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Should I name drop a famous coauthor on my resume?
I recently finished my PhD in the Spring of this year and after taking some time off I have been on the job hunt looking to get into industry or a government position. One of my publications ended up being a collaboration between a few different groups, and one in particular was led by a Nobel Prize winning chemist. I didn't have any direct interactions with this person. I just happened to do my data analysis and writeup for the paper and sent it over to the first author.
Seeing as most people, even in our field, don't recognize every Nobel Prize winner's name in publication histories, would it be a faux pas if I name dropped this scientist in my resume or specifically mention that I collaborated with a Nobel Prize winner? I'm proud of the accomplishment (even if it was a bit of luck by circumstance) but I'm not sure if it just comes off as name dropping and snooty rather than highlighting my experience.

If I read this application, chances are it would neither hurt nor help.

Normally the list of your publications would name all of the coauthors for each publication. Did you have in mind doing more than that?

Ask yourself: if you were asked to elaborate on your interaction with this notable chemist, would you feel ashamed to admit it was only indirect, or if not ashamed perhaps now cognizant that it was pointless to say so in the first place?

''Seeing as most people, even in our field, don't recognize every Nobel Prize winner's name in publication histories''.  People in the field wouldn't recognise a Nobel Prize winner as a co-author?  That's very surprising to me, are you sure about that?

@MichaelHardy I have listed the co-author in my publications section, it was suggested to me by some friends and family to mention in a highlights section of my resume that I collaborated with a Nobel Prize winner. I have a line in my resume stating "Collaborated with research groups both at my home university and elsewhere resulting in another two publications". It was suggested I add a line saying including a Nobel prize winner. I'm definitely leaning against that after reading the other comments, but I appreciate the extra perspective from everyone

@Tom You are probably right, but anecdotally I have ran into quite a few chemists that didn't know the name offhand. Most likely it is a big minority, but it was sizable enough that it gave me the impression that a portion of the population just doesn't keep up with every winner

You wrote that you didn't interact with this person and want to write on your CV that you collaborated with them. That seems ethically very questionable to me.
If I understood your description correctly you have a scientific paper that has both you and the Nobel prize winner on its author list. You can and should put that paper on your CV (including the author list). But if there was no interaction between the two of you I wouldn't put anything more than that.

I'm a bit confused (both by the question and this answer) because, to me, collaborator and coauthor are basically the same.  You can collaborate indirectly on a project.  If I had a section on my CV listed "collaborators", then I would list all coauthors (+ ongoing collaborators).  Though I don't really know what the OP is proposing...

@Kimball I understood that this was a paper with a large number of authors, essentially multiple groups all chipping in. Of course there were people between any two groups actively working together but not every person in every group interacted with every other person in all the other groups.

I agree with that, but I don't see why you need to directly interact with someone to consider them as a collaborator.  I have been part of three different 3-author papers where two of the authors never interacted directly, but I think in my field they are still considered as collaborators (e.g., for grant reviews, letter writing, ...)  Maybe there is another distinction in fields with many large-author papers?

@Kimball to widen the perspective, have a look at the number of authors per discipline (a phdcomic, but accurate). Some collaborations such as LHCb, CMS, ATLAS have 1000+ authors on their papers. Collaborators and coauthors is not quite the same, not in the context of interactions.

Thank you for the feedback. I was leaning towards not directly mentioning this but a few friends and family members were suggesting I include it in my highlights section as I have a bullet point that says "Collaborated with research groups both at my home university and elsewhere resulting in another two publications", but I wanted to ask people in the community instead.  I will continue to simply list the coauthors and leave it as is.

@Mayou36 indeed some papers have far too many authors for there to have been meaningful collaboration between every pair https://improbable.com/airchives/classical/articles/peanut_butter_rotation.html ;o)

If I would read in an application that the candidate worked together with a Nobel Prize winner, I would google the Nobel Prize winner (out of curiosity) and ask the candidate how was working together. I'd be disappointed to hear that you did not interact with each other. It would hurt your application, as I would start to wonder which facts in your CV are similarly stretched.
Just name him as one of the co-authors in your publication list. Usually, this list is not relevant for industry or public-service jobs, unless you should conduct research with the exact same topic.
Save this for some fun or anecdotal part of the application: If you are asked for some special thing in your last job, you can mention you have a publication with a Nobel Prize winner (who has this? cool), even though you did not really interact with him. Or if you are asked for a weakness, you could mention that you like to brag about your paper with a Nobel Prize winner, but you did not really interact with him. When delivered right, it might stick with the interviewer, but in a charming way.

I don't believe this is so. You don't need to interact directly with someone to establish yourself as his/her collaborator. This is well known to most academia personnel, and the recruitment panel.

@Dilworth The collaboration with a big name implies, that you were thought something or at least learned something above the average collaboration. If you did not interact, you are a collaborator, but your employer would not profit from this collaboration.

No, this is not the intent of working with a big name. The point is to witness impact and perceived importance of result and standing within the community. Having a joint paper with leader in the field is a clear indication that one work is not "esoteric" or completely "uninteresting", and shows solid standing in the community.

You must have very good reason to write to someone if the applicant did not put them in the referee lists ... that person being a Nobel prize is probably the silliest reason you can find.

Thank you for the feedback, I was unsure about including it but it had been suggested by a few friends and family members. I think I will take your advice to heart and if I mention it at all it would be in a cheeky interaction with the recruiter.

after taking some time off I have been on the job hunt looking to
get into industry or a government position.

None of the two sector's recruiters would be impressed by your publication with a Nobel Prize winner. Maybe if you were giving private lessons, there would be some rich parents (that do not understand anything, not even how exactly they became rich) caring about that.
On the other hand, in academia, a publication like that may be the one high impact publication that opens the door towards professorship (the Nobel Prize winner being co-author helping indirectly).
I feel you are trying to play the game "let's not say I collaborated with a Nobel Prize winner, but let's point to the fact I have the coauthorship in the paper and let's try to imply I collaborated with a Nobel Prize winner, so I am not lying, and it's the other person inferring that from my talking".
Well, sorry but half a lie is still a lie, even worse if you are trying to deceive someone.
Put yourself in the shoes of the receiving end. What would you think?
My opinion is that since you did not win the Nobel, such a remark will be ignored, but it may also be a rewarding technique. A gullible enough person may be impressed by such an anecdoctal fact and you will jump a couple of steps in the career ladder.
However, you should be smart enough to recognize the technique is rewarding because to put this technique in game, you need to have some insecurity (how do I stand out) leveraging on your ego (I did not collaborate with the Nobel Prize winner directly, but given the chance I would have been able to, so I can say that I did).
Plain and blunt, enjoy your ego and throw away your insecurity without silly tricks. Say that the Nobel Prize winner collaborated with you, not the other way around. Why risk with a small lie, when you can have success with a big lie?

Name-dropping is just as obnoxious in an academic context as anywhere else.  Most of the time people find this to be obnoxious because the name-dropping is gratuitous and has no relevance to the subject under discussion.  In the case at issue, what exactly is your theory of the relevance of the Nobel prize here --- is it somehow the case that this person's prize-winning research on a different paper somehow rubs off on you due to a later academic collaboration on a different thing?

The idea was that my quality of work was good enough to be on the same paper with somebody who is a leader in the field. But I take your point to heart, it is obnoxious and I will nix the idea.

That is fair enough, but I think the quality of your work is better demonstrated through more direct methods.  Here the quality of such indirect evidence is very slim in comparison with the negatives of name-dropping.

"...just as obnoxious in an academic context as anywhere else..." There are exceptions to obnoxiousness ubiquity, e.g. Erdős number number and if you will, Bacon number

"would it be a faux pas if I name dropped this scientist in my resume or specifically mention that I collaborated with a Nobel Prize winner?"
Say you are shortlisted and interviewed and they ask "what was it like working with Prof. X?" what would you say?  I suspect if you just said that you had never actually interacted with them, just made a contribution to a paper that they also contributed to, I suspect that would be (i) a somewhat underwhelming anecdote and (ii) give a bad impression as it suggests that you may have been trying to mislead them into thinking that it reflected well on you, when really it was just good fortune rather than an accomplishment.
Having said which, I suspect many mathematics CVs mention Erdos numbers (mine is proof that not everybody with a finite Erdos number is a mathematician ;o) you could say your Prof. X number is zero?

I don't think that's correct. You don't need to collaborate directly with someone to establish yourself as his/her collaborator. This is well known to most academia personnel, and the recruitment panel.

@Dilworth There is nothing in what I wrote that suggests they didn't collaborate with the prof, just that it wasn't an accomplishment on their part or something that reflected positively on their ability.  If you have nothing interesting to say about it in an interview, it probably isn't a good idea to mention it on a resume/CV.  I've "collaborated" with eminent scientists in this way, I wouldn't expect a recruitment panel to find it worth mentioning.

@Dilworth and Dikran, thank you both for your feedback. The idea was that my quality of work was good enough to be on the same paper with somebody who is a leader in the field. There obviously was some luck involved, but I was one of a few people that could have actually done the analysis that I did. However, I see how this could be considered in bad taste to mention it outside of my authorship list so I will nix the idea for now.

@DikranMarsupial Thank you for the advice. I will take it to heart

@Dilworth Very inappropriate here to try to continue a comment discussion that's already been cleaned up. Comments are meant to be ephemeral, if there is valuable information there it should be added to the answer; if there's a difference of opinion it's better to add your own answer. You've already done this, so stop commenting.

It depends on the context.
Yes, add the name: If you are going to send your CV around the globe, with institutes and communities that may not know the Nobel Prize Laureate you've worked with, then yes, you can definitely add in your research summary, and also in your CV something like: "Worked with leaders in the field such as X". This shouldn't hurt.
No need to, but wouldn't hurt much anyway:
If your CV is to be sent narrowly to people who already know this Nobel Laureate, there's no need to emphasize this, though I wouldn't think it would hurt your chances anyway.
Comment: Other answers here mention it to be of "bad tase", "obnoxious", and so on. This may be the case, but it is irrelevant to the question whether it is an effective practice.

"Worked with leaders in the field such as X". strongly implies a direct interaction, more strongly than "collaborated with", but even that is pushing things.  If the OP is going to mention this, I would simply stick to the facts and say that a Nobel laurate was a co-author of one of their papers, or that they were involved in a collaboration with a Nobel laurate, neither of which implies a direct interaction.  If someone views this as "obnoxious" then it may be "effective" but not in a positive way, which is I suspect what the other answers are pointing out.

Again, as explained explicitly in my answer, the collaboration with the leader in the field intends to prove importance or relevance of some of the results of the candidate. It has nothing to do with the "innate capabilities" of the candidate himself/herself. As for the precise phrase "collaboration", "worked with" etc. it doesn't matter, but indeed better to be modest about.


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Should I mention that I am a tutor on Chegg on my CV?
I have recently been selected as a tutor on Chegg for the subject of advanced physics and have recently also been applying to various internship opportunities as I am in my final year of undergrad. I have the experience of being an educator at an Indian organisation, and was wondering whether I can add this new part time tutoring job to my CV. The problem is that I have the opinion that professors don't look at Chegg as something good, so is there any way it could look bad on my resume?

Somewhat related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/165912/should-instructors-make-use-of-the-chegg-honor-shield-tool

Note that many people (outside the US at least) don't know what chegg is.

Some extended discussion, mostly about the culpability of Chegg with regard to academic misconduct, has been has been moved to chat. Please see this FAQ before adding another comment.

It's possible to list yourself as 'paid online tutor in physics' without naming which service. It might help if you have any legit client stories/references of who you tutored.

I would probably interpret "tutor on Chegg" to mean "paid to help students cheat". Maybe this isn't a fair assessment of your job there, but it's certainly the impression I get out of Chegg.
I am only willing to answer student questions on StackExchange and on other sites here like Biology.SE because of strict moderation policies that prevent students from using the site as a homework cheating tool rather than an educational aid. Other sites without these controls, especially those that seem to have a business model based on helping students cheat, leave a bad taste in my mouth.

@DanielHatton Unless applying to a company/institution that hunts cheaters, I cannot see an advantage in looking like somebody that switched sides.

@DanielHatton, only if they hire you specifically to be a gamekeeper and nothing else.

I know that I'm probably the only one here around to think this way, but I'm much more disappointed by the professors who complain about Chegg and don't do anything to change the way in which they administer homework and exams. When I was a student around 30-35 years ago, there were professors who would say: "It's a student's right to cheat, and it's a professor's duty to avoid cheating". Even though this statement is strong, it contains more than a grain of truth. I've also discussed this here.

@MassimoOrtolano The problem is that it's much easier to cheat today than when you were a student, and much harder to catch. It's now an industry with thousands working full-time on it, who can go so far as make entire projects and essays for hire. If you think you've made exams that can't be cheated, you are probably mistaken. I myself have written many "creative" problems which can't be found in standard sources, and within minutes they get posted to Chegg, where people like OP solve them.

@knzhou There was already a cheating industry 35 years ago, and even more, and the methods are the same. There were professional cheaters and you could buy projects, essays, dissertations and whatever you wanted to buy already 35 years ago. What changed is just the technological support. But there are other forms of exams, like oral exams, which are less prone to cheating (and this is just one example). I know that many here like to think that nowadays it’s different, but it’s just because they are inexperienced about cheating (and also because it’s sounds a lot like good guys vs bad guys).

@MassimoOrtolano How do you know there isn't massive cheating on your oral exams?

@knzhou Because an oral exam is a one-to-one interview. I wrote about the structure of my exams here.

This does not answer the title question.

@AnonymousPhysicist As you've probably noticed on my other answers where you've commented similarly, I don't really think we should be in the business of telling people directly what to do and not to do except in special circumstances. Rather, we can help supply the information needed to make a decision. As Daniel suggests, there may be some (very rare) situational information that changes the answer, yet we're building a repository of Q&A here meant to help people beyond just one asker. The question that OP ends their body with is more answerable than their title, IMO.

"we can help supply the information needed to make a decision."  I do not think you have done that sufficiently explicitly.  Michael did; see Michael's fourth paragraph.

@AnonymousPhysicist From the Help: "If you have a question about a decision you need to make, please focus on how to make the decision, the pros and cons of a certain choice, or what relevant aspects you should consider. We cannot possibly know or judge all the details of your situation, in particular your personal preferences and the quality of your work and qualifications. Therefore you still have to make the decision yourself."

Even though @MassimoOrtolano as a moderator has closed some questions that I wanted to stay on this site, and made other mod decisions that gave me some bad feelings, I have to say I totally agree with Massimo here. Oral exams are a much better way to evaluate how well the student has studied the material (for a huge class, meeting each student 1-on-1 sounds like a daunting task, but I don't think any of you like spending 6 hours grading exams where you can barely read their hand-writing, either. Plus ... you can do an oral exam to a group of 10 people, 5 times, and you've covered 50).

Yes, but your answer does not discus CVs in any way, so it is not explicit enough.  You're not really helping the asker, who we can presume to be a novice CV writer, make a decision.

The only thing that has changed today compared to 30-35 years ago vis a vis cheating is that the process has become democratized. Now, anyone can cheat using the Internet and other readily-available resources, without needing access to specialized, exclusive resources (like those previously maintained by fraternities, sororities, and athletic "tutors"). Massimo is absolutely correct; the kind of cheating that Chegg makes possible can only be blamed on lazy professors. There were times as an undergrad that I "cheated" on homework by looking up answers. I then learned from those answers.

@CodyGray, I don't think that laziness on the part of professors is always accurate. In my experience, most professors are very hard working, but may be hampered by budgetary restrictions.

Keep your resume to what is relevant, and highlight how your experience has been for positive learning rather than cheating, or leave it out.
Chegg is notorious for student cheating - we actually had instructors scouring Chegg during the exam this year to search for real-time cheating.  It was surreal.  But that being said, Chegg in and of itself is not bad, and tutors on Chegg can't be held responsible for cheating just because they post on Chegg.
So, if the job requires you to show experience as someone who can handle remote learning, remotely communicating with students, that sort of thing, Chegg could be relevant experience.  Now, if the person doing the hiring has reasonable knowledge of Chegg they'll also know that it is used a lot for cheating, so you will have to do some work on your resume to show how you specifically did not contribute to student cheating.  This is a big hill to climb and I doubt you'd be able to do it.  On the other hand, if it is for a job where the hiring person doesn't really know what Chegg is for you won't have this issue.
If the job doesn't require you to show any of this, I'd leave it off for two reasons.  First, Chegg is sketchy and is obviously a cheating mill.  Second, it is not worth it to waste the hiring person's time with irrelevant experience.  Unless you can swing your Chegg experience to be relevant to the job you are applying for, it doesn't really do much for you to leave it on.
Now, since you asked this question it's pretty obvious that you knew you were likely helping students cheat.  Perhaps use that to guide your choices of what goes on your resume...

" we actually had instructors scouring Chegg during the exam this year to search for real-time cheating" This actually happened to questions I wrote. Highly disappointing.

"Chegg in and of itself is not bad" - why not? It seems principally to be a cheating tool. "tutors on Chegg can't be held responsible for cheating" - I disagree; tutors, whether on Chegg, on some other online service, or those having in-person meetings with their students have a responsibility to assist in education rather than to assist in cheating. There may not be ways that an instructor can compel any sanction on the person, but it can certainly affect their judgment of that person.

I think the "hill to climb" is beyond most people. There is no way to document that what you did was ethical.

Students are allowed to collaborate with other students, cheating happens when a student submits work that he/she does not understand good enough to be able to reproduce on his/her own. The responsibility for checking whether a student has stuck to the guidelines happens after the exams are graded. One can see of there is a bog difference in the exam grades and the homework grades. Students with large differences should be invited and ask questions to see if they have actually mastered the subject and done poorly on the exam due to e.g. having been ill, or if they cheated on their homework.

So, when profs, complain about chegg, it's actually they themselves who use a bad system for homework and exams, they are then themselves to blame for cheating.

@CountIblis This sounds like blaming the victim. I wrote completely original questions for an online exam and they were posted on Chegg within minutes of the exam starting. What's your better system here?

@knzhou You shouldn't give conventional exams online. Give your students projects to work on and hold  Zoom meetings with your students about their projects. Let them write reports that you can grade. This way you'll know for sure that the students mastered the subject.

@CountIblis Not only does that not scale, the abuses in those cases can be even worse, as you can buy entire projects and reports. It is just the same as the exam cheating except that there's a much longer time window to get it done. When I was younger, I was in a course with a required group project. I saw somebody buy a project and then sell membership in his "group" to others.

@CountIblis In my opinion the best option is still tough exams with unique questions and tight time limits. It's still cheatable but it's much harder -- the examinee really feels the minutes tick by as they wait for a Chegg answer. It would work fine, if not for dutiful people like OP.

@knzhou That's why you need to hold regular Zoom meetings. If a student buys entire reports, the student won't be able to explain what he/she has been working on.

@knzhou I've seen students offer $300 for exam help on reddit. They hire entire teams of online tutors. If you give a 3 hour exam with a tight time limit, 3 tutors will work on the different questions simultaneously and be done with your 3 hour exam in just one hour.

@CountIblis That's crazy! All of the many comments on this Q/A are just leaving me more and more depressed...

@MishaLavrov If the students are working from home then you can just as well give a take-home exam in the form of a small project that takes several days to complete. If you make it more technical e.g. computations involving many pages of equations that has to be done using Mathematica or Maple then it becomes much more difficult for students to cheat. Such projects are also much more interesting for students to work on.

@knzhou You shouldn't be depressed, but you should realize that you (and all the others who think alike) have two choices. You can either continue living with the illusion that a long time ago cheating was more difficult, blaming sites like Chegg, criticizing those who tell you that you're losing a battle, and not changing the way you administer the exams. Or you can accept that in certain types of exams it is way too easy to cheat, and change the way you administer the exams, maybe listening to those who have more experience and don't have a massive cheating problem in their classes.

@MassimoOrtolano Well, that's a bit harder for me because my main experience for exam writing is a competition with 5000 participants...

@knzhou An exam is something different from a competition, but this tells you that if your university wants to propose a competition it should change the format and the maximum number of applicants.

@MassimoOrtolano But that's begging the question. The whole point of a screening exam is to lower the maximum number of applicants for the next round; how else can you fairly do it? You might be okay if you only ever deal with small groups of students, but that's only because somewhere earlier in the process, somebody had to do the initial screening that turns 5000 students into the 20 that you end up meeting. That somebody is me!

@knzhou If your university really wants to do such a competition, it can subdivide the 5000 applicants in 5 shifts of 1000 applicants each, with 50 proctors monitoring the applicants through video for the duration of the test, each shift receiving a different problem and each student using two cameras, one from the computer and one from the phone positioned from another point of view to cover the whole room. If the university cannot afford this, they can reduce the pool of applicants on a first-come, first-serve basis. It may not be fair, but you cannot have everything.

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Disadvantages of posting on arXiv when submitting to Nature or Science?
In astronomy, most papers are posted on arxiv.org before being published in a peer-reviewed journal, partly because the review process is long and timing is crucial to ensure one gets the credit for a discovery.
However, it seems to me (from talking with colleagues) that when papers are submitted to Nature or Science, they are rarely posted on arXiv first. Is it because of the common misconception that journals like Nature or Science will not consider for publication papers that have been submitted to a pre-print server? Or is there some disadvantage in posting on arXiv that overcomes the advantage of claiming the result as soon as possible?

Regarding the journals' policies on pre-print servers, I found this:
Science Journals: Editorial Policies

The Science journals will not consider any original research paper or component of a research paper that has been published or is under consideration for publication elsewhere. We do not regard dissertations/theses as prior publications. We do regard peer-reviewed and citable conference proceedings as prior publication. We support posting of research papers on preprint servers such as arXiv.org, bioRxiv.org, ChemRxiv.org, medRxiv.org, and the like.

For authors: Initial submission – Nature

The Nature journals support the posting of submitted manuscripts on
community preprint servers such as arXiv and bioRxiv. We do, however,
ask you to respect the following summaries of our policies:

The original submitted version may be posted at any time.
The accepted version may be posted 6 months after publication.
The published version—copyedited and in Nature journal format—may not be posted on a preprint server or other website.

Nature and Science have come around to tolerating arXiv, but it wasn't always that way. The cultural memory of academia is quite long.

I don't see any downside to publishing preprints provided the journal won't object, and in this case, they don't. They won't let you post the "as published" version as a preprint, which is pretty common.
Perhaps the colleagues who warn you against this are thinking of "olden days" in which publishers were more strict about such things. That is changing (has changed). Some publishers wish to put submissions on preprint servers themselves, but make that clear in instructions to authors.
And, as you say, it is advantageous to almost everyone to get results out in public early. Not just to assure priority, but to enable extensions.
There is a difference for patentable material (in the US, at least) because of recent changes to patent law. In that case, holding things private prior to filing for a patent is probably necessary.

Everywhere in the world publishing something prevents subsequent patenting. Only in the US has this difference been adapted "recently" (10yrs ago) and only to some extent (1yr grace period). If you want a patent, don't publish before filing.

@DonQuiKong - Other countries with a nominal grace period are Canada and Japan.

In addition to misguided diehard beliefs that are a vestige of the “olden days” that Buffy’s answer refers to but are no longer applicable today, there is a real sense even today in which not posting preprints on arXiv while submitting to a prestigious journal is beneficial to the authors (while being detrimental to the community as a whole). For one thing, authors who delay making their results public until the last possible minute gain for themselves the advantage of being able to continue the research and produce more publishable results without competition for a longer period of time than if they had made the work public earlier.
In addition, publications in journals like Nature and Science are often accompanied by marketing blitzes where the authors try to drum up publicity for their work by issuing press releases, talking to journalists etc. It may be plausible to believe that the media will be more likely to cover your cutting edge scientific research when it’s just been made public now in a Nature publication after being veiled in a shroud of secrecy during the refereeing process, compared to a scenario of a Nature paper coming six months after the results already having been made public in an arXiv preprint. It is natural for people (journalists and colleagues alike) to find new things more exciting than old things.
In other words, the behavior of your colleagues may in fact be driven by rational considerations.
Is it selfish to keep your results secret for as long as possible for maximal career advantage? Yes. Are some people selfish? Also yes. Is the population of ambitious academics (of the sort who aggressively pursue publication of their work in Nature and Science) more predisposed to selfish behavior than the general population of scientists? You can decide that one for yourself...

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What is Springer's “version of record”?
What is Springer's “version of record”? Is it the final originally published version of an article or book?
According to the answers that I received, yes it is.

A version of record is the article or contribution as published including copy editing and lay out.
Source: Peter Davidhazi (2014) "New publication cultures in the humanities: exploring the paradigm shift."

According to this Springer document

The "Version of Record" is defined as the final version of the Work as originally published, and as may be subsequently amended following publication in a contractually compliant manner, by or on behalf of the Publisher.


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Is it acceptable to say that a reviewer's concern is not going to be addressed because then the paper would be too long?
It is my understanding that philosophy papers have less chance of being published if they are over 7,000 or 8,000 words long. But at the same time we philosophers often complain that a given author's work was not considered in a manuscript. So what should one do when a reviewer asks for consideration of a whole additional facet or philosopher in a paper? Is it understood that in that case, the author can substantially increase the wordcount of her manuscript? Even over the limit stated in the submission guide? (I've seen published papers of 13,000 words in a journal that indicates a limit of 10,000).

Nice to see a non-STEM question

This is the kind of thing you ask the editor about. "If I include this philosopher's view, the manuscript's length will increase by roughly 40%. Are you sure?" If the editor says yes, you're in the clear - they are clearly going to waive the word limit. If the editor says nevermind, you're also in the clear - even if the reviewer objects, the editor's on your side and can overrule the reviewer's objections if the reviewer recommends reject.

You can also offer to note the omission, which might please the reviewer more than doing nothing while not adding to length substantially.

I have seen ‘supplementary materials’ (such as large dataset or proofs) available on authors webpage or repository.

What about a middle path: very generally and overarchingly mentioning, in no more than 7/8 lines, my approach's position with respect to the work that the reviewer asks me to consider?

@DamiánBeanato you can certainly do that too - in my experience the editor is usually willing to consider the authors' opinion on where to take the manuscript. Just be sure to give your reasons in the cover letter to the editor.

You can ask the editor for advice, but you probably can't force your will on any journal. Ignoring reviewer advice is risky. Going over the page/word limit is risky.
So, acceptable, yes. But it may not result in an outcome you would favor. Only the editor can say what will be accepted when all is done.
An alternative, perhaps, depending on what you have, is that the original together with the reviewers suggestion is enough material for two papers if things are moved around a bit. I can't judge that, of course, but it might be worth a look.

This largely depends on if you think that addition is useful or valid or if you think that the addition is unneeded or will detract from the focus of the paper.
If you think that the addition is valid and useful, one way forward is to reduce words elsewhere: cut was is less important, restructure, and be more concise to fit this new information in. You can also contact the editor directly and ask about additional words. If the journal still produces print versions you might be bound by the stated word limits. If they've gone entirely digital, there are no physical constraints so it is just what the editor will allow. Usually there's a bit of wiggle room for articles post review and many of them must grow a bit.
If you do not think the addition is useful and valid, then the fact that inclusion will significantly increase the length of your paper can be put in the response letter as a reason that you will not be taking on board that particular suggestion. If you are going to do this, do think of a way you can nod to this philosopher/corpus of research/whatever in a sentence or two, if only to explain that they will not be discussed here but further work to include them in the analysis could be interesting in the future. That often gives the editor what they need to allow your paper to continue. This won't always work, especially if the reviewer said that your paper is invalid without the addition, but if it was more of a suggestion than a mandate it tends to be enough.
Good Luck!


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What do you do if you have developments on your paper during the long peer review process?
We all know that the peer review process of a manuscript can take months, and months, and more months. In this period, one continues to research, and sometimes your manuscript keeps experiencing small changes as your investigation proceeds further. What do you do? Wait until the first revision to introduce these changes and let the editor know that you also made modifications that were not based on the reviewers comments?

related : https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/131332/1015

The phrase "exclusively modify" puzzles me.  Are you trying to warn the editor that you did not modify the paper behind your co-authors' backs?

Hi. "you did not exclusively modify your original manuscript based on the reviewers comments" = you modified your manuscript, but those modifications were not exclusively based on the reviewers comments, i.e., you made other modifications on your own. I don't have a co-author.

Thanks for pointing this out. Are you a native speaker? I modified and simplified the text of my original question.

Wait until the first revision to introduce this changes and let the editor know that you did not exclusively modify your original manuscript based on the reviewers comments?

Yes, that's the most common thing to do.
Of course, if the paper is rejected, then you can incorporate the changes before submitting somewhere else.
If the new developments are dramatic, then you may instead decide to leave the original paper alone, and write a separate paper with the new work.

I had dramatic developments which were very well received by the reviewers, apparently. The article was accepted.

This depends a lot on the scale of your proposed changes. If they are huge, you might have a new paper to follow on the first. If they are really small, as you suggest, you could just save them for a revision, supposing that the paper will be "accepted with revisions".
The intermediate case is a bit harder. If the changes alter the thrust of the paper or a major conclusion, you need to inform the editor. In the long run that will save time, in most cases.
But yes, you can and should point out things in the revision that weren't in the original to make the second round of review either go faster or be avoided.


text:
Should I answer a revise decision saying that I will?
Should I answer an EiC email that communicates a revise decision and sends me the reviews, saying that I will? Or just revise an upload the revised manuscript when it is ready?

Just submit the revisions when ready, according to whatever the procedures for that particular journal are. No need to bother the editor with an extra message that doesn't require any action from them.
Often, journals request revisions within some time interval; if you expect to need more time, for example if reviewer requests will require additional experiments, the journal will probably ask that you request an extension. Otherwise, no contact is necessary unless asked for until you send revisions.

I, myself, would probably want to send a "thank you" email in return and mention that I'm working on the revision. The editor then knows, at least, that you got the revision request and that it didn't wind up in junk-mail limbo.
Some might say that it is a mistake to "bother" a busy editor. But, if the volume of work of an editor is so large as to make this a problem, then I think that editor probably has an assistant who filters the mail in any case.
It might be useful information to them or not, but the thank you part seems to me to be appropriate. If a reply were essential, the mail from the EiC would have requested it, however.

Yes, I'm always inclined to acknowledge people's communications quickly, and to thank them when appropriate...


text:
Can editor ask for revision after a paper is accepted?
This is my first publishing experience (field: social sciences). I have an article accepted for a journal (sage publications) after minor revision. I have undergone the proof read and revision stage (submitted my proof and responding a week ago and my open-access option).
But today, I received an email from the editor asking for further revision (actually, a challenging one). The editor writes that there was a miscommunication on the journal's side and I shouldn't worry because my paper is still "accepted." I am writing to ask if this is a rare situation? Do you really have to go through another process of revision?

Yes
Ultimately nothing gets published unless the editor(s) approve of it, so if they request revisions you'll have to make them.
As for whether it's rare, the answer is also yes. Usually there are no more revisions requested after a paper is accepted. The underlying reason this is happening is, as the editor says, a miscommunication on their part. People are more likely to communicate correctly than incorrectly.

I won't comment on how rare it is other than to guess that for something major it is pretty rare - and a bit odd. But until you have something that can be considered a contract where you are, they can require it. Not knowing the actual request, it is impossible to say if they would be justified in withdrawing acceptance if you don't comply. There might be some regulatory reason for the request, in fact.
Probably you should do this, unless you are willing to withdraw the paper and submit elsewhere. But you need to judge whether the request is reasonable. If so, it might be in your best (career) interest to make a final revision.
One option that is open, is to discuss the situation with the editor and determine the reason and the necessity.

Hi, thank you for your insightful answer; much appreciated. What is a contract for journal publication? I have received an acceptance email from the journal editor and signed the open-access contract. Are these considered some sort of "contract"?

What constitutes a contract varies around the world and I'm not a lawyer in any case. But if you signed away your copyright then you probably have a contract. If you do have a contract and they insist on the changes before publication and you don't agree, you need to deal with cancelling the contract and getting your copyright back. The idea of the "contract" is that you gave them something of value (the copyright). So they likely owe you in return. But regulations/laws might intervene depending on the nature of the requested changes.


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Who is responsible for paying for an on-campus visit for a faculty interview?
I am applying for faculty positions. I am worried that I may have to spend thousands of dollars for flights, hotel, and other transportation depending upon where I travel for the interview. I am wondering who is responsible for paying for an on-campus visit for a faculty interview? Is it the applicant or the employer?

In the US the university would reimburse travel expenses as a general rule.

In Germany or Austria it is likely to happen that applicant has to pay.

@HenrikSchumacher: really? On faculty level? I can see that happening if you are interviewing for a Ph.D. or postdoc position, but once you are applying for professorships, I would be surprised if the host institution did not cover reasonable travel expenses in Germany.

@HenrikSchumacher My experiences with Austrian university systems were different. And everyone I know got reimbursed by German universities.

@Michael Greinecker Well, I have occasionbally seen job advertisements (maybe mostly W1 positions?) where they explicitly told applicants that they won't be reimbursed. In particular, I recall such an advertisement by Graz University because I was in the USA at that time (so I decided to not apply).

But what I actually meant to say by my comment is that the country does matter.

Indeed. @Dr.Baje: what part of the world are we talking about?

@HenrikSchumacher I think there are definitely universities that do not always have the funds for overseas flyouts (though I saw it, coincidently, at Graz). And interviews are often done online with few flyouts afterwards.

@Cag51, primarily US/Canada but I like to hear how practices and norms vary by country.

@StephanKolassa Yeah, in Austria universities do sometimes expect candidates to travel on their own bill. But I think it's falling out of fashion, since it basically communicates "we expect every candidate to be a car / train ride away from us at most".

FWIW: in France, I have never, ever, seen travel expenses for a job interview reimbursed.

@IliaSmilga: Does the experience you describe include faculty interviews, or just other kinds of job interviews?

Oh yes, sorry: I meant faculty interviews. Outside of academia rules are different. I am currently trying (and have been trying for the past 8 years or so) to get a faculty position in France. (My field is pure math, in case it matters - but I do not think the situation is any different in other fields.)

This may vary from place to place (country), but generally you should expect that the institution will cover the cost. Probably they won't cover first class travel or expensive hotels, but otherwise it is on them. Often they will make the arrangements themselves.
Another possibility is that you need to pay initially and make your own arrangements with reimbursement later - hopefully not too much later. Ideally in this situation you get a check when you leave, but that isn't always possible.
I would be wary of anywhere that won't cover travel. You should ask how and when you'll be reimbursed, but that might be in a conversation with the department head rather than the hiring committee. Practices vary.
International travel might present problems, however, so know before you get too deep into the process.

Thank you. I requests answers from other people too.

I would add that in some cases the university may have or at least impose strict budget limits on how much they can cover. So they do cover your travel cost but only under the assumption that this is a within country train ticket. If you need an international airplane ticket they may only pay a small fraction of the total cost.

Academia and every non-academic employer usually pay for travel reimbursements to a job interview. There are several countries that have according laws. Nevertheless, not every small company or university obey. Some later try to only pay for the successful candidate and hope they don't get sued.
It is always better to ask for confirmation that the expenses are being covered and how the process is done before you spent too much money like for a plane ticket. If you don't get a clear answer, be prepared to pay it yourself or having to fight for the money, which might look bad on your application.
You could ask for an online interview first, to get an impression if the job offer is really that promising for you.

(Same question as I asked in response to someone else's comment on the original question) What is your experience with faculty hiring interviews? Every hiring committee I've served on has a first round of online interviews, followed by a smaller round of in-person interviews. Requesting an online interview is unlikely to change this process, and would hint that the candidate has not been mentored on the faculty job search process.

RLH:  Comments really shouldn't be used for asking new questions.  If you are interested in the process, I would suggest that you ask a new question.

@XanderHenderson: I'm very familiar with the process. My question is asking the question answerer to clarify their qualification to answer the question, given that the last line of their answer suggests an unfamiliarity with the faculty hiring process.

@RLH Why is there a committee involved? Unless it is a tenure track, applying to a permanent position or guest lecturer is without a committee.

@usr1234567: What kind of faculty position are you envisioning that there's a sole person as opposed to a committee/team running the hiring process, and they're not already using a multi-stage screening process with online interviews to narrow down the pool before inviting candidates to campus?

every non-academic employer usually pay for travel reimbursements to a job interview - Is this really true?  I was under the impression that non-academic employers are less likely to pay (for one, because they typically expect interviewees to be local).  But even in academia, things vary by country (if not other factors.)

Germany has a law (I am slightly paraphrasing) that says the employer pays unless they tell you beforehand they won't. Which they might well do, if they would have to fly you in from California.


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How to network with people in virtual conferences?
After the coronavirus pandemic, most conferences have switched to the virtual mode and it is most likely that this will be the norm for some time now. I understand that networking will be much harder in this setting and that is a major let down for researchers/graduate students especially the ones starting out fresh.
What do you suggest are the best ways to optimize one's experience of attending and presenting in a virtual conference? If some of you have already attended any such conferences in recent months, it would be great if you could share your experience, preferably with a little more focus on the networking aspect of it!

How to network with people in virtual conferences?

There are no methods that actually work.
You can present your work, including your contact information.  But you were doing this anyway, since it is the same as in-person conferences.
You can try asking questions during the conference.  Most of the time, most of the questions are not answered, and most people do not know who asked them.
You can network using non-conference methods based on what you learned from the conference.  For example, send emails to other participants.

Two things come to my mind:

create a personal website that allows for networking and give a short profile of you and your research on it (like exchanging calling/business card at a real conference), don't make the mistake to overload it, maybe 1 DIN A4 page. You can also think about something like ORCID or researchgate profile, so I don't know how many researchers are registered to such services, a www profile with short URL is probably more safe to be visited by any researcher. On the website you can also establish a viewable flash version or snapshots of your poster/presentation. A disadvantage of a virtual conference is that longer discussions/conversations that happen during poster sessions cannot be easily technically realized or are convenient. And I think most researcher feel easier to contact you directly after the virtual conference by mail or skype/zoom if you actively ask for collaboration.
on the last (and maybe first) slide or end of your virtual presentation/poster show your interest for collaborations and above link or skype/zoom contact.

I do not believe that zoom contacts exist.

-1 for reserachgate


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PhD Interviews for CSE at US universities
I am a final year Master of Technology Student studying Computer Science. I am planning to apply for PhD's in top US universities. But I have a problem of stuttering. I stutter a lot while speaking on phone or over the video chats, but very less while talking face to face.
Does PhD admission process in US universities for computer science disciplines involve interviews for international candidates? And if yes, I am very nervous, that I will fail because of my stuttering despite having sufficient knowledge.

Disclosure: I am myself a person who stutters the severity of which depends on the position of stars in the sky.

First, I want to point out, that stuttering is OK. In the same way, as not stuttering is OK. Discrimination based on stuttering should not happen, and all the common misconceptions regarding people who stutter (not confident, less knowledgable, less prepared, etc) are simply misconceptions. While there are still a lot of people who believe in them, the situation is getting better for people who stutter; in particular, in the USA.
Regarding the interviews for candidates (whether domestic or international): that highly depends. In some universities/departments, some professors would want to interview their potential students. In others, the students are not assigned a particular advisor until the 2nd year; thus, no interview. It is a rarer situation when an interview is conducted not by a potential supervisor themselves. However, the specific fields like MBA or medicine might have a separate "Interview" stage in the application process.
Thus, I suggest you find that information directly from the individual program you are intending to apply.
However, I would strongly advise not to be discouraged by the interview. You should be judged by the essence of your speech, its organization, logic, and particular answers, and not by "the occasional repetitions and blocks". While there is very little you can do about the stuttering itself, there are many things you can do regarding your preparation and the way you formulate your thoughts. That is important. Focus on that.
One of the very useful tools is a self-disclosure statement. One can provide it in a written form before the interview, right at the beginning of the speech, or both. For example, I can suggest something, as follows (which you should modify so it becomes yours):

Hello, [my name is XXX]. Sometimes, in my speech, you will hear blocks and repetitions as I do stutter. Please, feel free to ask me a question if something is not clear, I would be really happy to clarify on that.

That has several purposes:

explicitly allows you to stutter during the interview (or any other speech or speech-related activity)
prepares the other participants that you stutter
calls to action of asking questions if something is not clear

Consider using one if you feel like it.
With that, I hope that whether you have an interview or get to a program where no interview happens, you will succeed despite the stuttering. As research (which is why you want to do a PhD, I assume) welcomes people irrespective of their stuttering. It simply should not matter.

+1 for the self-disclosure statement. Helps clear the air.

Thank you for your words and suggestions. :)


text:
Try exercises or look at the solutions for self-study
I am currently self-studying The Art of Computer Programming as an undergrad in my free time. To do all of the exercises (or even a portion of them) would be incredibly difficult and time-consuming; however, there are solutions at the back of the text. I am wondering if I would miss out on something from a pedagogical perspective if I simply look at the problem, understand what it's asking, and then read the solution and understand it?
I would hope that mastery of the content is gained through experience in the field and further study in mathematics. How strongly recommended is giving “the old college try”?

George Polya wrote something like, "in order to learn to solve problems, you must solve problems.  Some of the problems in The Art of Computer Programming are, or were at the time, suitable for doctoral dissertations, but each problem has a numerical indication of difficulty.  Do the easy ones and try the ones that are a stretch for you.

The only way to learn to do the thing is to actually do the thing.

Some of the exercises are very hard. That is expected. But it depends on how deep you want your learning to be. If you are happy enough with a superficial understanding, then just read the solutions.
But if you want "operational" knowledge. The knowledge of how to put all of that to use and to extend it in your work, then you need to do a lot of the exercises. Mark them off when you succeed and come back to the ones you can't do later on. Or, find someone more knowledgeable than yourself, who also understands learning, who can give you minimal hints when you get stuck.
The issue is in the way the brain works. Long term memory works not by seeing something once and having it immediately imprinted somehow, but through rewiring of the neurons through repetition, reinforcement, and feedback. If you don't do that, you won't develop a deep understanding - or even memory of what you've seen.
But, since many of them are hard, and there may still be a few research problems hidden in there, don't work until you get frustrated. But instead of giving up and reading the solution, put it aside and go on to another. Come back to the hard ones occasionally and see if you can do better.
The more you do, the more it will enable you to do others, even if it doesn't make them easy.
In some books the exercises are what give it value. If you can do them, you have some deep knowledge TAOCP is like that.
But the same is true of the books you have for your coursework in CS and in Math.

ok this makes sense—should i read the book once through and do the exercises afterwards?

Unlikely. Especially that book. A bit of reading and a bit of working is better for most people. There are (rare) exceptions. And maybe a bit of bike riding or violin playing to give yourself a break.

I've posted a number of things here about how learning works. A good book on the subject can be found by searching this site for "Zull", the author.

thank you so much and i will search for zull, topic is of great interest to me in the present moment

The great thing about TAOCP is that the difficulty of the problems is specified. It might not always be perfect, but it makes figuring out how much time you want to spend on trying a problem much easier. Knuth talks about that in the foreword iirc (how he once read a text where there was an open research problem among much easier problems without any notice).

Reading the problem and then reading the solution to understand it would be like going to the gym and then understanding how to lift weights by watching other people. Unless you do it yourself, you won't build any actual muscle.
Any amount of studying is better than never having picked up the book, but programming is very much a skill you have to practice. There are so many things you have to experience and fail at first hand to develop this skill.
For example, people often joke about forgetting something as simple as a semicolon at the end of their statements. The only way to ingrain that into your brain is to get that error a few hundred times in real life practice.

Nice analogy. Like "learning" to swim by watching the olympics.

You probably have no chance to finish all the exercises in the TAOCP in your lifetime.
Some of them appear to be open problems, i.e., the solutions would be publishable.
A better way would be to skim over the material, and go into the details and the depth of the parts that really interest you. Then you might find out that TAOCP is not complete, and that you'll need even more time to find the additional literature by yourself.
A titanic task, indeed.


text:
Attend an international conference during PhD? How to know I'm ready (or not) to attend/answer a call for paper?
I am currently a Ph.D. candidate (1st year). I am still reviewing literature and thinking about the design of my research to begin the empirical part within 4–6 months (social sciences, qualitative research).
There is an international conference organizing different seminars about themes I precisely deal with. Though I still did not start the empirical part, I would like to know if it is of any interest to answer a call for contribution to discuss the theoretical framework I contemplate to build upon?
My supervisor seems not knowing yet that this conference is organized (his research interests are quite far from that of the conference). I fear it might sounds being fiercely ambitious, though I consider this meeting as an opportunity to meet people sharing my research interests/challenging my first assumptions.

You can still ask your advisor.

This is totally dependent on when the call is due


text:
For an undergraduate, what does it mean to publish an article in a peer-reviewed journal?
I'm an undergraduate and have been able to have my thesis on curing psoriasis published in a peer-reviewed journal. Does it qualify me for anything?

This will be hard to answer if you do not tell us more about the journal.  Is it just for undergraduates?  Is it the top journal in your field?  How advised you to send it to this journal?  Is the publisher reputable?

what was your role in and contribution to the published project?

https://researchpublish.com/issue/IJTPD/Issue-1-January-2021-March-2021

This is a thesis of my own life. My purpose of asking this question is not to gain any job or a degree. I want this message to be seen by as many as possible.

Publishing in a reputable venue is an achievement that is definitely recognized.
To potential academic grad program admission committees, it signals your readiness for a PhD degree.
To employers, it signals your willingness to dive into a project and excel in it.
To your friends, family and fellow humans, it signals that you have made the world a better, more understandable place.
Whether you qualify for anything really depends on how important was your contribution. You might be eligible for a scholarship or an award from your institution for example.

The posting says nothing about the journal being reputable.

Yep, all I said is conditional on that

It doesn’t qualify you for anything in the literal sense of the word “qualify”. It is merely a sort of achievement, whose value to your future studies and/or career can range anywhere between extremely positive (if you’ve discovered a revolutionary cure for psoriasis) and slightly negative (if you’ve published a garbage paper in a predatory/vanity journal).
Assuming the most normal scenario in which your paper is a legitimate paper that makes a legitimate contribution to science but is not very good or exciting (the vast majority of papers authored by undergraduates aren’t), and is published by a reputable but not very prestigious journal, what it would mainly qualify you for is a bit of respect from your peers, friends, grandmother etc; slightly improved prospects to be admitted into a good graduate program; and microscopically improved job prospects if/when you apply to non-academic jobs.
All of these are fairly minor compared to the sense of satisfaction and pride at having contributed something to the sum total of human knowledge, which is probably the biggest reward.


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I submitted a paper and later realised one reference was missing, although I had written the authors in the body text. What could happen?
I'm a PhD student who has submitted his first article and I have a question that makes me upset and embarrassed.
After submitting the article I realised that one of my references which I cited in the article was not included in the reference list, however, I have never been through this process so I don't know what can happen next. I don't know if the reviewers can reject my work or somehow say that this flaw is plagiarism (although I think it is copying the ideas of others without mentioning them, I mentioned the author only the reference is missing, which I will add later if I got that change) or if they put it as a note in the comments so that if it is accepted it can be added in the future.
Could someone help me? I've been spending some almost sleepless nights thinking about this... If there are any reviewers, editors or authors out there with similar experience, please let me know.
P.S. It is under revision, so I am very stressed and impatiently waiting for bad news due to this.

Are you using software to manage your citations? I would highly recommend it, and while it comes with its own issues it greatly simplifies the process of formatting references and makes a mistake like this much less likely.

@BryanKrause
Thank you very much for your recommendation. I used Zotero, but I still haven't understood why it wasn't added. Do you recommend another software?

I don't have any specific software recommendation, just have found that sometimes people starting their academic careers haven't had anyone tell them about this sort of software.

You'll be fine, don't worry. Most likely, if the reviewer is keen enough on the topic, they'll probably add a comment that that specific work should be referenced. A paper won't be rejected cause a specific source wasn't cited.

This is not a big deal.
I've personally submitted a paper with all references missing (too much LaTeX, too little experience) and all that it led to was a polite email from the editor, slightly longer refereeing process, and some embarrassment. A single reference missing is the type of error that's routinely sorted out during the review process, and no referee in their right mind would accuse you of plagiarism if the author of the paper is mentioned.
The norms matter from field to field, so it would be helpful to know what's your discipline. In mathematics, if I was the referee, in a situation like this I might complain that some claim you made is not sufficiently justified and a citation is needed, or I might point out that similar ideas appear in some other paper and you should cite it, but it's very difficult for me to imagine a situation where a missing citation causes me to think that something nefarious is going on.
Another point worth keeping in mind is that before anything gets published, even in the very unlikely scenario that a paper is accepted without any corrections, even if somehow they don't offer you an opportunity to make changes and they don't catch this issue in the copyediting process, the journal will need you to sign a copyright form and at this point they will need to ask you if there's anything wrong with the paper. So, it's not possible for this error to somehow go into print by accident if you're aware of it and want to fix it.

Relax. Small mistakes occur on a regular basis.
You can fix this during the revision process.
In the unlikely event your paper is accepted as written, this mistake would be caught and fixed during the copy-editing process (I know from experience).
Also, based upon a comment for Buffy, even if you paper was accepted as written, you could still let the editor know and they would fix it.

Even if accepted "as is", the editor will let you make minor corrections. Just let them know.

@Buffy
Thank you so much for your comment.

As a reviewer in math, I've asked authors to formally cite references before. This is not a big deal.
I'd consider this a minor error. It's common for referee reports to contain lists of minor mistakes/omissions and requests for additions and clarifications -- this has been true for papers I reviewed and recommended for publication, and it has been equally true for my own papers that were reviewed by others and later accepted and published.
This isn't a big deal. You needn't worry -- although, if it would bring you peace of mind, it would be fine to add the reference to the paper, and send a brief email to the editor saying "Apologies, I just realized that I accidentally omitted one of the references, here is a version with the missing reference included".
One additional piece of advice: although this isn't a cause for rejection, I'd advise you to try to get used to your work being rejected and not to lose any more sleep over it. I've had plenty of papers, grant proposals, etc. be rejected, and so has virtually every other academic. Honestly, if you have a long-term academic career and your work never gets rejected, then you probably aren't being ambitious enough in your choice of where to submit!

Dear @academic thank you for sharing your experience. I understand that there's always the possibility of being rejected. However, I don't want to be rejected for this failure, because then I feel that more than responsibility (because I am the first author) I feel that I have failed my co-authors and supervisor in a big way.
In your opinion and experience, how common is it to forget a reference?
Concerning the email, I've always heard that it's better to wait for feedback and then do something, as editors are usually very busy. So I don't know if I should wait..

I'm not sure how common it is to forget a reference, to be honest. It's the kind of mistake that is probably often not noticed. But making small mistakes in general is certainly common.

Honestly, this is a very minor error. Depending on your field, and reviewers, either no-one will notice, in which case you just correct it when you reply to reviewers, or someone will say, - very likely an author of the paper you left out -, please put it in. Anyone who thinks they have never done this or worse in an academic career is probably not paying attention. Also - don't fret, and use software to manage references. I use Zotero. Best wishes!

end a brief email to the editor saying "Apologies, I just realized that I accidentally omitted one of the references, here is a version with the missing reference included". - While you could do this, it will create an extra burden for the editors, needing to update your submission and contact the referee again, so I generally wouldn't recommend making minor changes until you get asked for a revision.

@Kimball I essentially agree with you, and I completely agree if we have resolved OP's anxiety. Objectively speaking the best course of action is to do nothing now. That said, personally I've had similar experiences where I've been anxious, even after being reassured by experts -- so I suggest this only if OP finds himself still losing sleep.

Deliberately skipping a reference is horrible, because it's dishonest. But honest mistakes are, well, honest, and they happen. If you'd caught it after publication, you'd want to contact the editor and they might be able to put a note of correction on the publisher's site (and you'd fix the arxiv copy). Since you caught it during review, it's trivial to fix. Fix it in your current copy, then tell the editor. Problem solved, and no need to worry at all. There's basically zero chance it'll be rejected for this reason. (continued...)

(...continued) But it might still be rejected. If so, don't freak out about that, either. Rejections are just a part of the job. The reviewers will tell you what the problems are and what could be improved. You make the improvements that are practical (and are good ideas; sometimes reviewers just didn't understand the paper (in which case, see if you can reword things to prevent other readers from misunderstanding in the same way)), and then resubmit somewhere else (or in the same place, if you get a revise-and-resubmit rejection). We've all had papers rejected. Don't stress it.

All of the above are very good answers. I would add that this type of problem, if not caught by the editor or reviewers (a real possibility), would be addressed during copy editing. I have had an article go through review and revision before the error was caught. It was then spotted by an eagle-eyed copy editor during typesetting.

This was also mentioned by @RichardErickson.  (My link seems to just take me to the bottom of the page, though it's directly from the "share" link to that answer … sorry!)


text:
When do you stop research or consider the sunken-cost fallacy
While currently pursuing my undergraduate degree in Computer Science degree, I have been doing research that has unresolved conclusions for more than a year and a half.
The research topic itself is still new in the field, so the research that is done is still pretty much untouched and filled with possibilities. Although my supervisor is pessimistic about it due to the requirement of such high processing power (by default), I learned that, after a year of searching, some study might have the solution I needed. I read lots of papers, I learned lots of things along the way, and enjoyed the process, but the result remain inconsistent and more hurdles that has even higher stake than before keep coming.
I might not be giving my all, and I might have problems with my time allocation since the first half of the research is done concurrently with work, but if I don't submit proper result in time; I should burn all the work that I have done for a year and a half.
When do you consider burning all your work and when do you consider to keep moving?

I do not understand, do you have to write a bachelor thesis and this work is a part of it? Have you already completed all other formal requirements?

@yarchik yes this is a bachelor thesis that is the final requirement for graduation that I have not completed. I kinda don't want to throw all the work I did but all the answers are wise enough to tell me sometimes things can be postponed for better time

You should always bear in mind that sunk costs are not a valid justification for continuing investment.  But neither are they, in themselves, a valid justification for discontinuing investment.

There are usually a third and a fourth option between "burning your work" and "continue moving":

Writing up or otherwise delivering what we have learned so far, and terminating this line of inquiry
Writing up or otherwise delivering what we have learned so far, and continuing this line of inquiry

Even if you feel like you have gone from dead end to dead end, you have almost certainly learned something. Depending on what you and others have done, you may today be the world's foremost expert on what approaches do not work for problem X. This is valuable knowledge, and absolutely worth bringing to other people's attention.
Yes, negative results can be harder to publish than positive ones. This just means that you may need to think harder about how to package them.
I emphasize above that you can either continue this line of inquiry or stop it. This is a conscious decision you should take after some thought. If it seems like there are still promising avenues to pursue, then it might be worthwhile to do so. (With the understanding that if they do not pan out, you can again write up what you learned.) This will again commit you to a significant investment in time and work. But at least you already know the basics of your problem.
Alternatively, if you do not see a promising way forward, you can reorient yourself elsewhere. (After writing up what you found so far.) In this case, you will need to find an alternative problem, and start understanding the basics and the existing literature on it, so it will take a while to get up to speed.
There is nothing wrong with putting one topic on hold for a while and returning to it a few months or years later.
This is absolutely something where your advisor should help you. They can help you determine which of your learnings so far are publishable, and how to package them. In addition, they can help you in the decision process as to whether to continue working on this problem, or to switch elsewhere. Ideally, they might have ideas about alternative problems that may not be too far away from what you have been doing, so that the necessary startup investment is not too big.

The sunk cost fallacy just means you should not blithely continue the same direction without careful thought to the quality and value of that direction, it doesn't mean throw everything away or raze and burn - there are no doubt many valuables and useful bits to salvage and proceed ahead and many in the audience would be interested to learn what as well.

Follow up questions: How do you actually measure the other path is better than this one. Like if both require same learning curves for example or have results you might not get from your datasets, etc.

(+1) In my experience, the very process of formally "writing up" a research project can bring significantly greater clarity whether it is worth continuing the effort or not, and it can even reveal new angles of attack. Not sure why this works so well. I hypothesize that the effort of structuring one's writing also brings order into one's internal thought processes (analogous to "rubber duck debugging", perhaps)

Re your follow-up questions: that absolutely depends on the problem(s) at hand, and this is where an advisor is really indispensable. They should have more knowledge of what problems are out there, what has already been tried, which are the papers to read or skim etc. And they should be able to at least give a qualitative prediction of what will likely happen one way or the other. Of course, in research nothing is ever guaranteed in advance.

@RedSean Talk to someone in the field who you can trust not to subvert your efforts.

If it's about number theory or data structures or something similar, I could probably tell you if it's worth pursuing, if you'd like to email me the details. Or you could just describe it in very general terms here. I mean, if you solved the halting problem, then no. But I don't think anybody here is going to steal your idea.

@JessFuckett well I don't mind if they steal the idea because I would want to know how to make transformers (Artificial Intelligence topic, not the electronics one) more efficient for image segmenting. That fifty-headed hydra, I am still wondering what choices I could do to them to make them eat and learn faster. One of the ways I found is to avoid ViT gulping everything in pieces wholly in RGB. Park., et al. said in "RGB no More: Minimally Decoded Transformers" by converting the RGB to YbCr and then make bitmap out of it will make it faster a bit. But in the end it's still 50 headed hydra.

@StephanKolassa My supervisor actually prefer the original CNN to do the job due to lack of computing power at hand. But CNN researches are deeply saturated, and I feel like Image Transformer are perfect to be embedded in CCTV system the research was ought to offer to. I was curious about Transformers, and thought that the system is perfect to implement it, so I do something for one and half years that leads to my question here. Maybe I should've listened to them beforehand but like you guys said, things I learned are not meaningless either way.

...[hours later] Well, I never thought I'd escape that rabbit hole! So you understand images by mapping groups of pixels into vectors in some abstract space, and it's the same way that  chatGPT maps  semantic tokens into meaning vectors. Jee-zuss. Good luck.

But why would you think that converting the RGB to YbCr would speed up the transform? Apparently you tried it and it didn't make any difference, right? Have  you considered that maybe it just doesn't work? I'm getting sucked into the rabbit hole again.

@JessFuckett It's just my first finding of people's effort in taming visual Transformers, and in a sense YbCr would reduce the data that the transformer reads, which of course speed up the data reading as expected, it's similar like that CNN research where instead of learning whole image, it took coordinate points/skeleton of it. From your perspective, can I use some memory-allocation or data-processing to make things faster? It would be hard in python of course, I'm just wondering.

@JessFuckett Exactly! Visual Transformers are just "what if these images can also be quantized like words?", hence the first paper for it are called "Image worth 16x16 words" I also found the same fascination like you did here, but things I found are just way too precious to not be explored. Maybe it's just not me that will find things about it today, maybe some people will find same way and succesfully did what I want to do

Hopefully supplementing the answer of Stephan Kolassa, consider the following.
You don't have to abandon the research in the long term, but it might be wise, with advice from faculty, to put it on hold for now and focus on the undergraduate degree and building relationships with faculty. That will also help you get into graduate school.
To do this, create a research "notebook" capturing what you have learned is true and where the dead ends are. You can return to it in the future when time constraints are less binding. One of the issues with undergraduate and masters level research is the short time frame in which to complete anything significant. True research (exploring the unknown) can't be done on schedule. You can, of course, write it up as the draft of a paper as Stephan Kolassa suggests.
You have probably developed insights into the specific problem area and possibly the field that contains it. A research notebook can capture these so they won't be lost when and if you return to that problem.
Note that in many places prior publications are not expected of incoming graduate (even doctoral) students. What you have and can discuss might be more than enough to get you started in doctoral studies, even without publication. Note also, that the publication process itself can take a lot of time after first submission.
But a research/project notebook is valuable for any researcher at any level. If you review it regularly and add to it as any ideas or insights occur you have a valuable tool for a career.

Follow up questions: How do you actually measure the other path is better than this one. Like if both require same learning curves for example or have results you might not get from your datasets, etc.


text:
Asking Professor for Letter of Recommendation before finishing class
I'm currently in a class with a professor that I'm confident has a good and positive impression of me. He also often singles me out as the student who "always does well". I'm applying to masters programs for the fall and want to get my applications in early. Is it okay to ask for a letter of recommendation mid-semester?

Yes, it's fine.  You could visit office hours a couple of times, to get to know him better, to make up for the missing second half of the semester.

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text:
Teacher takes pictures of students during exams and posts them on social media
There's this teacher who takes pictures of his students during exams, and posts them on social media, with the knowledge of the students. A lot of people enjoy these pictures (including the students), but I'm not sure how I should feel about this.
This also includes editing pictures to make them into memes of some kind. There is no foul play involved, just for fun.
Is this behavior alright? Should it be tolerated?
Addition :
The students were not asked for their consent. There have been no verbal objections, so far.

Absence of objection is not consent or permission. Also I don't understand why this is taken during exams. Certainly unprofessional of the teacher either way. You must voice out your objection or at least bring it up anonymously with the school board (drop a letter in an attended complaint box).

I can understand taking pictures of students during an exam, as a deterrent to cheating.  But if the teacher worked at my (US) university, posting those pictures anywhere without explicit written permission of every student would probably cost them their job, even if they had tenure.

As others mentioned, the country and its legal framework are part of the picture (beside the ethical aspects). For instance In France that would not be legal in the first place.

In Germany, photos that show more than 12 people (iirc, something of this magnitude anyway) are not protected by personal/privacy rights. Hence, a photo that shows a room full of students busy with their exams is fair game. Whether posting it online is good style is another matter.

Ew. Just totally ick.

@JeffE Wow. Is that written somewhere? Some of my colleagues also do this and I had always wondered about it. Losing their jobs over it seems like overkill, but I suppose that comes after a warning.

@AgapwIesu Sounds a lot like security by obscurity.

Doing this without permission is unprofessional, and it may be illegal, depending on your jurisdiction.
Asking for students' permission first is still unprofessional, especially in an exam situation, where students are already nervous, and given the power imbalance between the professor and the students. Who among the students will dare to object right before the exam? (This could depend on your local culture.)
You write that "There is no foul play involved, just for fun." - What is fun for one student could very well be harrassment for another, especially if pictures are edited. I don't see how this furthers the academic enterprise, so I would avoid doing this, at the risk of coming across as a spoilsport.
I surmise this question could soon be closed as opinion-based.

This is definitely illegal in some US jurisdictions, and could also be dangerous to students who need their identity protected under FERPA (e.g., due to a persistent stalker).

@jakebeal I would assume that someone who is being stalked, and wants to "stay under the radar" wouldn't agree to getting their picture taken? Making that a non-issue. (With knowledge of students assumes 'with permission' as well). I also agree, that without location (Country?) it's too broad and opinion based.

@WernerCD In the US and many other places, there is a general shift in ethical frameworks from "negative consent" models where it is the responsibility of a person who is uncomfortable to object (which may be problematic for any number of good reasons) to "positive consent" models where it is the responsibility of the active party to obtain approval from all involved (which is less efficient, but generally safer).

Certainly the exception, but some students(more so grad students) may have security clearances and don't want that information or pictures of them publicly available.  Positive consent deals with that - everyone is asked individually and if the class isn't a unanimous 'yes' then it's a no go and no explanations are needed. Along with stalkers, there's probably a plethora of reasons someone wouldn't want their picture taken without being a stick-in-the-mud.

@jakebeal they also might be in the witness protection program.  Now the Gambino family knows where they are, thanks teacher!

Pretty sure this should be taken as a form of bullying both online and offline. If a student were to due the same thing would the college tolerate it? I doubt it.

I don't know about the US, but in Germany, this is quite clearly illegal. You need a signed model release to post other people's pictures on a public site, regardless of the academical setting. There are exceptions for when people are not integral to the picture and not easy to recognize (e.g. you are photographing the Kölner Dom and there are people walking in front of it), but this is clearly not the case here.

Wouldn't it be against the rules (even for the staff member) to have a camera in the exam room anyway?

@rumtscho, here in the UK a model release is only necessary for commercial use of photos (e.g. in adverts). For example, a news organisation does not have to get the consent of everyone in a photo before they can use it in their newspaper or on their website. I don't know German law on this; I am pretty sure that the law in the US is similar to the UK. That said, I don't think the behaviour in the question is professionally OK for an academic.

@rumtscho That's not true, afaik. You don't need releases for photos that show groups of people (above a certain size).

Is this behavior alright? Should it be tolerated?

Well, it certainly does not seem very professional to me, and I would neither do it nor suggest it to any other lecturer. That being said, I can certainly imagine small, informal master-level classes, where doing this may be perceived as a fun gimmick and not as outrageous.
Whether you should tolerate it probably depends on whether you are personally offended, and to what degree. If you personally don't care (and don't know somebody else who clearly cares), I do not see a reason to make a big preemptive fuss. If you would really rather not have your picture taken, or you expect the shy guy at the back to be really bothered by that, then you can (and should) talk to the lecturer in private and explain the situation to her/him.

+1 for the straightforward "I would rather you not do that" approach.

I would bet that this is surely a FERPA violation in the U. S.
This is not based on my detailed knowledge of the law, but only my past experiences (and vague recollections from the FERPA quiz my university has everyone take).
Here's an example of how strict these laws can be: once I got an email from the parent of an autistic student in my course. The parent wanted to know how the student was doing in class so the parent could help her child stay on top of things. On a hunch, I contacted the disability services office to see if I could speak with the parent about the student in this case. I was told that it would be a violation of FERPA to even confirm with the parent that this student was enrolled in my course!
Since posting a photo of someone taking an exam is certainly evidence that they are taking a particular course, it is very likely posting the photo is not okay.

Rather than assuming consent, or requesting it on a short timeframe right as the exam starts, the professor should get consent this way:

In the first or second lecture, show a series of pictures from previous years, including the memed ones. Further, explain where these go (public blog or twitter? private facebook page for students in this class this year? The physical wall outside the profs office?) Then say "if you're cool with being the subject of one of these pictures, please [email me and say so, or put your name on this list at the front, or go to this web page and enter your student id, or something relatively unspoofable.]

The onus is now on the prof to ensure that pictures are taken and cropped so that they only include students known to have agreed to this. (Don't recognize third-from-the-left? Can't remember if that's Ashleigh or Ashley? Not a usable picture.)
At most one reminder later in the term for new arrivals would be ok. Other than that, there shouldn't be any haranguing like "7 people still haven't filled out the ok-to-make-a-meme-of-me form, please try to get that done today."
Approaching this any other way at best risks leaving some students unhappy and feeling mocked; depending on where you live it could have worse outcomes including legal and financial liabilities. There is no upside to assuming consent and saying it's all for fun. The prof and students are spending 4 or 8 months together, there is plenty of time to collect non pressured optional true consent if this really is so much fun.
In addition, a role model showing people that "hey, this is fun, don't be a spoilsport, just go along" is no longer the way universities operate will be doing a larger public service for those who will hear the same words around alcohol, drugs, vandalism, coerced sex, and the like. Just because something will be fun for some of the people participating in it, that doesn't mean everyone should participate regardless of their feelings or preferences. Demonstrating that with something relatively minor like pictures of funny faces during exams is probably a really good life lesson. True consent matters.

I don't entirely disagree - I certainly wouldn't take or post these pictures myself. But this prof has some motivation for doing so. Given that, it is better to get consent in a minimally invasive (1 or 2 minutes) way than to keep doing it without consent as appears to be the current practice.

I got a picture of me taken during the entrance exam for my undergrad. The photographer tried to capture the environment where 1000+ candidates sit in this huge hall and compete for a place at the institution. The photo shows a portion of the seats, but as the photographer stood right in front of me, I happened to be in the first plan. This photo was posted on the institution's official web site. It is quite dear to me as it captures a moment which you wouldn't expect to be documented in such a way and I see nothing wrong with it. The same reasoning might apply to your professor. Of course, editing the picture might be another story, especially if it is done with malicious intent. As I see it, you or any other student could approach the professor afterwards and ask them to remove or not disclose the pictures taken. This is a viable option even if those pictures were posted on social media.

Depending on the jurisdiction, pictures of single persons (or pictures that highlight single persons) can be an entirely different matter from pictures of large amounts of people (even if single persons happen to be in the foreground in such a picture).

Interesting anecdote but I don't think it's much of an answer to the question.

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