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Professor seemingly threatens students with incomplete grade because TA has not turned in their grade?
I am writing this question on behalf of a friend, Alice. Alice is in a US based university working towards earning her Master's of Science in Nursing. This semester, Alice was enrolled in lecture based class with a corresponding clinical class. That is, she worked 250 clinical hours with a nurse practitioner essentially as an unpaid internship. There are multiple instructors for the course, but the main professor Dr. M, oversees both of the courses. She has various TAs (called advisors, they seem to be a few steps above a TA) who oversee subsets of the students. They are tasked with helping with questions, mostly about the clinical process.
The semester has come and gone, grades were due on Sunday, it is now Tuesday. Alice does not have a grade for the clinical course. Dr. M sends an email to Alice's TA and CC's the students she oversees, the email reads as (I don't have access to the exact text, but it was extremely close to this):

Dear TA, It has come to my attention that you have not submitted
grades for these students. Grades were due Sunday. You have until the
close of business today to submit grades. If you do not submit grades,
these students will receive an Incomplete for the course.  Dr. M

My question is, what should Alice do about this? It is now Wednesday morning with no response.

"There is no perceivable action for students to take to correct this," If they receive an incomplete they would know what may have caused it, and proceed accordingly, instead of panicking about what they may or may not have done.

Actually this is an attempt to put pressure on the TA. Also a bit of explaining why they are not at fault.

I expect the downvotes are due to the length of this -- I recommend you [edit] your post to remove unnecessary detail.

I have taken the liberty to make the edit. @KDecker: You can reverse it if you do not agree.

@Louic - thanks for the clean-up! Note, however, that two of the existing answers quoted from the now-deleted text. "Breaking" the existing answers is sometimes unavoidable, but it's worth trying to avoid if possible.

This is an email from the PI to the TA.
A copy was sent to the students for information.
Alice should do nothing, this is between the PI and the TA.
Clearly, the PI is already aware of the consequences for the students if the TA does not do their job. The PI is trying to solve the problem by stressing this urgency in their email to the TA. Sending a copy to all the students further emphasises this urgency and informs the students about what is going on.

Probably also worth it to Alice to check the policies on "incomplete" grades at their institution; almost certainly if a grade is incomplete because of a TA's error, this will be easily changed to an appropriate final grade administratively. It may be particularly inconvenient for students approaching graduation or needing a transcript immediately, but this isn't something the university is going to just drop the ball on and leave students in a bad place. Agreed, this is just a very firm nudge to the TA.

The "darker" side of me, somewhat involved in the situation and really not a big fan of Dr. M. by any means, would like Alice to respond to the email ensuring to CC all students along with the graduate program director to bring it to their attention. Alice would respond along the lines of "I am very nonplussed by this situation. I am unsure why the students have been involved in this administrative issue that we have no control over. Is this situation resolved, and if not, when will it be resolved? I would like further explanation as to why we may be receiving and incomplete for the quarter when we completed all clinical hours."

DO NOT DO THIS under any circumstances. This behavior is rude at all levels. When people do this sort of thing in an office setting; everyone in the office will remember this person forever. They won't remember Dr. M, or what the email was about, but they will remember Alice and will want to stay as far away from her as possible. It's an instant reputation builder, in the worst way.
My first advice would be to be patient; the people who need to know (TA, professor) already know, Alice was CC'd on this as an update and courtesy. The school isn't going to let this status quo stand indefinitely.
If Alice has some immediate need for this grade to be posted, such as if this is threatening timely graduation, the very most I would do is to email only the professor, politely, and ask for an update. If Alice knows she really needs the grade resolved by some future date, include that date. No accusations, no demands, just a polite request that makes sure everyone is aware it's still an issue.
It's worth considering that there are many reasons a TA may go briefly missing and be difficult to contact, and those include things that are far more important than Alice's grade in this course: the TA could be ill or injured, or dealing with an ill or injured family member, for example. These things will definitely get sorted out in time, so there is no need for Alice to get aggressive or blame or escalate.

Alice should wait.
Does any one of these options communicate any further information to the PI? No. The PI is surely aware that the students are unhappy and stressed out about this.
Is the PI sitting on some hidden piece of information that they are unwilling to share with students? Probably not. The situation is clear, namely that Dr. M has no way to assign grades to students if they do not actually have the grades.
If the PI is sitting on some hidden piece of information that he is unwilling to share with students, will Alice's email induce him to share it with her? Certainly not.
"The first thing to discuss is whether Dr. M used a poor choice of wording here and/or was too short in the explanation." Are you actually interested in discussing Dr. M's choice of words? No, presumably you are interested in making sure that Alice gets her grade.
"There is no perceivable action for students to take to correct this." You are absolutely right, so why are you trying to come up with a perceivable action for Alice to take in order to correct this?
"I would like further explanation as to why we may be receiving and incomplete for the quarter when we completed all clinical hours." What kind of further explanation do you imagine there to be, beyond the fact that as a consequence of the TA not providing the grades (for reasons we can only speculate about), Dr. M does not actually have the grades at hand to enter them into the system?
This does not appear to be an actual request for further explanation, but simply an expression of frustration on Alice's part. Really the only thing to note here is that presumably it's not terribly difficult to fill in the incomplete grades after Dr. M is provided with the list of grades. It's not as if this is a permanent situation. Dr. M could have reminded the students of this, but then the email would have lost some of its urgency for the TA.


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Working in HEP TH with a background primarily in HEP PH
I've just started a PhD in QCD phenomenology and Quarkonia. While I'm quite happy with the work at the moment, I suppose I do have a romanticised view of working in theory. How feasible is it for me to work on more formal theory projects during and following my PhD in the field?
Edit: I have changed the title to reflect the true nature of the question. "Making a switch from HEP PH to HEP TH after my PhD" -> "Working in HEP TH with a background primarily in HEP PH". This is not a duplicate of the switching question as I am looking for the relationship between 2 quite related fields and also how to work between them rather than "switch" per se

Can you spell out the acronyms please

Currently, YQ is IC b/c of all the UAs.

Please see the duplicate target above: phenomenology and formal theory in particular do not have a solid wall between them, so it should be easy to gradually switch as the article describes. That said: I'm sure you know how terrible the job market for hep-th is. Rather than moving deeper into theory, you are very likely to need to move toward applied / experimental positions that will build skills that will qualify you for a job other than a professorship.

@cag51 I was looking for the very specific case of pheno to theory which is why I made a separate post. And yes, I know well how bad the market is for theory, thank you for the comment.

@user438383 The acronyms used are QCD: Quantum chromodynamics, HEP: High energy physics, PH: phenomenology, TH: theory.

Understand, but the very first paragraph of the linked post explains: “We realize that askers may have hoped for advice tailored to the fields X and Y; however, our experience over the past decade is that these questions almost never receive field-specific answers.”

@cag51 Ok, that makes sense. Thank you!

In graduate school, you better follow the lines suggested to you by your supervisor. While your own initiative and your own ideas would be of a great value, try for the time being not to deviate much from the topics and specific problems offered to you by your advisor, because (s)he has a broader vision of things, and should know what research would be best to ensure for you a postdoctoral position after the defense.
After defense, you may start thinking if you indeed wish to continue in your specific field, or to switch your focus. Your choice should be based not only on your interests and tastes but also on the funding situation and availability of positions.
Given your (supposedly, solid) knowledge of quantum physics, you may, e.g. consider switching, in the future, to such an emerging subarea as Quantum Computing for QCD.  While it is hard to predict the job market trend in 5 years, chances are that this subearea (and Quantum Computing in general) will be funded better than pure theory.

Thank you for the response! Yes, while I hope to continue in academia, I am absolutely building up my skills for possible employment in adjacent computing related roles.

@Allohn As an additional food for thought, my son started his PhD in QFT at a highly acknowledged department. However, after completing his MS requirements (and publishing three papers) he chose to receive his Masters, and to switch gears, leaving for a different school, to do his PhD in Quantum Computing. His background in Quantum Physics served him a good stead. He finished his PhD very quickly, and got a prestigious postdoctoral fellowship.

I'll definitely be stewing on that! I'll have to find my own unique path so hearing lots of stories like that helps. Thank you

Generally, one can switch research focus and even, perhaps, subfield or even field, if you have a stable position from which to work. If you are a tenured professor in some aspect of physics then there is little to prevent you from examining and moving to another. It is helpful if you have colleagues in the new area so that you can easily get guidance, but that is available elsewhere if you work at it. Of course,  you need to keep the department happy about your work but that doesn't necessarily imply being limited to one narrow area.
I switched focus a number of times over a long career, though not in physics.
But it is probably not possible to do so immediately after earning a doctorate as you will not yet have anything to show in the new field making it difficult to get hired.
What you can do during your doctorate depends on how intense it is and on the opinions/needs/desires of an advisor. There is probably some opportunity to dabble a bit but intense study is pretty hard even in one field.
If this is your plan, then you might consider either switching to the new field now or deciding to put it 'on the back burner' until you are fairly well established.
But it is always a good idea for an academic to look at new and different things and to take advantage of opportunities that arise if they seem interesting. Don't. Be. Bored.

Thank you for your comment! I suppose my desire comes more from an idealistic picture of what theory looks like compared to what I'm doing, but I am quite happy with what I'm doing. I'll keep your words to heart about keeping an open mind on topics but well into my career rather than as early on as I am.

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Applying for Associate jobs during tenure application year?
Edited for clarity:
I am an assistant professor in the US. I will be applying for tenure next year and, barring something unforeseen, I expect to get it. However, I live in a state that is having (ahem) issues with academic freedom recently. I am therefore considering going back on the job market and moving to greener pastures.
My question is: is it possible to apply for an Associate Professor position during one's tenure year? I.e., when tenure is expected by the end of the year but has not yet been granted? Specifically, I am wondering whether search committees will look seriously at an application from an assistant prof, and whether departments will vote to hire someone with tenure if it hasn't been formally awarded by the home institution yet. Or do I have to wait another year in this state?

It is actually the optimal year for such an application.

There are so many questions on this forum about this topic already. Have you tried to search for answers?

See: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/204118/75368

@Buffy, my question is not so much about my home institution finding out, but rather about whether committees will look seriously at an application from an assistant prof, and whether departments will vote to hire someone with tenure if it hasn't been formally awarded by the home institution yet.

It is unlikely that you would be hired "with tenure" at a new place, even if you already have it at the old place unless you are already an academic superstar in some sense.
You might be hired at the rank of Associate Professor, though, but have something like a two (three?) year probationary period before you actually have tenure. Not guaranteed, but possible. It is unlikely that your tenure clock would be reset to zero, however.
One of the reasons that an institution might want a probationary period is to get a sense of "institutional fit" and general mutual comfortability with the existing faculty and students. It helps the institution recover from errors they may make, hiring incompatible people.
I was once hired as a full professor at a new place with such a probationary period.
I doubt that there is any reason that you wouldn't be considered, at least, assuming you have an appropriate record.  Nor is there any reason you shouldn't apply if you can find a better situation - especially if academic freedom is a growing problem where you are.
And, you might even wind up with some bargaining power at both places.

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Common App GPA Scale
The Common Application asks for your school's GPA scale, but it's unbelievably confusing. There are lots of questions about this online, and there are even differences from school to school.
My high school has a weighted GPA system; if you take unweighted classes, it's on a 4.0 scale. Anything less than an A in unweighted courses will drop you below a 4.0. However, if you take weighted classes, you can get a "B" and still get a 4.0. If you get an A in the class, you can get higher than a 4.0.
Would I report my GPA scale on the Common App as 4.0 or 5.0? I did research and got a ridiculous number of mixed answers. I found this Common App support page, but other schools suggest otherwise.
I've reported my GPA scale as 4.0 but reported my weighted GPA as 4.434. I've submitted applications to over half of the colleges I'm applying to, so I'm pretty sure I can't change my answers for those schools. I can still change the GPA scale before applying to other schools.
I only came to ask this question after a friend asked me. Could someone help me out?

Questions about undergraduate admissions are called out as off-topic here (see https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic and https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3300/what-kind-of-undergraduate-questions-are-not-really-generalizable-to-graduate-ed)

I worked university IT for a bit before returning to academia. You made the correct decisions. At my university, we would get pipe separated values containing your GPA scale which is the 4.0 scale and your reported GPA which could be greater than the scale. Our internal database had fields for both and were fairly flexible. This should be the case for most universities, so you should be in the clear.


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Worried about Ws (withdrawals) on transcript and letters of reccomendation for a masters program
Disclaimer: W stands for withdrawal, it’s when a student withdrawals from a course regardless of grades after a certain deadline for course changes.
I graduated from a Big10 Engineering school with a 3.6 GPA and now work for a fortune 50 company.
I currently am looking at masters programs in engineering (these are non thesis/course work classes) and I am certain I can do very well on the GRE. I am looking at M. Eng degrees and professional masters programs, not MS research based ones.
The concern I have is I have some Ws scattered throughout my transcript(2 were for classes I took and realised slightly after the deadline that I didn’t fit into the topic nor was I interested, they were not relevant to my career) and 3 were because of financial distress and health issues that arose.
My letters of recommendation from industry are from supervisors that have PhDs and prestigious careers, although as for an academic ones I currently am trying to obtain very good ones. It’s been difficult as I only developed a close relationship with 2 and the one I want I did my senior project with. The downside is the project didn’t go as well as it should’ve but I earned an A and a B+ in both semesters of the project, the professor is also very difficult to get in touch with.
Am I in jeopardy for applying to masters programs? These are not super competitive ones like MIT, Berkeley, U Mich. etc. They’re for working professionals and they’re M. Eng degrees with schools like RPI, UConn and UMass. I’m just worried about those W’s. The courses that are relevant to what I want to study in grad school had entirely As and B+‘s, especially upper level math and engineering courses despite one C.

How would answers to this question change your next steps?

A few W is probably not a big deal at all.  Does this answer help: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38237/how-does-the-admissions-process-work-for-ph-d-programs-in-the-us-particularly

Short answer:  The Ws aren't great, but they're basically unimportant in light of the rest of your portfolio.
I'm a little wary of withdrawals, because I know from personal experience that my own university's academic advising tends to use them as a way to help students avoid failing classes.  So they're not great on your transcript, especially multiple Ws.
But if I saw a record like yours, that included graduation from a good school, good grades in the most relevant classes, successful time in industry, good recommendations from respectable professionals, AND it was for a professional-oriented graduate program on top of all that, I would almost certainly discard them as meaningless to appraising the current you.
Of course, this is based on my experience, and it's possible the departments you apply to could think differently.  But I wouldn't advise anyone in your situation to fret over it.


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Will a D in a major elective keep me from getting into a PhD program?
I am in my last semester of undergrad (majoring in mathematics) and am currently working on applying to PhD programs (in mathematics). During the fall of 2016 due to a health issue that lasted for the majority of the semester and the general difficulty of the course I received a D in Topology. Topology is not a required course at my university, but is an elective in my major. I was going to immediately retake the course, but my school has not offered the course since I last took it until this semester (fall of 2018). So, I could retake it this semester (and am currently planning on it), but my applications will need to be submitted before the new grade can be recorded, so I will have to submit my application with the D on my transcript.
I have done everything in my power to try to remedy this flaw on my transcript. I have a ~3.7 (3.68 exact) overall GPA and subject GPA (although if I had the chance to retake the course my mathematics GPA would be a ~3.8), as well as having received permissions from the department to take several graduate courses as an undergraduate in which my GPA is a 4.0 and taken several courses that cover and use topological concepts and received A's in them. I strongly believe that given the chance to retake the course I would have no problems receiving an A (or using topological concepts in research/other classes) since I have already mastered topological concepts in a variety of other courses as well as my prior knowledge from my first time taking the course.
I also have prior research experience from my freshman year (in a different engineering area since my freshman year I was a computer science major) and will also be starting mathematics research during this coming semester, so I will most likely not publish anything but will have research experience. My GRE scores are average to slightly above average according to GRE data that I have looked at and will be retaking the GRE to improve my scores even further next week and my letters of recommendation will be strong as I have worked closely for years with all of my recommenders.
Will this bad grade effect my chances of getting into a PhD program? Should I apply to a masters program first? Should I retake topology this semester even though admissions committees will not see the new grade until after I have received a decision? Any advice would be appreciated!
(Note: I have read a handful of other posts on here about one bad grade, but none seemed to quite match the dilemma of a bad grade in an upper level elective in one's field of study. Thanks!)

Sincere apologies, my GPA is a 3.60 after looking at my transcript. However, as mentioned, I truly believe I would pass topology with flying colors if given the chance to retake, so my graduating GPA may be ~3.7 after retaking the course this semester (fall 2018)

Strongly related question: 3.8 GPA, but 3 Fs and 1 D on transcript

Possible duplicate of Will one 'C' grade due to health issues ruin my chances of admission into a top grad school?

I don't believe any single thing like a particular grade is disqualifying, but it will raise eyebrows in anyone considering you for acceptance. But things happen. If the grade is truly an outlier and you have a good explanation most people will understand. Not all, of course.
Stress the positives in your background, as you have in this question. Don't ignore the negatives.
For future reference, however, if it is possible to drop a course late, do so when you are having trouble. Often a Dean's signature may be required for a late-drop, but he/she will be in a position to evaluate your need to do so. I once took too many credits, got into difficulty, and dropped a course to get back to a more reasonable workload. In my case it wasn't difficult, but in the case of illness, especially, most folks at your institution will make an exception to a rule. That doesn't help you now, of course.
Making an attempt at re-learning, even without a grade, is a positive thing. You can mention that.
Different Universities feel differently about accepting doctoral students straight from undergraduate. It likely also depends on the field, but it is possible in Math, of course. Sometimes a Master's degree is just awarded along the way as a sort of marker. So, while it depends on the University, I don't think that "settling" now for a Master's is a good choice.


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How dificult is it to get into a PhD program years after quitting another?
I am in my 5th year of a PhD program, with the deadline for my dissertation just a few months away and barely any results to report, never mind writing an entire dissertation.*
I am considering quitting this program and working for some time. I already have a job, and they have made it clear that my PhD or the lack of it are not going to make a difference in my employment.
I am wondering if ther is anyone who has found themselves in similar circumstances and, years later, has succesfully applied for another PhD position, and how did they present the fact that they left the program just a few months before the deadline.
Thanks
*After browsing for a bit, I believe some people may be tempted to say things like "if you are on your 5th year, surely you do have enough material for your dissertation". While I appreciate it, this is not what I want to discuss here.

Not a real answer, but probably harder to return than it was to get in the first time. And, what do you think will change over the interim that will make success more likely than now? But it may not matter if you are happy where you are.

This might be very locale dependent. Also, it is one thing to be accepted in the program and another to obtain grants. I'd expect failing one PhD while receiving a government grant is pretty much enough reason not to receive a second grant. Depending on the country, if the only stipend students may have is their grant, professors will sometimes ask how the student will keep himself during the years of study, precisely because they're afraid the student will quit as soon as he gets a job. Good for the student, terrible for the advisor.

It will be very difficult indeed.
Having a second-class undergraduate degree I was unable to get any PhD position and was advised to take a Masters course to improve my grade. If you fail the PhD or abandon it then you will find it almost impossible to get a funded place again - you would need to fund yourself, and to demonstrate successful completion of whatever you did in between. You might be successful if you had to withdraw early on for health reasons, but not as late as the 5th year. I presume that you are already past the usual finishing date, which in itself is a negative indication.
You will do far better to apply for an extension or a suspension of studies. You will have to re-register every year but this could give you the time you need to reassess what has gone wrong and how you can steer your PhD to a successful conclusion.
The starting point is to have a thorough discussion with your supervisor and the tutor in charge of the PhD programme (assuming they are not the same person), to discuss the options. If at all possible avoid taking a major break because it can be a huge obstacle to get back into it, and the field will move on while you are away so that your research becomes less relevant and harder to "sell".
In the end you just have to grit your teeth and get the work done, regardless of how dissatisfied you are with the outcome. Lack of a PhD may not make a difference in your current job but it will make a difference to your career progression, and will probably close off options of moving into an academic career later on.
The fact that you have a job might be a distraction which is keeping you from completing your PhD. It might be better to ask your boss for 3-6 month of unpaid leave to complete your PhD, or at least get it back on track.

I am wondering if ther is anyone who has found themselves in similar circumstances and, years later, has succesfully applied for another PhD position, and how did they present the fact that they left the program just a few months before the deadline.

As somebody who has sat on graduate committees, it would be an uphill battle but not impossible. You should be honest in any future application. What we would be looking for was an indication that circumstances have changed and that you now had the ability to successfully complete a PhD.


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Is there a website that compares both Scopus and WoS (SCI/E)' ranks of a journal/publication altogether?
Something like Resurchify, but contains both Scopus and Web of Science, perhaps?
I usually just browse separately on https://www.scimagojr.com/ (for Scopus) and https://jcr.clarivate.com (for SCI/E / Web of Science) to find the rank of a journal. But lately browsing on Clarivate has been a hassle for me (slow loading, always get redirected, requires an institutional login which I don't have access to, hence I haven't been able to find the information that I need).
I am wondering whether there is a website/integrated platform to browse for the latest ranks more conveniently? Any feedback on how to get SCI/E info would also be appreciated. Thank you.
Note: My main field is computer engineering and computer science.

Ask your preferred library if they have access to the Journal Citation Reports from WoS. The latest useful rank are the latest published ranks, they are published once per year.


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I don't want to do research (First year tenure-track faculty)
I'm currently in my first semester as a tenure-track faculty in a small liberal arts college. I also finished my dissertation and defended about 5 months ago. While I'm grateful that I've got a tenure-track job as a newly minted Ph.D., I'm struggling to do research at the moment. Of course, I've been busy adjusting to the new lifestyle, but honestly, it hasn't been bad at all.
So, to cut it short, making time for research or lack of energy isn't really the issue for me. I consistently have at least 3-4 hours of writing time everyday. I think I'm just burned out from research after finishing my dissertation. When I sit down to do research, I spend hours doing nothing on my computer. I can't get myself to focus and write. I thought resting for 3 months after my defense was enough, but this state of unproductivity in research makes me very anxious.
Sometimes, I even think that I might not be apt to do research anymore. Is this normal? What was it like for you? Does it get better? How do I get over this?

Added:
Thank you for your answers. They were all helpful to read. I know I'm not the only junior faculty suffering from a burnout after getting the degree. I've seen more people taking at least a year off after they finish than continuing with productive research. I needed to acknowledge that my 3-month break was not enough. I'll take it slow for now. I need to find my passion for research again from within, and it will happen soon.
Another problem is that I still haven't quite figured out what kind of scholar/teacher I would want to be. I'm not sure if I want to pursue my career in an R1 university or a teaching school. I come from a very large R1 university and didn't want to live a research-oriented lifestyle that would make me work 70 hours a week. And at that point, I was already burned out from my dissertation even before I finished it. But now that I'm in a teaching school, I miss the environment of intellectual conversations and academic discussions. I'm not sure if I'll be content in teaching-focused environment.
How did you guys decide or know which environment you wanted to work for?

Before you follow people who jump to a clinical diagnosis, consider that one of the major differences in you current situation is that you're not being scientifically supervised like when you were a grad student. I suspect you need to find strategies to cope with this. Interest and discipline will need to come from you.

Since you are more free now to pursue in any direction of research, try to find something that you enjoy. Also, consider taking a short vacation from research of max 3 weeks.

To the OP: you seem to have two accounts. If you want to merge them, see: I accidentally created two accounts; how do I merge them?

You may be suffering from burnout. You've been running at full speed for well over 20 years (K+12+4+7). You may just need a break.
First, check your department and college expectations for tenure. Talk to newly minted associate professors about their experiences before tenure. You may have to only do a modest amount of additional post-dissertation research in order to clear the tenure bar at your institution. At a small liberal arts college, it could be a book based on your dissertation and a few peer reviewed journal articles combined with some college service and not pissing off your colleagues ("collegiality").
This is eminently doable even if you take off your first year to recharge your research batteries by focusing on teaching and a recovery of some modicum of sociality.
Finally, you might ask if your university welcomes you taking a leave of absence to do a postdoc somewhere. A writing fellowship in the Berkshires can do wonders for mental health as well as ones’ publications list.

It took me a while to get that SLAC was not the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center ;-)

... and the rest of us shouldn't have to google that term. Please edit in an explanation.

It's the acronym of a phrase used in the very first sentence of the question itself. If it's not possible to figure that out from context, either you haven't read or haven't comprehended part of the question.

@Nij Do you know what RAFMD, HDNOMC, NMP mean? They are all acronyms of phrases used in the question too.

Using "P" as a shortening of PhD makes no sense, but yes, I figured out what they were despite their nonsensicality. If finding those was easy enough, what's your explanation for not picking up on SLAC, given the term's somewhat common use in certain areas?

@Nij: Since this site seems to be weighted towards STEM people, perhaps our excuse is that we are much more familiar with the accelerator facility than with small liberal arts colleges.  It's rather like using IBM or MIT, you know?

I'm not sure it's appropriate to hastily diagnose a burn out on the basis of that short text. That's one possible explanation out of many.

True, the OP could be suffering from an unknown form of brain cancer or something else. However, Occam's Razor seems to apply here - taking a short break from research and focusing on teaching/service will allow for a quick and painless diagnostic. Certainly easier than a brain biopsy.

While I agree with the advice in this answer, it is true that many academics don't do much research after their PhD.  So also I agree with @CapeCode's sentiment that it's hasty to suggest that the OP will "almost certainly" be research productive after a temporary break.  (Maybe you didn't mean this, but one could easily infer this from your first paragraph.)

@RoboKaren why do you assume OP has some sort of condition?

My own experience in mathematics is surely different in various ways from other academics... while, yes, still similar ... but:
Yes, "being fried" after working too hard for at least a few years to get that thesis done, while suspending one's own critical judgement (since, after all, it's only one's superiors' judgements that will get you the PhD, and publications, and jobs, or anything else...) it is utterly reasonable to find oneself "deadened" in some way.
This is not a good feature of academe...
But to over-appraise this as "not liking research" is wildly inaccurate, and self-destructive. That is, what one (reasonably!) does not like is being dictated-to, being infinitely vulnerable, and so on. The "apprentice-research" situation is very wonky, and many academics are stunningly bad at deconstructing the disconnects between "genuine intellectual practice" and "getting papers published and getting a job".
Genuine "research" is "trying to understand things better". Really, very many people do this as a matter of course. (The recent election makes me wonder a bit about how widespread this is, but, still, ...)
I imagine that if you went to grad school because you had an affinity for "trying to understand things (better)", you are not actually allergic to that process. Almost a tautology.
Allergy to the game-playing involved in acquiring peer-review-status-points is completely unsurprising. Duh.
So, please, don't confuse the professional game-playing, that administrative bosses impose on intellectuals (a.k.a. "thinking, curious people") with "research". :)

I also graduated from my phd a year or so back. I was exhausted after I finished the sprint to complete my dissertation and find a job. So I was working at half capacity for over a year and having fun. Recently I have starting "thinking" again..
I have been reading a book called Writing for Academic Journals.
While the title suggests its merely for writing articles, it goes into a lot of depth on strategies/routines to do research and write articles.
I am finding the suggestions very useful.

Could you briefly share some of the strategies or routines that were mentioned in the book, which you found to be particularly helpful?

Read the late Richard Feynman's book Surely You're Joking,  Mr. Feynman.  In it, he described how, taking a teaching position at the end of WW2 and his work at Los Alamos, he found that he just couldn't get up any interest in doing research.  He felt completely used-up and worried that he might be finished as a scholar already.
As he reported it, one day he was in the caf watching someone spin a plate on their fingertip, and he tried to figure out how to describe the wobble mathematically.  Trying to work out that problem "re-ignited" him, and everything else followed.

"So I got this new attitude. Now that I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything, I've got this nice position at the university teaching classes which I rather enjoy, and just like I read the Arabian Nights for pleasure, I'm going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without worrying about any importance whatsoever." -- Feynman

Two thoughts:
(1) Did you run into any side interests in grad school...maybe an area you didn't know much about? Maybe you could pursue one of those for a while.
(2) At some schools, especially smaller ones, 'research' may be interpreted rather broadly. Sometimes things like the scholarship of teaching and learning count; or perhaps you can work on something a bit lighter, but that leads to good student research projects.

Yeah I second the student research projects. Particularly at Liberal Arts Colleges, it's a great way to engage more students and it's even an opportunity to publish or present smaller projects.

RoboKaren is very right, you need to check with the expectations of your department and school. See how much research was required for the most recent tenure cases, and even better, see if they have explicit guidelines. In addition, the AAUP (American Association of  University Professors) supports tenure-track jobs which might not have the three common areas required for tenure. They imagine a "tenure-track teaching position" to be within the standards they've set for academic freedom and tenure.
Of course, none of that matters if your position (like most TT-positions) requires research, scholarship, and teaching. The fact is, you are having trouble with part of the requirements for the job. But everyone has their own path to tenure - you have some time, use it to figure out what kind of scholarship you can participate in. Depending on your field, it can be a great many things, not just papers and articles. What about data collection, textbook projects, research in teaching pedagogies? Maybe find a collaborator - organizing a project might help you become more interested in working on the project, and splitting the work might make it more interesting as well.

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


text:
Should my PhD thesis be submitted under my legal name?
I married during my PhD and changed my legal surname however (for many reasons) I will continue to publish under my maiden name. My (UK) university says that a thesis has to be submitted under the name held in registration records. They seem happy for me to revert my registration to my maiden name so I can submit my thesis as "maiden name" and this means my degree certificate will also have "maiden name".
I think it would make more sense to have the name on the thesis the same as on the published papers that it contains (i.e. maiden name) but would there be any issues with graduating with an old name? I do have birth & marriage certificates that show my maiden name.
Note: As others mentioned in the comments, technically the concept of a "legal name" does not exist in the UK. However, in practice employers, banks, airports etc. ask for evidence of your name and to change a name on a passport, for example, requires a marriage/divorce certificate or deed poll.

In Poland, one can keep her maiden name as a part of her new legal name. Can't you do the same? It is especially popular among female scientists for the very reason you stated - publishing under the same name after getting married. But I don't know if it's legal in UK (and your home country if it is different than UK).

In the UK, to use both names you would have to do a deed poll to add the maiden name as a middle name. It's more complicated than changing to the married name and I don't think many women do it.

I find the titular question confusing. It doesn't seem like you have an option there. It's a legal thing you either publish PhD under your legal name or get a diploma for a maiden name. Academia per se doesn't care, but a PhD diploma is an administrative thing. Could you publish as "Ali Newsurname nee Maidensurname"? Officially it would be your legal name, but from editorial point of view it would be as close as possible to your academic "pen name". It would also make references to your papers obvious.

Could you clarify what jurisdiction you are in? The notion of a “legal name” is jurisdiction-specific.

@Ali There is no requirement in English law to use a deed poll to change your name (although many institutions require documentary evidence of a name, which a deed poll would provide).  There is also no requirement for a woman to change her name on marriage; a birth certificate would provide evidence of the original name.

@Mołot The marriage has already happened and the married name has already been chosen.

@DavidRicherby well, don't know other countries, here it is decision that can be easily changed.

My school also requires the name on the thesis must exactly match that in records (in US).

In the UK there is no such thing as a "legal name". You may use any name you wish, or even different names to different people, provided you don't do it for fraud. This doesn't mean the government will issue documentation such as visas, driving licence or passport in that name however. Government services will require documentation to prove that you are really known by that name to others, and that is the role the marriage certificate serves.

There is no problem using a maiden name for PhD graduation, it is very normal for professional women such as doctors and lawyers to use a maiden name for professional use. If anything it is more normal to do this than not.

So you can be Doctor Jones at work, and Mrs Smith at home. This is not a problem. Your driving licence can only have one though, so I would suggest Doctor Jones-Smith for that :-) but of course it is up to you.

In some countries, you get some number attached to you for government record purposes. Thus, whatever name appears on your degree matters less than this unchangeable number. The ideia is that no matter how many times you get married, change sex, find yourself a homonym criminal, the number should remain the same. Has the UK any such number?

Your thesis is a publication, and unless you have strong reasons to do so otherwise, I would recommend that you use the same name in all your publications ─ be they theses or papers.
I would particularly recommend that you do not pay attention to the oft-propagated myth that "nobody reads PhD theses". For one, it's simply not true (at best, it is field-dependent), but more importantly, it is irrelevant. Regardless of whether people read your thesis or not, it will appear in both your CV and other publication lists (Google Scholar, ReseracherId and ORCID, at the very least). I think the core question there is: what name will you use at the head of your CV?

If you'll use your maiden name, with only an incidental mention of your legal name when required, then it makes no sense to have any publications under your legal name.
If the header will be your legal name, then it still doesn't make sense to have some publications with a different, maiden name (the papers) and some with the legal name. You still have to design around the use of two different names, and using the legal name for the thesis only complicates that design even more.

I was under a roughly similar situation, where my UK university required a legal name for the PhD thesis that differed from the name I use for papers (specifically, I left out the maternal surname), and I can tell you that the legal name did propagate to places where I would rather have one single unified front.
More importantly, though, I think that the key distinction is that the PhD diploma and the PhD thesis will be seen by two drastically different audiences.

The PhD diploma will probably only be seen by Human Resources staff, or their equivalents, who are trained to deal with this, and for whom person-changed-their-name-through-marriage is a run-of-the-mill type of feature. Having a legal name that differs from that on your PhD diploma, with a marriage certificate to match, won't even raise an eyebrow.
The PhD thesis, and particularly its bibliographic details, will be seen by a lot more people, and they will have a lot less incentive to care about the details - it's more likely to confuse them and they're much less likely to chase it up to figure it out.

After having said all of which, though: It's your name. It's your choice. Consider all the points that everyone has mentioned here, but do what feels right to you.

This is not just a normal publication. It is a legal document and the name under that document must follow the local laws! It is not something automatic to use any other than the official legal name and I would certainly not do that without consulting the appropriate office of the university. There is nothing definitive strangers on the internet can say for sure.

@Vladimir OP reports having consulted with their university's registry. Are you suggesting that they shouldn't be believed?

@VladimirF This may vary by jurisdiction but in most places a disertation is not a "legal document", at least not in the sense that something like a contract or birth certificate is. And while you should virtually always follow local laws, most places do not have laws regarding the name you publish under.

@TimothyAWiseman The situation is different in large parts of Europe. When a thesis is a legal requirement for completing a degree, it's not just any publication.

@JouniSirén A thesis isn't a legal requirement, it is an institutional or national requirement. (Some exceptions may exist.)

You need to pick a name that you'll use in your professional life. Changing that name has a cost. At this early stage, the cost is low. So, if you want to use your married name professionally, then change to it now. Otherwise, use your maiden name for the duration of your career. (This isn't to say you can't switch later, just that the cost increases over time.)

would there be any issues with graduating with an old name?

It may create a slight administrative burden, in that you may have to prove that your degree certificate is yours (given that it won't match your legal name).

It may create a slight administrative burden, in that you may have to prove that your degree certificate is yours - I think this is not at all an issue in Western academia, nor if one goes to industry/government/etc.

@Kimball Regardless, it is a slight burden?

Wouldn't the burden be the same as if someone changed their name after graduation?

@Kathy I suppose that depends how you quantify burden. Changing later might reduce the lifetime burden, because after graduation there is less life. That said, degree certificates probably won't be required later in life, so the period of disruption is perhaps fixed. I'm not sure whether these details are particularly useful. Crucially, changing a name later has a higher impact on professional life, since  a name is essentially a brand, which (hopefully) improves over time.

"degree certificates probably won't be required later in life" - probably true in UK/USA/etc, not so true in Germany/Switzerland/etc.

@MartinBonner That seems unnecessarily bureaucratic, but not unexpected. Does that hold for say a 50 year old professor?

@user2768 I'm not in academia, but my employer in Switzerland wanted my O-level certificates from 1974 (as well as my degree certificate). (If you are not familiar with the British education system, O-levels were the muggle equivalent of OWLs.)

In the UK employers usually ask for these certificates too. It is sometimes awkward for people who changed their names through (re)marriage, divorce etc.

@Ali If they regularly ask for it, why aren't they used to people (women especially) changing their names?

@AzorAhai : sadly, that's typical for many bureaucrats: even if they've seen something millions of times, they still often act as if it was the first time they encountered it.

As others have said, the administrative burden may be not so slight if you move to a (typically civil law) country where you have to produce your degree certificate more frequently. It may be a particular problem if you move to a country where people do not or can not change their names.

Administrators should certainly be used to name-changes caused by marriage, and there's a formula for that: Mary Jones née Smith. Name changes caused by gender reassignment are probably more problematic, because people may want to "wipe out the past", and administrative systems have trouble with that.

There is one more point for using your maiden name.
Maiden name is yours forever. Your married name may change.
If you publish under your married name now, and re-marry later, you will be stuck with your ex's last name.

or have to explain the same dreary thing over and over again, and also accept that the bots collecting data for google scholar etc do not automatically group all your output the way they ought to

The legal position in the UK is quite different to that in many other jurisdictions. In English common law your name is that by which you are generally known. It follows that, if you wish, you can change your name as often as you change your hat. Now, you might be asked to provide evidence that your name is what you say it is: as the UK government website puts it:" You do not have to follow a legal process to start using a new name. But you might need a ‘deed poll’ to apply for or to change official documents like your passport or driving licence."
So, from a legal point of view in the UK there is no such thing as your "legal" name. In the academic world just use the name by which you wish to be known in that world. It might be very convenient to continue to use the name that is used on your various degree certificates, but if you don't want to do that just drop a line to the awarding institution to say that your name has changed.

But if the University has a rule that the name on the PhD thesis has to be the same as the name used in the University's matriculation register, they are perfectly entitled to impose that requirement regardless what the law of the land says. (Unless, I guess, you want to contest it on grounds of natural justice, human rights, etc).

Does any UK university have such a requirement?

The OP seems to be claiming that it does, I have no idea if this is true.

For your thesis it will not really matter at all as the thesis itself will not be read by many people (sad truth!) (and if you have to proof somewhere that you are the person who holds this degree you can always provide the marriage certificate in addition).
It is however very important that you choose one name for all of you publications that arise from your thesis and further career as a later scientific life will build on many numerical descriptors (e.g. H-index) and this will be very difficult if you publish under 2 different names. If this is your maiden name or your current one is up to you.

@Guest +1 for "Your wellbeing is far more important than your career"

Yes, right the "well-being" overrules possibly everything said before ;-)

It is more important (for you!) that the name on your thesis is the same that appears on your papers. If there is an obvious explanation for any discrepancies with your passport, which a uni must ask for when they hire you, there should not normally be any trouble.

authors: Vladimir F Героям слава


text:
When is an Erratum needed?
A typo, a spelling error etc., in a published paper is definitely not enough for issuing an erratum.
If a mistake destroys a main result, then an erratum is definitely necessary.
What about cases in between? What about a typo mistake in expressing a value which does not affect the result?

This depends on the field and the nature of the error. It is a judgement call. If a reader is likely to be misled in some way, even if not about the main result then a correction is warranted - or at least serious consideration of a correction.
For example, in mathematics, the proof of a theorem is fairly often more important than the theorem itself. This is the case if it gives insight into the solution of other (important) questions. So, an error in a proof might require an explicit correction if the error would mislead readers and give the wrong/incorrect "insight". But one needs to use judgement about the nature and effect of the error, even beyond the specific result (theorem).
This likely extends to other fields as well, though, perhaps, in different ways.
But, literally, a typo in a value seems less likely to rise to the level that a correction is essential. Little harm in making it right, though.


text:
Is it badly viewed to have company funded research during one's thesis when applying for their first postdoc
I have a friend that might be doing an academic (not industrial) thesis in a biology related topic where one of the projects would be funded by a company that sells a product that will be tested in the research. I have the impression that research that's funded by a company tends to be regarded as not being trustworthy as there is the incentive of the company.
I am concerned whether this could affect the review of their CV when applying for postdoc positions when compared to other students that might have only done purely academic research.

There is a very similar question in the link ( Funding of research by commercial companies, what is the sentiment in the USA?: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/19783/182553 ) in the related section of this page that I do not really recall seeing in the suggestions when writing the question (is the related section different than the initial suggestions?). I also do not recall seeing it in a site specific google search.

Once upon a time companies like GE, IBM, and Bell Labs funded lots of research. Nobody thought twice about it, but it was in all cases quite clear that it was fundamental research.

I am weighing in the pros and the cons especially that they have not yet started their thesis and might have time to change project if needed (I am not sure). According to https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2019/10/03/when-big-companies-fund-academic-research-the-truth-often-comes.html it seems to say companies might try to get academic researchers under an agenda that benefits them (so the research could be true but maybe implicitly or explicitly constrained/incomplete) and that a paper that does not favor them might not be allowed to publish (which is maybe a separate question).

I think that concern is more for "research" (yes, in quotes) by company employees who have a conflict of interest in publishing results. The tobacco companies and the fossil fuel industries are famous for this.
But an external researcher has no such conflict as the funding is for the research not for their careers. Such people can be honest in what they say and so there need be no assumption that it might be tainted.
It could be different, if the researcher were promised additional things after completion of the research provided it turns out the "right way" (hint wink hint). Presumably the supervisor of the student is an academic with academic concerns paramount.

Thank you I did not know about the distinction internal (within company)/external (outside of company within university) when considering company funded research.Your answer makes sense to me thank you again.

But an external researcher has no such conflict as the funding is for the research not for their careers. - I think it depends on the situation.  If a company is giving you financial incentives to do research, this can easily create conflicts of interest.


text:
How can I teach a graduate seminar with two students (who are not from my department)?
I am teaching a PhD seminar (in social science) with only two students, both of whom are from other departments that are not very relevant to my field. I need to assume that they know nothing about the theories or concepts that will be discussed in this class.
Do you have any tips or recommendations? I used to have student-led discussions, but it seems unrealistic for two students to do so, especially as they have a limited prior understanding of the course content. In one week, I am considering assigning no readings but asking them to bring and present three research articles from their own field, which they can then develop into a final research paper.

I would presume that they are taking your course because they need/want to know more about what your course covers. Why do you assume they 'know nothing' coming in to a graduate class?

Yes, they are interested in learning more about the course content. I should mention that their background is in the natural sciences and they are non-thesis track students. (This course has primarily been designed for PhD students who are writing a research paper.)

Great question. I think your approach is the right start, in the sense that you are meeting them where they are. Don't be afraid to also expose them to some of the conventions from your field, presumably they took this class, with you as instructor of record because they want to learn something from you as well. With such a small class it's a great opportunity for open discussion.

Thank you for the comment. I've been concerned about making this class engaging while maintaining the key content. Apart from asking them to bring their own research, do you have any other suggestions that I could incorporate into my class?

You could just have an open discussion on what they expect to get out of the course. Post pandemic I had a grad class that was in person only (while others went hybrid), so I ended up with very low enrollment (5 vs the normal 25), with 3 out of department. I was very flexible, and it was actually very fun to teach. Lots of discussion. Very engaged students.

That's very relieving to hear, and thank you! I guess flexibility is key. I will encourage students to be involved in choosing the topics they want to discuss. Since I have weekly topics, we can vote on which ones are less interesting and add a week for each student's specialty.

There are two aspects to consider for the content of the course. The first is, asking the students, as written in R1NaNo's good answer. A seminar with only two students is an opportunity for something tailored exactly to the students needs and can be amazing learning experience for them.
The other aspect are the administrative bounds you have to satisfy. Your university pays you to teach that course, so there will be some rules. First check that the course is not automatically canceled if there are so few students. Next you may be required to have an exam or request a written paper from the students or something like that. Finally consider how much work you want to invest in the course. If the students are great such a course can be great fun and an infinite time sink but presumably you have other job duties as well.

Thanks! You are right. I've already dedicated so much time (perhaps more than I should have) to plan this course, and now I need to change many things with the low enrollment - from the readings to the class structure.


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Industry-funded postdoc at university -- how does it work?
I am recently discussing an opportunity of joining a university as an industry-funded postdoc. Both the company (in the US) and myself do not have any experience about this so I would appreciate any help, suggestion or potential caveat you can think of at this moment.
I am currently in the final year of my PhD. A company reached out to me and mentioned that they are very interested in my thesis, and would like to explore it more with me. Given that the headquarter of this company is at a city that I do not want to live in, we've reached an agreement that I will start as a postdoc at a university and then company is willing to pay for my entire salary through the university (and therefore with overhead), which means that I will be a formal university employee. I have also found a professor that verbally agrees to host me and serve as the PI. The professor is currently negotiating this with the department.
I have some wishes as following but not sure whether or in what extent they can be fulfilled:

Though being a postdoc, I would like to get a much higher salary, ideally compatible with the industry. The company has already mentioned to me that they are willing to pay higher salaries to me as long as the university agrees. Would universities in general be ok if one of their postdocs earns exceedingly more than others (say 2 or 3 times more)? Is there any creative way so that we can initiate an industry-sponsored project to make this exception? The company is willing to pay for overhead costs. Would making up a new position, e.g. "Williams Kevin James Research Scientist", help make this happen?

Another main complication is that I am not a US citizen nor a permanent resident, so will need visa sponsorship to work in the US. Given that I plan to have a much higher salary, would the university still be willing to sponsor a cap-exempt H-1B, which is typically for non-profit employees? O-1 could also work for my case but I feel like universities typically consider it as the last resort.

To help make this deal work, the company already agrees that I can publish most of my research findings as conference papers or journal articles, so that it can be perceived that the university "owns" the IP of these publications. However, inevitably, there will be cases where I need to work with field data or realistic data that is owned by the company or third parties thus cannot be shared to public. Also, I might also spend a little bit time developing their software tools and infrastructure. Would there be an IP concern regarding these? Is this generally negotiable with the university? I know that there are academic consortia that produces software only accessible to the consortium members. Not sure whether the same idea can work in my case because right now there is only myself.

Although the company is very generous, they are paying because my current research interest highly aligns with their goals. Therefore, throughout this postdoc, my research ideas and focuses will be determined by them on some level. I can still do something "pure academic" but it cannot be completely unrelated to the scientific problem the company is trying to solve. Would this be considered as a conflict of interest? What is the best way to handle this?

Please add a country tag or info about where this would take place as things differ considerably depending on where you are.

I think it's sufficient to say that your situation is not how it usually works - I think you need to consult with the specific university because a general answer won't help you here. It kind of sounds like you and the company are trying to find an immigration law loophole so I'd be careful about that.

Thanks for quick reply. This would take place in the United States.

You also need to talk to a US IP lawyer to assure that you don't get exploited. The US university might have a legal department that can help.

To put it more bluntly: these post-doc shenanigans seem very suspicious, and I would proceed with caution. If everything was on the up-and-up, the company could simply hire you as a remote employee (which would mean a higher salary for you) and form a collaboration with the professor.

What you are trying to do is actually quite illegal - circumventing immigration laws which tend to be quite strongly enforced in the US, and (hopefully) with most universities as this is a system they must rely on constantly for students, postdocs, and faculty. This would look terrible for USCIS and could land both you and the university in a heap of trouble.
Most Universities have strict guidelines for interacting with industry and how IP is handled. This is not something you casually propose. This is negotiated by the company and the University legal department. A postdoctoral position would have to be created, with a standard pay scale (or provide rationale why yours should be higher, if it is much higher it will raise alarms). Furthermore the average overhead is somewhere between 40-60%. So if the company is paying you 2-3x postdoc range which would imply 2-3x the general ~ca 50-60k salary for postdoc (though most pay more now anyway)... that is a huge amount of overhead to drain on you. Then you have to apply for the job and go through immigration. I assume you are trying to circumvent the regular process and go under a J visa? H visa will receive more scrutiny and may get flagged for what you are trying to pull off.
The nature of your employment needs to be very clear. If you are a postdoc, then you must follow the rules and pay scales of a postdoc.

Let's start with the salary: I suspect that most departments will be reluctant to have employees at the same level and with the same experience have very different salary levels. But there are other job titles that may allow for this. I would suggest you talk to your university about being a "research scientist", a title usually used by career people in research roles who are not faculty (as opposed to the temporary positions with a training aspect that we call "postdocs"). Whether 2x or 3x the typical postdoc salary is feasible is a separate matter (departments will not want your salary to reach far into the starting faculty salary range), but at least you are not tied to the typical postdoc salary range.
As for IP: By law, the intellectual property created by employees is owned by the employer. It is possible (and not entirely uncommon) for universities to enter into agreements with companies who sponsor research to either share or assign the IP with these companies. But it is something that requires lawyers to be involved, and you will do well to bring this up early given that the wheels turn slowly with the lawyers (I know from experience). You will also have to make sure that this topic is resolved before you start your work given the legal implications of doing work that is then owned by the university.
Visa: This is a good deal for the university. They should be willing to sponsor your visa.

I have a number of industrially sponsored projects. Unless a standard contract has already been negotiated with said company, the process, starting with (typically) an NDA, then IP and follow up negotiations can stretch into 1-2 years. Universities are HIGHLY reluctant to give up IP (or potential IP, or the potential to potentially generate IP), especially if the only return is some random postdoc.

I agree with the timeline being quite slow. The issue is non-trivial because the law by default assigns the IP to the university. It takes a specific contract to do something else.


text:
Is it okay to copy somebody else's words and sentences?
So I am writing my master's thesis, and am reading a lot of papers. I usually do a lot of 'backtracking' (meaning, read one paper, then look at who they cited and go read those papers).
Doing this, I have found that a lot of authors straight-up copy words and sentences from some of the papers they cite. I don't mean a full paragraph or anything of that sorts, it's almost never more than a sentence, but it does happen a lot.
This is particularly annoying when I read a sentence in one paper and think hmm, that isn't entirely clear and could be expanded upon further, and then I track down the similar concept in another paper to see if there's more info there, but I then find the exact same sentence written there, with no further context provided.
For example, currently I am reading a paper which states

The alternating coefficients of the method may mean that in practice, the theorem does not hold.

I'm not quite sure what they mean by this (why are the coefficients alternating? And why does that impact the validity of the theorem?? Does the theorem not take into account the alternating coefficients???), so I look at a paper they cite that talked about this theorem a bit more, and that paper has the exact same sentence (with no further context).
This makes me think that not only was

the sentence (in the non-original paper) copied straight from the original paper without using quotation marks

but also that

the author of the non-original paper doesn't actually fully understand the meaning of that sentence (just like I don't), and hence, since they don't understand it, they can't write it in their own words, and hence just copied it verbatim.

Am I reading too much into things, or is this behavior common, and if so, what is the proper etiquette concerning what this is acceptable or not?

Aside from your actual question, I'm surprised that anyone would want to copy word-for-word the sentence "The alternating coefficients of the method may mean that in practice, the theorem does not hold"! Unless there is a huge amount of unusual context in which this sentence works well (and I'm not holding my breath regarding this possibility), for a math paper this sentence is venturing into word salad territory -- "alternating coefficients" probably doesn't modify "method, "may mean" is not a definitive existence statement, "in practice" is almost meaningless, etc.

As I'm sure you know it isn't correct to just copy things from others. However, there are a couple of additional considerations.
Something is really plagiarism only if it is copied without citation. Then, the author is claiming the work of others as their own. The safest way to avoid this is to use quotes, as you suggest, but certainly to cite.
However, if some of the work you find is old, it is also possible that the standards have changed a bit over time and are now a bit more rigid. Citation and being clear about who originated ideas is the important thing, not, specifically, the punctuation.
But another consideration, especially in fields such as mathematics is that there may be only one way to write some given idea in words. So, in a calculus textbook, for example, the definition of the derivative is nearly identical to every other calculus text on the planet. This sort of thing has actually been discussed in courts, as I understand it.
But for your own work, be as clear as you can be. Cite anything you use and clearly mark what is being quoted using some reasonable typographical convention. Of course you also need to worry about copyright infringement, but that is a different issue. The sloppiness of others shouldn't bleed over into your own work.
The question of copying without understanding is a deeper problem. I won't comment on that.

Quoting a paper without indicating it is a quote, even with a citation, is still very wrong.

Maybe we should have a best practice answer for how to cite these "super-common" things, like a common definition that you probably learned from a textbook in class rather than a cutting edge paper.

@BryanKrause, yes, of course. But old papers are what they are.

It is definitely not proper etiquette to do that, irrespective of whether it is common or not. I would assume that it is more common in lower quality journals than in higher quality ones. Personally, I have also come across that issue from time to time, and it is definitely a bad (and annoying) practise.
It can probably be considered plagiarism, though it is true that if the original paper is cited, it is less severe. Still, the authors should have explicitly indicated that the sentence that follows is a verbatim quote; and not their own words.
Also, even if quoting properly, generally it is indeed advisable for authors to describe ideas through their own words instead, unless there is a particular reason to quote verbatim.


text:
Approaching a paper author who has left academia
I am a research software engineer for a behavioural science research group at a university, currently trying to help my academics with recruiting for and running psychology and economics experiments online. As part of this I have been reviewing the literature in the field and have come across a very useful paper. In the paper, a link is given for the source code and raw data collected by the authors, however the link is dead - it looks like the domain name registration has lapsed.
After a cursory internet search, it seems that the author whose domain the materials were hosted on has left academia and now works in industry.  A co-author still works in academia though.   Both are listed as corresponding authors on the publication, though the latter is marked as "principal corresponding author".
In a case like this, who should I approach to ask if accessing the data/source code is still possible? Should I try to contact the author who no longer appears to work in academia, but who seems to have been the one to initially host it? Or should I try to make first contact with the "principal corresponding author" who does still appear to be based at a research university?

Always start with the principal corresponding author, that's why the authors list it. It's both common courtesy and will increase your likelihood of getting a response.
That said, two more minor points:

Note that just because someone left academia does not mean they do not engage in research. I've published more since I left the university than when I was in it.
Do keep in mind that material ages quickly, and in some fields very quickly. If they have left the field it is very possible that they don't have their notes, access to original data, access to their academic email correspondence with peers, etc. Heck, their email address probably changed as well, so you may have to hunt for their new one. If the principal author has moved on I would definitely recognize that in your correspondence and be understanding if they can't help you out.

Thank you for the answer.  When you put it like this, I don't know why I was overthinking it so much!

I would guess that the person in academia would be the best person to contact first because 1) they are still ostensibly interested in research, 2) they are listed as the main correspondent contact, and 3) they might be more likely to be checking their email and responding to these types of queries. If they do not have access to the materials that you seek, they should be able to point you in the right direction. In the worst case scenario, you can contact the other author who now works in industry.
There seems to be no risk in simply choosing a person and trying to contact them.

Sending to both is also fine, I think.

“more likely to be checking their email” — I’d say it’s the other way around. I know a lot of faculty that ignores (or seems to) email.

Thanks for the answer.  You're completely right, there's no risk in just reaching out.  I guess I just didn't want to bother the wrong person - but they can always ignore my email if it comes to that.

While this is not a full answer (please convert into a comment if that's the right thing to do here), you may try checking whether the original URL has been archived by the Internet Archive. They store copies of various sites going back to the very early era of the Internet, with some possible omissions due to various technical limitations.

Very good tip, thanks.  I tried it out.  Unfortunately, though the original site was archived, it looks like there were no direct links to the data within the site, so the wayback machine's crawler never found it.  Never mind - this may still help someone facing a similar problem in the future.


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Is it worth regularly publishing in unknown business & management journals?
I notice some business & management full professors regularly publish in unknown or low rank journals. Yet I have previously been advised to be very careful where I publish. Is there value in the 'Stack 'em high' method in the Business & Management field?

There are not many business school faculty on this site.  Consider that when evaluating answers.

The rank of 'full professor' is not uniform across countries and universities.  I know of many full professors who do not know how to do research.  Indeed, some have no PhD degree.

‘Worth’ here is a value judgement. You’re an adult, what’s your impression on the value to you?

For someone who already has a solid academic record publishing in non-traditional, but more visible, venues can be a way to get some recognition in the wider world - outside academia. But I doubt that it has a lot of effect on the things that lead to an academic reputation.
Even in other fields, there are "public scholars" who spend time and effort on making the results of research known to non-academics whose practice might benefit from it. Think of it as a public service, not an academic reputation builder.
In physics, for example, Carl Sagan was such a public scholar, even though he had a solid academic reputation as well. In fact, it was that academic reputation that gave him credibility in the larger world.
For a young scholar, however, it may mean less.

Publishing in unknown journals does not give you recognition, nor does it reach non-academics.


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Should I tell my situation or request a possibly negative recommendation letter?
I'm preparing to apply to PhD programs. My current master thesis PI used tactics to postpone the graduation of the students in order to keep them longer. I quarreled with him one time in order to get the degree. I sincerely apologized in front of lab members and him.
He was the only faculty member who is familiar with my research. There is no supervisory committee. So I am concerned about the LOR from him.
Which solution might be better? Or is there other better solutions?

Do not request current PI for LOR. Rather, describe the fact he likes postponing his students’ graduation in the PS and the interview. This seems a bad solution.
Do not request current PI for LOR. Say nothing in the PS or in the interview. However, if I am asked during the interview, should I say that he wants me to stay longer ?
Request current PI for LOR, which may be a possibly negative letter. However, no one knows the result. It is impolite to ask if he would write a strong recommendation letter for me. He has not denied my request of LOR directly, but he said he is too busy. I am not sure if he would finally write it for me.

"He was the only faculty member who is familiar with my research."  Perhaps you could find someone on the faculty who would be willing to read up on what you did.

"Too busy" means "I won't write a letter you'd like."
"Describing conflicts" with your supervisor will raise flags you do not want to raise.
Your choice 2 is the correct one.  If you are asked why you don't have a letter from a current faculty member, say your working relationship with your thesis supervisor was "difficult."  Do not say anything more except to answer further questions as briefly and politely as possible.  Let your transcript speak for itself.

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


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Applying to MS in CS or EE with Mental Health Struggle
Before I get into it, I'd like to say that I'd greatly appreciate any thoughts or advice, especially if you have any experience with EE or CS graduate admissions.
I have just completed my third year as an undergraduate electrical engineering student at a top 20 engineering school, and I am interested in applying to a Masters in CS or EE. Starting in the last year of high school, I went through an intense mental health struggle related to a medical condition; psychologists warned me when I was a kid that this might happen at some point and would take years for me to overcome. My parents and I have kept the medical condition and my lifelong experience with it secret from the rest of the family. I intend to keep it private from admissions officers too. The situation was worsened by my parents' "ineffective" and "damaging" (in my psychologist's words) way of dealing with my mental health struggle while applying high academic pressure on me.
My major-field GPA could have been considerably higher if I hadn't gone through the major struggle to find meaning in life. It became hard for me to care as much about outperforming my peers as I used to, and I focused more on my mental and physical health. I earned a C in my first year during the semester when my parents threatened to disown me after discovering that I'd secretly reached out to a mental health professional (they don't trust them). I think I might've earned an F in an EE class this past semester. I am convinced that if I hadn't gone through this process, the risk of self-harm or potentially even suicide would be high later on in life. So the good news is: I'm not worried about that any more. The bad news is: I had perfect academics until the end of high school, and now I feel like I've undone all my past hard work. My parents refuse to let me graduate one semester late so all four years of grades can be considered.
My current summer internship is for software engineering at a startup, and I have been in a computer science research lab since January (although I didn't do much this past semester because I was too busy). I am resuming my research work this week, but I'm not sure if I've done enough to ask my professor for a reference letter. I also have great recommendation letters from computer science professors given that I've done considerably better in CS than in EE. Grades put aside, I want to work a job involving both EE and CS (so probably firmware/embedded software). So an MS in CS would probably be best, all things considered, but CS MS is usually harder to get into than MSEE. If I apply at the end of fall semester this year, that means I have just one semester to really turn this ship around. I will also apply for full-time jobs at the same time, but I don't know how that will go.
Does anyone have advice on what I can say to graduate school admissions officers to explain the low grades? Do I have much of a chance at top 20 MS CS programs? Along the same vein, are there any suggestions for what I can do to maximize my chances of admission? There's a summer online CS course (not crucial to CS jobs though) that I dropped to devote more time to my remote internship, but I'm considering enrolling just to strengthen my CS background and boost my GPA.

Questions asking for answers work best if they actually contain ... a question. What specifically would you like to know?

Hi! I just updated my post with questions.

"it became hard for me to care as much about outperforming my peers as I used to"
I do not know, but you have to outperform yourself, not the others. You do not do better than the others, you do your best. Being with others best will bring out the best of you, but you still do not outperform them, you have to express your potential.
And then, when you express fully your potential, you see where you stand.
There is already so much competition in life, no need to create some more out of thin air ...

First of all, you should be commended for your extraordinary resilience in the face of all the hardships you had to overcome. I know how it feels, because years ago I had to finish my degree (PhD) in a foreign country, barely surviving on a miserable scholarship, and having a persistent physical health issue.
Not knowing all your circumstances in detail, my recommendation will be of a general nature: whatever choice you are faced with, put your health first -- especially your mental health.
You are enquiring: "Do I have much of a chance at top 20 MS CS programs?"
Wrong question.
The right question should be: "Shall I be able to continue living under the same pressure for another couple of yours, doing MS right after finishing my bachelors degree?"  The ability to survive two more years of study is infinitely more important than getting admitted to the top 20, or top 200, or whatever.
If, suppose, you find a job after graduation, and work for a year or two before applying to graduate school -- would that lessen the pressure on your mental health? Would you feel less stressed or more stressed? In my opinion, an answer to this question should be the key to your decision.
Also, a year or two of work experience is a good addition to one's CV, provided this experience is more or less relevant to the planned area of graduate studies.

Let's start with the hard reality of academia: there are very few people that can afford to get a Ms/PhD (and let's not talk about a tenure position), without strong family support (both financial and mental).
Usually these people are less than 1% of the academic population, they are extremely overtalented and additionally at birth they luckily picked all the genes without any possible trigger for mental coditions, plus sometime even genes that make them resilient to things like war, plague, famine, sexual violence and other triggers of mental conditions.
For the remaining 99% of the academic population, if they are relying on themselves only, it means temporary job, underpaid and involving a lot of overworking so the mental health and financial stability are always in peril.
In your question you made clear that you have neither mental nor financial granted support from your family.
Please do not forget that it is written nowhere that you must do a PhD straight out of your master.
Do your best, find a decent working position, so you can ignore the future financial threats from your family, then you can get back in the research world with a solid financial basis you built yourself. You may look for working for companies that are at the edge of the R&D world, there are not many, but they exist.
You will be the salmon going upstream from the ocean of research applications to the source of innovation, instead of being the fat catfish profiting(scavenging) the bottom for the rest of predigested research expelled from the others ...
Good luck and be strong.


text:
When is it appropriate to ask whether relocation costs would be covered?
For one who has accepted a faculty position overseas, when is it appropriate to ask whether relocation costs would be reimbursed?

Reimbursement for relocation expenses is part of your compensation for the job.  The best time to ask about it is actually when you are negotiating over your salary.  Depending on the policies of the hiring institution, it may or may not be possible to negotiate over the amount of the relocation expenses.  However, whether or not you can negotiate for a larger reimbursement, you would probably want to find out how much your employer is going to be paying for you to move before you agree to take the job; long-distance and international moves can be quite expensive.
If you have already agreed to take the job, but you have not previously asked about relocation expenses, you ought to do so immediately.  I would contact the head of the department and ask them.  They may give you an answer immediately, or they may refer you to human resources.  However, there is no reason to hold back on asking about this.


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How to address strange author order of a collaborative paper within "equal distribution" section?
I am PhD student in mathematics and am writing a joint paper with a computer science PhD student. As we will submit the paper to a computer science journal we discussed the author ordering and agreed to equal distributions for us PhD students and our respective supervisors.
The computer science student has now ordered the author names in an non-alphabetical order for us PhD students, which makes him the first author, and an alphabetical order for the supervisors, which makes his professor the last author.
Is this common practice in computer sciences? I can understand that it is their community, but this confuses me. I think it should be at least in the same order for both categories.
My supervisor told me to talk to the other PhD student. How can I address this issue without offending anyone?
How does equal distribution authorship in computer science work, anyway?
Edit: I just don't want to be fooled. I understand that being first author is important in computer science, this is why we decided to have both PhD students as co-first authors. Our supervisors are co-last authors. Having a non-alphabetical order for the PhD students and an alphabetical order for the supervisors seems to abolish this equal distributions again to me. I just have no idea how this equal distribution thing works and how to address this issue without messing up everything.
I am not sure if we PhD students will work together again, but I could imagine that our supervisors do.

I'd first ask what it is that you'd like to achieve by any action you take? Is the ideal outcome that you become first author? Will you do further collaborative work where you can alternate first authorship?

"... discussed the author ordering and agreed to equal distributions for us PhD students and our respective supervisors." What did you agree on?

Added answers to kwah's questions. This should also answer Karl's question.

The "hierarchial" ordering you're proposing, with authors sorted in distinct ways within each group, seems way overcomplicated.  Nobody is going to be able to read the author list and be able to extract the kind of information you're trying to encode there.  Unless this other PhD student made a dramatically huge contribution compared to everyone else, I would be inclined to just order everyone alphabetically and be done with it.  Include a note saying "Authors are listed alphabetically" so Prof. Aaaaarhus doesn't seem to benefit unduly.

If you really want, also include a note saying "Author A contributed this, Author B contributed that, etc".

I understand that being first author is important in computer science -- That really depends pn what kind of computer science. At the more mathematical ends of CS (like mine), authors are alphabetical, period.

Ask the editor. It's unlikely you're the first to submit a paper with two authors who have contributed equally.
If the publishers have no policy how to tell the reader about this, push them to make one.


text:
What are assistant professors called in North America?
We've had discussions on this site about the German tradition of Prof. Dr., but I'm unclear on how it maps over to the North American academy.
My question, therefore, is whether a North American assistant professor (PhD holding, tenure-stream) would be considered a professor, a doctor, a professor doctor, or some other form when registering for an event there.

Is there anywhere other than Germany (and Austria?) that uses "Professor Doctor"?

In North America, one would only mention an academic's rank (assistant professor, associate professor, full professor, etc) in formal contexts where it is important to describe their exact job title (in a CV, business card, news article, etc).
Otherwise, the word "professor" is used generically to refer to any tenure-stream university faculty members, and in some cases also non-tenure-stream.  For example, "Susan Jones is a biology professor at Harvard."  That would still be correct if her rank is assistant professor.  Or: "The conference was attended by 300 professors from across the country."  They need not all have been full professors.
It is also the word used to address any of these people.  ("Professor Jones, I thought your paper was very interesting.")
"Doctor" is also used as a term of address, assuming the faculty member in question holds a doctoral degree.  ("Doctor Jones, please tell me more about your experiment.")  Whether "Professor" or "Doctor" is to be preferred is a matter of local custom which varies from one institution to the next.  But "Doctor" is not used to refer to the job itself.  You would not say "Susan Jones is a biology doctor at Harvard."
In North America, titles are never stacked.  One does not say "Professor Doctor Jones".

So, if I address someone who is not a full professor, is using "Dear Dr. Smith" improper? Should I use "Dear Prof. Smith" instead?

@tohecz: "Dear Dr. Smith", but any US professor with any exposure to international students or colleagues will have heard "Dear Professor Smith" and neither be offended by it nor hold it against you.

@gnometorule Thanks, that was the last missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle :)

In my experience professor is a more normal title than doctor.  Local customs vary, but people are unlikely to be offended by either.  (Just be sure to use dr/prof and not mr/mrs/miss/ms.)

When it comes to annoyance, you may find that some folks are annoyed by being called "Professor Jones" when they work at a University, have a PhD, but do not have a professor's job. I don't let it bother me, but I do get addressed as Professor Barth frequently enough because people assume that all PhDs at universities are professors. If you're writing someone out of the blue, do enough web research to determine whether calling them a professor is appropriate.

In my experience, at research universities (where there are lots of PhD's who are not professors) "Professor" is a higher title and shows more respect.  At community colleges (where there may be professors who do not have PhD's and the only PhD's are professors and top administrators), "Doctor" is a higher title.  It gets more complicated in medical fields, where there are lots of non research-trained MD "doctors."

Another distinction important in some quarters is the difference between doctors who are PhD's vs. doctorates in education.  In such environments, PhD's often prefer "John Smith, PhD" to distinguish themselves from the Ed. D.'s.

For me, Prof. versus Dr. in titles of address has to do with context. It's "Prof." if the interaction is related to the person's teaching, and "Dr." if it's to do with their research or other non-teaching context. For example, "Prof. Jones, what classes are you teaching this semester?" versus "Dr. Jones, please tell me more about your experiment." -- Of course, this is the US, so formal salutations disappear rather early on. So in anything but early contact or formal settings (which would include classes) it's most often: "Hi Susan, could I borrow that book you mentioned earlier?"

I have even had a professor request that we address him by his first name because Doctor and Professor were to formal and he thought of his students as colleagues. So it definitely varies, but you can't really go wrong with professor.

Contrary to @IanSellar's "you can't really go wrong with professor", in my experience of Australia and South Africa "professor" is a much narrower category than it is in the USA. The over-use of "professor" sounds pretentious to me, even though I know it is a purely a cultural variation. In Australia and South Africa permanent positions on faculty have hierarchical grades such as Junior Lecturer, Lecturer, Senior Lecturer,Associate Professor and Professor. One could have a PhD and work for 10 years before attaining the title of Professor. We would not refer to more junior roles as "professor".

If you are uncertain, err on the side of the higher title. But have at least a little caution: when people wrote to me as Professor when I was a grad student, I knew that they hadn't bothered to look me up at all...

@MattClarke the question is asking about North America though

In North America, all professors at all levels seem to just use the salutation "doctor", and nothing more. Does this answer your question?

That certainly doesn't match my experience, which is that the salutation "Professor" is much more common.


text:
Double check a meeting with my professor
I saw my professor couple days ago. He told me we can have meeting on Wednesday. I want to email him to double check the meeting.
Should I say
I just wanted to make sure if we can still have meeting tomorrow? Please let me know if it doesn't work for you anymore.

When he said we can have meeting on Wednesday, did he tell you what time on Wednesday?

This is not really specific to academia in any way.  You'd send this email to a professor just like you would to anyone else.  Professors aren't some sort of magic beasts that have to be placated with special code phrases.  They are just people.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's not specific to academia.

Does the professor have an administrative assistant? Because they are the ones who often know the prof's timetable better than the prof does. Especially for the more senior professors. Ask the assistant.

Yes, that sounds like an appropriate email to send anyone if you are ever want to verify that a meeting is going to take place.