being the person in charge of the research project.  The kinds of tasks that a PI could perform would include planning and management of the project, strategic guidance on research direction, supervision and development of junior researchers, review of research drafts and outputs, strategic guidance on appropriate outlets for publications or referees, and administration of grant funding and personnel decisions.

This is saying the same thing as my answer, but worded better. I didn't mean to suggest that the OP should misrepresent the role of the PI. Rather that that PI should genuinely provide "strategic guidance and team management".

@IanSudbery: Don't worry --- I didn't for one second read your answer as suggesting misleading people.  It is a great answer (+1).  (My agreement with Dan was not intended to imply any disagreement with your answer.)

You can either acknowledge in the proposal that the PI will do nothing and “he’s just there to satisfy the university's requirement”, or you can try to hide that fact with misleading language and trickery.
If you hide that fact, then you are engaging in misrepresentation. This is unethical and borders on fraud.
If you acknowledge it, it wouldn’t be unethical, just foolish as the proposal will obviously not be funded.
Either way, this sounds like a bad idea. A PI has to actually want to be involved with the research they are signing up for as “principal investigator”.
For what it’s worth, as far as I’m aware it’s not an absolute requirement that the PI on an NSF proposal has to be a tenure track faculty. At my department we had some visiting assistant professors (a 3-year postdoc position) who submitted NSF grant proposals. This was a while ago, but I think it was enough that they included a letter from a tenured faculty member who said he’d be willing to take over the grant in the event of the PI’s departure. So I’d suggest checking with your institution if their policies might allow such an approach.

I think this is a university requirement, not a NSF requirement.  When I was a postdoc my department told me I technically had to be the co-PI, and a tenured faculty agreed to be the PI, though he wasn't doing any work on the project.  They told me the NSF knows about such situations and would be able to interpret the proposal appropriately.

@Kimball okay, as long as you didn’t make any misrepresentations in the proposal, I suppose that’s fine. If you did make misrepresentations, I wouldn’t consider the statement that the NSF “knows how to interpret it” to be a very good justification for this type of behavior. But perhaps other people would disagree — I have encountered people with very cavalier attitudes about the accuracy of the things they tell funding agencies.

Sure, we didn't try to misrepresent anything, though I don't remember quite how we wrote it---I think that comment about the NSF being able to interpret it correctly was in response to me worrying it was weird that the proposal was just "The co-PI will do [X]" and not about what research the PI would do.

@Kimbal, I think your situation was most closely related to the situation described here.  Could you please elaborate your experience as an answer.


text:
Are mathematicians paid enough?
I am a first year PhD student. The amount of funding that I receive, in my opinion, is bare minimum. After covering all of my expenses, I'm hardly left with anything or in some of the months, nothing. And, let me tell you that I'm a thrifty and economical person. I'm not spending my money carelessly (tbh, I won't be able to even if I want to). Also, I have heard some mathematicians complaining about how difficult it was for them and their families to manage during the initial years of their post-doc.
Also, the kind of work we do is not "easy". I'm not saying that in other professions people have an "easy" life, but I think there are few professions (maybe outside academia) where people work less hard than us and are still earning more. Many people don't even get enough time to enjoy life with their families because of their research, seminars, supervision, etc.
I know I'm just a first year graduate student, I won't be earning a lot. But looking at the bigger picture, it makes me wonder: Are mathematicians(including graduate students) paid enough? or in general, are people in academia paid enough? If not, then why are people not trying to change the situation?

It's supply and demand. There are far more people who want graduate student or postdoc jobs than there are slots, even at the current stipends. Accepting a lower pay is part of the process of pursuing the academic dream.

If you aren't paid enough, why are you doing it? (Kind of a rhetorical question, of course)

@knzhou
isn't that the case for every profession?

@FreePawn Why are you a PhD student in math? Why not an actuary? Why not an investment banker?

I think the salary of a math grad student varies by university (there was a recent reddit post talking about it). A math faculty is paid much better than that, though that depends on location/ cost of living. But tbh I think you should be more concerned with the availability of a job than the pay of a job...

@BryanKrause Because I wanna do maths.

@FreePawn And that's exactly the reason: lots of people grow up dreaming of being mathematicians. Not so many dream of being bankers. Even though there are many more bankers than mathematicians.

@knzhou how does that address my question?

@FreePawn Exactly. So do a lot of people. Hence the supply and demand thing. Why should a math grad student be paid more when the school has to turn away people that want to be students there?

@BryanKrause There are many profession where the number of candidates are more than the jobs available but still have better salary/funding

@FreePawn If they were paid like math PhD students do you think that would still be true (more candidates than jobs)?

@BryanKrause I'm not particularly talking about math PhD students., but in general

@BryanKrause you asked, "Why not an actuary? Why not an investment banker?", so are you suggesting that one should choose their profession based on the salary that is paid, and not based on their interest?

I'm voting to close because comments such as "Don't you think that shouldn't be the case. Shouldn't people be paid good amount of money based on amount of work they are doing and not under-paid?" makes it clear that this is an opinion-based question (or at least OP is looking for an opinion-based answer).

NO, I am not looking for opinion based answer. Maybe this is not an opinion based question either, but some people seem to disagree

This question is impossible to answer at this level of generality. How much a mathematician is paid depends - or at least can depend - on a long list of circumstances, such as the country they're working in, the region within this country, their university, the stage of their career, the details of their position, the details of their contract, in some cases even their family status. Whether they earn "enough" depends on a similarly long list, such as the difference between gross and net pay, the usual cost of living in their city, again their family status, their personal preferences, etc.

"are you suggesting that one should choose their profession based on the salary that is paid, and not based on their interest?" You have to make a trade-off: Most people want a high paying job that they like, but very few people are so lucky that their interests and skills align with a high paying job. So you have to make a decision: how much potential income are you willing to sacrifice for doing a job you like.

There is an element of luck here (someone's interests and skills aligning with what happens to be a high paying job), and you could argue that that is unfair. However, changing that involves a fundamental reorganization of society. There are good arguments for and against that, but they are far outside the scope of this forum.

How is this specific to mathematicians in academia?

RAs/TAs in the universities are paid about the same regardless the fields. The simple reason is: they don't have PhD degrees yet. Once they get the PhD, the pay is "enough". Please see the answers below about Math professors. Whether Math PhDs (not students) should be paid more is opinion-based. Thus I vote to "Leave Closed".

You said in a comment that your question is specific to academia. For the United States, a good source on how much mathematics faculty in academia are paid is the American Mathematical Society's Faculty Salaries Report, based on a survey sent annually to mathematics departments at many universities. Their latest report is from 2018-19 and contains salary statistics for different academic ranks at different groups of universities (split into different categories such as large public university, medium public university, small private university etc).
The report has a lot of data so I won't try to summarize it, but to address your question about whether academic mathematicians are paid enough, we can see from the report that the median annual salary reported for a full professor in the "large private university" group (page 5 of the report) was $155,000, the mean salary was $182,160, and the third quartile salary was $195,000. I think most reasonable people would agree that such numbers qualify as "enough" to be paid for doing something that you love. Indeed, for a lot of people this would be more than enough.
At the lower end of the spectrum, if we look at salary distribution for new assistant professors at institutions that grant only bachelor's degrees (page 11 of the report), we see quite a different range of numbers. Here the median salary was $57,500, and the first quartile salary was $47,500. Whether that's "enough" would depend on one's outlook, personal situation, and future plans and prospects.
Bottom line: the most successful people in academic math are doing quite well. Some of the least successful might be struggling. Mathematicians are a diverse group, and the question of what counts as "enough" is a complicated philosophical question anyway, and a rather subjective one at that.

Are these net figures?

@henning no, the net figure would depend on any individual’s particular tax situation so would be meaningless to report as a reference for any comparisons. In the US net salaries are never really discussed.

Think of the person collecting your garbage, the janitor who keeps the building clean, the ... There are many people who work very very hard and get little pay. In a market economy you don't get paid based on how hard you work, or how valuable your work is. It is based on supply and demand. So if you want to change that, you have to move away from a market economy. You don't have to go full communist, there are hybrid systems that work fairly well (though very far from perfect). Further discussing this is far outside the scope of this forum.

The first sentence of this answer reminds me of a thought experiment: What would happen if all mathematicians suddenly stopped working?  What would happen if all garbage collectors suddenly stopped working?  This helps me avoid exaggerated ideas about my own importance.

On its own more money is always better on an individual level and I certainly did not complain about the last raise I got. But as a counterargument consider the global optimization problem for academia.
What do we (as mathematicians) want as a goal for the whole system? I thing the answer should be the most (good) mathematics, both in teaching as in research. Now the thing is that we have to achieve that on a fixed budget, coming from all kinds of funding sources.¹ So paying people better generally means hiring less people.
And this is the point where it gets complicated. While you will generally get better mathematicians if you pay more, the effects are far from linear. If you pay double, you will never get people who work twice as fast, which on its own would pull salaries down to zero. On the other hand, the pool of available competent mathematicians depends on the salary offered as well. As an extreme example, if you offer less than the cost of living for your area, you are limited to a enthusiasts with independent income (if they don't go somewhere else). If you combine these two factors, I'd argue that you will end up roughly where we are right now.²
What adds to this is that money is not everything, especially if you get it for doing something that you would probably do in your free time anyway. My current post-doc salary is not huge, but it pays for a reasonably sized apartment, puts food on my table and even after occasionally wasting too much of it on things I don't actually need, there is generally a reasonable percentage left over. If you pay me more, my spending would not change. I could probably retire earlier with all the money I would save up, but the thing is, I do not want to retire, since I like doing what I currently do.
Of course with this, I am not speaking for everybody. But in general academia cannot compete with industry using money alone. There are certainly some investment bankers that could have been brilliant mathematicians, but who currently earn more than entire university departments.
¹I know that the budget is not fixed in a strict sense, but getting e.g. a big increase in budget for opening a new department does not change the problem, as you are expected to produce proportionally more work. I also assume that salaries are generally corrected for inflation.
²In my opinion PhD-students are generally somewhat underpaid and professors salaries might be a bit above the optimum, but the same discrepancy is true in any profession. And as mentioned by others, the numbers are highly location dependent.

I went to grad school in math straight from undergrad. Looking back, I definitely think that students considering grad school should make sure they have some financial stability before going to grad school. I would advise my former self to work for a few years at a "real job", save up some money, start a retirement account, etc. Then, once you have that, you can go to grad school without worrying too much about not having much of a salary, because you have money saved up and you're not living paycheck to paycheck, so to speak. And your retirement account money will be accruing interest while you're in grad school.
As pointed out in the comments, salary varies quite a bit depending on the university. Private universities probably pay a lot more. I went to a public university. We went on strike for better pay. It would be nice if we didn't have to do that.
One benefit to being a grad student, though, is that as long as you maintain good academic standing, you should be fully funded for several years (around 5 or 6). This means you basically have a guaranteed source of income and you don't really have to worry about being fired. This is in contrast with many "at-will" employers, where you can be fired at any time and, oh well, you're out of work.
Also, if your advisor can fund you with a Research Assistantship, it basically means that you can get paid to do math and not have to teach. You can wake up whenever you want, sleep whenever you want, work some days and not others, etc. You basically have complete freedom, and you get paid!
In addition, funding could be tight during the summer months, with fewer students enrolling in courses. When I was in grad school, summer funding was typically given but not guaranteed. If you can get a summer internship in industry, you could be paid a lot more than you would by teaching summer courses. And you would pick up valuable industry skills. So consider setting aside some time to look into that.

In general, what counts as "enough" varies from person to person. Some people need more money to support their lifestyle and their personal needs than others. However, one thing some mathematicians do is the following. They apply for a position at a different university and get it. Then they tell the department chair, "I got a position at this university, and they will pay me X amount, which is more than I'm making here. You'd better increase my salary, or I'm out of here!" The department says, "OK, we'll pay you more. Please don't leave!" And they say, "Thank you. I'll stay."

I think it would be better to specify the country in your answer (probably the US?). In various countries, many of the things you write do not apply. (Random example: "This is in contrast with many 'at-will' employers, where you can be fired at any time." For instance, at-will employment does not occur, at the scale your indicating, in Germany. Even less so in France, I think.)

united states
The average living wage in the US is $16.54 per hour, or $68,808 per year, in 2019, before taxes for a family of four (two working adults, two children).
The average salary for a mathematician is $121,259 per year. This ranges from $84,254 for an entry-level mathematician (1-3 years of working experience) to $150,869 for those with 8+ years of experience.
Since $84,254 > $68,808, I conclude that mathematicians are paid more than enough.

I assume the definition of a mathematician excludes postdocs, graduate students, and quite some lecturers

I also doubt if by mathematician they mean people in academia or in corporate sectors/industries.

@k99731 you'd have to ask the OP what their definition of mathematician is.

@FreePawn, If a mathematician is not someone in academia or in industry, then where can one find mathematicians?

@JoelReyesNoche what I meant was that, I'm not sure if in that statistics they only considered people from academia or industries or both. My question is specific to academia

Thanks for the clarification.