text:
Is there any way to get accepted in PhD program without masters?
I am applying for a PhD position for last few months but all the Professors say they need a masters whereas I have quite good lab experiences than a masters student even. I am very much depressed nowadays. What should I do now? If the professors do not trust the skills written in the CV, they can give a conditional offer; but they don't.

The professors may be looking for e.g. theoretical background or understanding of how research works, not just for lab skills. Have you considered getting a master's degree?

@PatriciaShanahan: No, it's a structural issue. See my response below,

What country / region are you applying in? And what field of academia?

Most PhD programs in the US do not require a prior masters degree for admission, although (in my experience) applicants with master's degrees are held to higher standards than applicants without.

In Germany I have seen that one of the Max Planck institutes tried to hire two exceptional bachelor students directly into their PhD program.

Why wouldn't they give you a conditional offer? Bringing you in takes a lot of time and effort, and it is plainly safer to hire someone that is certain to know it. Furthermore, a PhD student needs more than just lab skills, the kind of knowledge that a MSc helps you acquire.

In the US, you'll find that many PhD programs are structured something like "60 credits past the the MS or 90 credits past the BS", along with additional course requirements for students that are starting directly from the Bachelor's degree.  In that situation you won't really save any time by being admitted directly into the PhD program and students who already have an MS have a quicker route to the degree.

The OP has written some similar questions before. In my humble opinion: If you failed to get your master's degree, you should either try to do it in another field/subject or just leave academia. In most jobs, it is not necessary to have a PhD.

This isn't too broad at all! A perfectly good answer can be given in 3 short paragraphs, and a concise one can be given in one. It's a perfectly relevant question for the site as well.

@J.FabianMeier Thanks for the reminder. Indeed, this question is a dup of what the OP asked before. Vote to "Leave Closed".

@Superbest Europe is a big place and academia is broad. The unhelpful answer to this question is "yes" and then a counter example (e.g., my former UK department). A helpful answer needs the country and "field" (humanities are different than sciences).

There are universities and research centers in Europe who accepts students without a masters degree, but they would require to take full credits of masters and to complete modules, before or while the research is being conducted. Therefore you might want to get in touch of those universities.
Here are a few which I know of:

http://adaptcentre.ie/
https://www.insight-centre.org/

Most of the time you need to show that you have enough skills with your previous experiences, publications, the letter of application/statement of purpose. An interview may follow where you will be asked about your work and the domain of work in which you have applied.

It's not clear from the links you provided whether those centres have PhD programs and whether these are accessible without a Master's degree.

@MassimoOrtolano: Each of the positions advertised will have different requirements. As per I know, and I am related to one of these centers, many of them accepts phds without a masters, but, as I told, that is considered as a case by case basis.

For example : http://adaptcentre.ie/careers/PhD-improving-machine-translation-for-information-retrieval-and-multimodal-interaction-tg-phd5.html  says: "The successful candidate will have an excellent academic record (first class or II.1 primary degree or a postgraduate qualification, e.g. M.Sc.) in Computer Science or a related discipline. "

Do they actually take them in? In Sweden is not a requirement, but everybody has it, and my guess is that the rule is there mostly to allow people that have almost finished one, or similar.

@Davidmh: As far as I know, I know a few people here who has been directly admitted as a PhD, but has to finish far more credits than what a student with post graduate degree.

In most European countries following the Bologna process, a master's degree is a "hard" prerequisite for being accepted into a PhD program. There is no easy way around this, in large part because the PhD typically encompasses only the research phase of a standard US PhD program. By skipping or omitting the master's degree, one would have a "weaker" degree than someone who completed the master's.
Your best bet would be to find a PhD program which offers a master's program as "preadmission" to the PhD program. Not all doctoral programs offer such master's degrees, but many programs designed to attract international students will.

And just to be clear, US PhD programs typically include a course work phase which is of similar length to a master's degree.  Thus a student in the US might spend two years doing course work and three years on the dissertation (although in practice both phases are often longer), while in the European system under the Bologna process, that student would complete an MS first, then enter a PhD program during which they would focus entirely on research.

I'm quoting wikipedia: "3rd cycle: doctoral degree. No ECTS range given.". So there is no range required for the institutions to uphold. But it also does not say : mandatory 0 credits. So in practice there often is on a more local level a requirement of 1-2 years of course work on PhD level for a 3 or 4 years long PhD. And that is not counting the teaching which often amounts to 1 year in excess to the 4 year long PhD.

In the UK it is often not a requirement, but a desirable qualification.
Academics have discretion to offer PhD's to whatever candidates they wish, subject to them meeting the funding agencies criteria (which for science, at least, is usually a minimum of a 2:1 undergraduate BSc degree).
In practice, many professors are obviously unwilling to offer PhD's to students who aren't completing a masters since there are so many possible candidates that theres simply no reason to take sub-standard students, however I know of many cases where students on masters programmes have been offered PhD's then never completed the masters and went straight on to a PhD.

I know of some faculties in Germany that (formally) accept students without a master's degree, but I have never personally witnessed a case where a student with only a bachelor's degree was accepted as a PhD student. I can only speak for Germany, but it's best to read the Promotionsordnung (PhD regulations) of the faculties and look for the admission section. For my faculty it read something like: General prerequisite is a master's degree, but in special ocassions and if the student proves eligibility he can be accepted to the PhD program, but has to do extra coursework.

In my experience it is quite common in Australia for students wanting to undertake a PhD to be enrolled in a Master's degree with the understanding that after a year they will undergo a conversion to a PhD. The Master's degree is never completed and in the cases I know of there was always a clear understanding between the student and the supervisor that this was the expected path, i.e. the intent of both parties is that the student will complete a PhD, and the initial enrolment as a Master's degree student is a formality unless something goes badly wrong in the first year.

Do you mean a Masters by Coursework, Masters by Research, or M.Phil? Certainly an MPhil is often treated as a probationary year of a PhD.

Also worth noting that some Australian universities offer a 4-year Honours Bachelors that is equivalent to UK 4-year Masters undergraduate degrees, and provide a route to PhD.

Good point about coursework versus research - I'm referring to research, and most of my experience is in Engineering where it would be a Master of Engineering. But given that I've just noticed the "europe" tag on the question, none of this is particularly relevant :)

Possibly still useful for Australian students intending to apply to European institutions for Higher Degree Research. I worked in an HDR office where I had to work out the equivalence of various degrees from other countries for acceptance for research degrees.


text:
What does "masters 2 level" mean?
I saw an offer in a research group described as 'Research position at master 2 level'. Can anyone clarify for me what that means? Is it a 2nd masters or anything else? Does it always need a masters degree for applying (sorry, it's not clear in the requirement, that's why I am asking).

Did you see it in a French job ad?

yes its a french one @scaaahu

At least at the universities in Paris where I took courses, there is a strong distinction between the first and second master year. In the first year you still take general courses in a variety of topics, whereas in the second year you really specialise. Someone explained to me that this is a remnant of how it was a while ago: first 4 years of undergraduate (which is now 3 years of bachelor, then the first year of the master), then 4 years of graduate (second year of master and 3 years of PhD).
I know that some of my friends in physics had something which could be called a research position at the master 2 level, i.e. they were integrated in the research group, doing some type of research, whilst not yet being PhD students.
So no, it should not be a second master degree, it should mean that you are in the second year of your master.

This is the correct answer. It generally means that you have had five years of study in your subject at university. Though there are some strange equivalences as well; I've seen integrated masters degrees from the UK accepted as equivalent to a completed M2.

The Master 2 is the French academic way of saying the second year of your Master's degree. According to the Bologna process, students are expected to complete 90-120 ECTS credits to obtain a Master's degree. This can take either 1 or 2 years, depending on the country, course and institution. In France, Master courses usually last two years. So the selection committee is basically looking for students who are about to obtain their Master's degree.
The fact that the ad mentions a research position at Master 2 level could mean that they are looking for candidates in their second year of a Master de Recherche. This is a research-oriented master, somewhat comparable to a UK MRes maybe, which is meant to form students towards research careers rather than industry. Quoting from the Wikipedia page on Master's degrees:

In France, the equivalent of master's degrees is the combination of two individual years : the master 1 (M1) and master 2 (M2), following the Bologna Process. Depending on the goal of the student (a doctorate or a professional career) the master 2 can also be called a "Master Recherche" (research master) and a "Master Professionnel" (professional master), each with different requirements. To obtain a national diploma for the master 2 requires a minimum of one year of study after the master 1.

Nevertheless, I am sure that the people posting the ad are looking for exceptional candidates regardless of their educational country of provenance. If you have a Master's degree that is compatible with the Bologna process, or with a comparable number of credits and experience, with some research experience gathered along the way you should fit the profile.

In France, Master’s students in they second (and last) year have to1 intern in a private or public institution. As France make a distinction between Master’s degree which lead to academia and Master’s degree which lead to industry, there are many short-term internships (say, 5 to 7 months) in research institutions aimed at Master’s students. My guess is that’s what the offer is about. When I was a student, these offers had to provide the student with a meager pay, around a third of the minimum wages.

Well, its the norm in science, at least. Some other branches might just require a memoir.

In many European countries they have a three-level degree system for BA and masters below is a quote from wikipedia

Italy uses the three levels degree system. The first level degree, called (Diploma Accademico di) laurea (Bachelor's degree), is obtained after 3 years of study and a short thesis on a specific subject. The second level degree, called (Diploma Accademico di) laurea magistrale (Master's degree), is obtained after two additional years of study, specializing in a particular branch of the chosen subject (e.g. particle physics, nuclear engineering, etc.). This degree requires a more complex thesis work, usually involving some academic research or an internship in a private company.

The school you are looking at in France appears to be using the same terminology. As such, if it is a second level master it would be the equivalent of a master degree in the US, which requires 4 years of undergraduate study first  and not a only 3 years degree as in the example above.

Thanks to all for clarifying.one more thing-they said the contract length is one year.does it mean they will offer money also?i mean should I ask them regarding this matter as they have called me for interview.As far i know when you work in a research group,most of the time they offer money.

i'd rather not speculate but it's difficult to complete grad school without some sort of financial support. It's better to ask them directly about this

Just for additional (and slightly contradictory!) information regarding a Level Two Master's Degree in Italy, this from the website of the Italian Ministry of Education:
3.2 New Academic Degrees and Qualifications (SCROLL TO BOTTOM)
The reform has abolished the old three year degree (diploma universitario) and the old four year degree (laurea) and has introduced the following new academic qualifications organised in three cycles.
Degrees
Credits
Years
First cycle – Undergraduate studies
First degree - laurea
180
3
Second cycle – Graduate studies
Second degree – Laurea specialistica
120
2
1st Level Master degree – Master universitario di 1° livello
60+
1+
Third cycle – Postgraduate studies
Research doctorate degree – dottorato di ricerca
3+
Specialisation degree – diploma di specializzazione *
60-300
1-5
2nd level Master degree – master universitario di 2° livello
60+
1+

Welcome on the Academia SE! Unfortunately, this site is not so good to show tables, but it can show fixed-width text. You can do it by inserting four spaces to the beginning of the lines. I think your answer could be significantly improved by continuiung this work and making your table looking as a table. I now started it.

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text:
Can I reuse a recommendation letter that was given to me a year ago for PhD applications now?
I took a recommendation letter from one of my Professor last year and I want to apply for a PhD position now.Is it OK if I send that recommendation letter or should I ask for a new one?

I assume you are in a country whose academic culture allows you to have the recommendation letter in the first place.  The American version of this question is "Can I use someone as a reference in my PhD applications now if they wrote me a recommendation letter a year ago?"  And the answer is "Yes, but you must ask them first.  And they'll probably want to revise their old letter."

Would you send a CV that's a year old?
You have hopefully been doing something in the time between when your professor wrote the letter and now. Your reference letter should reflect that. If you can, ask them for a new one, otherwise find someone who you've been working with more recently to ask.

No I will send an updated CV.But I have to send three recommendation letters thats why I was asking.If I ask him again he will write the same thing,right?

If you haven't contacted him or worked with him since when he last wrote the letter, then I imagine he would write exactly the same thing, unless the letter was not tailored towards a PhD application (eg emphasising your research ability), in which case he might conceivably edit it.

Yes,it was for a PhD position.I took it but eventually I did not apply that time.And he emphasized everything very well in it,I mean its a good and strong letter indeed.

In that case, I'd say reuse it. Good luck with your application! :)

So u mean to say date is not a problem at all?

Truthfully, I don't know. It's a little deceitful to put today's date on a year old letter, but if the admissions committee see a year-old letter they will likely question why you haven't updated it. In my opinion, the best course of action would be to contact your professor and ask if he minds you changing the date to a more recent one. Or, to avoid this, ask him for a brand new letter.

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How to counteract poor academic instruction and demanding workload at German university?
I am an undergraduate student at a university in Germany. I already hold a bachelor's degree in an unrelated field from a university abroad, and I also have a solid secondary school background with above
average grades in my school transcript. So I consider myself as having the necessary skills for academic success, in general. However, I am extremely frustrated with the state of my current studies.
I feel the teaching quality is very poor and the syllabus in any given subject is overly demanding. My biggest concerns are

poor teaching quality that manifests itself as insufficient instruction. An example would be the use of PowerPoint slides. The slides are, as a general rule, borrowed from other academics and often contain numerous mistakes or inconsistencies. I would expect a professor to spend more time at the blackboard actually showing how a problem is being solved visually step by step (as I often see in different online lectures from some other universities which turn out to be more helpful).
Unnecessarily demanding syllabi and mandatory homework assignments in
most courses. On average, according to my own observations, a 3-hour lecture covers about 30-50 pages of a textbook on technical/mathematical topics. The recommended curriculum for every semester includes 5-6 courses which sums up to 150-300 pages of scientific reading on a weekly basis to keep up with the requirements plus weekly mandatory practical homework assignments.

I would really like to get any feedback or ideas as to how I can act to either change the situation at the university (it's quite ambitious but someone has to do something) or improve my strategies in dealing with it.

Do your fellow students share your same opinion about the teaching quality in that department?

If your primary complaint about teaching effectiveness is that you wish your professor would develop original material and you wish your professor would use the board rather than slides, you're out of luck, because neither of those things are generally required of professors - they are left up to the instructor's discretion.

@ff524 I don't know about German specifically, but in several European countries Master's courses have the same structure of bachelor courses, so I think that this question applies identically to both undergraduate and graduate courses. I don't know how to write it in a more general way. I was thinking that probably it would be useful to have a discussion on meta about the undergrad/grad policy, taking into account the different regional traditions.

@MassimoOrtolano I closed it because the OP said there is already this question about graduate studies, but this one is different because it's about undergrad. If the main difference between this new question and the other one is really Europe vs US, not undergrad vs grad, I'd reopen. But it could probably use some editing to focus it.

@ff524 From the question I understand that the main difference is that in this case the issue is related to an entire department, something that might be much more difficult to fight than a single professor. Of course, it also makes it less likely, and that's why I asked if the OP's opinion was shared amongst their mates. I agree that the OP's should better clarify the difference.

@MassimoOrtolano I removed some of the opinionated stuff to focus the question, I'll reopen it and we'll see what happens.

"borrowed from other academics" Can you elaborate on this? Especially is it from somebody unrelated or somebody else from the same institution.

@MassimoOrtolano Some of them do, most of them have rather a mentality that's how the academic life is because most of them come straight from the secondary school system and don't know anything better. So if someone fails, they simply think they are inept at higher education and quit or look for less demanding majors. However, I think the problem lies within the professorship and bad curriculum organization.

@quid See How widespread is sharing of slides/assignments among educators?. I don't see why it matters whether you share materials with people at the same institution or another one.

While there may be a good question in there (variations on workload and style across regions?), at the heart of it it seems the the OP's problem is that they find the going hard - this belies the assertion that they have the skills for success. It would seem that the teaching assumes you can work out the details on your own, and they are assigning problems for you to actually work out the details. Sounds like a good rigorous education to me...

@ff524 possibly my question was not completely to the point. But I do feel the following situations are somewhat different: a) there is a course taught by a couple of instructors in rotation (over the years) or in parallel sesssions; everybody uses the same slides b) somebody using 'official' slides for some subject c) somebody having just grabbed the slides of somebody else from the internet. The distinctions may be blurry but I still feel there is  a spectrum, and I wanted to get an idea where in the spectrum this case is located.

@JonCuster Isn't it always easier to blame students for their lack of effort/intelligence? Is there even a way to draw anyone's attention to problems in education while being a student without getting all the blame? In other words, don't judge professors. Argumentum ad verecundiam, so to speak.

I've taken good courses, I've taken bad courses (there is a bad country & western song in there somewhere), but I always expected to work hard. What you describe is a pretty typical engineering course load and expectations. Now, what can you do? Go to office hours. Find a good group to study with (not hang out with - study with). do the reading ahead of class so you can pointed questions on the hard bits, perhaps cut back on the course load.If you came to work for me afterwards, I would expect you to  be able to take charge and work through ambiguous and hard problems.

@JonCuster There was a time when workers, normally, had a 12-hour work day. Is it possible to work that long? Sure. Most people did, some protested. I'm not going to revolt but as long as you don't complain, you can't expect anything to change. In the end, it's your health and well-being that you're sacrificing so eagerly. I hope it's worth it. Students seem to belong to a rather unprotected class when it comes to finances, workload, and teaching quality, and not much is being done in this direction.

I am afraid this degrades into a rant.

@quid No worries, I'm finished. If there are no constructive answers which I hoped for, may my question be forgotten.

There is already an answer for your question on how to change the situation. I add another to your other question on how to improve your strategies in dealing with it. My view is from teaching mathematics in Germany, so its not clear if it applies to other fields as well.
What you describe as "very poor teaching quality" does not strike me as "objectively poor". You describe short "classroom teaching" and "heavy mandatory homework". I may go as far and say that this is not a bug but a feature. It is on purpose. German universities generally work like this in that "teaching" does not happen so much (few hours per course per week), and "learning" happens mostly outside the classroom. Students are considered adults and they are suppose to plan their time and allocate enough time to learn the subject.
For example, when I teach mathematics, the whole "module" usually consists of four parts:

The lecture. There I am at the blackboard and present things. I explain definitions, state theorem, put them in context, prove them and provide some examples. That I "spend time at the blackboard actually showing how a problem is being solved visually step by step" usually does not happen. I work through examples that may be similar to homework questions but this is slightly different. This is about 2 to 4 hours a week.
Self-study. The students do this on their own, sometimes alone, sometimes in groups (which I encourage). This happens whenever the students want to. The students are supposed to work through the lecture, check if they got everything right and probably fill in some details. This is also about 2 to 4 hours per week but this varies individually.
Homework. I give problems for homework. The students have to learn to use mathematics and not only know it. The problems vary from "standard calculation" to "tricky calculation" to "simple application of a definition" to "tricky proof". The student can do homework whenever they want, they can ask me or a TA basically any time if they have questions or get stuck but they have to hand it in on time. This should take roughly 4 to 8 hours a week and is the largest chunk.
"Exercise classes". Here a TA works work with the students on the homework. Students present what they have, can ask questions, get additional explanations. This is about 2 hours a week.

You see, a small lecture of 4 hours a week will indeed mean about 18 hours work per week. Also, all four part serve their own purpose: In the lecture students shall learn the content and see how the theory in built up. In their self study they strengthen their understanding and "learn to learn mathematics on their own". In the homework they learn mathematical skills, i.e. to actually use mathematics to do something. Also they learn to write down mathematics. In the exercise classes they learn to communicate mathematics (orally) and also to present mathematics.
The lecture is the only place where an instructor has the lead. In the other parts the students are responsible for their learning. Not everybody can do this. Some people fail because than are not able to plan their time, do not have the discipline to work on their own or just don't manage to come to office hours to ask questions.
So in short: I as the lecturer are responsible for good teaching but the students themselves are responsible for their learning. That's sometime tough the realize but once you do, it may really help.
Problems start when the lecturer does not take his responsibility for good teaching serious, does not answer questions, give bad lectures…
So how to deal with this: Take the responsibility for your own learning. Demand good teaching but not expect that the lecturer will show you how to do your homework. Do not come to office hours and say "I have no clue where to start" but ask "I am stuck at this point. I tried this and that but I still stuck. I can make this technique work."

Can't you see the problem? If a single course has a workload of 18 hours a week and the recommended curriculum usually includes 5 courses per semester, that's 90 (!) hours a week, meaning almost 13 hours a day 7 days a week. This would be illegal under any labor law but there are no regulations in place to protect students from overworking. Straying from the recommended curriculum is not an option for many students for financial reasons. This was mentioned in my original question but was removed by moderators.

"Problems start when the lecturer does not take his responsibility for good teaching serious". I'm afraid this happens quite often because no one controls how a professor teaches his subject. And when students complain about the poor teaching, no one listens to them and blame them for their lack of effort/knowledge/intelligence. That's why I would expect professors to at least prepare their own teaching material and to work at the board actually writing down stuff to show some effort on their part. Clicking through someone else's slides the whole lecture is not enough effort, in my opinion.

This would actually be a problem. Where I am the usual workload is about 2 such courses plus some smaller reading seminar. Also there are only 2 semesters with 14 weeks each, i.e. 28 weeks per year. Hence, the overall workload per week is expected the be a bit higher than 40 hours per week. What you describe really sounds ridiculous. Germany has this credit point system (from the Bologna process) and a semester should be about 30 credits which amounts to 900 hours of work.

You are right. The official workload is exactly as you described. But I'm not sure if it means anything. OK, you can measure the duration of a lecture or lab class. But it's actually just a small part of the workload. How do you measure how much time a certain topic or homework assignment actually takes a student? I heard that the Bologna process reduced the time available for each course leaving the syllabus almost intact.

"How do you measure how much time a certain topic or homework assignment actually takes a student?" I'll take this as an actual and not a rhetoric question. It goes like this: First a curriculum is designed where one guesses the workload for an average student based on experience. Then every course will be evaluated and students are asked about their actual workload (in hours per week) and also if it is more or less the what they expected. If there is some crass discrepancy, something will be changed. Hopefully you university does evaluations and uses them wisely.

Unfortunately, the German university system can be rather notorious for its orthodoxy—things are often done the way they are because that's the way they've been done. And many courses, particularly in engineering, are taught by faculty members who are way too over-committed time-wise to develop their own instructional materials; lecture slides may be developed by graduate students or postdocs within the professors' institutes or chairs (Lehrstühle), rather than bythe professors themselves. Moreover, the initial years of the curriculum in some programs are often used to weed out students who are unqualified, since most universities cannot restrict enrollment beyond requiring a certain minimum GPA in high school.
If you'd like to change the system, just about the only way to do so would be if your school offers students the opportunity to sit on the Kommission für Lehre  (Committee on Teaching) or its equivalent. Coping with it is a bit easier—there are usually resources offered by the Fachschaft (student union) for your program.

Indeed. And for each hour in lecture we expect students to spend another hour or so at home, for lab work this should be doubled. We don't offer textbooks in Germany (with rare exceptions) as in the US. You are expected to be responsible for your own learning - so ask questions! I'd much rather people ask then surf around on their phones...

@DeboraWeber-Wulff: When you say "we don't offer textbooks in Germany", do you mean (a) textbooks are not distributed for free to students, or (b) textbooks are not identified/assigned/suggested for given courses?

@DanielR.Collins: Students are normally provided lecture notes, but usually no specific textbook is assigned.

@aeismail: The keyword is indeed assigned. I have often seen books being recommended by the lecturer for further reading, but students were not expected to necessarily read those particular books instead of others, the books were not guaranteed to cover everything that appears in the lecture, and students were still supposed to also identify and read other suitable books/information sources on their own. With that said, in the rare cases where a textbook was actually required (only saw that once or twice, by very old and traditional professors), it was ensured that the library has enough ...

... copies so students do not have to buy the book.

-1 from me. This is way too much generalized. I don't think that one can reasonably say that "lecture slides are usually developed by graduate students or postdocs" neither that "faculty members who are way too over-committed time-wise to develop their own instructional materials". I personally do not know a single professor in Germany who lets his PhD students or postdocs write their slides. In fact it's the other way round: All prepare their lectures themselves, most develop their own lecture notes. (tbc)

(cont) Also the quote that "the initial years of the curriculum are often used to weed out students" bothers me a lot. I teach service mathematics for engineers, and no, I am not expected to weed out anybody. Neither I want to do anything like that, nor does anybody expects me to do it. In fact it's also the other way round. If too many students would fail my exam, there would certainly be an investigation of what has happened (this really has happened, but not to me).

@Dirk: Sorry, but that's not my experience in an engineering faculty, where not a single professor (out of about 50) ever talked about preparing their own slides—and most of whom, when I spoke with them, encouraged me to devolve that duty down to my Mitarbeiter. And the weed-out courses are not service courses, but freshman and sophomore courses in the discipline—thermodynamics was usually the one at my institution.

@Dirk: And yes, while high failure rates can lead to investigations, there is also no interest in the faculty in "social promotion," as that would dilute the "brand"

This should be contrasted by the fact that there is considerable political pressure to reduce drop-out rates at universities. Also, sorry to hear from you experiences. If you "tone down" the absolute statements, I would remove my down vote.

I think I've indicated that there's some variance in programs now. Hope this suffices.

@Dirk: "I personally do not know a single professor in Germany who lets his PhD students or postdocs write their slides." - maybe that is different in maths, but in CS it is very usual that professors do not prepare their slides themselves. (Note that I personally do not think that in itself is a bad thing. In fact, I think like this, quite a bit more effort goes into some of the slides than what the professor's workload would allow for. This is spoken coming from topics that greatly benefit from visual (and possibly animated) schematics that take effort to prepare properly, though.)

@Dirk: Furthermore, yes, I'd agree that the first few semesters might be described as "weeding out". That does not mean that unsurmountable hurdles and chicanery are put in the way of the students. Rather than that, students get some two years to show they either already know certain basics or are able and willing to learn the respective skills in due time, because the respective skills will be required later on. The goal is not to make students fail, the goal is to prevent students from passing into advanced courses of a subject of which they cannot even master the basics.

I like the edit.


text:
Can [edit: or should] a scientist's h-index decrease in the case highly cited publications are retracted?
I am at the moment preparing a workshop unit dealing with 'digital publication'. While writing down my script I noticed that I usually tell the participants that a scientist's h-index cannot decrease. Now I am wondering what happens in the hypothetical case that highly cited papers are retracted due to scientific misconduct or something similar. So my question is: Does or can a scientist's h-index decrease in the case highly cited publications are retracted?
Just to clarify my motivation to pose this question a little bit. The class/workshop I am conductiong deals with information literacy in the sciences. My participants haven't usually dealt with research(er) evaluation and the like. They may have heard about the existence of the JIF or the h-index but that is where things normally end. So in my presentation I explain how these indices are calculated and that they are often used to evaluate scientific effort. I also address the issues and shortcomings of this latter use.
I just checked some of retraction watch's most highly cited retracted papers and noticed that they are still listed in Web of Science and also being cited to this day. I see that this fact defeats my question as retractions are still being counted, at least in this data source. So maybe I should have posed it more philosophically like "As the h-index is used in researcher evaluation, shouldn't it decrease if highly cited papers are retracted?" ...
Thanks to everyone answering and commenting!

The h-index for author A can decrease even if an uncited paper by author B is retracted if the paper by author B cites an h-index critical paper of author A.

You state that h-index and other metrics "are often used to evaluate scientific effort". However, we must not forget that there are false positives: e.g., papers that are cited for being notably wrong or bad, criticized examples of scientific fraud, etc. And of course, these metrics are field dependent, since citing/publishing habits are not the same from a research field to another...

If clearly depends on the data source, and if that removes citations from retracted papers. How the H-index should be calculated isn't standardized from the point of the data used, and another issue is whether self-citations should be removed or not, and if so, how? Most commonly, they are not excluded when the H-index is calculated (e.g. from google scholar or ResearcherID).

The h-index is defined mathematically based on the number of publications and citations. So the only question is what data source you are using to calculate the h-index. If that source removes publications and citation counts upon retraction, the answer is yes, the h-index can decrease.
However, since this is source-based, you could even get occasional decreases due to other factors. Since many of these systems are automatic, you sometimes see incorrect publication associations and citation counts that can be later corrected, causing the h-index to decrease (I've seen this happening in Google Scholar).
I fail to see why this is interesting, though. Isn't this just like saying the number of publications and citations an author has can only increase, except in special circumstances such as retractions etc.?


text:
What reason would someone who offered you a PhD position give a recommendation letter for another position?
Background: I was offered a PhD position by the advisor of my current masters thesis and also by the corresponding professor at the local university. Now that i thought more thoroughly about pursuing an academic career i want to apply to a different university to gain experience abroad (eg. Switzerland).
Obviously my advisor and the professor are interested in my work, is there any chance they will support me with a letter of recommendation? Or more generally if the professor likes your work, why would he or she support you to apply somewhere else?
Edit: To expand on the answers, will i risk my chance of PhD at the local university just by asking for a recommendation (e.g. EPFL seems quite competetive)?

Of course you might risk your chances at home, if you wait too long for EPFL to take you, and your prof hires someone else for the project you wanted. But otherwise? Universities are not huffy teenagers. ;-) If your prof wants you, other staff and administration will only reject you because of formalities. Grades or due date of application.

If they refuse to write you a letter you probably don't want to do a PhD with them anyway

Yes. There is a good chance that they will support you by writing a letter. This happens frequently.
More generally, they will probably support you when it doesn't seem to immediately and directly benefit them, because everyone benefits from a supportive and connected community. People moving between institutions is almost always considered to be a good thing. Even if they lose a good student now, the community is what brings most good students; you and your future advisors will likely recommend your current advisors to students at your new institution(s), for example.

Indeed. Unless the advisor is of questionable ethics (which is fortunately not as often the case as the frequency of questions on SE seem to indicate - it's not representative), they will typically provide you with a strong letter of recommendation if they would have hired you themselves. But, trust your instinct, nevertheless.

I’d be shocked to hear of an advisor who wasn’t willing to support a student in this situation.  It would be a big breach of professional ethics — an abuse of their power over the student.

@PLL It is fortunately not the default, but bad things do happen, though; therefore my caveat at the end of the comment.

It makes them look good if you go out into the world and do well. Besides do you REALLY think you are the first student they will have written such a letter for? Not everyone acts out of pure selfishness only ;-D


text:
A reviewer rejected my paper stating that in my work a significant amount of text was from other publications. Am I allowed to argue back?
I received a rejection of my paper. It was a simple case report of 750 words of a very rare disease.
After almost two months of no-answer, I wrote a polite mail to the editorial board asking how much time it would take to receive an answer from the reviewer. They answered that I was going to receive an email within days.
Another month passed without any answer and I wrote another gentle mail asking how much time it would take, and after four days, I received an answer from the reviewer stating that my work added nothing new to the knowledge in my field, which is acceptable nonetheless arguable since it was a rare case with just another similar case in literature, but worst of all the reviewer said that a "significant amount of text was from other publications".
I interpret this statement as a plagiarism accusation. Am I wrong? Should I answer the editor in chief and ask him for the cross-reference documentation or should I let it go and maybe submit to another journal?

Is your manuscript a review, a review of reviews whether systematic or narrative?

Generally it is very hard for editors to say how much time a reviewer will take. The reviewers have deadlines, alright, but they do unpaid work, and often other things get in the way. As editor you can't do much more than reminding the reviewer and hope for the best, and at some point nominate another reviewer with whom the game begins again.

My paper was a case report on a rare case. In the journal, it is stated that they usually send a first answer within three weeks. The first time I emailed after two months the editorial board answered me that my reviewer was on holiday. the second time after another month they answered me that at this time of the year, many people are on holiday. It is quite understandable and no one expects to receive a review of a paper during a holiday break but I think that a three months holiday sounds odd

Did you or did you not plagiarize (or self-plagiarize)? This might be an obvious thing for you, but it might help to specify it in your question.

DId you write all the text yourself, or do you have co-authors that could be guilty even if you are not?

I have not plagiarized any publication or even myself from previous work. My co-authors reviewed the work but did not add any phrases from other publication and I am the corresponding author, so I checked the paper before the submission

I justed wanted to add that it was not the reviewer who rejected the paper, but the editor. The reviewer may have suggested rejection, but it was the editors decision.

Did you or any colleague upload a copy of your paper, or earlier drafts of it, anywhere in the intervening months? It's possible to get a very high similarity score if the similarity checker managed to get a copy of your work into its database. The fact that it is the same paper might be missed by a hasty reviewer who doesn't have time to give your paper a serious look; or it might even be that someone else plagiarised from your work, and their paper found its way into the similarity checker's database.

@kaya3 especially worthwhile, please note that review sometimes is double-blind, i.e. the reviewer do not know you are the same author of a possible similar work already existing and accessible in arxiv/conference proceedings/reports/papers that you or your co-authors published.

Any time I read such questions on the Academia SE, I am shocked, how can be given such power to single humans without accountability...

@peterh are you talking about the reviewer? Just for clarity, and thank you for the comment

@Martina Yes. A highly reputated science journal and obviously no one really cares about. I believe, some mechanism should exist to take very obviously unfair decisions to some higher level, like the appeal in court procedures.

The devil is in the details. Your report is 750 words, which is roughly 1.5 A4 pages.
Let's say you took the 25 words literature description of the pathology: it will make 3% of your report suscetible of plagiarism suspect to automated plagiarims detection tools, and also to peers familiar with the work you are citing (not useful for the discussion, but please remember it is possible the reviewer is one of the author of the "just another similar case in literature", exactly because of that).
You can re-formulate that part in a couple of ways, as follows:

The pathology has been described in (REF, year) as

a well defined and separated literal quotation of the 25 words in a separate box

For the pathology description we forward the reader to its first description given in REF (year);

In the first case, you have a block describing the pathology, in the second case you save 20 words that can be better used in other parts of the report.
Although the editor is not accusing you of plagiarism, they clearly are not confident on the novelty or on the opportunity of publishing your work. Take the bite, improve your work and submit it for publishing somewhere else.
You may feel your work has been misinterpreted, we know only your side of the story and it may be that the reviewer wrongly missed you properly referencing previous work.
The reviewer may be wrong, the editor is supposed to spend some time on the paper under review, but the editor is now facing the situation where you submitted your best possible work and the reviewers found some big flaws in this work.
Since the editor is strongly rejecting your paper there is not much room for discussion: the wording "significant amount of text was from other publications" leaves no room for discussion.
Stick to the facts you are facing, not to the interpretation of their motives, the editor has nothing to gain to prove you have bad intentions (plagiarism!) or to prove you are simply naive/sloppy (no novelty, work is a repetition of referenced works), they are simply annoyed and they judge your work not worthwhile of theirs and other people time.
Do not worry for the long-term consequence to your reputation (not even for the short-term), the editor that rejected your work is unlikely to remember your name or to put you in a sort of black-list (unless you start arguing, escalating the situation).

"unless you start arguing, escalating the situation" - this is the sad reality of research now, with the race to publications. I hope that someday people will start to publish on blogs or similar decentralized platforms bypassing the "kneel before the journal" situation we have now. I understand the need of peer review, but this review is one or two people today, who can be seriously biaised.

@WoJ I do not disagree with you. I try to balance the author view with the reviewer duties. If I see one reference too less, or a sentence partially word-by-word without adequate reference, I ask for major revision (major in quality not quantity), if the consequent work is still meaningful, new and interesting. OP has 1.5 paper report: it is a very short text, ea. (trivial) flaw weights a lot.
My review leads to slow paper, wasting time/money to add a couple of proper reference only. Please compare the wasted resources with the funds spent on projects mentioned on https://retractionwatch.com/

I left academia quite some time ago - so my perspective is mostly "out-of-universe".  We teach people to not rely on a single source - but this is what a journal is. Worse, it is the opinion of the authors and the reviewers. If you compare this to general news (technical ones for instance), people got used to sourcing across many sources, and some of them evolved to be trustful. This way you get independent opinions (that can wildly vary).

(cont'd) There is not a case where someone has to wait months to pass information or is not published because someone does not like them. Of course, this leads to false information - but if someone wants to believe in homeopathy, no amount of data will change their minds. If they are truly curious, they will find sources that say yes and sources that say no and it is up to them to decide.

To pass informations there are lot of ways, peer-review publication is only one of the many ways and it come with (cumbersome for some) requirements. There are plenty of other venues, for example www.medrxiv.org , or even just sending an email to peers working on similar cases, to pass informations.
Said this, if one has enough "guard systems" in place to defend their work, they can use whatever system to pass informations. Unfortunately, because of laziness and inertia, the scientific word hinges strongly on the peer-review system.

Being a physician and clinical researcher myself, I can just encourage you to keep submitting the case report if it covers a "rare disease". There are numerous diseases / syndromes out there which are covered by less than n = 100 case reports. Every single one of them (given a decent quality) matters to compile knowledge that later goes into treatment recommendations. Cite the case report under discussion and clearly state to what extent your case was different. Consider a head-to-head comparison as a supplementary table. Try another journal and do not give up. You do not have to "add to the literature" with a case report in a classical sense. "Another case report on a rare disease" alone might be of high interest itself.

if the disease is a novel one, "Another case report on a rare disease first reported by xyz (year) " is what makes the difference between the paper being perceived as an interesting addition to a paper being questioned with "are they trying to be the first reporting this disease?" ... especially if the disease is being described with very close wordings. The importance of the credits to the first discoverer of something is unfortunately a disease of our research&progress thinking.

@ EarlyGrey. Sorry, I do not understand. I wanted to express that reporting diseases and approaches towards recovery / symptom reduction is what counts.

I am not against your goal. If you want to publish it in a peer reviewed venue, then it must be formally correct. The statistical risk of publishing bullshit is otherwise too high (compare it with requirements to be blood donor: many of them are in place to reduce the risk of diseases on a purely statistic basis, not on the basis of the single donor).
I am not against publishing on https://www.medrxiv.org/ either.

"[C]learly state to what extent your case was different."  I second that, but also want to point out that this information can be helpful to the reader as well — so a revision of the paper to include that information may also be in order.  Frequently, when the author needs to clarify something to a reviewer (who is presumably an expert in the field), that means it was not at all clear from the paper, so the paper needs to be improved.  I hate it when authors whose papers I review bury explanations in a response to me, because that insight is lost for others.

@Dr.M I must sincerely thank you for your comment. It gave me another perspective, and sometimes as young researchers and clinicians, we take personally every failed attempt, even the ones not worthwhile of a double thought.

@Mike I must say that I was not given the opportunity to resubmit the revised paper and to submit a better version, since it was rejected after three months of procrastination with a review stating the phrase above. Since the editorial board answered me two times that my reviewer was on holiday for a period time of three months, I must say that it sounds like the paper was not even given the chance to be revised in a proper way.

Yeah, it sounds like you were certainly not treated well, and I'm sorry to hear that.  But this is not the end for your paper.  Regardless of whether you try again with the editor-in-chief (in which case you can certainly enclose a revision), or submit to a different journal, my message is this: Learn from this painful experience and improve your paper.  The worst outcome would be if you manage to muscle through the original paper, but its message gets lost because you didn't clarify any issues that even an expert didn't understand.

It's not necessarily a plagiarism accusation - a possible interpretation is that the manuscript contains a significant amount of material that is already published elsewhere, and hence is not novel. This seems to match your description of the paper.
Assuming you didn't plagiarize, then asking for the iThenticate report (I assume this is what you meant) is kind of pointless. If the journal were rejecting your paper due to alleged plagiarism, the manuscript should not have reached a reviewer in the first place. In other words, the fact that the paper reached a reviewer implies that the reject reason is not plagiarism.

The paper is about a rare clinical case in the cardiology field. I found in the literature only another case similar. Nonetheless, I checked with attention in the paper and there are a few phrases similar to other papers that cannot be changed, such as the definition of pathology. the text is not similar to other cases, and despite some pathologies can have something similar there are other details that are shared and can actually change the outcome. Should I write to the editor-in-chief about the revision to ask explanation? Does someone have  advice in this case?

Resubmit elsewhere and use quotations where appropriate.

@Martina I edited the last line to make what I meant clearer.

It does sound like an accusation of plagiarism, but I would ask for clarification (it could be that the reviewer is being very literal - if you quoted a lot of text from others), if you were planning on submitting another version to another journal so it doesn't get rejected again (or worse be accused of plagiarism after it is published in another journal). You want to get to the bottom of what made the reviewer think it was plagiarism (if indeed that is what they thought).

Before asking for clarification, I'd suggest checking using Ithenticate / Turnitin or a similar platform. Maybe OP's university has a subscription, or in the worst case it costs 100$ to check a single paper.

@FedericoPoloni 100$? a time-cost benefit analysis points strongly at resubmitting to a different venue rather than investing so much in a tool :D !

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


text:
Trying to collect information on grad schools
I'm in the process of listing and comparing all the graduate schools I am interested in. What should I be comparing, gathering, etc. And what is the best way to keep all the information together?

Here are some ways in which different schools differ from each other:

Size. Both small schools (personal attention) and big schools (lots of seminars, people to talk to) have their advantages. Which is more important to you?
Research focuses. Even large schools will be dominated by a couple of research groups. Do you find their work interesting?
Program structure. Some programs are very structured, with lots of requirements; some are more free-form. Which is best is a matter of individual preference.
Competitiveness. Some departments are friendly and competitive, some departments are friendly and less competitive. (And a couple of departments are unfriendly and you should avoid them.) Do you thrive under pressure? If so, choose a competitive place.
Quality. (This one is obvious.)
Geography. Some places (Harvard, Wisconsin, Michigan, Washington, among many others) are located in towns where it's a lot of fun to be a grad student. Some are not.
Support. Some places offer more money, and/or less teaching requirements in exchange for funding. (Typically private schools fare better than public in this regard, but not necessarily.)

All things to keep in mind when you compare schools.

+1 for answer the first part of OP's question. But, this doesn't answer the second part of the question (how to keep all the information together). My simple suggestion: a spreadsheet.

To add to this list - Outcomes: What percentage of students graduate in a reasonable time (maybe 7 years for PhD depending on field). This information can be hard to come by, but for US programs: http://www.phds.org/graduate-school/graduate-school-listings-and-rankings/

You forgot another big one: People. Look through the faculty web pages in details. Can you identify a few potential advisors? Are they highly visible in their field? Are their former students successful? Do they look like someone you would get along with? (Yes, this is hard to judge over the web, but if something raises a red flag, even subconsciously, you should probably listen.)

What is the best way to keep all the information together?

You've got a number of options here, but I would suggest two:

A spreadsheet (as Thomas mentions in his comment) for the logistical issues.  I had a spreadsheet with the following columns:

Name | Website | Location | Due date for application | App. complete? (Y/N) | Letters sent? (Y/N) | Accepted? (Y/N/Waitlist) | Visit date | Primary contact name | Primary contact email | Thoughts (this was a one-liner column where I would put "great location!", "no funding...", or "perfect research fit", etc.
2. A folder on your computer for each school, underneath an overarching "Grad School Applications" folder. This is where you can drop all information pertaining to the school, including: a document with jotted down thoughts, your personal statement personalized for the school, a cover letter, the application form (if offline), correspondence you've received from the school (printed emails work pretty well), etc.
I would put everything in a Dropbox so you can access it on the road (and for backup).


text:
Research publications per capita?
I came across yet another infogram, originating from this Nature article, showing the top-40 countries in terms of scientific publications produced for 2011.

The data are based on publications from Thompson Reuters/Web of Science. Similar data are available from Scimago (spanning 1996–2012).
Presented this way, there's some "bias" towards countries with a larger population. I was thus wondering if statistics on the number of scientific publications per capita was available for countries?
... just out of curiosity.

What does it even mean? I (UK) just submitted a paper with three UK co-authors and one Japanese; last week, I submitted one with one UK co-author and two Spanish.  Does that give 1.3 papers to the UK, 0.5 to Spain and 0.2 to Japan?  (Well, if they're accepted, anyway.)

@DavidRicherby, my understanding of the Scimago statistics is that it would count as one paper for UK, one for Spain and one for Japan.

In that case, the number of "papers" in the Scimago statistics must dramatically exceed the number of papers that were written!

@DavidRicherby, true! But I don't think the absolute counts of publications are so interesting. I think what's more interesting is the comparison of research output (at least volume-wise) per country, normalised by population.

Taking the data from Scimago for number of publications in Scopus for each country including the years 1996–2012 (Pubs), and
taking the 2012 populations for countries from Worldbank (Pop), and
writing a small script to join on country name and curating the subsequent results,

... we get the following (edit: note that the list scrolls down!):
No...Country.......................Pubs/Pop
1....Switzerland...................0.04948049
2....Sweden........................0.03949838
3....Denmark.......................0.03724673
4....Finland.......................0.03512776
5....Iceland.......................0.03384176
6....Netherlands...................0.03266005
7....Norway........................0.03235590
8....Monaco........................0.03153357
9....United Kingdom................0.03034517
10...Australia.....................0.03013565
11...New Zealand...................0.02928470
12...Canada........................0.02848185
13...Israel........................0.02841134
14...Singapore.....................0.02814340
15...Belgium.......................0.02684193
16...Austria.......................0.02538793
17...Slovenia......................0.02456816
18...Liechtenstein.................0.02302488
19...Ireland.......................0.02280205
20...United States.................0.02250084
21...Germany.......................0.02177218
22...France........................0.01953477
23...Spain.........................0.01643973
24...Greece........................0.01601820
25...Italy.........................0.01575377
26...Czech Republic................0.01557232
27...Estonia.......................0.01429077
28...Japan.........................0.01392641
29...Croatia.......................0.01346473
30...Portugal......................0.01319425
31...Luxembourg....................0.01267497
32...Korea.........................0.01157157
33...Hungary.......................0.01128115
34...Greenland.....................0.01071429
35...Cyprus........................0.00913291
36...Poland........................0.00899290
37...Lithuania.....................0.00829172
38...Bermuda.......................0.00745301
39...Faeroe Islands................0.00668606
40...Bulgaria......................0.00620812
41...New Caledonia.................0.00605143
42...Malta.........................0.00601626
43...Grenada.......................0.00528995
44...Palau.........................0.00510745
45...Latvia........................0.00497760
46...Romania.......................0.00432618
47...Kuwait........................0.00423781
48...Barbados......................0.00421932
49...Turkey........................0.00414781
50...Russian Federation............0.00408719
51...Serbia........................0.00399812
52...Chile.........................0.00394931
53...San Marino....................0.00374436
54...Seychelles....................0.00373640
55...Guam..........................0.00360543
56...Tunisia.......................0.00355685
57...French Polynesia..............0.00341107
58...Malaysia......................0.00339218
59...Brunei Darussalam.............0.00326268
60...Armenia.......................0.00315417
61...Jordan........................0.00314134
62...Lebanon.......................0.00309093
63...Puerto Rico...................0.00305665
64...Cayman Islands................0.00297030
65...Argentina.....................0.00288041
66...Qatar.........................0.00282271
67...Uruguay.......................0.00281334
68...Trinidad and Tobago...........0.00279863
69...Macedonia.....................0.00273227
70...Iran..........................0.00265369
71...Belarus.......................0.00262056
72...Oman..........................0.00247495
73...Bahrain.......................0.00247073
74...South Africa..................0.00244784
75...Ukraine.......................0.00241902
76...Brazil........................0.00232119
77...Cuba..........................0.00218313
78...Dominica......................0.00216227
79...Saudi Arabia..................0.00208004
80...United Arab Emirates..........0.00206949
81...American Samoa................0.00204978
82...China.........................0.00198446
83...Montenegro....................0.00175661
84...Fiji..........................0.00174223
85...Botswana......................0.00172363
86...Georgia.......................0.00166009
87...Virgin Islands (U.S.).........0.00164332
88...Tuvalu........................0.00152130
89...Mexico........................0.00137863
90...Costa Rica....................0.00135080
91...Andorra.......................0.00132721
92...Jamaica.......................0.00128646
93...Moldova.......................0.00127910
94...Thailand......................0.00123095
95...Marshall Islands..............0.00119874
96...Bosnia and Herzegovina........0.00116017
97...Egypt.........................0.00110861
98...Mauritius.....................0.00110573
99...Samoa.........................0.00093706
100..Panama........................0.00093654
101..Northern Mariana Islands......0.00091924
102..Gabon.........................0.00091696
103..Venezuela.....................0.00090597
104..Turks and Caicos Islands......0.00089432
105..Vanuatu.......................0.00086952
106..Antigua and Barbuda...........0.00084204
107..Gambia........................0.00084188
108..Morocco.......................0.00083801
109..Azerbaijan....................0.00080366
110..Tonga.........................0.00077186
111..Mongolia......................0.00076525
112..Colombia......................0.00075234
113..Belize........................0.00069432
114..Bahamas.......................0.00069362
115..Algeria.......................0.00066821
116..Namibia.......................0.00064132
117..India.........................0.00060709
118..Swaziland.....................0.00056459
119..Guyana........................0.00053183
120..Albania.......................0.00048797
121..Congo.........................0.00047290
122..Sri Lanka.....................0.00040530
123..Solomon Islands...............0.00040393
124..Maldives......................0.00039889
125..Bhutan........................0.00039767
126..Aruba.........................0.00039069
127..Kenya.........................0.00038740
128..Zimbabwe......................0.00038282
129..Senegal.......................0.00036806
130..Suriname......................0.00035732
131..Cameroon......................0.00034761
132..Kazakhstan....................0.00033660
133..Pakistan......................0.00032448
134..Peru..........................0.00029889
135..Ecuador.......................0.00029486
136..Ghana.........................0.00026906
137..Uzbekistan....................0.00025359
138..Benin.........................0.00025232
139..Bolivia.......................0.00024428
140..Nigeria.......................0.00024256
141..Papua New Guinea..............0.00023985
142..Nepal.........................0.00022093
143..Malawi........................0.00021098
144..Burkina Faso..................0.00020486
145..Uganda........................0.00020330
146..Sao Tome and Principe.........0.00020202
147..Guinea-Bissau.................0.00019536
148..Vietnam.......................0.00018557
149..Zambia........................0.00018529
150..Iraq..........................0.00017914
151..Syrian Arab Republic..........0.00017648
152..Tanzania......................0.00016707
153..Nicaragua.....................0.00016106
154..Lesotho.......................0.00015549
155..Djibouti......................0.00015471
156..Togo..........................0.00015159
157..Equatorial Guinea.............0.00014804
158..Paraguay......................0.00014026
159..Philippines...................0.00013611
160..El Salvador...................0.00012751
161..Bangladesh....................0.00012593
162..Mali..........................0.00011910
163..Kiribati......................0.00011906
164..Tajikistan....................0.00010988
165..Sudan.........................0.00010700
166..Cambodia......................0.00010468
167..Guatemala.....................0.00010131
168..Madagascar....................0.00010097
169..Mauritania....................0.00009194
170..Central African Republic......0.00008817
171..Ethiopia......................0.00008738
172..Honduras......................0.00008720
173..Comoros.......................0.00008223
174..Indonesia.....................0.00008169
175..Rwanda........................0.00007864
176..Yemen.........................0.00007203
177..Niger.........................0.00006895
178..Dominican Republic............0.00006860
179..Eritrea.......................0.00006035
180..Mozambique....................0.00005971
181..Sierra Leone..................0.00005720
182..Haiti.........................0.00004305
183..Turkmenistan..................0.00004156
184..Timor-Leste...................0.00004131
185..Guinea........................0.00003336
186..Burundi.......................0.00002853
187..Liberia.......................0.00002792
188..Chad..........................0.00002249
189..Angola........................0.00002123
190..Myanmar.......................0.00002040
191..Afghanistan...................0.00001626
192..Somalia.......................0.00000589

Countries missed by the join ...

Population not found for following countries mentioned w/publications:
 Anguilla
 Bouvet Island
 British Indian Ocean Territory
 Cape Verde
 Christmas Island
 Cocos (Keeling) Islands
 Cook Islands
 Côte d'Ivoire
 Democratic Republic Congo
 Falkland Islands (Malvinas)
 Federated States of Micronesia
 French Guiana
 French Southern Territories
 Gibraltar
 Guadeloupe
 Heard Island and McDonald Islands
 Hong Kong
 Kyrgyzstan
 Laos
 Libyan Arab Jamahiriya
 Macao
 Martinique
 Mayotte
 Montserrat
 Nauru
 Netherlands Antilles
 Niue
 Norfolk Island
 North Korea
 Palestine
 Reunion
 Saint Helena
 Saint Kitts and Nevis
 Saint Lucia
 Saint Pierre and Miquelon
 Saint Vincent and The Grenadines
 Slovakia
 South Georgia and The South Sandwich Islands
 Svalbard and Jan Mayen
 Taiwan
 Tokelau
 United States Minor Outlying Islands
 Vatican City State
 Virgin Islands (British)
 Wallis and Futuna
 Western Sahara

Publications not found for following countries mentioned w/populations:
 Cabo Verde
 Cote d'Ivoire
 Curacao
 Hong Kong SAR
 Isle of Man
 Kosovo
 Kyrgyz Republic
 Lao PDR
 Libya
 Macao SAR
 Micronesia
 Sint Maarten (Dutch part)
 Slovak Republic
 South Sudan
 St. Kitts and Nevis
 St. Lucia
 St. Martin (French part)
 St. Vincent and the Grenadines
 West Bank and Gaza

+1, you followed up on your question with own research. I'd be very interested in actually seeing a rank curve (at least for the top 20 or so).
Also, isn't this now slightly biased towards countries with a small population (Liechtenstein comes to mind)? I guess it's hard to find data on the number of researchers, because that's the part of the population that produces these articles...

@tschoppi probable although the US having a higher rank than Luxembourg seems to contradict the small population bias. This might actually be a rather good estimate of the number of researchers per capita.

@Jigg I haven't thought about it that way. But it makes sense!

Scimago also offers the numbers for just one year. Since populations (and also the number of publications) change, I think it would be better to just compare it for one year (say, 2012) in both data sets.

@DavidRicherby, I think the wording needs to be a little bit more careful: certainly 1-in-20 Swiss people did not publish a paper. Rather over the sixteen-year period defined, Swiss-affiliated researchers co-authored a number of papers equivalent to one-twentieth of the Swiss population. In other words, the number of Swiss-affiliated papers indexed by Scopus from 1996–2012 divided by the Swiss population in 2012 roughly equals 1/20.

@tschoppi, I could spend some time to do the same analysis only considering the number of papers published in 2012, but I prefer choosing 1996–2012 since my goal is a comparison of the research outputs of the country per capita, rather than a comparison of the same countries over years, if that makes sense? For me, looking at 16 years of publication output is preferable to looking at only 1 year, even if the population is fixed at a given year. (In terms of asking/answering my own question, I had precisely this curiosity, I ran the analysis and so I thought I'd share the results here.)

@badroit So, crudely, ignoring the fact that some Swiss people died during that 16-year period and some were born, about one Swiss person in every 320 published a paper? That sounds more reasonable.

@DavidRicherby I'm guessing some people in Switzerland publish more than one paper (even per year). E.g. if those who publish, do publish 10 papers per year on average, then it's 1/200 people publishing papers.

@Trylks That would still be 400,000 academic papers a year, just from Switzerland! The answer has already been given: the data is over a 16-year period.

For your information, because Taiwan is not officially a member of Worldbank(for political reason), the population is not available there. According to the official report from Taiwan government report, indirect link, the population in 2012 was 23,268,087.

@scaaahu, that would give Taiwan a Pub/Pop value of 0.017136, giving it a rank in 86th place (fwiw!).

@tschoppi: no, there likely is no small country bias. What we see here is that small populations go along with high variances in paper output per capita. So small countries are disproportionally likely to end up at the top of such rankings... as well as at the bottom. The same effect appears if you look at cancer incidence. The 20 US counties with the highest incidence of a specific cancer are usually among the least populated - and so are the 20 counties with the lowest incidence of this particular cancer. Correcting for this effect is not easy.

@StephanKolassa So it's also like the schools that perform well have smaller classes, but those who you find at the bottom of such rankings also have small classes? I never really could get my head around that statistical effect. But then again, I'm no statistician. Thanks for clearing that up, though! :-)

Switzerland has close to no natural resources and its economy relies heavily on high-tech/med. tech/pharma industries. As a consequence, there is a lot of private and public funds allocated to research. I'm not surprised to see it in the upper part of the list, regardless of statistical artifacts.

@StephanKolassa While your explanation sounds reasonable, I can't find any of the smaller Western European countries, apart from Portugal and Luxembourg, below the big continental Western European countries in the list. Now Luxembourg didn't even really have a university over much of the considered time span, and Portugal is a comparably poor country. How does that fit with your explanation?

@silvado, note that the list scrolls down.

@tschoppi, the small/large class room analogy doesn't fit ... that's a very specific phenomenon about the effect of class room size on education. To illustrate the core point Stephan was making, the pop. of Tuvalu is 9,860. They published 15 papers over 16 years. But if they had even a small research group (e.g., four people publishing three distinct papers a year for sixteen years), Tuvalu would be top of the list. Within small populations, small outliers can cause a large overall effect. Another example might be IMDb movies with fewer than 1000 votes tending to be more extreme.

@badroit I noticed that, but I didn't find any Western European Country after rank 31. I wanted to focus on this subset, because it's a sample of small and large countries with relatively similar economic situations. When comparing e.g. France to Guatemala in terms of research publications, it's clear that there's different effects than stochastic variance at work.

Re: Taiwan Pub/Pop value 0.0171 is worse than France(22nd), but better than Spain(23rd). Definitely better than 86th place.

@scaahu, apologies, you are absolutely correct! I lost an order of magnitude.

Supplementing badroit's answer (my point is not to use different source, but to show at the same time total and per capita data).
Taking data World Bank Open Data for Population and Scientific and technical journal articles, for year 2009 (for newer there is no up-to-data publication data), and using a short Python script, we get:

Only top 50 countries are shown.

Height: publications per capita per year (in 2009),
Width: country population,
Area: total publication count per year (in 2009).

Source code: on IPython Notebook Viewer, on GitHub Gist. (Quick and dirty, be warned.)


text:
How to handle citing duplicate publications?
I am writing a review article and have come across a number of references which were published verbatim in their entirety in more than one place (same author(s) and the same content; Duplicate Publications). All of the publications in question are before 1970 and may be divided into two classes: those that have an instance with a statement that the content has been published or presented elsewhere (which references the duplicate) and those lacking such a statement.
For those with a statement, I am inclined to cite the earliest instance and omit the later. However, the approach is unclear for those where precedence is not apparent.
I am looking for any recommendations (best practices, examples) on how citing duplicate publications should be handled in general. I have not come across an example in my literature review and have been unable to find any guidance (most search results are related to preventing duplicate publications rather than coping with their aftermath decades later).
Options I see at the moment (some of which are more palatable than others):

Don't explicitly acknowledge the duplication, but cite both variants in the text and bibliography (i.e., a parenthetical or textual citation with both instances each and every time I want to reference its/their content).
Pick one (randomly if precedence cannot be determined) and ignore the other.
Pick one (randomly if precedence cannot be determined) and include a footnote at the first use indicating that another instance exists (the alternative instance would be cited there with the full citation included in the cited references section).
Pick one (randomly if precedence cannot be determined) and modify the full citation in the cited references section to indicate that another instance exists and provide the full citation of the alternative.

Some additional, possibly relevant information:

Subsequent publications are inconsistent in which instance is cited (i.e., both are cited and precedence is often ignored).
The field is environmental biotechnology.

Edit: To clarify in response to BioGeo's answer, I cannot determine absolute precedence for instances lacking a statement because the submission dates are not included (apparently the practice was not yet common, at least in this field). Unless there is a "standard approach" of which I am unaware, the published date cannot be relied on as a general solution either, given the differing precision in reported dates. For example, consider a duplicate publication where one instance is a book chapter published in 1943 and another instance is an article in the June issue of a journal published the same year. Which came first?

I would assume this to be covered in the various [tag:citation-style]s, so I added the tag. However, I couldn't find anything in the APA Publication Manual Table of Contents, nor on the APAStyle blog.

I guess I would treat it like the translated Russian physics journals, with the translated version published by the American Physical Society. There one would reference the original Russian, then in parenthesis give the translated version reference.

The purpose of references is for readers to look up the sources of the information you present in your article. If these publications are exactly the same, word for word, then I would not worry too much about it and I would cite the most easily accessible source or the one with a DOI and only cite it once, so that it will be easier for readers to find the source without having to access some articles that are published in less accessible journals.

That's what I'd recommend, too. Additionally, a footnote mentioning the duplicate publication would not hurt.

Thank you for your answer. I awarded the bounty to you because none of the answers satisfied the bounty request but yours told me what I probably need to hear (that I'm worrying about it too much). That being said, I do find "accessibility" to be uncomfortably subjective (few of the references have a DOI and many of the journals are now defunct, meaning availability in print depends on the holdings of one's library or its participation in loan programs). Moreover, if accessibility is the objective and the purpose of references as you say, wouldn't listing all of the instances be preferred?

@Guho I understand what your problem is, but I don't think accessibility is that subjective, while not everybody has a huge library, more and more articles are available online through different channels, and you can check if something is available or not. But I would agree that if you include a list of duplicates it might help find at least one of them.

As a review article should not also give a broad overview of developments in a certain research field, but also ease the task to anyone who wants to get acquainted with the history of research on a certain topic, you should provide all the information that may help your reader. If a certain seminal piece of research was published twice under different names I as a reader would profit from the knowledge that these are essentially the same text, which would save me from having to figure it out myself. So I would recommend citing both versions and explicitly stating that the works are identical.
This also applies to cases when a work originally published as a journal article was later included in a book as a chapter.

As a first comment, since all the references you are talking about are before 1970, there is a (high) chance that they will not be available (easily), so accessibility is probably a problem that you will encounter yourself (let alone your readers).
On the other hand, I would say that a reference is supposed to show the progress in a specific field. So (and if I didn't misunderstand something in your question), I would rather have the article that describes the finding you are referring to (e.g. the first application of a method, the discovery of an enzyme or the first description of a microorganism) rather than a later article citing that first one.
Of course, if the later article reports a development in the method that is interesting for your narrative, you could also add that to show the progress.
I don't understand completely why in some cases you cannot determine precedence - maybe I miss something. But in general, for reviews or original research articles, I try to find a reference that is the first occurence, rather than someone else using that method. I remember once trying to find the first describing a microorganism and I went back to 1957, which was citing an even older article which I couldn't find it. I reported it as the first accessible report on this microorganism and used the article from 1957.
So, in summary, I think you should go as back as you can get relatively easily access to old papers, and as close as possible to the article whose results are depicted in the text you cite.
If a part of the text is described without proper citation and you evaluate it as an opinion, rather than a finding, I think I would try to describe it in the review as such and/or cite those that actually proved it (probably later).
I hope I didn't misunderstand the question and you wanted something else...
In response to the edit: That seems like a quite different story from what I initially thought. I also now assume that the authors are the same (or overlapping), since you mention the text being copied verbatim (a bad practise if you ask me when writing a book chapter based on an article - but that was not the internet era). So there it is... I accidentally answered part of the question. I think it would be more common to have an article out first before writing a book chapter (assuming the editor sees the article first and then invites the authors to write a book chapter). But nevertheless, considering the intellectual property belongs to the same authors, and also the maturity (of age) of these works, I could choose to cite the one that is available more easily, i.e. available online or in a newer edition of the book.
There is no use for double citations on a finding that is proven once experimentally but described twice by the same authors. But if none of the authors is the same in the two sources, and it's still verbatim, then it seems like a case of plagiarism. I would still assume the article --> book direction, but I don't think the other way around could not work either.

Thank you for your answer! Indeed, finding some of these references has been a challenge. I have edited the question to hopefully clarify some of these points. To be clear, the references in question are identical (same author(s), same content), differing only in where they were published. The ones where precedence cannot be determined do not cite each other (through a statement or otherwise), hence the difficulty.

I saw your comment after the edit, but I think what I wrote covers what you ask. :)

I work in mathematics, where literature references are usually given in detail only in the bibliography at the end; in the main text of the paper, there would be just short pointers (like "Einstein [3]" or "[Ein1905]") to the bibliography. In your situation, with identical text published in several places, I'd list all those places in a single bibliography entry.  I'd start with the first (as far as I can determine) publication and then continue with "reprinted in ..." for each of the republications.  In the main text, I'd just have a pointer to that bibliography entry; there's no need to mention the multiple publications in the text.

I have reviewed recently reviewed a paper that had this passage:

In this paper, we show the algorithm to compute X. Very similar
  algorithms were simultaneously published by Alice, Bob and Charlie
  [5,6,7]. The same result being published by various important researchers,
  in our opinion, strengthens the significance of this result. However, our work differs from them ...

I think this is perfectly fine. Actually, I am convinced that the authors did a perfectly fine literature review -- even enough to know the brand new publications, and have no purpose to "sneak their manuscript into the conference."
That being said, I think it is perfectly fine (and most proper way) to write a sentence like following.

This result was simultaneously published by a number of scientists
  [2,3,4,5,6]. In this paper, we improve the mentioned result and ...

Actually, in my opinion, it would not be proper to refer only one or two since the reviewer might be very familiar with one of them and question the paper's sufficiency in terms of literature review.


text:
Logic behind masters programs admissions
I'm 2 years out of undergrad and thinking about applying to some math graduate schools, specifically operations research and maybe financial engineering. I was a math major, with middling grades, and now I work in IT.
My question is this: it seems that even for not top-tier schools, a high GPA is crucial, as are great letters of recommendation, wonderful GRE scores etc. Why? If I'm willing to shell out 50k for grad school, and I've met the prerequisites, and I show an interest in the subject, why wouldn't a school want to have me? Is it purely so that they can claim they have a low acceptance rate?
In other words, if a grad school (again, not top 10 let's say) has a surplus of people who want to take that program, in a field like math, why not just hire as many professors as it would take to teach them?
I guess I don't get all this pressure to be perfect.
Thanks!
EDIT: I am referring to masters programs in particular, where stipends are not as common.
EDIT: Ok, Pete and Paul's answers make sense, given the current set up of grad school. I can imagine a different set up, however, that would make it less competitive for students, more profitable for professors and more about learning than prestige.

I'm not sure how many people would want to pay 50k a year for grad school, when there isn't much money to be had after graduating. So, there probably isn't going to be a surplus of people who want to go. Spots in a program are limited because each professor can only take so many students. I really wish some math programs would hire more professors, so there's more than one guy in particular areas, but I guess they are also picking about investing in a faculty member...

@Dtseng: Trust me. We would eagerly hire more professors, if only our provost would pay their salaries.

Don't think of grad admissions as "uni hiring professors to teach you"; think of it as "professors choosing to hire/not hire you as research assistants". Grad school isn't for teaching people like in early college, it's more an apprenticeship/internship/employment trial period for new "hires" as professors or researchers in their team.

@Peteris: That is a very helpful comment.  Let me add to it: if your undergraduate student is not doing well, it is (a little harsh, but true) really their problem.  If your apprentice is not doing well, it really is your problem too.  So you don't want to hire someone as an apprentice without some threshold level of expectation for their success.

Some points:
1) The line that jumped out at me and probably most other mathematicians reading your message was "If I'm willing to shell out 50k for grad school".  Stop right there.  Most people who go to math graduate school get paid stipends; almost no one pays the full tuition themselves.  It is a little unclear why you are so willing to do this: it certainly does not seem like a wise career move.
2) Graduate programs have limited resources.  If they admitted more PhD students then it might in the long run lead to more faculty, but this is an indirect and uncertain process.  Moreover every graduate student is a huge outlay of time and effort on the part of the faculty, and while programs are not being ranked according to their acceptance rates (I don't know that these statistics are even reported), they are certainly being ranked according to their completion rates.  Math graduate school is a challenging proposition, and a lot of people who enroll realize it is not for them.
3) The requirements for getting into a decent math graduate program are not "perfection".  (In fact, a "perfect" academic record may in practice mean that the student did not suitably challenge herself.)  They are looking for an academic record that gives them confidence that the student will actually succeed in the program.  If you admit a student who is merely interested and willing to pay but turns out not to have the skills and the drive to complete the program, everyone's time has been wasted, and lots of the student's money has been wasted.  This is not a desirable outcome.
Added: Yes, the above remarks apply primarily to PhD programs.  (In fact I didn't understand the meaning of MFE, and I thought that OR stood for "Oregon" rather than -- my next guess -- "Operations Research".  It's best to err on the side of spelling out abbreviations on a site like this.)  Master's programs generally do have lower entry requirements compared to PhD programs at the same institution, and yes, paying your own way is somewhat more common, although I would still not recommend it to any but the wealthiest students.  There are in fact some good master's programs in mathematics that one could get into by making clear in advance that no financial support was being requested.
To say more than this really depends on the department.  Some places have extra resources for master's programs, but many do not: the master's program takes place alongside the more populous PhD program and is administrated and taught by the same faculty members with limited time and energy that they are trying to apply in the best possible way.  Master's students who are not strong enough to receive funding may in fact be the ones who require significant extra effort to get them to finish the program.  They may also require faculty to meet and discuss tough questions like whether or not they should be allowed to continue in the program.  Speaking from my own experience: a few years ago I was largely open to the idea that anyone who has the appropriate undergraduate degree and coursework and is willing to pay their own way should be given a shot in our master's program.  I do not feel that way any longer.

I appreciate your response. I certainly agree with you as far as PhDs go. Fit with an advisor, the ability to conduct independent research, and other factors are crucial, and that significantly reduces the pool of acceptable applicants. I'm talking about masters degrees, however. On different forums, and on school websites, I have seen rates of acceptance, and certain expectations, that do not make sense to me, if we're talking about a program that students generally pay to attend.

@Alex: Aha, I was just wondering whether maybe it was masters programs that you were looking at.  It would help if you'd edit that into your question.

@pete thanks for your added perspective on the masters issue. If I'm understanding you correctly, the amount of money that is transferred from student tuition to the professor isn't worth as much as the time that is transferred from doing research to struggling with unmotivated students? I am still making sense of this, will comment and probably accept your answer later today.

To clarify, it sounds like a bunch of students are willing to pay money to hear professors speak, but the professors are worried that this might require them to do a bit of mentoring.

@Alex: Since "the amount of money that is transferred from student tuition to the professor" is in this case zero, this is certainly true.

@Alex "this might require them to do a bit of mentoring". This is an unkind comment.

You should not pay tuition to attend grad school, excepting possibly certain "professional" schools like medicine, business, law.
That is, grad programs admit a number of students for which they have funding, and have faculty/mentoring support.
Programs do not get tuition money back directly (as counter-intuitive as this might seem), but have to calibrate grad admissions to match the faculty they have ... the numbers of which are determined by essentially unrelated issues. But, approximately, programs will not admit you if they are not confident that you can succeed in their program. So you should not begrugde that judgement. And, srsly, such judgements are made with much experience.
Yes, there is the issue of prediction of success, which is an element that did not enter in undergrad studies. That is, programs do not "admit everyone" and then allow people to fail. Nor is it just a matter of "trying hard". Beyond a certain point, there is an issue of natural ability. It is true that this is highly non-trivial to understand/detect/encourage.
Yes, there is a considerable amount of disingenuousness in how we describe graduate programs...
Perhaps reaction-comments from the OP could help refine useful answers.

I appreciate your response. I think you are misinterpreting my question, however. I am not begrudging anyone's judgment, as I have not yet applied to any program. But for example, Columbia has an MSOR and an MFE. These cost I think, 20k and 50k respectively (not sure exactly). They accept around 10% of applicants each. My questions is whether the low percentage of acceptance is a reflection of how many qualified candidates there are, or just a way of boosting a school's reputation.

@Alex, ah, ok: no, the low acceptance is not a choice to boost the rep, but is a response to an already-more-desirable program's attracting more applicants ... who want to benefit from the associated cachet. One's "pedigree" matters a good bit at the beginning of an academic career and some others. A program has a certain limited capacity, for one thing, and a desire to preserve their exclusiveness (thus not strongly motivated to expand).

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