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Academia research vs. industry research (computer science)
After finishing my PhD in Computer Science (machine learning) and after several years as a university lecturer, I decided to transition from academia to industry. As a result of that, I have been working one year for a company, doing applied research.
In my latest performance review, my supervisor pointed out that my only negative point was that I still had an academic mindset towards research, and that I should be able to get better at what he called "risk analysis". He defined risk analysis as the skill of assessing in advance the potential benefits/drawbacks for the company of a given method/technique/algorithm. The aim of that is to be able to rapidly discard methods that are supposed to not solve the company's problems without having to waste too much time on implementing them.
I was wondering whether any learning resource exists (book, online course/resources) that may help me to acquire such a skill. More generally, any recommended reading about computer science research in industry would be much appreciated.

This question appears to be off-topic because it not about academia; it is seeking resources about a specific skill for industry.

@EnergyNumbers This site is for academics as well as anyone in or interested in research-related or research-adjacent fields which includes industry research. You can debate whether "risk analysis" is really a research skill or not, but the fact that it takes place in industry research and not academia does not make it off-topic.

When I was in engineering industry years ago, non-PhD managers often had this opinion of engineers with PhDs. Does your supervisor have a PhD? If so, you could ask them how they developed this skill. If not, then your manager is just "pointing out the obvious." Don't sweat it; you'll develop this skill over time.

@MadJack - my supervisor does not have a PhD. He has a very business-oriented technical background, and his field of expertise is not machine learning, but programming and electrical engineering.

Perhaps it would be beneficial to find someone in your group/organization from whom you can learn how to make these quick assessments, a mentor of sorts.

@ff524: I'd argue that "risk analysis", as defined here, is also used in academia - in "real" research, you also need to assess as early as possible whether a given approach/question/whatever will be fruitful, beneficial, whatever... or impractical, useless, whatever else. So +1 to your comment.

I was wondering, after reading Stephan's comment: would it be useful to rephrase the question and make it more general?

I find it mildly amusing that your very question and approach reveals a purely academic mindset, too -- "please recommend some books that can help to dig into the issue deeper". I mean, no offense, this is a perfectly legit approach, and I tend to do the same. What really helps is just understand the basics: how your particular company makes money and how economics works in general. For starters, try to measure any solution in dollars. E.g., what is cheaper: to research how to automate a certain manual process or to outsource it to low-pay workers?

A better search term than "risk assessment" might be "opportunity cost", for understanding the overall mindset.
Funnily enough I have the opposite problem going from industry back to PhD & postdoc: I have been fairly irreversibly 'trained' to seek the path of least resistance to an end goal and ruthlessly ignore side-avenues. It feels I am forever being pushed to 'meander', and to worry less about driving toward an application (I'm now in basic science)

As a researcher in industry, let me first emphasize to you that "industry" is a much broader set of organizations and varies a lot more than most people realize.  Thus, the answer to your question may depend quite a bit on the specifics of the company that you are at.
That said, however, in most cases a key animating idea for researchers in industry is a notion that often goes by a name like "customer focus": i.e., who will care about the results of this investigation?
Sometimes this is pretty straightforward (e.g., "if widget-making is 5% more efficient, then profit margins on widgets go up), but in other cases the relation is much more abstract or indirect (e.g., some prior work I did on potential programming languages for quantum computers that don't currently exist, but where the funder wanted to see how thinking about this might affect their goals for other research projects).
In all cases, however, you always have to be aware that somebody is paying the funds to support your salary and the salaries of your team, and they are giving you that money because they want some benefit to come from your research. This is true in academia as well, but professors are typically more insulated from it because their salaries are generally mostly supported by teaching---and even graduate students can be supported by TAships. If you're being paid to teach and expected to do research on the side, then it doesn't really matter what you're researching in the short term---but you will have more impact if you work on more important problems.
So, to the heart your question: how do you actually go about doing that?
I recommend starting by trying to be aware that at all times there is a "frontier" of research problems that you could be working on. Whenever you do a piece of work, you are choosing to prioritize one piece of that frontier over others.  Notice this fact and ask yourself questions like:

Why did I choose this problem over those other ones?
How will solving this problem affect the other problems on my frontier?
Who else cares about the solution to this problem?

There can be lots of reasonable answers to these questions, but starting to ask them can be extremely helping in moving to a more conscious evaluation of your research choices and whether they're actually moving you in the direction that you want to go in your career.
For more thoughts and suggestions along these lines, I would recommend the following resources:

"You and Your Research" by Richard Hamming, a long-time industrial researcher at Bell Labs.
My own talk on "Surviving Life as a Researcher"

Here are some links for you
this blog
books from Amazon
more books from Amazon
I am not interested in risk assessment but if I was, would sort the books by customer review, would see what the people who read them think, if possible would look inside the book.
Have to say though that I find strange you didn't do it yourself before posting the question.

Thank you for your answer. I, indeed, did several searches on Google, Amazon, etc. prior to asking the question. The issue with that approach is that the amount of published information is overwhelming, and therefore I was expecting somebody to point me in a more right direction.

This reads like more of an admonishment than an answer

this does not appear to be the "risk analysis" the question is referring to.

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What author name should I use for publication?
I'm soon to be co-author for a paper and I'm not too sure which name I should use for publication (like many previous users here!). I have a legal Chinese name which no-one knows me by but is on official documents (passport, my soon-to-be degree certificaet), and my English name which is what everyone calls me and is in the email I use for my CV. Unfortunately both combinations of my legal and surnames are quite popular when I search them on Google (advice I saw given by others) so I'm at a bit of a lost here of what I should do!
I'd really appreciate any advice/thoughts here thank you !

This has been asked before: Have you tried searching this forum? There's a search bar at the top.

With with name do you identify more in an academic setting?

Does this answer your question? Choosing my name as an author when publishing a scientific paper, can I use my "unofficial" first name?

Sidenote: A group of mathematicians have published under an assumed name for years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Bourbaki

Whichever name you use on your email or, if applicable, professional membership to the journal.  If a reader contacts NAME and gets a response from OTHER_NAME, it will be a bit jarring and perhaps cause them to wonder if they contacted the correct person.  Similarly, if you are in the journal's system as NAME but your paper uses OTHER_NAME, then that will cause confusion.

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Purpose of participating in "student doctoral programs" in conferences
I am finishing my third year in PhD program, and have at least 1.5 more years before finishing.
I have just recently submitted a regular research paper for a conference, will be waiting for around 2 months to hear back. Meanwhile I see a deadline for the  Student / Doctoral program, for which the conference is expecting a 3-4 pg. research writeup.
I see such student / doctoral program section in almost any reasonable conference. I was wondering what to expect from such programs? Also I was wondering if it makes sense to apply for one, considering I am already submitting a paper there. Of course the paper isn't accepted yet.
Any general feedback about such programs? Thanks

In my field these are usually called doctoral symposia or graduate consortia. They are a great way to get feedback on your research direction.
They are generally setup as a discussion between a panel of professors and the other students that are participating. The students have an opportunity to present their research and receive feedback from everyone. This is nice because you also get to see other students in various stages of their PhD talk about their work and the feedback they receive.

Also I was wondering if it makes sense to apply for one, considering I am already submitting a paper there

That is the best scenario to participate! You'll get to present your conference paper and get feedback from the doctoral program. Two birds, one stone!
Additionally, it is something you can put on your CV, the paper might be published in the proceedings depending on the conference, a great way to network with other students and professors, and some of these programs provide travel funding.
I'm currently working on applying to my second graduate consortium (this time as a mentor) and am really looking forward to it! The one I attended previously helped me a lot.

I attended one in my field this past week. I also attended one sponsored by the NSF last year.
Primarily the focus seems to me about professionalization: Preparing your CV, understanding how to prepare journal articles and apply for grants.
They also emphasize networking - both among participants and between faculty members who serve as speakers or mentors and participants. For one, faculty invited participants out to dinner after the first day, which was a nice chance to get to interact (and network).

Are you talking about an early career program? I don't think that is what the OP is asking about (though I might be wrong!?)

Yep, I am talking about an early career program.

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Editorial rejection: should I write back?
I recently submitted a paper to one of the Physical Review Journals (not Letters). I think that the result is both novel and important. After I uploaded the preprint to ArXiv, I received several emails from researchers in the field whom I do not know personally saying that they liked the paper and it is an important advancement in the understanding. People I personally know reacted similarly. I was sure that the paper would at least be reviewed considering that it seems to be important and that it is not submitted to PRL.
After two weeks, I got an email from the editor saying that it is being rejected without any review. My friend has got such rejection from the same journal, he received exact same text, which means that it was simply copy pasted. Now, I am a researcher who has a small number of citations, I have never published in Physical Review before and I am from a third world country. My feeling is that these things have biased the editor against the manuscript even though it is a good work if not groundbreaking and he should have at least sent it to reviewers.
I feel that I should write back to him these concerns. However, I have never done anything like this before and I am not sure if I risk lifetime rejection from the journal if I do this. I would be glad to hear the experienced researchers on this issue.

I suspect (due to lack of evidence to the contrary) that Physical Review editors frequently reject submissions without reading them.  I would not worry too much about it.

No doubt your first instinct is to challenge this desk rejection, but I would advise against it.
It is well known that appeals rarely succeed when referees go against you. When a handling editor thinks your work is not sufficiently interesting, I'd say an appeal is even less likely to be successful.
Coming specifically to Phys. Rev., your situation is somewhat worsened by the fact that alternatives to the Phys. Rev. A-X stable are not as attractive or popular.
But if your work is sufficiently useful, and helps advance your field, it will get cited even if you take your paper elsewhere. There is evidence for this in your case: You have senior researchers on arXiv giving you good feedback.

Can you explain more what you mean by the Physics Review journals not being attractive or popular?

@astronat Read what I wrote carefully - I said that alternatives to the Phys Rev. journal stable are not as popular (e.g. Europhys. X)

In my field there are more equally prestigious journals, so I would submit somewhere else. Is it that in physics there is no way to do that?  Europhys as mentioned by others?

After two weeks, I got an email from the editor saying that it is
  being rejected without any review. My friend has got such rejection
  from the same journal, he received exact same text, which means that
  it was simply copy pasted.

This is very likely true - journals get a substantial number of submissions, and for most actually tailoring their desk rejection emails would be overly burdensome, and likely not terribly productive.

Now, I am a researcher who has a small number of citations, I have
  never published in Physical Review before and I am from a third world
  country. My feeling is that these things have biased the editor
  against the manuscript even though it is a good work if not
  groundbreaking and he should have at least sent it to reviewers.

While it is possible that those things are true, you have zero concrete evidence that they are. Most papers submitted to a journal get desk rejected. There are myriad reasons for that - it's possible the flaws are stylistic, rather than rooted in the results. It may not be a good fit. There may be more compelling items in the queue. The editor may simply not share the opinion of the people who have emailed you.
All of those things are possibilities, and far more likely than the editor being biased against the paper due to who you are.
As for whether or not you should email and appeal that decision, I wouldn't bother, as I'd place the odds of success at indistinguishable from zero. While I often encourage colleagues and students to appeal editorial decisions if they have specific ways to address a review that they believe is in error, etc., merely "I think it's good enough" isn't enough fuel to do that. You'd be better served prepping the paper for another venue.


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Does the person who downloaded the data deserve to be a co-author?
As a part of my post-doctoral project, I am working on some problem. Apart from my post-doc mentor, another junior member had been added to the project to assist me and been given the position of ``Junior Research Fellow'' (JRF). Initially, I thought that a proper person who would be able to learn the methods of my field would be chosen to do the job but the person X was chosen who is from a different background. I still hoped that X would learn at least basic things (which are not very difficult) and would be able to help me. However, X kept telling me that they want time to learn and in my frank opinion, never tried even a bit to learn anything.
In the meantime, I gave a very simple work to X : Download around 150 data-files from the Internet and name them as I want. Even this took long time but this is the only thing that X has done during the whole year.
On the other hand, I studied the whole problem, did literature survey, discussed with various experts in the filed, found a proper way to solve the problem and built 3 complex codes to work things out. Now we have nice results which can be published in my opinion. Now my mentor tells me to add X as the second author of our paper. I am quite unhappy with this and I expressed my opinion to the mentor. But according to the mentor, we must add X because we must show funding agency that everybody worked together. I am surprised at this and hence I am asking whether this is really normal and how should I handle the situation.

Could you say a bit more about the nature of the "Junior Research Fellow" position?  Is this a student of some kind?  Someone with an advanced degree?  Is it a short or long term position?  Also, is your mentor also a coauthor on the paper?  If so, what is his/her contribution?

@PeteL.Clark: Their appointment is initially for an year and after that could be extended by 2 more years. They have science degree equivalent of M.S. which is an advanced degree in my opinion.

I don't think this is about the person but about the project. If you have people working with you and in the end they did nothing, you may not get anyone assigned again. If their name appears in somewhere, they can probe their usefulness and ask to be assigned more people to help with additional projects (and get more funding)

@fernando.reyes : Can you please simplify what you are saying?

If you get funding for a JRF and he gives no results, you may not get another JRF. In the other hand, if you JRF coauthors a paper, you could see a lot of funding for more helpers.

@fernando.reyes That is not related to the ethics about the co-authorship.

@Peaceful He points out a typical problem: you get assigned somebody to help you. That person doesn't pull their weight. Now you have a choice: expose them and you won't get anyone assigned anymore, or do the unethical and include them in the author list. Typically, such situations coincide with not actually even being a line manager, so, being stuck in trouble with no recourse. In the question, it's not clear who the line manager of the fellow traveler is. But it seems that at the very least, OP should have given an early warning sign (or at least midway, before probation's over) to the PI.

The question is actually about my opinion of not making X a co-author. The fact that X didn't work for the whole year is a thing that has already happened.

The proper answer here is clearly that this person does not deserve to be an author.  Downloading a bunch of data files is not any kind of intellectual contribution to the research.  It may have been a necessary task, which was required to get the project operational, but the same could be said about administering your institution's e-mail server or keeping the HVAC system you use operational.  Workers that do not contribute intellectually to a project do not merit authorship on papers, although they could be thanked in the acknowledgements, if they put in a large amount of time in support of the project.
You seem to be concerned that your funding agency may not want to see people paid to work on a project who are not authors on the resulting publications.  While some agencies may have concerns about this, what they are ultimately worried about is whether their money is being spent on the research it was intended to fund; they do not want the funds redirected to other projects.  They must also understand that some money is going to go to people who do not end up making intellectual contributions to any papers.  Some people just end up doing scut work; some people quit before they make any progress; some research projects unfortunately never produce anything publishable.  All these situations will be familiar to the funders; they may not be thrilled about any of them, but they know that they do happen.

The authors of scientific papers should have had an intellectual contribution in the resulting publication. You can name he/she in acknowledgements.
You could also ask the ethic commitee or your institution research guide if you have one.

I already discussed the point with the mentor but their argument is that funding agencies like to see all people as the authors.

@Peaceful: That seems like a very poor argument to me.  I think it boils down to "We should lie because the truth is unfavorable to us."


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My previous supervisor keeps asking me to review her papers. How to deal with this?
I am currently a post-doctoral researcher at some institute. My Ph.D. supervisor, from my former institute, keeps asking me to review papers that come to her for review. I am pretty sure that this is because I am good at a particular topic which is not her expertise. She has coauthored papers on the topic but she is not an expert there.
I have two problems with this. First, since I am not her student now, she should stop doing this; I am an independent researcher now. Second, I feel that this takes away credit from me. She could tell the journal that I am a better person to be a reviewer and this will benefit me since I am still young. Currently, I use my skills, time and energy to review papers for which she earns credits and I lose a chance for the same. Should I tell her this or is it normal in academics? If I should, how should I?

It's not clear to me that there is anything wrong with this situation. Sub-reviewing is common. Do you have reason to suspect that she is taking credit for your reviewing effort or otherwise misleading people?
Unfortunately, reviewing is thankless work. I'm not sure what credit you're expecting to get for it.

She [sh]ould tell the journal that I am a better person to be a reviewer indeed - ask her to do so, since you prefer to be in direct contact with the editor, for learning etc, and to build your reputation as a reviewer. No need to burn bridges here, at this point at least.

Even as a student, you should be acknowledged as "co-reviewer" at least. The practice is rather common, but anyone that actually reviewed paper needs to be acknowledged...

Repeat after me: "Please tell the editor that I would be happy to review the paper."

Is she also asking you to review revisions?

This person was your advisor, right?  So she is your ally, mentor and general fan, no?  You can be straight with her.
Phone call:

Hi Susan.  About the paper you sent me yesterday to review.  I'm flattered/honored that you thought of me for reviewing it.

(Pause in case she wants to say something at this point, which she probably will.)

The thing is, Susan, I'm at the point now where I need to start establishing myself as a reviewer in my own right.

(At this point she may figure it out and state the desired conclusion.  If not, spell it out for her:)

Could you pass my name on to the editor as a possible reviewer for papers about  (description of sub-field)?

No it should not be normal. It is the decision of the editor to pick a specific reviewer. As a reviewer, you are supposed to keep the manuscript confidential. While i would see that this can be argued if you ask somebody working in your organization and reporting/being supervised by you, i think giving material to somebody whom you do not have direct control over in another institution is a pretty bad violation of the usual journal policies.
There are a number of bad situation which could arise from this

You actually having a professional relation to the peroson which you review (without your former professor knowing)
You telling your new boss about this, and he/she deciding to do politics using that knowledge (delaying etc)
You plagiarizing the paper, without the editor being able to track how that ended up there (since nobody knows about it)
You asking for changes to include references to your papers (innocent, since the editor team wont catch it...)

So no, beyond you not getting credit, i think it is a pretty shady thing.
(Added after comment): There are essentially two options, which depend on the mindset of your supervisor.

You explain what I wrote and tell that this makes you uncomfortable - you don't have to tell about her taking credit for your work, so it is less personal.
You inform the editor about the incident, pass your review, and ask the editor to be confidential about it. (I would imagine that they may just remove you former supervisor from their list)

I think this answer addresses why reviewing papers for your former advisor is a bad idea, but not how to deal with this situation in a way that OP's professional relationship with their former advisor isn't damaged in some way.

Should I tell her this or is it normal in academics? If I should, how should I?

You are quite reasonable to be concerned about your former supervisor taking advantage of you in such a way. I cannot say what you “should” do, but in my opinion any of the following ways to respond would be appropriate:

You can tell her that you are happy to consider reviewing papers in your area, but that as an independent researcher intent on building your professional credentials you will only consider such requests coming from an editor, so she should feel free to pass your name along as a suggestion to the editor for any paper she thinks you are qualified to review.
(Note the precise language here: you don’t want to say that you are “happy to review the paper”, only that you are “happy to consider reviewing the paper” - since she is not an editor and is only trying to freeload on your work, it’s not really her business whether you will ultimately agree to do the review or not; moreover, if you tell her that you agree to do it, you open the way for her to try to manipulate you further by saying that since you agree, it’s more convenient/accepted/normal/[insert some other bullshit excuse here] for you to send the review through her.)
You can tell her that you are busy and cannot take on the review at this time. Repeat as needed until she gets the message and stops sending you these requests. (This is a white lie so not really my preferred option, but still a reasonable and socially accepted way to handle the situation.)
You can tell her that you cannot take on the review without explaining yourself. Repeat as needed.

As for the risks of angering your former supervisor with each of these responses: obviously you need to apply your own judgment based on your acquaintance with her, but I have this to say: even a person who tries to manipulate you or take advantage of you in a small way can still be a decent person, and can actually be impressed if you stand up for yourself in a graceful way and put them in their place if they have crossed a line of appropriate behavior. If the former supervisor is some sort of vindictive psychopath and you depend on her for future career success, you might be better off not doing anything that will upset her, but if she is a normal person who just has some flaws, I think the risk of damaging your relationship with her by asserting yourself in a polite and respectful way is very small. Conversely, the option of being a pushover and continuing to allow her to freeload on your work and talents also carries its own risk that as a result she will not have much respect for you and will not be very motivated to help you with your future career.
Hope this helps, and good luck.

Your concerns are fair enough to tell your former supervisor that you have your own things to do.
Try to reply the emails with a polite tone, explaining her that you do not have time for a while because you work on other papers. If she keeps sending you papers or insists on a level of harrassment, then there are two options left.

You can keep on reviewing papers once in a while and your problems remain.
In your own words in the comment to Bob Brown's post, you can burn the bridges.

Burning the bridges with an abusive person (note that in this case, your former supervisor abuses your experience) is not very dangerous in my opinion. What is way more unpleasant is if your future depends on doing somebody else's job.
One life-pro-tip I always adore is

Do not ask a person to do something for you as a favor, if the person does it for a living.

In other words, if you were in a software company and your former manager asked you write some patches, when would it worth not burning the bridges? Software development is a paid job, and it is not ethical to ask for someone to do it for you. Same as reviewing papers. Only difference is, you are not paid by money, but academic reputation.

Let me be sure I understand... editors send her papers to review, she sends them to you to do the actual work, then she returns them to the editors as her work.  Is that correct?  If so,  you have two options.
You could, the next time you get such a paper, decline immediately and without making excuses.  "I'm sorry, I cannot do this, and won't be able to do so in the future."  If you're afraid of burning bridges, you might find a likely excuse, such as press of work.
The "nuclear option" is to accept the next paper, review it, and return it directly to the editor (assuming you can identify the publication and editor) with the notation that "Dr. X asked me to review this."  You absolutely will burn bridges if you do that, but you won't get any more papers from her, either. Edit: In the comment below, Dan Romik is correct that what I suggested is passive-aggressive.  However, if my summary in the first paragraph of the answer is correct, then the former supervisor is engaging in serial plagiarism.  A report to the editor is equally nuclear, equally certain to burn bridges, and likely equally effective.  (Before anyone says it's the same thing, I want to point out that responses to other current questions here take the position that reporting academic misconduct is not only appropriate, it is required.  Of course, those answers apply to students... )
Edit: It was suggested in a comment that I add what happens if one burns bridges with one's former supervisor.  That, of course, depends entirely on individual circumstances.  The best generalization I can reach is that, the further along one is in one's career, the less damaging it is likely to be.  If OP will depend on this supervisor for a recommendation following the post-doc, then it may be necessary to allow that former supervisor to continue to take advantage, or to fabricate excuses.  If, at the other extreme, OP is the star of the lab and is certain of a tenure-track position at the same institution after the post-doc, then burning that bridge has less chance for harm.

Is it a good idea to burn bridges with the former supervisor? Sounds scary.

@Peaceful  It's not something I'd do without considerable thought, which is why I mentioned it.  However, that wasn't the question.  Further, if my understanding as set out in the first paragraph is correct, then the supervisor is behaving unethically toward both OP and the journal editors.  Of course, that wasn't the question, either.

And the possibility that the Editor will send you the papers afterwards as well...

It might be (very) helpful to add something about what happens when someone in OP's position burns bridges with their PhD advisor; like, spell it out.

@MadJack : before or after completion? : this case is presented after...

before or after completion? -- After burning bridges with the advisor, of course.

Needlessly burning bridges with your advisor is a terrible idea.

@Thomas Well, sure!  However, the key word in your comment is needlessly.  In this case, OP is being taken advantage of, and needs to weigh the respective advantages of the possible courses of conduct.

This seems needless to me. The supervisor may not even realize that @Peaceful is unhappy about this. If reviewing is too much, just decline the reviews -- it happens all the time.

@Thomas  Trouble is, declining the reviews opens the possibility of burning that bridge.  Not as much as the "nuclear option," but still possible.  The supervisor is not an editor looking for reviewers, the former supervisor is asking OP to do her work for her and not giving credit for that work.

If sticking up for yourself is all it takes to "burn bridges" with your advisor, your relationship with your advisor is seriously broken already.

@JeffE The issue is that this answer suggests burning bridges as a solution. I don't see the need to think in those terms, as the situation can probably be resolved without any undue harm.

Downvoted. The first suggestion is good, but the “nuclear option” is a really bad idea. It’s passive-aggressive and serves no purpose other than to make yourself feel good or look cool and sophisticated. If you want to send her the message that she should go through the editor, just say so directly. Why resort to immature public humiliation gimmicks? You gain absolutely nothing, and will likely make yourself an enemy for life, which is much worse than just burning a bridge.

I don't understand why people are so freaked-out about burning bridges with a former supervisor. If any person tries to take credit on me, I would not let it even if it means burning the bridges.

@DanRomik You are correct about the passive-aggressive part, and I've edited my response.  I think you still won't agree with me, but I did make a change.

@BobBrown you are correct that I still disagree with you (but thanks for the edit). I just don’t understand what goal you are trying to achieve with the “nuclear” bridge-burning - you refer to it as “equally effective”, but equally effective at what, exactly? Ok, so the professor’s behavior is perhaps mildly unethical (or possibly just clueless), but it’s not severe enough to be actionable at any level. So again, your public shaming/humiliation/finger-pointing approach won’t achieve any useful purpose other than to make OP an enemy for life.


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Journal published a paper, ignoring my objections as a referee
A few months back I received a request from a reputed journal to review an article. The article was in a fast-track mode because of its assumed importance. I did review it, and found that it makes some improvement over the existing models, and hence does not rate high on the novelty axis. Moreover, there were serious problems in the article both conceptual and mathematical. Lastly, the English used was erroneous. I wrote these things to the editor, and he made it a regular article and asked the authors to revise it.
They did, and the manuscript came back to me. Unfortunately, the mathematical problems were simply ignored by them, and only cosmetic changes were done. I wrote back to the editor about this, and requested him to ask another review with all the clarifications/modifications. But after that journal did not communicate with me. Today, I was surprised to see that the paper has already been published! I went through it, and found that some minor changes that I had suggested (like changes to a figure to make it more informative) have been done, but the main issues that I had raised have been pushed under the carpet. I find this to be a complete insult to the reviewer, and also a kind of scientific dishonesty. I thought of writing to the editor, but I just want to know if something like this is regular, and if it has happened to anyone. If yes, how should I proceed from here? Just shut my mouth and carry on?

Just to put the shoe on the other foot for a moment: how would you have preferred the editor to act if you were the author of said paper?

@nick012000 : I would have made the changes or replied to the reviewer justifying my work. But unless the reviewer is convinced, how could the work be published, especially when the objections are serious?

Is the journal one that allows people to publish comments on or responses to other people’s work?

That's a good point. I think I should find that out.

If you don’t want to work with that journal again, you could also include the name of the editor when publishing your comments ie that they were told prior to publishing...

Did you get a "response to the reviewers" document when it came back to you? Did the authors dispute the corrections that they ignored?

How relevant to the conclusions were the remaining errors that you didn't see improvement on? If the math problems were not relevant to the conclusions (for example, if they consisted of under-specified assumptions or terminology/notation complaints) the authors and editor could have legitimate reasons to not find them valid.

If the problems are important, consider doing a "review paper" (or commentary paper/letter) for that journal.

You should write a rebuttal article and publish it in another publication :) seems like easy publication credits for you.

Maybe the editor asked another reviewer for an opinion as well.

Is this a reputable journal, or a journal published by a parasitic for-profit publisher like Springer/Elsevier/etc.? (e.g., could there be an economic incentive in publishing mediocre papers to make money off them?)

This probably isn't something to fight over. Possibilities abound:

Perhaps you misunderstood something.
Perhaps the other reviewers were positive on the paper.
Perhaps the authors provided arguments that your rejection reasons aren't applicable, and the editor found them convincing.
Perhaps the editor thinks it's better to accept a potentially bad paper than to reject a potentially good one.
Perhaps the authors said they cannot fix the issues (e.g. funding ran out, one of the lead experimenters graduated and is no longer in the group, etc) and the editor made the judgment call to accept anyway.
Perhaps the journal is short on papers to fill its issues and so is accepting borderline papers.
Perhaps the editor simply made a mistake, but since the paper is already accepted, decided to stick with accept instead of rescind the decision.

Ultimately journals are going to publish whatever their editors think are acceptable. Reviewers do not "give permission" to publish something; they only offer recommendations. In the same way if there is a backlash against the journal for publishing this paper, it's the editors who take the heat, not the reviewers. So even if your objections are correct, it's probably still not something to fight over.
If it really bothers you, you could email the editor asking why they accepted the article in spite of your comments. If the response they give isn't satisfactory, you could refuse to review for and/or publish in this journal in the future. If it really bothers you and you feel taking retributive action against the journal is justified, you could try denouncing the paper on social media (high-level summary of what happened), but be psychologically prepared for the drama that might follow.
Alternatively, you could view the entire episode positively - hey, I can now write a paper arguing why this paper is wrong!

I do agree. But I would like to point out that so far whenever I reviewed an article, whether accepted or rejected, the editor has always informed me so. The fact that this time it didn't happen when I questioned the core of the paper makes me feel bad. Editor might have simply said that the paper is now fine and we accept it. Period.

@Peaceful does the journal use an editorial management system? If so, there's a chance that you weren't informed because of technicalities: i.e., you didn't review the last version of the paper that was accepted or rejected. I can't explain why this system is there, but it was in Editorial Manager when I last used it.

Basically if paper is submitted -> editor invites reviewers (including you) -> paper is sent for revision (you are notified)  -> paper is revised -> editor invites reviewers, but does not invite you -> paper is accepted, then you aren't notified about a final decision because you didn't review the revision. If this happened, I'd guess that the editor didn't invite you the second time because he's already made a decision that went against your judgment.

If you're wondering why the editor might not invite you if he's already made a decision that went against your judgment, I once had a reviewer who wrote something like "this paper should still be rejected, however, I note you have already decided in its favor so I don't understand why you're asking me".

"Alternatively, you could view the entire episode positively - hey, I can now write a paper arguing why this paper is wrong!". Very good point!

EDIT:  The question has been changed since this was written.
Your key misconception is that the editor needs reviewers' permission to publish a paper.  Actually, the decision to publish rests solely with the editor.
In this case, you disagree with the editor, but we do not have enough information to tell who is correct.  If you think the errors in the paper are important, then once the paper is published you may be able to submit a comment to the journal.  Do not do that before the paper is published, because for most journals you must maintain the confidentiality of peer review.

Probably I shouldn't have used the word "permission"; I know that the editor doesn't need it. However, the problems are "serious". What is the problem in convincing the referee with solid arguments instead of simply ignoring him/her?

@Peaceful if the editor disagrees with the referee, then convincing the referee with solid arguments takes time and effort but serves no useful purpose. It would be polite (but not absolutely necessary) to inform the referee of the decision, and it makes sense to ask questions to referee if their position is unclear; but if the arguments made by referee are clear to the editor but the editor intentionally chooses to act contrary to their recommendations, then why should they spend their time arguing with someone? As you say, the editor doesn't need your permission, that's their choice to make.

Any reasonably academic who cares for intellectual honesty should argue with anyone that raises serious scientific objections about a work they are editing or involved in. That is basic. At least the editor should note the referee who contributed freely to assist with the reviewing process. Indeed, it is common that editors are busy and choose the easy road of ignoring the referees. But let us not justify such intellectual laziness.

@Dilworth why should we assume that there actually are serious scientific objections? As the editor together with other reviewers (I mean, there's almost always more than one reviewer) decided to publish the paper, so apparently their majority opinion is that the paper is adequate. From the supplied description, it seems that the arguments of the lone dissenting reviewer were listened to but they did not agree with their judgement - the opinion of peers seems to be that the problems are not serious, and review process is not a debate club for some reviewers to convince others of something.

@Peteris, "why should we assume that there actually are serious scientific objections?"--- Why? Because the OP explicitly talks about objective mathematical problems. So either there are serious scientific objections, or the referee is completely unqualified and devoid of sufficient competence to review the paper. In both cases the editor made an obvious grave mistake: either they ignored serious objections or they asked a completely unqualified person to referee a work, only to ignore their review thereafter.

NB, and science, and peer-reviewing process included, is precisely a debate club, in which different arguments and counter arguments are raised in a transparent manner, and where each argument is evaluated purely on its merit and according to accepted methods of reasoning and logic, etc. Decisions about science in any serious scientific framework are made based on clear arguments, not based on authority ("I am the editor, and I decided to ignore your review!").

I had to read the first sentence a few times to figure out what you meant.  I think if you say "Your misconception is X" the standard interpretation is that "you think X but it is wrong" and not "you do not realize X," or is this just me?

tl;dr: You may want to send an email to the editor about this. Although it will not change anything about this paper, it will be a good lesson for the editor to engage in more constructive correspondence with referees who are spending a lot of effort for free to enable the existence of the journal itself, as well as to be more responsible in his/her decisions next time.
--
This is something that can and does happen in reputable and even prestigious journals. We do not have the full picture, only what you wrote, but based on my experience, I tend to believe you are correct, and the editor made a judgment that takes into account non-scientific factors such as:

Efficiency. He/She does not have time to deal with the details too much. He/she needs to make a fast decision and it's safest to let the paper in because it was on a fast pace track anyway.
Politics/Importance/Perceived-importance of papers/author. Since it was on a fast track the paper was probably important for some reason to the journal/editorial board. Maybe it gives them some prestige? Or whatever reason. The editor knew there is a reason for concern, but went with publishing it because he/she decided to ignore what they perceive as "details" that "do not take into account the whole picture", or something like that.
Possibly, the editor did a genuine decision, believing the paper merits acceptance, and that "you are just picking on the details". They may have a different view than yours, they may think that details are unimportant.

Overall, I tend to agree with your view: details are extremely important and decisions should be made based on objective merits solely as much as possible. Unfortunately, that is not how the system works.
Conclusions: You may want to fight a bit over it. I don't see it as harmful. Simply send an email to the editor to inform them that you think they made a wrong decision as long as the reviewers don't address your concerns. This will not change anything for the present paper, but for the next paper this editor will be more cautious I assume. He/she may be a bit pissed off by your email, but so be it.

There is a slightly different scenario in which it may be useful to contact the editor, which is if it appears that your review was never even sent to the authors.
I know someone who reviewed a paper, she sent the review, but when the paper was accepted there was no evidence they had taken notice of it at all.  She contacted the editor, who then found out that her review had never been sent to the authors in the first place.  The editor profusely apologised to all parties involved, retracted the acceptance, asked the authors to revise taking into account her review, which they then did.

As others have already said, it is up to the editor to decide if a paper gets published or not. That being said, I have been in the same situation before, and to be honest, it is extremely annoying to carefully write a review - I usually put more care into reviews where I recommend rejection than reviews of good papers - only to have it dismissed by the editor.
My solution to the problem was simple. I stopped accepting referee requests from that journal, and submit my own work elsewhere. Since it is a well known mid-tier journal in my field, collaborators ask me why I don't want to submit there, and I tell them the story.

I don't even think there would be a problem with submitting your own work there. The journal is inviting submissions, you're the boss of how you decide to allocate your reviewing time -- there's no genuine problem with submitting in a journal you wouldn't want to review for.

The reason I don't submit there, is simply because I will rather not publish somewhere that a) does not take referee time seriously, and b) publish what I this are sub-par articles.

This isn't something to fight over.  The editor made an editorial decision based upon your review, other reviews, and whatever the editorial policies and goals of the journal are.  This is the proper editorial role.
As to what you can do -- you have the option of doing nothing, you can counter the problems in the paper in a paper of your own, if it's appropriate to do so, you can write a letter to the editor (I'd recommend doing this in the role of a reader of the paper, and not a referee, which would be inappropriate) -- in other words, you would do exactly what you would do if you had nothing to do with the reviewing process and read a paper you had issues with.
Lastly, if you were really offended by the process, you might consider whether or not you'd accept review request from that journal or that particular editor ever again.  There's certainly a "cut-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face" aspect to effectively taking your ball and going home that might negatively impact you in the long run to turning down reviews, especially if you make the reason for that action known to the editor, but it might help you make your point.

Why not voice your concerns with the review in the role of the referee? This might get the most complete explanation from the editor (for example that other referees had a different stance on it)

@eckes -- IMO, the editor simply does not owe the reviewer an explanation.  Pursuing correction/explanation/satisfaction through the review process will be less than fruitful.  Push comes to shove, it makes very little difference whether the other reviewers had a different stance on it, or if the editor overruled all the referees, or whether the editor generated a random number to come up with a decision.   Requesting more information about the editorial decision is something for authors who have been rejected do, not something referees do.

I think an editor and a publication owe someone who is doing work for free respect and transparency.

@eckes yes, an editor does owe the referee respect, and will probably answer such a request very politely -- though it remains pointless.  The referee has already voiced his concerns about the paper -- in the original review.  Perhaps the concerns were not expressed clearly enough.  That would be on the referee, who can use the experience to better frame reviews, if this is the case.  Most journals (including all the journals I've ever reviewed for) provide all the referees with all the reviews, and if this isn't the case with this journal, requesting the reviews is certainly not out of line).

Why is it pointless? Obviously the OP cares about the effort they invested in the review that the journal requested of them -- the journal don't owe them explanations, but acknowledging the effort isn't pointless, it's just basic decency.

I don't think it's worth fighting over this, in the sense that it's the editor's choice to disregard your comments and publish the article. And I don't think you should care -- if the article is bogus, it will be the author and the journal's problem, not yours.
I do think it is very disrespectful to ask for someone's time to review something, and then ignore their feedback without keeping them posted. No matter the merits of your comments, no matter all the good reasons there might be to overturn them, at the very least the journal should have informed you about their choice of publishing the article nevertheless. Sadly it is pretty common that reviewers don't hear back after sending reviews, but this does not make it acceptable.
If you feel upset about this, I would suggest writing to the editor and express your surprise about not being informed about the outcome of the feedback that you sent. I wouldn't argue about the article's quality (it's probably too late to debate this) but simply ask whether they believe it is OK to take someone's feedback and summarily ignore it. This gives the journal a chance to clear up possible problems (e.g., forgot to send your comments to the author, forgot to inform you, etc.), and to apologize if they screwed up.
And if you are not satisfied with the journal's handling of this, you can simply decline further invitations to review for them -- or even block them and not bother replying to them. Reviewing is volunteer work, so you are free to decide how and for whom you want to do it. Some people in your research community might pressure you about doing reviews for your community's venues, especially if you submit your work for publication there (see e.g. this question), so you might need to hold your ground. In my opinion, though, this is bogus, and allocating your review time to the right venues is a completely legitimate way to push academic practices in the right direction.

Although it is not specifically helpful here, remember that publishing is only the first stage in peer-review, broadly conceived.
You've done due diligence trying to fix things before they make it to the broader world (perhaps you should have argued for rejection initially?). But this isn't the only poorly done science out there: try not to amplify those signals by being careful about what you cite.
Ideally, every paper is perfect and sound in all ways. But, given a flawed paper, there is also a question of whether some subset of the paper --- the core idea, perhaps --- might have value to the community. What you saw is disqualifying mathematical issues may not have been the part of the work the editor saw as valuable.

As a reviewer, you are an advisor to the editor.  You are NOT a gatekeeper.  You are not the editor.  Not the author of the paper.  As an author, I may refuse to make a change that you advise.  It is then up to the editor to decide if he will side with me or with you.
Even if you think you are right, you still have to allow the editor to make his own decisions.  And realize some percentage of the time, you will disagree with them.  It is his magazine.  And it's the author's byline.
I advise not to get to over-invested in a particular publication incident.  There are some questionable papers published.  And there are some good papers that get stifled.  It's not a perfect funnel.

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


text:
Publishing a high-quality indexed book retaining copyright
Two colleagues and I would like to publish a book, and we're surveying our options for the publishing company. Throughout discussions, it became clear that all these items are important to us:

Retain the copyright so we can use our work for whatever we want (for publishing new papers, create a revision of the book, share some of the material with students);
We will produce a print-ready document using LaTeX, and although the resulting pdf would be ready, it would also be nice to have digital ebook versions (.mobi, .epub) so that people can also read the book in iPad and the like;
We would like to have the book indexed by Scopus and similar databases so at least we get citations for the book (we're not interested in royalties. This means that the book has to be associated with a DOI;
The quality of the final print should be good, so that our hard work doesn't get obfuscated by poor choice of paper quality, lack of color images, an ugly cover, etc.

We have had some interactions with major publishers, and although they can accommodate to a large extent our demands, it seems their contracts are crafted in such a way that we don't really get what we want. In addition, it's very unlikely to get some of our demands with them (for instance, color images in the printed book). I would appreciate any suggestions on selecting a publisher with those points above as paramount.

I can say more about self-publishing if you consider it an option.

I'll note that some of your needs (color, paper,...) drive up the cost of a  book and possibly drive down sales as a result. Publishers understand these things, hence their reluctance.

Check out https://r4ds.had.co.nz/ and https://moderndive.com/ both are open source stats textbooks that also sell dead tree copies through publishers as a possible example of what you could do.

@Buffy self-publishing is not an option because of the workload (as you suggested). Regarding color images, are there any publishers that allow for this?

I think most will if you convince them of the necessity. But it increases production costs since color compatible paper is not the same and so needs to be inserted, unless the whole book is on some special paper, hugely increasing material cost. It is a pretty hard sell. Some books have a section (one "signature", say, about 16 pages) that is glossy paper suitable for high quality graphics.

"color images in the printed book" -> "high price for the printed book"; it helps if you can settle for Buffy's suggestion: 16 pages at the center of the book where all the color images are placed.

One outside possibility is self publishing, though (a) it is a lot of work and (b) unless you are well connected to potential readers it will have little impact. There will be no marketing effort other than what you do, though there is little such for a lot of publishers in any case. Amazon, for example, has a subsidiary that helps with this, as do some other sellers.
Some publishers will let you keep copyright (perhaps jointly) but normally only for the superstars in the field with a long publishing history. At a minimum you would need to give them a license that satisfies them. Probably an exclusive license for some things. They want to cover their risk, as is natural if unsatisfying for authors.
But many more publishers, taking your copyrights, will give you back a license to your work that, if carefully worked out, will let you do pretty much what you want other than take it to another publisher. That may be your best bet. Think hard about what you might want to do in the future and get those things enshrined in a license.
But some of what you want is normal. New editions are actually expected for some work (textbooks especially). And cover art and such reflects on the publisher as well as the authors so may not be a big problem.
And while you say you will produce LaTex or such, you really want a copy editor to go over your book. That is one of the hardest things to arrange in self publishing. You need at least some independent readers of the book to give you feedback. Publishers normally pass this task to seasoned reviewers even before copy editors get a look.


text:
How do citations get counted for a book and for an electronic book?
I am very curious to learn how citation engines work for both books and ebooks. I assume that these computer engines (Scopus, the web of science, Google scholar) take the bibliographic data from papers, review articles and books, and somehow get a unique identifier for each bibliographic entry. Then they associate a counter to each unique identifier, and this counter is increased by one every time a citation is made. I'm speculating here as I'm by no means an expert. But if this is the case, then what happens for a book that is both in paper and electronic version? How is this unique identifier created (is it by the ISBN or by the DOI)?

I am not sure why you are so much interested in citations instead of reputation. The latter is much more important for a scientific career than the former. You may gain academic reputation for a great online resource without a DOI/ISBN even without any entry in Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed, whatever…

The answer varies with the service you use. I only know something about two services:

Google scholar: It crawls the web to get a database of publications and citations (and it often counts something as publication which is not one, e.g. slides, lists of presentations…). I guess (but I am not sure) it also gets formatted data from publishers. It tries to identify similar publications (I have no idea how this is done precisely) and it also relies on user input (you can identify two things as the same by yourself if you have a verfied account and Google thinks that you are an author). In my experience, the database Google scholar is quite messy. Wrongly identified authors, lots of non-publications, double or missing citations.
MathSciNet is a service for publications in mathematics run by the American Mathematical Society. It gets data from the publishers and imports it automatically into their database. It has people to check the database, to identify duplicates (very rare, basically only reprints), to keep different authors with same names different and to identify authors who appear under different names or spellings. This is done by hand and also uses user input. As GEdgar points out: MathSciNet is very accurate and pretty fast to fix things.

In my experience, MathSciNet is (unlike Google Scholar) very accurate.  And that is one reason MathSciNet subscriptions cost lots of money, but Google Scholar is free.

@GEdgar Sure! I added this addition information to the answer.


text:
Leaving PhD program to apply for industry job - better to apply while still officially enrolled?
I am going into the fourth year of a PhD program and my research, which is in a STEM field, has clear applications in the tech industry.
I have my Master's degree, but have decided not to finish the PhD.
Is it important to be enrolled while applying for jobs rather than be unemployed?  Will the people hiring view me differently?
Note: being enrolled brings some significant demands on my time.

Well, if you were not enrolled in your PhD program, what would you be doing with your time?  Something that gets you paid?  Does your PhD have a stipend?  I don't have much direct experience here, but if the difference is "still [paid to be] a PhD student" versus "no employment or income", then unless you're doing something amazingly valuable in your free time, I would say to stay in the program.  Why not?

Also: if you've done three years of a PhD in a STEM field, then unless you've been making very unsatisfactory progress you could probably get a "minimalist PhD" in another year or two.  In some industry jobs, having a PhD would be worth the extra year or two of trouble (and in some it wouldn't, but if you are trying to keep your options open...) Have you spoken to your advisor about your plans to leave?

@PeteLClark, the plan would be to just spend the time applying to jobs, networking, and preparing myself (like writing some open-source code I could show).  The money's not an issue - I have a small stipend which is negligible compared to what I'll probably get with an industry job and I have savings from before my PhD to live for at least 6 months.  My only concern is how it'll be viewed by prospective employers - if they don't care, then I would stop now.

Yes, I've discussed with my advisor and he has no flexibility on the requirements for graduation.  He estimated approximately another 2 years, but since research has been progressing very slowly in my lab, that could easily turn into 3 years.

Every academic has applied for the next job during her current job several times at least, so it doesn't seem implausible that you could do much or all of what you want while you're still gainfully employed.  "I have a small stipend which is negligible compared to what I'll probably get with an industry job" Well, I don't know you, but statements like that make me nervous: in case you hadn't noticed, times are tough.  I wouldn't advise someone to give up a paycheck in expectation of a future job.  But this not an academic issue and I'm no financial expert.

As I said, I don't know the answer to your key question (hence comments rather than answers).  But I suspect it has got to make you look at least a little more desirable to be employed rather than un-. (I know that's true for academic jobs.)  I don't know how much notice you have to give your advisor: maybe you could try to take a "leave of absence" for a couple of months and use that to look for a job?  In that case, you're not exploiting your university and you still get to look like a gainfully employed PhD student.  (And you have a fall-back if things don't work out like you thought.)

Also: is there anyone in your program who wants you to graduate?  Maybe you could switch to someone else with a more goal-oriented style.  In my part of academia, a key departmental statistic is the completion rate for PhD students, and almost any student who has passed their exams can find someone who wants to get them through.

@PeteL.Clark, thanks! That's an interesting idea about being on Leave of Absence.  Do you think that being on Leave of Absence, I can still represent myself (on my resume and in interviews) as being a current graduate student, rather than unemployed?

If you are on a leave of absence, then I think that you are still a graduate student, but obviously you should check to see that your university views things the same way.  You certainly shouldn't withhold this information from prospective employers: if anyone asks, you should say that you are taking a break to explore nonacademic jobs (i.e., the truth!).  I honestly don't know whether you need to list such a status on a resume.  That may also depend on how such things are viewed by your university; in any case, it is worth talking to others about.

Being unemployed can significantly decrease your likelihood of successfully landing a job. The preceeding link is one of many stories covering that angle. The best graph describing how bad it is comes from this Atlantic article:

The upshot of most of these is that employers have a psychological bias towards employed people. Whether this is "fair" or "appropriate" or even "smart" not is really not the question, the finding is pretty difficult to refute: you are far more likely to land a job if you are currently gainfully employed.
To bring this back to your original question, I would strongly recommend you begin your job search before you leave the program.

I don't disagree, but I have to wonder about the old correlation versus causation here. To state the obvious, people without a job are likely less employable (on average) than people that currently have a job. It would be interesting to see statistics about people that had voluntarily left their previous position.

@DougLipinski - Your statement is based on the assumption that termination was performance-related, rather than large-scale layoffs. With the previous recession almost all job cuts were layoffs, where highly skilled people were just let go. Read the Atlantic article, it's fascinating.

Thanks, in the end, I decided to take @PeteLClark's advice (see comment section) of applying for a Leave of Absence.  I confirmed with my university's career services office that I can indeed consider myself a current graduate student while on Leave of Absence and thus not face the stigma of being unemployed.

Is it important to be enrolled while applying for jobs rather than be unemployed?

I'll answer this question from different point of views: your potential employers and yourself.
From your potential employers’ point of view, it does not matter. What matters is your immediate availability. Most companies prefer their new hires to start to work immediately. Once they make a job offer, they would like to see you in the office like today so that they can start to train you. They don't like to hear excuses like: I have some unfinished project, I am in the middle of writing a paper, I need to go to a conference next month, etc.
So, you need to indicate on somewhere such as your resume, cover letter or during the interview that you'll be immediately available. This will increase your chances to be hired. If you cannot be immediately available for some reason, you need to provide a definite time frame when you'll be able to start.
From your own point of view, you'd better keep enrolled. Job hunting can be a long shot. It can be only a few weeks if you are lucky. It can be a year or even longer if you are not lucky. Waiting for job interview and job offer can drive you crazy. You'll have things to do while you are waiting. You also can change your mind on finishing PhD if you still have some uncertainty about going to industry.
If you are absolutely sure you want to go to industry, then you should take bfoste01's idea, do internship. You can get into industry faster this way.
Good luck on job hunting. Academia will miss you!

And I will add that, even if you find a job offer, in some companies the hiring process is very lengthy: several interviews spanning across two or three months before they make the final decision. And you have to eat in the meantime.

@Davidmh Exactly. They may take two or three months to call you, and then drag the process on for months.

First, immediate availability is not always important (some are happy to hire for months in advance). Second, maybe OP can finish PhD position immediately (it was not said); and being a student may be beneficial over being unemployed. Third, I have no idea why do you suggest an internship, if OP's goal is not to test the waters or gain experience, but get job in industry (if he absolutely wants to go to industry, an internship may be the worst option). So: -1 for (IMHO) a bad piece of advice.

@PiotrMigdal I did say "This will increase your chances to be hired". I did not say every company wants immediate availability. If the OP did say he is close to finishing PhD, my advice will be to finish it before looking for job. Internship can let OP gain experience which is one of the key factors for the OP to get an industry job. I am not sure why you said it's the worst option. Finally, I am not advising the OP to quit PhD immediately. On the contrary, my main tone is to stay in PhD program. But, he needs to know what to say in his resume and during the job interview.

Be careful with internships, a lot of them end up being you working for free with no expectation of a full-time job because free work. Do not take an unpaid internship, and do as much research on GlassDoor and with the current employees/interns as you can.

Interesting point about internships vs jobs.  Of course, I would prefer a job but I also have no work experience.  I think that would be a good question to post, maybe I will do that.

I would apply for jobs now, while you are enrolled in the PhD program. Talk to your professors and develop a network. Ask for contact information of any of the individuals they know in industry. Send an cover letter with your CV and application, and be sure to mention your research's specific application to the job in the cover letter. Through this, companies sense that you are very meticulous and detail-oriented, and see how your skill in research could carry over to its products.

Thanks for advice, that'll be helpful.  But my real question is about how being a current graduate student vs. unemployed will affect my applications.  Could you elaborate on why you think it's important to be enrolled?

@Zephyrus Just my opinion, but applying while enrolled might help show you're not just a slacker who quit their Ph.D. and is now searching for something to do because you got hungry. Caveat: I'm not in HR.

I think Scaahu has given a very nice overview of the situation, but to easy your mind: job search takes time, but you have to eat every day. Thus, no company can expect you to be unemployed to be eligible for hiring.
The only reason I can think of why not having a job would make you more desirable is your full availability; but if you have decided to leave, you can just do it (please, talk with your advisor well in advance, so they are ready, though).
And lastly, if you have a job, you have a leverage point. For a starter, you can ask for a salary that is, at least, as much as you are getting now. Another disadvantage of quitting is that you will have to live on your savings or benefits, and they are limited; thus you will have pressure to accept whatever job you can find in that time. If you keep your present job, you can wait longer until you find something you really want to work with.

Great point about leverage.  Being unemployed makes you look more desperate and reduces your bargaining power for salary/benefits.

Great points, although I can't imagine any employer offering me a salary that's lower than I'm currently making as a grad student.  If I can't get a better salary, I'm just going to give up on civilization and live off the land.

@Zephyrus right, grad students are usually not rich. Think of the rest of the conditions that you have and that may be good to have in the new job: flexible hours, days off...

@Zephyrus: This answer will be too long to comment. A lot will depend on your history.
Some context for you to make sure I'm not just blowing wind: My fiancés company: Biotech, fast growing, successful rounds of funding have brought a product to market, turned down offers to sell. My fiancé: Decade of experience in STEM industry.
Here's what I've seen matter in all my conversations with he Senior Scientist there, as well as my fiancé:

It's about the match of your skills with the needs of the company. I've seen them let 4 people go in the last year who were super competent, but had very specific skill-sets that were no longer needed by the company. If there is a clear match between your skills and the company's needs then +1. However, if you have very specific skills that can be a detriment in your marketability.
Advanced degrees aren't always an asset. In startups a really smart person with a B.S. and years of industry experience can become a staff scientist. It's better for the company. Same can be said for and M.S. In fact, most of the senior scientist have advised junior staff who are looking at grad school to just get their M.S. and get back into industry. If you're the highest paid person at a startup you better be value added on all fronts. So, depending on your degree this could all matter.
Length of unemployment matters. If you are living in an area where there is a vibrant STE community and you've been unemployed a long time people will wonder. It's always a necessity to make sure people can vouch for you within the community, and this might help. Hopefully you aren't jumping ship from grad school without contacts in industry.
If you were competent but not a rock-star, skills that fit, unemployed for a short period, had some people that could vouch for you then they'd contract you for 6 months. Show your worth and you'll get a salaried position and options (but stock options aren't alway what they are cracked up to be). You'd be in a good position to negotiate that offer if you have shown value added. However, point also depends on the phase of the startup. Now that this startup has grown and has a product shipping they contract everyone first. My fiancé came in after series B and had the perfect experience that fit with the job requirements, some heavies that vouched for her, and passed the interview with flying colors. She was contracted shorter than 6 months, and I think offered a full-time position after a month. So, get ready for the potential that you are working a contract, which obviously lacks security.
Now if you took the same situation outlined above, were still a student but had demonstrated that you would be a real rockstar with the perfect match of skills to the job then they might make you a better offer to try and lure you out, but the offer would never be as good as what a scientist with proven industry would receive.

This might all be different for a massive industry conglomerate.
I hope that helps.

It probably will depend on where you interview in terms of how your status will be received, and what that would mean for a job offer. My fiancé works in a STEM startup that has been taking off, and I've had the luxury of chatting with many of the senior scientists about hiring whenever they are looking for people (it's a fun work culture where everyone and their SOs go out for drinks after work and chat). Anyways, in two instances a Ph.D. student working at the company on their internship was so talented that they tried to make each a job offer before they left. In one instance the conversation turned to what it would take to get that individual to leave their program and come work. In the other instance, and before the internship started, the University made the student and company sign a legal document that essentially said, "whatever said student works on in the lab during internship period becomes is owned by the University" (this was one of the top 5 schools in the US, you can imagine what one). Therefore, the company backed off because of patents.
In other instances students have applied for open positions at the company and if their resume garnered a look they then got an interview. However, if they weren't rock stars the company was not willing to lure them away from being a grad student by giving them a higher salary. Therefore, there was the perception by the company that they needed someone who could work now, and a student didn't seem to cut it.
Do you have an internship period at all? That's when I plan to explore offers to see what my skills are worth.

Thanks, that's helpful.  But how would this particular startup have treated the application for an internship from someone with an unemployed status?

@Zephyrus I think the take away from a lot of these answers (and comments) is: it is better to line up an internship/contracting position/full-time job offer before quitting your PhD program.

Yes, or be certain about your network. I'm actually in a similar boat, but very different field. I'm spending this year expanding my network, internship will probably come at the end of next spring, and if all goes well I will be exploring offers after internship. I've grown a bit tired of academia.

Well, to address the part where you want a comparison on enrolled vs. unemployed. It is always better to not to have to answer the questions about being unemployed. You don't want to look like you were doing nothing for quite some time. Interviewers usually aren't impressed enough by candidates that have a few years that weren't mentioned on the resume anywhere, be prepared to reason that effectively. And you don't know how soon you are going to find a job. If you continue your PhD and look for a job in the meantime, you have an excuse "I got a good job and hence left the PhD", which brings us to yet another point to ponder upon...
Let's say you quit your PhD(which you could actually officially finish in a year or two), apply for some jobs, interview and finally land into one. You work there for some time, but your progress starts plateauing. Now you realize that for a higher position they require a PhD(which you quit, remember?). At that stage, you might wish that you hadn't quit but you did, and now it might be the bane of your professional progress.
Think of these things in the long run... no one knows what the future holds...

Here's what you do.  You request a "leave of absence" from the University for personal reasons.  That way you can say you're still a student, but not obligated to take classes during that period.

Yes, I think this is the best answer.  You probably didn't in the long list of comments, but PeteLClark had the same idea.  Thanks!

I was in a similar situation. In my case, I wanted to have some/full break from academia. My ph.d is almost done, only public defence is pending. I had to decide whether to stay in the academia or move to the industry?
Here is my approach; I personally like building stuff and therefore biased towards the industry. I have enjoyed the time in academia but might not be able to keep myself motivated for long. Thus, I thought, either I move now or otherwise it will be too late. I am already 31 and its now or never kind of situation for me. So, I decided to move out as I found a job. The search still in progress for like 4 months now, had few interviews and perhaps land on a job in a month.
First rule, be honest to your university and supervisor. I informed my supervisor right away that I am looking for opportunities outside the university and will leave as I get one. He was very supportive and also offered to help me in making CV etc. It is quite normal to take this path, academia to industry, for a ph.d student.
You should ask yourself, "Do I like industry?" if Yes then go for it, in a reasonable fashion. Stay at the university, find a job and then move out :)


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Practical Aspects of Workshop Organization
I'm surprised I couldn't find any similar question. Please mark as duplicate if you know one.
What are the practical aspects one should not overlook when organizing a (small) workshop?
Organizing a small (~ less than 50 participants, on one day) workshop includes taking care of a lot of small details that I feel are easy to forget, and yet crucial (easy Wifi access, parking spots, break room, collecting information during registration, etc.)
What is your "to-do" list when you're in charge of organizing a gathering of that kind? What are the nice finishing touches (having work room available, creating a web forum for the attendees, etc.)?


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Suggesting edits in recommendation letter
I asked a professor months earlier for a recommendation letter for a summer school, he accepted but in turn, he asked me to draft my own recommendation letter, I did that since I was only applying for summer school that usually admits most students. Now, I asked the same professor for a recommendation letter for a prestigious research internship application. And he sent me the attached letter with these words-
"I have attached please check whether I had made any mistake in your accomplishments. If it is ok for you let me know I will upload  it."
Now since it's a prestigious research internship, I am not satisfied with the letter. Some of the statements are even copied from the previous LOR that I have drafted for him about myself, he only listed the things I have done so far that too without much emphasizing those points which make me a better candidate for doing research work like my previous projects, and there are spelling mistakes too. Should I point these things out in reply mail and ask him to edit? What should I do?

I think it is OK to ask for some changes, but don't be too demanding. If the parts he copied from the previous LOR are true, there is nothing wrong with that.
I would say something like: "Thank you. There are no mistakes in my list of accomplishments, but this is a prestigious research internship that is more competitive than the summer school. Would it be possible for you to write a sentence or two about my work on projects A and B, or some points that might make me a strong candidate? (There are a few spelling mistakes: ...)" Then finish with some other expression of gratitude.


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Is it a good idea to explore other field of research when you are sure of your interested area?
I am currently pursuing master's in Physics. In my university, there aren't many professors in my field of interest i.e. Astrophysics, the professors whose work I was interested in, declined me the project cause I asked them late. So, I joined another professor, telling him that I am interested in Astrophysics and want to do project in Fluid Dynamics. He accepted and offered me one, that have application of fluid dynamics in biophysics. I thought this since fluid dynamics is used in Astrophysics studies as well, and in my topic of interest i.e. star formation and galaxy dynamics.
Now, I am pretty sure for now, I want to go into Astrophysics. My question is for higher studies what ways could doing a master's thesis in a topic other than interest, hinder my chances of getting PhD admission?
If cons, what could I do to improve my chances?
And if pros, please list them.
I started my project a month ago.

There are lots of interesting areas of research. In a typical career you are unlikely to work in one small area for 30-40 years. Learn to appreciate other areas.

@JonCuster But masters thesis is important for PhD admissions, it being competitive, it should be chosen carefully. And my area of interest is Astrophysics, and one I end up working is Biophysics, both are broad.

You have been wise to be a bit flexible, yielding to circumstances. If you do well in your current work and maintain flexibility going forward you will probably continue to do well.
When it comes time to apply for doctoral programs, don't be so insistent on a narrow field (though "astrophysics" is broad enough, though "star formation" seems narrow to me, a non expert) that you limit your chances. If the program you are in gives you the research skills applicable to a variety of fields then you are in a good position. You can, over a career, change your research direction.
But you have to do well along the way and be in a position where supervisors are willing to support your future plans.


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Referencing someone else's Appendix with news articles URLs, or putting the links in my own appendix?
I am referencing someone else's work, specifically an Appendix which contains ~100 news article URLs. For example, "bla bla bla (Author, Appendix A, article 5)". The reason I do this, is simply to avoid duplication. If someone needs to know the article URL, they can simply check the appendix in the reference work.
However, at the same time, one should generally try to cite primary sources in academia, and also the article was not written by the Author but by a news site, so from this point of view it would be better to include the article URLs in my own appendix, would it not ?

What if the reference work is unavailable to your future readers? You should always cite the primary source if you have it.

This depends on the level of abstraction. If you reference a more general claim (a synthesis of parts of the appendix), it might be better to reference the appendix as a whole. If you reference a very specific claim, you should reference the primary source (after double-checking its pertinence). An example hopefully makes this clear:
Specific claim:

In mid-April 2021, the Danish government decided to stop the rollout
of AstraZeneca vaccines (bbc.com 2021).
bbc.com, 15 April 2021, "AstraZeneca vaccine: Denmark stops rollout
completely", https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56744474, accessed
19 April 2021.

General claim, assuming that the appendix contains various relevant sources related to Covid-19 vaccination policy, on which the following can be based:

Reports of rare blood-clots subsequent to vaccinations with
AstraZeneca triggered discussions in various countries about the risks
and benefits of suspending the use of the vaccine (see Smith 2021,
Appendix A).


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Are these good reasons for starting a new PhD project?
If have just finished the first year of my PhD studies in mathematics at a German university. After my master's, which I have done in representation theory, I had started a PhD in a more applied field, partly because my current supervisor pointed to the necessity for knowledge in representation theory in his field. However, I have been feeling disappointed since almost the beginning. The reasons are as follows:

For the problems I work on, my supervisor can barely act as an advisor. He has almost no expertise in what he asks me to do. If I talk to him about a point where I have no clue how to proceed, I have to explain basic material to him instead of obtaining useful hints.
He is unwilling or unable to provide me with suggestions on what to try, whom to ask, what to read etc. Probably, I should be able to do all these things on my own. In the case that the expectation is that I should state my research questions, find helpful material, and solve them completely without any advise, I am suspecting that I am not apt for pursuing a PhD.
There is also no vivid exchange between me and the other PhD students. This is mostly due to the fact that my supervisor has hired students from completely different backgrounds to work on very unrelated problems, which only have in common that he is no expert in any of the fields he has hired students from. However, when talking to my colleagues, it seems that I am the only one suffering from this isolation.
It is hard for me to spot and solve problems completely on my own. When starting my PhD, I had hoped for an opportunity to learn new things. Until now, I haven't learned anything. That I have my background in a different field does not make things easier, but I think that I would also struggle in my original field if I constantly have no one to talk to.
The social climate in the group is quite cold, also apart from talking about mathematics. Again, my colleagues seem to be fine with this solitude. This is fine, and, to be honest, I actually envy them for not needing exchange, company or just some chatting about what they do. I have the impression that I cannot live that way, which more and more seems like a deficiency to me.

These are the reasons why I have applied for two opened PhD positions I have found in January, both in representation theory. Contrary to my expectations, both have offered me the position. However, I hesitate to accept one of these positions because:

How can I be certain that I am good enough for these positions? Yes, they have judged my application, based on a talk I gave there and based on what I wrote in my master's thesis, they are experienced professors, but how can I be certain that I am good, creative, persevering etc. enough?
How can I be certain that the reason for my distress is not my working group, professor etc., but my lack of aptitude for doing a PhD? Shouldn't I be able to work independently, without the need for talking to others about what I do? Shouldn't I know of my own which questions I want and can work on?
How can I be certain that I will feel better if I start a new project?

Apart from these work-related questions, other aspects that make me hesitate are:

If I quit, I will be 31 or 32 when I finish the new project.
Exchanging a PhD on applied questions from a well-known university for a purely abstract PhD at some less-known university does not sound like a good thing to do with your CV.
For a PhD, the salary and other benefits I obtain know are perfect. This could not be any better and would certainly degrade if I quit.
Arriving in a new town, getting to know new people etc. has always put a lot of pressure on me. It has always taken me monthsto get to make new friends  after having moved to somewhere else.

I am aware that I should try not to take these aspects into account, but I have mentioned them for completeness.
Question: How can I take a good decision?

You have made it too personal to give good answers here. And too many questions. Decisions are your own.

Is it possible to change advisors at your current university? I am not familiar with German practices on this matter.

There are dozens of parameters that seem to be influencing this decision. I will try to touch on a few points as best as I am able:

Coming up with a PhD topic is hard for a lot of PhD students. This is a common feeling; it does not mean you cannot succeed as a PhD student.
How does representation theory relate to your current subject? Are there papers connecting the two subjects? If so, what do they say? If not, can you discover a link between the two subjects (representation theory and applied?) Your advisor seems to think there is a link. What is that link? (These are questions I would be asking myself as a way to try and discover a dissertation direction).
Graduate students are sometimes distant with one another. They all have their own projects to be doing. That's the reality. I would look for social connections outside of your department if necessary.
It may be easier to change advisors internally, if possible, than switching universities. Being from the US, I have no idea how feasible this is in your case.
In my opinion, passion for your subject is overrated as a PhD student. Graduate students I have advised are rarely deeply passionate about our research. But they realize that it is 4-5 years of learning and thinking about a subject in order to develop the ability to perform independent research.
I work at a national lab in the US now. No one cares about the topic of my PhD (probability theory). My master's degree was in representation theory. I never use these topics in my current work. But I've proven that I can think about math and statistics, and I use these skills in my job now as a researcher. I do not know your goals (academia or industry), but industry usually only cares if you have a PhD in a generally relevant field and if you can program. It is that binary.
Being in your early 30s when you finish a PhD is somewhat normal. There is nothing magical about being 27 and having a PhD. It just means that you have to start going to a full time job earlier in life. If your finances are in okay shape, finishing a PhD at 32 is not the end of the world.
We speak of a PhD being able to do "independent research." This does not mean you never need help or collaboration. I have a PhD. I collaborate with other researchers. Sometimes I come up with an idea, sometimes they do. And some of their ideas blow my mind--I would never have thought of them in a millions years.
Being honest, it sounds like your advisor may not be the best advisor on the planet. At least not for your case. Some students really like a hands off advisor, some do not. Both types of PhD students exist and both are successful. Changing universities to get to a better advisor position may not be as huge of a deal as you think. It might actually make your work more enjoyable.